The most active fields of investigation in Mesoamerican studies since 1960 have been those related to native writings before the Spanish conquest, such as the pictorial manuscripts from Oaxaca and related areas which have attracted a number of excellent scholars. Professor Jill Leslie Furst is now established among them with this ample commentary on Codex Vienna, a commentary which no serious student of the field should neglect to study in depth.
Yet certain questions arise from her interpretation, questions that will be discussed for as long as scholarly interest survives. Until now the Vienna Codex has been accepted as having at least some historical content that could be explained in part by comparison with similar representations in Central Mexican iconography. But Dr. Furst proceeds from new assumptions to deny the validity of this tradition that includes Eduard Seler, Walter Lehmann, Karl Nowotny, Alfonso Caso, and Henry B. Nicholson.
Her explicit assumptions are that all the representations in Codex Vienna are meaningful in conveying “precise information;” that the manuscript transfers “a verbal tradition to pictorial form;” and that the manuscript itself is the “ultimate authority,” able to “speak for itself’ (pp. 7, 9).
Her implicit assumptions are more controversial: that the manuscript is devoid of historicity; that it cannot be understood by reference to Central American iconography; and that the obverse, with fifty-two panels in screenfold, is an integral composition needing no further proofs of its physical and literary coherence. These new assumptions underlie the commentary and lead to conclusions that question the whole fabric of present-day notions about Mesoamerican cultural reconstruction. A satisfactory treatment of such problems cannot be presented in a brief review, and it will require the efforts of many specialists.
For the present, and so soon after publication, only the most salient points of her analysis can be mentioned. A comparison of her position with Karl Nowotny’s in 1948 will be useful. Their segmentations are as follows.
The reading order and the segmentations by Nowotny and Furst are nearly identical, differing mainly as to language description of content. Nowotny’s rubrics are more matter-of-fact than Furst’s. But his subjects are only eighteen distinct sections, whereas the richness of Furst’s rubrics is mythopoetic, containing thirty-six headings gathered in nine chapters with more than a hundred topics of discussion. Her articulation divides the manuscript into more subjects, which she regards as less repetitive than Nowotny.
Furst’s principal difference with Nowotny is about historical content. His reasons for accepting the historicity of parts of the manuscript are not discussed by Furst, although she accepts his “parallel passages” and “symbolic vocabulary.” She says he “falters in his interpretation,” but the criticism does not treat the arguments for historicity, such as they are, especially where the “historic” Quetzalcoatl is concerned, and in the ten fire-kindlings at the end.
Instead of Central Mexican iconography, Furst substitutes Huichol comparisons from northwestern Mexico (tobacco, stone disks, ger min ation deities, mythic geography), which will seem less germane to many than Central American ones.
