The Books of Chilan Balam,
The Prophetic and Historic Records
of the Mayas of Yucatan.

By Daniel G. Brinton, M. D.

VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF
PHILADELPHIA; MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL
SOCIETY; THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY;
DÉLÉGUÉ OF THE INSTITUTION
ETHNOGRAPHIQUE,
ETC., ETC.

EDWARD STERN & CO.,
PHILADELPHIA.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The substance of the present pamphlet was presented as an address to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, at its meeting in January, 1882, and was printed in the Penn Monthly, March, 1882. As the subject is one quite new in the field of American archæology and linguistics, it is believed that a republication in the present form will be welcomed by students of these branches.

THE BOOKS OF CHILAN BALAM.5-*

Civilization in ancient America rose to its highest level among the Mayas of Yucatan. Not to speak of the architectural monuments which still remain to attest this, we have the evidence of the earliest missionaries to the fact that they alone, of all the natives of the New World, possessed a literature written in “letters and characters,” preserved in volumes neatly bound, the paper manufactured from the bark of a tree and sized with a durable white varnish.5-†

A few of these books still remain, preserved to us by accident in the great European libraries; but most of them were destroyed by the monks. Their contents were found to relate chiefly to the pagan ritual, to traditions of the heathen times, to astrological superstitions, and the like. Hence, they were considered deleterious, and were burned wherever discovered.

This annihilation of their sacred books affected the natives most keenly, as we are pointedly informed by Bishop Landa, himself one of the most ruthless of Vandals in this respect.5-‡ But already some of the more intelligent had learned the Spanish alphabet, and the missionaries had added a sufficient number of signs to it to express with tolerable accuracy the phonetics of the Maya tongue. Relying on their memories, and, no doubt, aided by some manuscripts secretly preserved, many natives set to work to write out in this new alphabet the contents of their ancient records. Much was added which had been brought in by the Europeans, and much omitted which had become unintelligible or obsolete since the Conquest; while, of course, the different writers, varying in skill and knowledge, produced works of very various merit.

Nevertheless, each of these books bore the same name. In whatever village it