Unit 13 13

English 203: Literature of the NonWestern World

Explication:
Reading:   1728-59, 2614-18:
                     Native America, 1728-35
                     Florentine Codex, 1736-39
                     Cantares Mexicanos, 1739-42
                     Popol Vuh, 1742-59
                     Navajo Night Chant, 2614-18

Florentine Codex:

Our text tells us that this was "the first work of modern anthropology" composed in the mid-16th c. at the same time that Shakespeare was writing his plays.  Our 2 selections are interestingly medical, being rituals addressed to women giving birth.  Your mother & young friends who have given birth can seek to allay your fears about giving birth, but the consolation & respect offered by a formal ritual are important.

"The Midwife Addresses the Woman Who Has Died in Childbirth":

As in many primal cultures, we can imagine that most mothers were teenagers when they were pregnant with their first child.  The young woman is told that if she dies as a warrior-mother, she will not be a "girl" but become a woman, even a god:
1737    it is said she stands up as a woman, when she dies they say she becomes a god.

The sacrifice of the young mother's life is respected as comparable to the sacrifice of a warrior's life in defending home & hearth:
l. 22     you sacrificed yourself.
           Yet you earned a compensation, a reward: a good, perfect, precious death [as a hero].
           By no means did you die in vain.
           & are you truly dead?

The rhetorical question suggests that the heroic young woman has passed to another plane of existence: from girl to woman to god:
l.28    my little child, my daughter, my lady
She has attained the hard-to-earn distinction of having a life after this one, as a kachina or ancestor spirit.  Thus the poem entreats the new ancestor goddess to be a mother to us all.  It also implies that the aged are envious of what she has won:
l.29    we are but old men & old women
l.32    without you, how can we survive?
         How painful will it be, this hard old age? [that she has escaped]
l.34    Dear lady, do not forget us!  Remember the hardships that we see,
             that we suffer, here on earth

The fallen warrior/mother is consoled, being told:
l.24    You will live forever, you will be happy, you will rejoice in the company
          & in the presence of our holy ones, the exalted women.

The young woman's spirit is addressed, but we suspect that much of the consolation was obliquely addressed to the young woman's mother, husband, & other members of her family.

Finally,  this poem suggest one of the many disastrous parallels between the Spanish & the Mayans.  You read that Mexico City was larger & more splendorous than any European city in 1519 when Cortes conquered it with 400 soldiers.  He was able to do so because of the strange coincidence in which the Mayan expected the god Quetzalcoatl to come to earth from the east.  In our poem the parallel is between the Mayan exaltation of motherhood & the Spanish Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary.  You could almost think the end of the Mayan poem was part of the Catholic liturgy of the rosary addressed to the Virgin Mary:
l.38    Remember us . . . O lady!
         You lie beyond [our world] in happiness.  In the good place, the perfect place,
         You live.
         In the company & in the presence of our Lord,
         You live.
         You as living flesh can see Him, you as living flesh can call to Him.
         Pray to him for us!
         Call to Him for us!

"The Midwife Addresses the Newly Delivered Woman":

The glory of being a fallen warrior & the honor of becoming a god is heady stuff for a teenage girl & an elegiac monument for the young woman's family.  But we would all prefer to have this ritual performed congratulating the new mother who went to battle & triumphed:
l.5     You went forth into battle . . .
         & now our Lord has seated you on the Eagle Mat, the Jaguar Mat [of the heroic victor]

Naturally the new mother knows better than anyone that she has won a victory.  The poem warns her that bad things can still happen:
l.11    Perhaps you shall go off [i.e., to the spirit world] & leave behind
             the child that has arrived [here in our world]
         Perhaps small as he is the Creator will summon him

Even if nothing so dire happens to either mother or child, the new mother is warned about being too proud of her child:
l.14    Do not be boastful of [the child].
         Do not consider yourself worthy of it
            [i.e., worthy of prideful boasting for something you accomplished,
            because God produced this child as much as you]
         Call out humbly to [thank] our Lord
            [for both the child & your deliverance]

Cantares Mexicanos (Songs of the Aztecs):

Song 4: Mexican Otomi [Heroes] Song:

The Aztecs were the other great ancient culture of Mexico.  The 2 poems we have somewhat resemble The Epic of Son-Jara in the sense that they need to be performed to produce the full effect of the art.  They also somewhat resemble Sakuntala in the sense of being sumptuous & poetically painting a visual picture.  Consider the visual effect of the poem:
1741    As colors I devise them [root songs that create beauty].
           As jewel mats, shot with jade & emerald sunray, the Green Place flower
           songs are radiating green [in the tropical forest where you find Palenque].
           A flower incense, flaming all around, spreads sky aroma, filled with sunshot
           mist, as I the singer, in this gentle rain of flowers sing before the Ever Present,
           the Ever Near [divine].

The color imagery is distinctively Mesoamerican.  The incense, the aesthetic sensitivity, & the self-consciousness about creating this beautiful sacrifice or offering ("I the singer") could be mistaken for Hindu work, as could the description of what sounds like Brahman: "the Ever Present, the Ever Near."  I am not implying that there was any influence from India on Aztec culture.  I offer the comparison only to help you appreciate the artistry & profundity of the Aztec poem.

The poem offers an elegant & appreciative sense of being in a tropical forest: seeing the sunlight carved into shafts of light by the huge trees & seeing the dart of intense color when tropical birds fly beneath the huge canopy of trees:
Delicious are the root songs, as I, the parrot corn-tassel bird,
lift them through a conch of gold, the sky songs passing through my lips:
like sunshot jades [the gold sun light shooting through the jade green forest]
I make the good songs glow, lifting fumes of flower fire [incense], a singer
making fragrance before the Ever Present, the Ever Near.

Again the sumptuous imagery, the self-conscious pride of priestly creation & aesthetic delicacy, the perfume & incense, & finally the dedication to Brahman -- all this resembles nothing so much as Hindu India.  Even the ending of the poem could be possibly mistaken for an expression of Hindu bhakti:
I exalt Him [the divine], rejoice Him with heart-pleasing flowers in this place of song.
With narcotic fumes my heart is pleasured.  I soften my heart, inhaling them.
My soul grows dizzy with the fragrance, inhaling good flowers in this place of enjoyment.
My soul is drunk with flowers.

We can hardly believe that people like these also cut the living hearts out of thousands of people at the top of pyramids like Chichen Itza in order to provide the ritual fuel or energy to keep the sun healthy.

Popol Vuh:

Creation:

These creation stories were also written in the mid-16th c., more than 500 years after "the mysterious collapse of Maya civilization [in] ca. A.D. 900" (1743).  Many of the basic elements are recognizable in Navajo, Pueblo, Hopi & other North American Indian myths; elements such as sipapu or the place of origin out of mother earth & into our world (imitated in the kiva dug into the earth).  The imagery here is that of the plant, especially corn, growing out of the ground.  The notion that this is a 4th or 5th world is familiar to Navajo culture, as is the yin/yang or mirror-imaged Twins who are both mischievous & enemies of chaos, the guardians of order.

Our text speculates on the influence of Christian missionaries & the Genesis story of creation on Popol Vuh.  Rather than speculating about how "thoroughly assimilated to the Maya pantheon" the story of Genesis might be, I think speculation might better consider that Genesis is simply one of hundreds of creation stories that all have somewhat the same symmetry.  There is first an indiscernible power that becomes manifest as some universal element, typically water.  Through some sequence or process (such as the "word"), other features of the world are made.  People finally arise, perhaps like cornstalks.  Things are chaotic until some heroic ancestor/s tame the titanic forces of creation to create order & justice.  In any case, that is pretty much the pattern offered by Popol Vuh.

1746    This is the beginning of the Ancient Word [that created being,
            including" . . . this place called Quiché.  Here We [the divine] shall inscribe
            [ontos or order on being], we shall implant [the seed of all life] the Ancient
            Word, the potential & source for everything

The narrator promises to explain:
how things were put in shadow [so they were not seen, being indiscernible] & [how
they were] brought to light by the Maker

All this is familiar.  What is unfamiliar to us are the Mayan names of God:
the Maker, Modeler, named Bearer [of being; Hindus have exactly this designation
   for Vishnu], Begetter,
Hunahpu Possum, Hunahpu coyote,
Great White Peccary, Tapir,
Sovereign Plumed Serpent,
heart of the Lake, Heart of the Sea,
Maker of the blue-Green Plate
Maker of the Blue-Green Bowl
Xpiyacoc, Xmucane
They accounted for everything -- & did it [i.e., created the world], too -- as
enlightened beings, in enlightened words

So the world is no accident.  It was created; & created purposefully or in an enlightened fashion.  Now we learn how the world evolved:
1747    Only the sky alone is there
           [as the first discernable trace or manifestation of unseen power.
           It then thickens or coalesces into something more tangible.]
           Only the sea alone is pooled under all the sky; there is nothing
           whatever gathered together.  It is at rest; not a single thing stirs.
           Whatever the is that might be [distinct or individual] is simply not
           there [yet]: only the pooled water, only the calm sea, only it alone
           is pooled.

Then a ripple occurs.  The power can also be discerned as a change in color, such as occurs on the tropical sea, from turquoise blue to turquoise green:
Only the Maker . . . [the Begetters] are in the water, a glittering light.
They are there, they are enclosed in quetzal feathers, in blue-green.

Father sky & embryonic waters begin to produce life, which is not content to swim.  The divine (as in Hinduism, called by many names: Heart of Sky, Hurricane, Thunderbolt Hurricane, Newborn Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt, & Sovereign Plumed Serpent) decides:
1748    Let it be this way, think about it: this water should be removed, emptied
           out for the formation of the earth's own plate & platform, then comes the
           sowing, the dawning of the sky-earth.
           & then the earth arose because of them, it was simply their word that
           brought it forth.  For the forming of the earth they said "Earth."

Twins Defeat 7-Macaw:

In the Navajo story of creation, the titanic forces of early creation are illustrated by a huge bird that eats Navajos.  When the twins kill it, the blood stains the red rocks of  much of the land of the Navajos.  The bird in our text is 7-Macaw.  The bird does not seem so evil, but the twins, Hunahpu & Xbalanque "saw evil in his attempt at self-magnification" (1748).  They hide under the tree & use a blowgun to hit 7-Macaw in the face or on the jaw or bill.  The battle is perhaps something like a dance in which Hunahpu's arm is torn off.

The point in all such tales is that titanic & chaotic force cannot be overcome by brute force.  Polyphemos, the one-eyed monster Kyklopes, is not overcome by some greater monstrous force, but by Odysseus' shrewdness & calculation.   Here too, the twins cannot defeat 7-Macaw by brute force.  He has just torn Hunahpu's arm off!  The whole point is to chain the titans to make the world less like an erupting volcano & more like a tilled field for agriculture.  Odysseus initially tells Polyphemos that his name is "Nbody."  When he blinds the monster, Polyphemos howls & other Kyklopes come to his aid.  They ask what is wrong & Polyphemos says that Nbody caused his pain & hurt.  The other Kyklopes say that if nobody is causing Polyphemos pain, they cannot help.

The twins concoct some similar trickery, getting 7-Macaw to trade his teeth for kernels of corn.  Remember the dream-imagery in The Epic of Son-Jara surrounding the inversion of a toothless dog that rips up another dog?  With the loss of his teeth, 7-Macaw loses his power:
1750    His face fell at once, he no longer looked like a lord.  The last of his
           teeth came out, the jewels that he stood out blue from his mouth.
           It was just as Hunahpu & Xbalanque had intended.
           & when 7-Macaw died, Hunahpu got back his arm.

Arrogant & insensitive power is curtailed, just as it was in The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Twins Defeat Death:

Many of you are familiar with Dante's Inferno.  The Mayan underworld seems to be something like a scary amusement park.  There is:

• a Dark House.  How can one escape without a glimmer of light?
• a Rattling House, "heavy with cold" & clattering hail.  Even in the tropics, one could perish of the cold in this house.
• a Jaguar House, "with jaguars alone inside, jostling one another, crowding together, with gnashing teeth."
• a Bat House, "squeaking, shrieking, darting through the house."
• a Razor House, "with blades alone inside.  The blades are moving back & forth, ripping, slashing through the house.

The story proceeds like a dream with little concern for transitions.  1- & 7-Hunahpu consumed cigars & a torch in the underworld.  Death wants them back, but the men say that they have been consumed.  Apparently this is symbolic for how life is consumed.  Thus Death promises them that their lives will also be consumed:
This very day, your day is finished, you will die, you will disappear [like smoke], & we shall break you off.  . . . You are to be sacrificed.

They were sacrificed & the head of 1-Hunahpu was put in a tree where it becomes a fruit.  The saliva of the fruit/skull falls on a maiden's hand & she is impregnated.  She gives birth to Hunahpu & Xbalanque.  Like their father/s, the twins become such great ball players that they are summoned to play Death himself.  Obviously the boys have added incentive to defeat Death who played ball with their fathers & took their lives (see n.1, p. 1751).  We then get a variation of the story of 7-Macaw, illustrating how sophistication can overcome brute power, even the power of death.

The story offers a dream-like reciprocation.
1754    They took hold of a human sacrifice.
           & they held up a human heart on high.
           [Then] that person was brought right back to life.

Xbalanque then does the trick with Hunahpu:
One by one his legs, his arms were spread wide.  His head came off, rolled
far away outside.  His heart, dug out, was smothered [wrapped] in a leaf.
Then Xbalanque commands:
"Get up!" he said, & Hunahpu came back to life.

The trick worked with a dog, with a person, & even with the magicians.  So 1- & 7-Death want to have the experience:
"Do it to us!  Sacrifice us!" they said.  "Sacrifice both of us!" said 1- & 7-Death
to Hunahpu & Xbalanque.
"Very well.  You ought to come back to life.  After all, aren't you Death?"

Stupid!  It was only a trick & when Death is put to death, they do not revive; for death is death.  How can it come to life?

Remember that these stories were written 40 years after Spanish domination.  Thus the story ends by claiming that the theme of the story is the repudiation of the old religion of blood in which the essential ritual was ripping human hearts out to provide fuel or food for the sun:
1755:    Such was the beginning of their disappearance [1- & 7-Death] & the denial
            of their worship.

The narrator continues to offer appeasement to the Spanish Catholics, denigrating his ancestors & their religion:
These ancient people only wanted conflict [& blood]
their ancient names [for the divine] are not really divine,
but fearful is the ancient evil of their faces.

The original meaning almost coalesces with the message of appeasement in the last paragraph.
1755   Such was the loss of their greatness & brilliance.  Their domain
           did not return to greatness.

Originally "their" referred to 1- & 7-Death.  The meaning was that the power of Death was diminished or limited.  The dead somehow entered into the sun & came back to life.  But we also understand the passage to be a eulogy for the Mayan world, which never returned to greatness after the Spanish conquest.

Origin of Humanity:

You remember that Muslim culture believes that angels are made from light, jinn from fire, & people from clay.  The Mayan world believed that people were made from corn.
1756     Corn was used, along with the water . . . for the creation of grease; it
            became human fat.
            After that, they put it into words:
            the making, the modeling of our first mother-father,
            with yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh

So we are not so much creatures of muscle & blood, but of fat!  (I guess I knew that.)  3 out of the 4 original humans were called Jaguar.  They are so far-seeing & powerful that the Bearer & Begetter feels threatened & consequently reduces their power:
1757   Let it be this way: now we'll take them apart just a little, that's what we
          need.  What we've found out isn't good.  Their deeds would become
          equal to ours,, just because their knowledge reaches so far.

The 4 original humans were all male.  They are evidently compensated for the reduction of their powers of vision & understanding by acquiring wives:
1758    Then their wives & women came into being.
            With their women there they became wider awake.  Right away
            they were happy at heart again, because of their wives.

Prayer for Future Generations:

1759     Give life & beginning
            Give . . . daughters & sons
            Keep them on the Green Road, the Green [living] Path

This prayer does not seem to have been answered very well for Mayan culture.  But you might be told something different when you visit the Yucatan & Chiapis & Guatemala.

Night Chant:

Prayer to Thunder:

The Mayan poem, especially in its ending, which prays for people to walk in health & beauty, offers an apt transition to the Navajo Night Chant.  Our text says that this ceremony is especially oriented to "ailments of the head" (2614).  The motif is essentially to bring good things out from the dark; from sleep, pleasant dreams; from dreams, a healthy life.
2615    In the house made of dawn
light & life begin, rising up from the dark.

The poem repeats the formula with various yin/yang associations: from the dark clouds & thunder comes the rain so wished for in the desert.  From the sky (rain & sun) & earth comes corn, food, sustenance, life.  As we learned in Popol Vuh, from corn comes Dinéh or the people, Navajos.
2616    With the darkness on the earth, come to us [life]
           My body restore for me
           Happily I recover.

The ritual is spoken by the singer or priest & repeated by the "patient."  Notice the "positive thinking" in having the patient repeat in many variations, "Happily I recover."
2617    Happily the young men will regard you.
           Happily the young women will regard you
Here is an incentive for either an old man or an old woman to recover from a stroke!

After so intensely being involved in chanting the very long liturgy of the 9-day long Night Chant, we can imagine that the "patient" is likely to be in a dreamy state as he hopes to create the reality by  conjuring with the power of words:
With beauty before me, I walk.
With beauty behind me, I walk.
With beauty below me, I walk.
With beauty above me, I walk
With beauty all around me, I walk.
It is finished in beauty,
It is finished in beauty,
It is finished in beauty,
It is finished in beauty,

An auspicious way to end the course!  Or almost to end.  To finish in beauty, you must answer the questions for this unit.  Go to the next section:

Questions.