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THE FOUNDATION RESEARCH DEPARTMENT | |
The Mayan Franciscan Vocabularies: A Preliminary Survey The Solana, Motul II, and San Francisco Spanish-Maya Dictionaries Of the various Maya-Spanish and Spanish-Maya dictionaries of the Mayan language of Yucatan which are generally available for study, only two are for the most part identical, indicating that they are both copies of an earlier and presently unavailable work. These two dictionaries are the Motul II, now at Brown University Library, and the Solana Dictionary (Vocabulario muy Copioso en Lengua Española e Maya de Yucatán), now in the library of the Hispanic Society of America. Neither of these dictionaries is complete. The Motul II is missing the following folios: 85-104, 161, 171-174, 209-216, and 233. The Solana on the other hand gives the appearance of being complete, but the last entries starting with the word "vulgar" consist of the Spanish headings only without the Mayan equivalents. Upon comparing the entries from the two dictionaries, it becomes apparent that in fact the problem begins with the word "visar cosa, cuxan." (Solana) / "viva cosa: cuxan." (Motul II). From that point on the copyist or restorer of the Solana had difficulties in reading the manuscript which he was working on, and later perhaps had run out of manuscript altogether and was trying to fill in the remainder of the alphabet. Alternatively, perhaps the last page of the Solana was missing and a restorer tired to give the impression that the dictionary is complete by adding a false page. (See Appendix C for the comparative listing of this problem.) In the Motul II only there is a specific reference to "el Arte": Nunca en ningun tienpo: ma bikin; ma bahun. ¶ vease en el arte fo. 100 et 140 et 136 en el ringlon 26. Since this reference is to be found only in the Motul II it is possible that it is intrusive material introduced by the copyist and not something which was originally part of the dictionary's text.17 Maya-Spanish entries in the Solana / Motul II Dictionary One interesting feature of the Solana / Motul II Spanish-Maya Dictionary is that there are some entries which are Maya-Spanish. The first example is found on the very first page of the Motul II: Aa .l. ee: assi que esso pasa. es como admiracion. This entry is to be found only in Motul II. On page 94 of the Solana, unfortunately in the area where pages from the Motul II are missing, there is the obverse of this entry: ee; aa: asi que eso pasa. Apparently, whoever put together the original Spanish-Maya dictionary, for some reason left these entries in their original Mayan alphabetical area, but also placed them under the correct Spanish alphabetical area on page Motul II 29r / Solana 30: assi que eso pasa: bai xabe .l. aa .l. ee. For comparison see Vienna 21v: Así que, ¿eso pasa? Es del que se admira: bay xa be; aa. There is a group of five entries which are given as Maya-Spanish in the Motul II after the entry "Ocho en numero: vaxac" on page 164r.18 The Solana scribe changed these entries about to put the Spanish gloss first but otherwise left these entries in their original position. Needless to say leaving the entries "Creer:...; Entrar:...; Sobre:....; Hurtar:...; and Llorar:..." between "Ocho en numero..." and "Ocuparse..." makes them completely out of place. These entries as a group are not matched by the Maya-Spanish section of the San Francisco nor by any other known Maya-Spanish dictionary. Since these entries are not matched in other dictionaries then we must come to the conclusion that, 1) the Solana / Motul II dictionary is the obverse of a previously existing Maya-Spanish dictionary and that, 2) this Maya-Spanish dictionary is now lost. The use of vide entries which reference Mayan glosses One of the more perplexing things to be found in the Solana / Motul II Dictionary is that there are a number of entries in which a vide will refer to a Mayan entry. These vide entries take various forms as the following examples show: Amançebarse, y amançebamiento: veyancil; tzayomancil; tzubancil. ¶ Vide: numçah ol. Amansado anssi: kuban yol. ¶ Vide: ixma kub ol: la que no tiene amor al marido.19 Cosas asidas vnas de otras: vide: trauar et hoken hok. Again, as in the case of the Mayan-Spanish entries, the conclusion must be that the writer had a Mayan-Spanish vocabulary at his disposition, and again, because the entry ixma kub ol is not to be found as it is given, this Mayan-Spanish vocabulary is apparently now lost. Intrusive material in the Motul II from the Vienna The place where the Motul II is missing the largest number of pages is from folio 85 to folio 104. Actually folios 83-84 were also at one point missing. The hand on these two folios is different from the one which wrote the rest of Motul II, and was a later attempt to fill in the missing material. This added material is actually a rather inaccurate copy of pages 72v-73v of the Vienna Dictionary. Interestingly enough, someone marked this material in the Vienna manuscript, placing the pound sign # in the left-hand margin in front of the entries Deestocar..., Desberarse... and the final entry Desbiarse... This symbol is not to be found in the rest of the Vienna and so seems to be clearly associated with the process of copying this material into the Motul II.
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