THE IDENTITY OF HUNAHPU AND XBALANQUE OF THE POPOL VUH

 

The Classic Period Hun Ajaw Shoots Down Itzam-Neh

Over the years, there has been a great deal of controversy over the identities of the Hero Twins in the K'iche epic the POPOL VUH. While the story itself associates Hunahpu or One Blowgunner [1] with the Sun and his brother Xbalanque or Little Jaguar Sun [2] with the Moon, various scholars have attempted to "correct" the tradition. Venus, sun and moon have all, at one time or another, been brought into the debate.  Complicating the efforts to clarify the nature and function of these gods is their relationship to the Classic Period twins, Hun Ajaw or One Lord and Yax Balam or First Jaguar.

Most of the disagreement settles on Xbalanque.  Why?  Because while the jaguar is a nocturnal animal, and Yax Balam is linked in his iconography and glyphic representations to the lunar number 9, there is conflicting evidence from the K'iche people themselves.  As Tedlock observed in his edition of the PV:

"Contemporary Quiches regard the full moon as a nocturnal equivalent of the sun, pointing out that it has a full disk, is bright enough to travel by, and goes clear across the sky in the same time it takes the sun to do the same thing."  

In this sense, then, the Full Moon could be seen at the Night Sun.

On the other hand, Tedlock reminds us (in his Breath on the Mirror) that

"In Kekchi, the sun is called b'alamq'e when it is hidden at night."

Dr. Ruud van Akkeren (in "Xibalba y el nacimiento del nuevo sol") has taken this last to heart, proposing that Hunahpu is the daytime sun, while his brother Xbalanque is the nighttime sun, i.e. the Ki'che version of the Classic solar Jaguar God of the Underworld.

Might there be a way to settle this, once and for all?

Well, if we go to a decent sky program and enter in the date for the shooting down of Itzam-ne (the Classic counterpart of the K'iche Vucub Caquix or 'Seven Red Feathers', i.e. the Scarlet Macaw), both gods can be rather easily identified.  This date is found on the illustrated pot depicted at the top of this article.  While Maya longcount date correlations vary somewhat, it became evident pretty quickly that going with a June 21, 3149 B.C.  Julian for the pot date made the most sense.

Here is what is happening in the sky on the date, at 3:41 p.m., when Mars sets:

Now, Tedlock has suggested - quite astutely, as it turns out - that the jaguar paw projecting from behind the tree belongs to Yax Balam.  The word balam for jaguar has the literal meaning of 'the hider', and related words mean 'hidden.'  This is an apt word for a silent, nocturnal animal that is rarely seen.  But when it comes to the moon, the association with the jaguar may go deeper and involves another pun.  On this particular night, the moon is a waning crescent, 2.5 days before new.  The new moon is the invisible moon, the truly hidden lunar body. And, as with the jaguar paw on the pot, it is just starting to emerge from the Milky Way tree.

The only planet occupying the Milky Way is red Mars.  As we have seen, caquix for Macaw means red feathers.  Mars is, of course, noted for being decidedly red.

And where is Hunahpu?  He is the Sun, with Venus and Mercury, the Paddler Twins (see https://firstjaguaronelord.blogspot.com/2021/12/creation-day-8-september-3114-bc-and.html, directly in front of him.  What is happening is that Mars/Seven Macaw is being shot down from the Milky Way tree, i.e. is setting, at exactly the time Hunahput shoots him with his blowgun and Xbalanque begins to reach out his paw from behind the tree.  This is, literally, a perfect comparative description of what is happening on the pot for this date, and it is doubtless the same story that we find preserved in the PV.

Admittedly, the K'iche identify Vucub Caquix with the Big Dipper, but this is almost certainly a later development and cannot (or should not) be back-written into the Classic period.  

I would say, then, that based upon this evidence, Hunahpu is the Sun, and Xbalanque is the Moon - exactly as the Ki'che have insisted all along.

[1] The best etymology for Hunahpu is Hun, 'One', 'aj', signifying agency (an ungendered someone who does something; information courtesy Dr. Allen Chistenson), and puh, ‘reed’, used to refer to reed blowguns (private communicatio via Professor Danny Law).  The Twins are shown several times in Classic period iconography as blowgunners. 

[2] The -que at the end of Xbalanque must be 'sun.'  I say this because we have two variants of the name (from the Totonicapan document and Las Casas), one ending in -quej and the other in -quen.  We can dispense with the Colonial Spanish/Latin /u/.  Kej, deer, does not work, as we can't account for the /n/ of -quen.  But Classic k'in, Yucatecan kin (etc.), is found in K'iche as q'ij.  Both for sun.  Although X- as a diminutive prefix has been objected to (because it appears to be feminine), it is also found in some MSS. fronting Hunahpu's name.  Thus is seems fairly certain that it does imply smallness or youth, as one would expect for boys like the Hero Twins.  Balan, given how common it is for m to be mistaken for n, is transparently balam, 'jaguar.'