The Popol Vuh's Preservation and the Newberry Library Manuscript

The Popol Vuh survived into the modern era through a single crucial manuscript copy made around 1701 by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximenez, who transcribed the K'iche' text alongside his own Spanish translation while serving as a parish priest in the K'iche' highlands, without which the original document, since lost, might never have reached later scholarship at all, a preservation story underscoring how narrowly some of the most important indigenous American religious texts survived colonial-era neglect and destruction.

Ximenez's manuscript eventually made its way to the Newberry Library in Chicago, where it remains today, and Dennis Tedlock's and Allen Christenson's modern English translations, both drawing on extensive consultation with contemporary K'iche' Maya cultural and religious knowledge, have significantly shaped how the text is understood and taught today, treating it not merely as ancient literature but as a living reference point for contemporary K'iche' Maya religious and cultural identity. K'iche' remains a living spoken language today among a substantial highland Guatemalan population, distinguishing it from many other historic scriptural languages that survive only in liturgical or scholarly use.