leondumoulin.nl: Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross () : Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and “ Anthropologist William Hanks has given us a remarkable piece of scholarly work.. .”.
Table of contents
- Converting Words by William F. Hanks - Paperback - University of California Press
- Compounding
- Locations & copies:
- Citation Tools
Paul outlines a corporate or collective inherited sin in Rom. But the specific doctrine of original sin was developed after Paul and is therefore absent in the New Testament Lewis , Conversely, Indigenous moral philosophies are principally concerned with transgression against the community and the natural world. There is a fundamentally different conceptualization of moral transgression between Indigenous non-soteriological and European-Christian soteriological knowledge systems. Moreover, the European-Christian missionary enterprise of moral conversion differs radically from the non-missionary Indigenous cultures.
The European missionary linguists intended to impose new moral principles upon the original concepts taken from the Indigenous language in order to obtain conversion. The heritage of colonial North Atlantic i. European epistemological obscurantism or unawareness, that is, anti-knowledge and disregard for Indigenous knowledge abilities and moral systems, is closely related to the issue of Indigenous self-determination.
Despite essential religious and philosophical differences, however, there are principal similarities between European-Christian and Indigenous moral epistemologies. First, I will briefly explicate the different scriptural and semiotics sources on the encounter between Indigenous and European moral epistemology in early colonial Latin America. From the beginning of the sixteenth century representatives of the Spanish monastic orders—the Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Augustinians, later followed by the Jesuits—began to create systematic descriptions of Latin America. In so doing, the various missionaries composed a quite extensive epistemological corpus outlining nature, geography, society, economy, beliefs, ritual practices, institutions, history and languages.
The missionaries were preoccupied with transmitting Christian moral philosophy to the Indigenous peoples. Although written in an Indigenous language, these manuscripts reflect Christian theology and do not demonstrate ample knowledge of Indigenous linguistic-categories of moral philosophy. The encyclopedia Florentine Codex is the most illustrious work written by an ethnographer missionary in the Americas.
He acted as a missionary while gathering data on the language, history, culture, philosophy and religion of the Nahua. Spanish civil and religious officials used Nahuatl as an administrative language in the early colonial period. The Florentine Codex constitutes an extraordinary book, not only because the data were collected and composed just after the European conquest but most importantly because it is written in Nahuatl.
Apart from ML dictionaries and grammars Sp. These various strategies of communication made it possible to convey or translate various ideas, concepts and practices. In particular in Mesoamerica and the Andes of South America, where the European encountered numerous civilizations with refined semiotic and writing systems, missionaries constructed various intersemiotic hybrid pictorial-logographic catechisms and confessionals based upon Indigenous and European semiotic, symbolic and iconographic conventions.
Both converted Indigenous peoples and missionaries produced these manuscripts. Indigenous pictographic-logographic systems, although with European conventions, were employed to convey Christian moral theology and practices. The pictorial-logographic catechisms and confessionals could also be accompanied with glosses translated into an Indigenous language or Spanish in Latin script.
Pictorial-logographic catechisms, called Testerian manuscripts after the Franciscan Jacobo de Testera ? This manuscript tradition represents a hybrid intersemiotic combination of pre-Hispanic pictorial and European catechistical manuscript tradition Leibsohn , — Pictographic Roman Catholic catechisms were also produced for Quechua and Aymara speakers from the Lake Titicaca region of Boliva and Peru in the Andes as late as in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Mitchell and Jaye , — Besides intersemiotic pictorial-logographic scripture there were also other Latin American semiotic systems applied by the Europeans in the early colonial period.
Khipu dyed knotted strings , originally used by the Inka 15 and other earlier linguistic cultures of the Andes in order to record and communicate a variety of information, were also employed by European missionaries Urton , —, note It represents a combination of dyed knotted strings in which apparently ply, form, structure, color, direction, placement and number are significant for communication Hyland ; Urton ; Khipu contains interrelated accounts narratives and transference of quantitative mathematical information.
This system—which may have a binary codified, mnemonic or phonetic i. Khipu were transcribed, translated and recorded in the early colonial period for administrative archives, but no extant example of a corresponding khipu transcription exists today.
Converting Words by William F. Hanks - Paperback - University of California Press
Spanish Catholic missionaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries applied khipu with the purpose of making confessionals and catechisms. At the end of the sixteenth century, Mercedarians produced khipu-boards with alphabetic writing for evangelization. Elders also employed khipu as catechisms. Lay specialists recorded confessions on khipus into the early seventeenth century and even in the twentieth century.
The European missionary innovation of a novel semiotics signifies how Christian moral epistemology was transferred to the Indigenous target culture with the intention of redefining the semantics of the Indigenous language, graphic and symbolic system—thereby converting Indigenous moral knowledge and practices. Mixeca Alta, Mixeca Baja and Mixteca de la Costa—was geo-politically fragmented, consisting of chiefdoms and city-states, with different dialects from the pre-colonial period.
This dictionary does not contain one-to-one translations of words, but various long explanatory paraphrases creating inadequate conceptual translations. This lexicographic strategy is interesting and revealing because it suggests that Alvarado believed that many Spanish lexemes could not be translated into Mixtec. In the colonial dictionaries tone is not marked by separate entries.
There is accordingly a semantic ambiguity with kuachi as well as with other Mixtec concepts. Kuachi was often modified by other words in order to convey a different meaning according to context. Kevin Terraciano has observed that this moral notion is applied in criminal records from the colonial period. For instance, Pedro de Caravantes from the pueblo Yanhuitlan of the Mixteca Alta applied the word kuachi to refer to his criminal act of murder according to a note from Thus, the instigator of the murder conveyed a Christian concept by extending the semantic range of a native-language word in conjunction with a basic loanword Sp.
In The Slippery Earth. Nahuatl is a polysynthetic or agglutinate language. It comprises complex words consisting of several morphemes or combinations of word elements. Accordingly, Nahuatl can express compound ideas with relative ease. Moreover, the concept is applied to characterize cultural defects of non-Nahua groups, things being off balance, destroyed, dislocated or displaced, duties being not executed etc.
The Spanish ML translated catechisms, confessionals, sermons and other types of doctrinal scriptures into Quechua, and to a lesser degree, into Aymara in the Andean region Durston , 67—75, — ; Urton , — Non-Christian religions and languages outside the Americas illuminate equivalent structural differences. This suggests that a comparable ethical concept does not exist in Indigenous moral philosophies and religions.
These Christian moral doctrinal principles do not correspond well with Indigenous ethic codes. Tlapilchihualli or tlapilchiualiztli is, however, not employed in contemporary Nahuatl John Sullivan pc, 16 November or by Protestant ML i. Guilt after defilement can be removed through a purification ritual, whereas guilt as debt can be removed through offering gifts Priest , But Pettazzoni maintains that the sexual nature of Tlazoteotl is intimately associated with motherhood as represented in the Nahua pictorial-logographic manuscripts Codex Borbonicus p.
Tlazoteotl is connected to fertility and vegetation, which is symbolically related to sexuality Pettazzoni , Can a ML secular and a religious dichotomy translation of these Yucatec Maya concepts, also be the case for the Nahuatl nouns tlatlacolli and tlapilchihualli? Cama refers to structure, order and harmony whereas hucha is the negative opposite. The ancient Hebrews and Greeks had many different Biblical words c. The respective accounting and bookkeeping or record-keeping khipu for the Inka systems registered individual transgressions and asocial actions that threatened to undermine society by the rhetoric of double entry.
This constituted a statistical and political arithmetic of collecting and organizing data in order to survey and control the moral behavior of the people. They also demanded the sinners to perform penance Urton , Moreover, the Huaxteca is said to: Admitting transgressions to a deity or to religious specialists was not foreign to Nahua moral philosophy because there was a non-Christian word for this practice in the language. The ML simply appropriated these words and gave them a novel ethical definition in Nahuatl.
- A Rocky Mountain Christmas;
- Read kar/converting-words-maya-in-the-age-of-the-cross-the-anthropology-of-christianity.
- ¡Vaya! Está página no se encuentra..
A quite different idea of pardon or forgiveness exists in non-Christian moral philosophies and practices in Mesoamerica. An ideological or epistemological system consists of a terminology of one or a few core concepts and a quite few additional interrelated key concepts. An equivalent methodology of analyzing concepts representing ideas and knowledge provides a constructive approach to an explication of the essential principles of various moral epistemological systems.
In colonial Christian soteriology, salvation is understood as liberation of evils or sin. A redemption or deliverance of sin will result in eternal life with God. The idea of salvation rests upon there being some sort of unsaved sinful state by moral corruption and transgression from which the individual and mankind is to be redeemed or condemned to perdition.
This gives it a particular meaning quite different from similar or apparent synonymous moral-linguistic categories in Indigenous languages. Problematic translations of moral-linguistic concepts in non-soteriological religious systems appear in both anthropologic scholarships as well as in missionary scriptural translations. Moral prescriptions and epistemology exist in every society where ethical precepts regulate the social order. Culture therefore contains principled imperatives and values, which sanction transgressions against religious mores, divine order, and judicial and social conventions.
Compounding
In a soteriological-eschatological religion like Christianity there are two possible final outcomes for the individual human being: Conversely, within a non-soteriological moral system, such a judicial idea of a metaphysical or transcendental destiny does not exist. For Indigenous American peoples the consequences for committing moral crimes against the divine order can be severe, but concerns only the social and the natural mundane and not a transcendental world.
The wrongdoings or transgressions can be corrected through symbolic ritual practice. Category A embraces all those societies whose ideologies discount any causal link between human actions of a moral nature and the intervention of supernatural powers in the fortunes of men either in this life or in a life beyond death. Rewards and punishments are believed to be automatic without the intervention of divine powers, and they are located in the life after death, either in the form of reincarnation or in heavens and hells.
Category B—where there is a divine intervention during the human life span but not a religious doctrine of a post mortem eternal judgment affecting moral behavior—does apply to Indigenous moral philosophies of the Americas. To be saved in Christian theology is to be rescued from hell and redeemed by God in heaven.
The morphology of salvation in non-Christian moral philosophies constitutes relief of the human condition in the human world from insecurity and danger, which can be obtained by ritual sacrifice Oxtoby , 31, Despite this fundamental structural ontological difference, there is considerable variation between the many indigenous religious cosmological and moral systems. Salvation can be defined as the ability to return to a state of communitas. For instance, collective transgressions because of lack of game make up an important part of the belief of the Iglulik Eskimo according to Knud Rasmussen Hallowell , , note 3 ; Rasmussen , For the Nuer, wrongdoings not only affect the culprit but also non-responsible people Evans-Pritchard , Zuidema maintains that it was considered hucha to do or think badly against a lord or to not fulfill ritual obligations according to the calendar.
Taylor , 30 points out that hucha represented a combination of sin, transactions and law with morality to perform ritual duties. Hucha can, according to Harrison, be perceived as an unsettled debt to society Harrison , 13 ; Urton , — Moral flaws constituted a breach of the reciprocity between individuals towards the community and divine order. Europeans emphasized the moral of the individual mind, whereas the Inka focused on acts towards the community Urton , —, note 7. For misconduct kuachi against this divine order there is punishment, although not necessarily towards the individual transgressor but the community at large by making people sick.
There is consequently a moral principle of collective accountability Monaghan , 99—, note 8. Durston asserts that these were divination rituals. The Andean notion of hucha referred to social groups and not individuals, indicated by the employment of the same confessional khipu by various people Durston , , Indigenous religions are communitarian whereas the salvation religions focus upon the individual.
These moral philosophical systems contain a covenant between the community and the sacred order and are accordingly not perceived as a personal relation. Instead there is an interdependence of individual and collective identity. There is no Indigenous mission, claiming a divine truth. Accordingly, it is not possible to convert to an Indigenous religion by accepting its religious principles. The individual must be born into the family, clan and community, participate in the ceremonies and follow the customs and religious duties Deloria , — In the latter moral philosophy there is no eschatological doctrine of a transcendent post mortem existence where there is either an eternal punishment or eternal reward—that is, a soteriology.
The literal meaning of tlatlacolli in Nahuatl comprises a metaphor, as it conveys an image of something being damaged or corrupted. Hence there is no distinction between a moral cause and effect relation in using Nahuatl to translate Christian doctrinal categories Burkhart , 32— But moral misbehavior in American Indigenous cultures has consequences, although these have nothing to do with eternal damnation in an afterlife but instead concern the human existence and condition in the natural world.
This also applies to Indigenous peoples outside the American continent where the effect of moral transgression or failure, for example with the Nuer, is physical sickness or various other diseases. This is because the spiritual condition is polluted, made unclean or contaminated Evans-Pritchard , —, For the people of Berens River Saulteux sickness derives from various types of transgressions. For instance, not to share food with other people is considered a moral failure, a crime or injustice kuachi and will be punished as it is told in stories where the solar deity i.
Jesus Christ who is said to punish people in this world Monaghan , Ethical values represent knowledge of punishment and reward in this life and not post mortem for Indigenous peoples of the Americas. There are accordingly healing deities, in ceremonies, and not saviors Kidwell et. Moreover, there is no praise but thankfulness in worship, because of a collective or communitarian, and not individual, reciprocal relationship with the divine order Kidwell et.
From the early colonial and continuing into the present postcolonial period, there is European moral-epistemological imperialism, through mission of Christian doctrine, upon Indigenous peoples. The Council at Valladolid in Spain or Castilla — was originally about economic interests and the claiming of territory during the initiating phase of the colonization of the Americas. Christian religion, natural law and natural dominium were, in this context, fundamentally interrelated moral concepts during the disputation at Valladolid.
The inalienable right to dominium rerum or property could only apply to rational human beings created in the image of God imago dei according to Thomistic Humanist natural-law principles of the relations between human beings and nations. At the Council of Valladolid it was accordingly disputed whether Native Americans were capable of self-determination over territory. Applying principles of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, this led to the process of dispossession of territories and self-determination of Indigenous peoples of North America.
The same can be contended about the previous colonial Spanish Catholic missionary inter-linguistic transference of moral philosophy. The colonial Christian discovery doctrine is still a concept of public international law in various countries of the Americas and also in many other countries outside this continent. Under it, title to newly discovered lands lay with the government whose subjects discovered new territory.
Today this doctrine governs US Indian Law. The European unawareness or obscurantism, that is, anti-knowledge and disrespect for Indigenous intellectual and moral systems are intimately related to the issue of Indigenous self-determination today. Moral categories and imperatives affect the conception, production, practice and exploitation instrumentality of knowledge in general. Various domains of epistemology are accordingly intimately interrelated, not disjointed, in moral philosophies. Moral epistemology is therefore exceedingly significant because it determines other categories of knowledge—not only of the human and social but also the natural world.
In the colonial period, Catholic missionaries did not only evangelize the gospel but also the European economical system in Latin America according to Anthony Pagden. They connected mission with commerce, trade and business. In this way, Indigenous peoples would be integrated into the order of international law. The North Atlantic Doctrine of Discovery opposes Indigenous ecological-moral conceptual knowledge because of its radical dichotomy between human and natural beings. The Christian principle of a human moral supremacy over other beings of nature, as outlined in Doctrine of Discovery, is inspired by Genesis 1: In Indigenous American ecological ethics there is no such divine moral principle legitimizing an exploitation of nature to the exclusive benefit of human beings.
Tlatlacolli relates to transgressions or misdeeds towards deities or not fulfilling religious obligation—a damage or violation of the sacred order as an effect not as a cause in the Nahua moral system, disrupting not only the individual being, but also society and the world order Burkhart , Crime and misdeeds for the present-day Nahua constitute an imbalance for the interrelated socio-political and religious moral order John Sullivan pc, 16 November of the social and natural world.
Ecological sins are indeed pivotal in Andean moral philosophy Harrison , — This complementary opposition is mediated by confession and penance and expiation—in a religious political economy of a credit and debit system and Indigenous moral philosophical systems and practices. Indigenous language systems contain various linguistic categories for morality not affiliated with European philosophy and religion. Auh ca cenca huey nahualle amo mach iuhqui yn inan yn itoca Mallinalxoch.
Book 6 of the Florentine Codex and the didactic oratorical moral scriptures known as Huehuehtlahtolli. This conceptualization of principled epistemology further implies that the Nahua have a meta-category for virtuous thinking and practice, e. Indigenous American moral knowledge is undeniably expressed by their various linguistic-philosophical categories—not influenced by European Christianity or philosophy.
Further systematic research is required, however, on key and core ethical concepts and ideas from Indigenous American languages and epistemologies that structure their moral philosophical systems and practices. This may well have an impact beyond inconsequential moral philosophical and linguistic investigation.
Locations & copies:
As has been propounded, the inter-linguistic transfer of moral knowledge is intimately connected with epistemologies of business and natural sciences. As moral philosophies are interrelated with systems of religion and socio-political institutions and organizations of a culture or society it does indeed contribute to how nature and its resources are used, exploited and even transformed. Beginning under European colonial domination—that is, introducing the present proto- Anthropocene or human-influenced, or anthropogenic epoch —human-nature-interactions exhibit the long-term consequences of human interference and the impact of human ethics, behavior and cultural practices.
The colonial period of moral knowledge production, organization and systematization and the related socio-political processes and institutions accordingly instigated the contemporary significant global impact on ecosystems and climate. Indigenous moral epistemologies of long term rationality and universal value for every organism, specie and being of the natural world may contribute to generate sustainable human-nature-interactions.
Historia natural y moral de las Indias: Revista Andina 4 2: Alvarado, Francisco de []. Las conceptiones de los antiguos nahuas. Utopia and History in Mexico. The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization, — University Press of Colorado. Bertonio, Ludovico []. Vocabulario De La Lengua Aymara. Man and His Salvation: Studies in the Memory of S.
- Analyzing Emerging Christianities: Recent Insights from the Social Sciences.
- James Brown: Eine Biografie von Geoff Brown (German Edition).
- Death, Intermediate State, and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism.
- Mixture Formation in Internal Combustion Engines (Heat and Mass Transfer).
- Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross - William F. Hanks - Google Книги;
Sharpe and John R. Boone, Elizabeth Hill Native Traditions in the Postconquest World. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, — Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. University of Texas Press. Their Way of Writing. Brewer, Forrest and Jean G. Vocabulario mexicano de Tetelcingo, Morelos. The Rhetoric of Religion: University of California Press. University of Arizona Press. The Mixtec Language in the Globalization Era.
Mixtec Writing and Society. Jansen and Laura N. Carochi, Horacio []. Grammar of the Mexican Language with an Explanation of its Adverbs. Edited and translated by James Lockhart. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America.
Estructuras Paralelas del Quechua y del Aimara.
Citation Tools
Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. Anderson and Susan Schroeder. University of Oklahoma Press. Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests: Davenport, Frances Gardiner Carnegie Institution of Washington. A Native View of Religion.
Memorias del Coloquio Francisco Belmar. University of Notre Dame Press. La conversion des indiens de Nouvelle-Espagne. University of New Mexico Press. Farris, Kathryn Beaty de New Series 9 4: Positivismo, liberalismo e impulso misionero: Gert, Bernard []. The Definition of Morality.
Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, part 3. Handbook of Middle American Indians. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America. University of Nebraska Press, 96— Sin, Sex and Sickness in Saulteaux Belief. The British Journal of Medical Psychology 18 2: Maya in the Age of the Cross.
The Anthropology of Christianity. Confesando el pecado en los Andes: This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. Maya in the Age of the Cross. University of California Press Series: This pathbreaking synthesis of history, anthropology, and linguistics gives an unprecedented view of the first two hundred years of the Spanish colonization of the Yucatec Maya.
Drawing on an extraordinary range and depth of sources, William F. Hanks documents for the first time the crucial role played by language in cultural conquest: Converting Words includes original analyses of the linguistic practices of both missionaries and Mayas-as found in bilingual dictionaries, grammars, catechisms, land documents, native chronicles, petitions, and the forbidden Maya Books of Chilam Balam.
Lucidly written and vividly detailed, this important work presents a new approach to the study of religious and cultural conversion that will illuminate the history of Latin America and beyond, and will be essential reading across disciplinary boundaries. Title Page, Frontispiece, Copyright, Dedication pp.