ebooks Napoleon's Conquest of Europe: The War of the Third Coalition (Studies in Military History and International Affairs;) by Frederick C. Schneid in History

Description

The title of Edmonson's work refers to the Mayan custom of first predicting their history and then living it; and it may be that no other peoples have ever gone so far in this direction. The Book of Chilam Balam was a sacred text prepared by generations of Mayan priests to record the past and to predict the future. The official prophet of each twenty-year rule was the Chilam Balam; or Spokesman of the Jaguar—the Jaguar being the supreme authority charged with converting the prophet's words into fact.This is a literal but poetic translation of one of fourteen known manuscripts in Yucatecan Maya on ritual and history. It pictures a world of all but incredible numerological order; slowly yielding to Christianity and Spanish political pressure but never surrendering. In fact; it demonstrates the surprising truth of a secret Mayan government during the Spanish rule; which continued to collect tribute in the names of the ruined Classic cities and preserved the essence of the Mayan calendar as a legacy for the tradition's modern inheritors.The history of the Yucatecan Maya from the seventh to the nineteenth century is revealed. And this is history as the Maya saw it—of a people concerned with lords and priests; with the cosmology which justified their rule; and with the civil war which they perceived as the real dimension of the colonial period.A work of both history and literature; the Tizimin presents a great deal of Mayan thought; some of which has been suspected but not previously documented. Edmonson's skillful reordering of the text not only makes perfect historical sense but also resolves the long-standing problem of correlating the two colonial Mayan calendars. The book includes both interpretative and literal translations; as well as the Maya parallel couplets and extensive annotations on each page. The beauty of the sacred text is illuminated by the literal translation; while both versions unveil the magnificent historical; philosophical; and social traditions of the most sophisticated native culture in the New World.The prophetic history of the Tizimin creates a portrait of the continuity and vitality; of the ancient past and the foreordained future of the Maya.