to the end of the
seventeenth, when it was first discovered by Ximenes at
Chichicastenango.

[Footnote 98: Mr. A. Helps was the first to point out the importance
of this work in his excellent 'History of the Spanish Conquest in
America.']

These years are not bridged over. We may appeal, however, to the
authority of the MS. itself, which carries the royal dynasties down to
the Spanish Conquest, and ends with the names of the two princes, Don
Juan de Rojas and Don Juan Cortes, the sons of Tecum and Tepepul.
These princes, though entirely subject to the Spaniards, were allowed
to retain the insignia of royalty to the year 1558, and it is shortly
after their time that the MS. is supposed to have been written. The
author himself says in the beginning that he wrote 'after the word of
God (chabal Dios) had been preached, in the midst of Christianity; and
that he did so because people could no longer see the 'Popol Vuh,'
wherein it was clearly shown that they came from the other side of the
sea, the account of our living in the land of shadow, and how we saw
light and life.' There is no attempt at claiming for his work any
extravagant age or mysterious authority. It is acknowledged to have
been written when the Castilians were the rulers of the land; when
bishops were preaching the word of Dios, the new God; when the ancient
traditions of the people were gradually dying out. Even the title of
'Popol Vuh,' which the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg has given to this
work, is not claimed for it by its author. He says that he wrote when
the 'Popol Vuh' was no longer to be seen. Now 'Popol Vuh' means the
book of the people, and referred to the traditional literature in
which all that was known about the early history of the nation, their
religion and ceremonies, was handed down from age to age.

It is to be regretted that the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg should have
sanctioned the application of this name to the Quiche MS. discovered
by Father Ximenes, and that he should apparently have translated it by
'Livre sacre' instead of 'Livre national,' or 'Libro del comun,' as
proposed by Ximenes. Such small inaccuracies are sure to produce great
confusion. Nothing but a desire to have a fine sounding title could
have led the editor to commit this mistake, for he himself confesses
that the work published by him has no right to the title 'Popol Vuh,'
and that 'Popol Vuh' does not mean 'Livre sacre.' Nor is there any
more reason to suppose, w