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Concept
Maya religion
Summary
The traditional Maya or Mayan religion of the extant Maya peoples of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and the Tabasco, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán states of Mexico is part of the wider frame of Mesoamerican religion. As is the case with many other contemporary Mesoamerican religions, it results from centuries of symbiosis with Roman Catholicism. When its pre-Hispanic antecedents are taken into account, however, traditional Maya religion has already existed for more than two and a half millennia as a recognizably distinct phenomenon. Before the advent of Christianity, it was spread over many indigenous kingdoms, all with their own local traditions. Today, it coexists and interacts with pan-Mayan syncretism, the 're-invention of tradition' by the Pan-Maya movement, and Christianity in its various denominations.
The most important source on traditional Maya religion is the Mayas themselves: the incumbents of positions within the religious hierarchy, diviners, and tellers of tales.
More generally, all those persons who shared their knowledge with outsiders in the past, as well as anthropologists and historians who studied them and continue to do so.
What is known of pre-Hispanic Maya religion stems from heterogeneous sources (the primary ones being of Maya origin):
Primary sources from pre-Hispanic times: the three surviving Maya hieroglyphic books (the Maya codices of Dresden, Madrid and Paris) plus the Maya-Toltec Grolier Codex, all dating from the Postclassic period (after 900 AD); the 'ceramic codex' (the corpus of pottery scenes and texts) and mural paintings; the inscriptions in stone from the Classic (200–900 AD) and Late Preclassic (200 BC-200 AD) periods
Primary sources from the early-colonial (16th-century) period, such as the Popol Vuh, the Ritual of the Bacabs, and (at least in part) the various Chilam Balam books
Secondary sources, chiefly Spanish treatises from the colonial period, such as those of Landa for the Lowland Mayas and Las Casas for the Highland Mayas, but also lexicons such as the early-colonial Motul (Yucatec) and Coto (Kaqchikel) dictionaries
Archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic studies
Anthropological reports published since the late 19th century, used in combination with the sources above
Traditional Maya religion, though also representing a belief system, is often referred to as costumbre, the 'custom' or habitual religious practice, in contradistinction to orthodox Roman Catholic ritual.
Official source
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