The Mayan Franciscan Vocabularies: A Preliminary Survey

The Ticul Spanish-Maya Dictionary

In 1836 Pérez copied a vocabulary which was found amongst the baptismal records in the church at Ticul. He rearranged it in 1847, and this rearranged copy was published posthumously in 1898. The Ticul Dictionary was dated January 26, 1690. While the author's name is not given, it should be noted that Fr. Gabriel de San Buenaventura was active at this time, and Beltrán mentions him as being a writer of both a Maya-Spanish and a Spanish-Maya dictionary, as well as the writer of the grammar²³  from which Beltrán was working while making his own grammar.

At first glance the Ticul Dictionary seems to be quite different from the dictionaries mentioned above. However, by the time one gets to the words beginning the letters "Al" it becomes noticeable that the Motul II / Solana / San Francisco II dictionaries are running almost the identical entries as the Ticul. (See Appendix D.) It becomes evident that in the Pérez transcript of the Ticul Pérez has rearranged the alphabetical sequence of the Ticul according to the "modern" method, as he states in the introductory pages to the Ticul. Furthermore, it would appear that the either the ms. from which Pérez was working was badly damaged, or the ms. from which the writer of the Ticul was copying was badly damaged, including lost pages or parts of pages, and that someone supplied what he presumed was the missing material. That would explain why parts of the Ticul are very different from the Motul II / Solana / San Francisco II and why other parts are almost identical.

It is evident that in order to ensure that a transcript of the Solana Dictionary is as complete as possible, all four source works must be consulted, with the Solana and Motul II dictionaries supplying the basis from which the transcript is made, and the San Francisco II and Ticul supplying corrections and additional information.

Endnotes

23. It should be mentioned that the San Buenaventura grammar is basically a rewrite of the Coronel grammar published in 1620. Thus, while Beltrán says that San Buenaventura wrote both a Spanish-Mayan and a Mayan-Spanish dictionary, it would not be surprising to find that what San Buenaventura really did was to rewrite older dictionaries at his disposal.

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