A Comparative Analysis of Ch’orti’ Verbal Art and the Poetic Discourse Structures of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing

Episode Peaks

One of the more poignant couplets the corpus of Maya hieroglyphic writing appears on the East Panel of the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque. The text records that on April 4^th of 611 Calakmul performed an ’axe event’ against Palenque (ch’a[h]kaj lakamha’) against the ruler Aj Ne’ Ohl Mat as well as the ruling family in power. This devastating moment in the history of Palenque is memorialized in the couplet satay k’uhul ixik, satay ajaw, "lost is the divine lady, lost is the lord." Translations of this phrase usually interpret the root sat to mean "lost" (see Martin and Grube 2001:161). While the primary meaning of the verbal root sat in Ch’orti’ is also "to lose," a secondary but still common meaning of sat in Ch’orti’ today is "to destroy." For example, in a Ch’orti’ story about the first people on the earth that I recorded God is said to have gotten angry with some of his early creations and so they were subsequently "destroyed by God" (sajtob’ umen e katata’). A couplet in another Ch’orti’ text I collected used the verb sat in a very similar context to this and to the Palenque example. Its text reads, "usati e pak’ab’, e gente," "he destroyed humanity, the people." I would argue then that the ruler of Palenque and perhaps many in the ruling family were "destroyed" when Calakmul attacked the city. Along these lines a better translation of this section of the text would be, "the divine lady got destroyed, the lords got destroyed." While perhaps only a slight semantic difference between "lost" and "destroyed" in this case, the more precise meaning of "destroyed" would suggest perhaps an even more hostile defeat for the many in the ruling family. The very fact that this couplet appears in an otherwise unpoetic section of this inscription strongly suggests that it was meant to draw attention to this even as the episode peak of the text.

Nikolai Grube has recently proposed a decipherment for the quotative particle che or chehen, "so they say, they say" (Grube 1998). Ch’orti’ makes regular use of the quotative particle che in reported speech. In poetic contexts, however, a seemingly different che is used as a kind of discourse marker that terminates lines. It is part of a group of affirmative particles (which are occasionally difficult to translate in context) that appear as atz’i, ya’, atz’i ya’, and atz’i ya’ che. Most traditional healers sprinkle this che particle throughout curing prayers without adding much to the meaning of the phrase. Instead, it seems to mark the end of a line or thought and is usually the point where the healer takes a breath. Its function seems rhythmic as much as it is grammatical at times. The following are examples of these affirmative particles in use.

All of the curanderos with whom I have spoken tell me that che in these ritual prayer contexts does not mean "they say" but instead, as one old curandera explained, "es como una afirmación" (it’s like an affirmation) that does not translate easily. Some prayers make use of this che discourse marker at the end of nearly every line to mark a pause point. (It should be noted that I still think this needs further confirmation as a separate discourse marker, but all indications now are that this is precisely its function in these contexts). It may resemble more closely the Chontal che’en "thus is is" (Knowles 1985:242) or the Ch’ol che’ "así" ("thus") (Aulie & Aulie 1978:47). This discourse marker in Ch’orti’ may have some relevance to a small number of texts from Primary Standard Sequences that end the clause with a single che (Figure 16). I suggest that this che that appears, as Grube has pointed out (Grube 1998:169), on a few ceramics of unknown provenance where it ends a phrase is parallel in usage to the discourse termination device che in Ch’orti’ that is preserved in these ritual poetic texts.

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