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the language of Zuyua
Author(s) -
STROSS BRIAN
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1983.10.1.02a00090
Subject(s) - interrogation , aristocracy (class) , history , linguistics , nobility , period (music) , literature , art , politics , philosophy , archaeology , aesthetics , law , political science
Colonial‐period documents pertaining to both highland and lowland Mayan groups refer to a place called Zuyua, or Zuiva, from whence came some of their ancestral nobility. This place has been identified with an area on the Gulf Coast of Mexico and is associated with the postclassic Toltec presence among the Mayans. A chapter of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel is devoted to an interrogation in the form of riddles in the “language of Zuyua,” the understanding of which appears at one time to have been an important criterion for inheriting positions of leadership in the Yucatec Maya aristocracy. This essay examines the forms and functions of the language of Zuyua as it appears in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, interprets some of the riddles of the interrogation in terms of a Mixe‐Zoquean language source from which homophony and punning in the riddles can be inferred, and proposes that the “language of Zuyua” was at one time a Mixean language. [Yucatec, Mixe‐Zoquean languages, secret languages, punning, riddles]