THE BAT GOD OF THE MAYA RACE" 



By Eduard Seler 



The beautiful drawing sent by Mr Dieseldorff to the Anthropolog- 

 ical Society shows us a deity whose worship is indeed occasionally 

 mentioned bj^ historians and Avhose name is contained in the names of 

 various Maya races, but of whom, on the whole, as of the mythologic 

 forms of South American and Central American races generally, little 

 enough is known. This deity is the bat god. 



The bat in various Maya dialects is called Zotz. From this is 

 derived the name Zotzil and Ah-zotzil, the " bat people ", which 

 name, on the one hand, belongs to a tribe who from ancient times to 

 the present day have been settled in the vicinity of what is now San 

 Cristobal de Chiapas — Mexicanized as Tzinacanteca, the people of 

 Tzinacantlan, the " bat city " — and, on the other hand, it belongs to 

 a tribe which is probably to be regarded as a portion of the great 

 nation of the Cakchikels, the chief nation of southern Guatemala. 

 Finally, there is still a Tzinacantan in the extreme southeast of 

 Guatemala, within the region of the Sinca language. 



Unfortunately, we are insufficiently informed concerning the lan- 

 guage and traditions of the Zotzil of Chiapas, but we have some 

 information in regard to the tribes of southern and western Guate- 

 mala. Here in early Christian times the natives themselves wrote 

 down their traditions, and these traditions, the Popol Vuh ^ and the 

 annals of Xahila ' are precious documents. The only drawback 

 is the difficulty of using them, because, on the one hand, we lack ade- 

 quate lexicographic aids, but more especially because we have no 

 exact definitions of the mythologic animals and the rest of the objects 

 and expressions which have reference to the ancient folklore of these 

 races. 



<• E. Seler in Verhandliingen der Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologic, Ethnologie 

 iind Urgeschichte, p. 577 and following, published in Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, 1894, 

 pt. 6. 



'' I'opol Vuh. Le livre sacre et les mythes de I'antiquit^ am^ricaine, etc., par I'ahb^ 

 Brasseur de Bourhourg. Paris, 1861. 



'"The Annals of the Cakchikels. Brinton's Library of Aboriginal Americnn Litera- 

 ture, n. 6. Philadelphia, 1885. 



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