Chol Ritual Language
with Terrence Lee Folmar, Heidi Altman, Ausencio Cruz Guzmán, and Bernardo Pérez Martínez
©1996 J. Kathryn Josserand and Nicholas A. Hopkins

Curing

From the vocabulary of curing, it is apparent that the main cause of illness for the Chols of Tila, as it is elsewhere in Mesoamerica, is soul loss, which results in or produces an incomplete state of being. While this is not expressly stated, terms for ’to cure’ all stress ’completeness’. One set of terms is based on the root tz’äk, which in Yucatec and some other Mayan languages has the meaning ’to extend (by adding pieces)’. In Chol tz’äk is the term for ’medicine, remedy’, with the extension tz’äk-al ’seasonings (for a food)’.  A derived verb is tz’äk-an ’to cure’, which underlies its passive form, tz’äk-än-tel ’to be cured’, and the agentive noun tz’äk-ayaj ’curer’.  These forms are related to tz’äk-äl ’complete’, tz’äk-tesan ’to complete’ and tz’äk-tesän-tel ’to comply with an agreement’ (literally, ’to be completed’). A related set of terms includes laj ’all’ and laj-mesan ’to cure’, which are related to laj-al ’equal’ and laj-in i-bä ’to be equal (to something)’.

As mentioned above, two terms for female curers, xyot’onel ’midwife’ and xyojkonel ’curandera’ derive from their curative actions, yot’ ’to exert pressure on the abdomen’ and yojkon ’to jump over a patient’.

Other sets of terms will likely yield further insights into ritual behavior as analysis continues. It is interesting to note, for instance, that the term for saint, or saint’s image (as in the church) is based on lok’ ’to come out, emerge’, attested in lok’-san ’to take out, to cause to come out’.  Saints are lok’-om baj (in Tila) or lok’-om-lel (in Sabanilla). It is also notable that they are counted with the same numeral classifier as humans: jun-jun tikil-ob i-lok’om-baj-ob ’each (person) of the saints’.

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