Talk:Votan

Some notes for futher expansion potential

Nice work Hoopes on the expansion here, as I mentioned before.

After doing some quick hunting around, I came across a couple of other related contexts and mentions for Votan, and if they stand up to scrutiny could be worked into the article. You may probably be aware of these, but annotating these here for future use in any case:

• A figure incorporated (metaphorised?) as Votan-Zapata in EZLN literature, as "heart of the people" according to their interpretation of Tzeltal belief; written about in some of Subcommandante Marcos's writings (eg some essays in Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Essays" (2004).
• It seems most of the early calendrical theorists & writers- Brinton, Cyrus Thomas, Seler, Gates, also up to Thompson, etc, pick up on votan being the Tzeltal name for the day ak'b'al, dunno whether this comes direct from Nunez de la Vega or somewhere else.
• Ordonez y Aguiar's reported possession of the Probanza de Votan MS., in Tzeltal. Per Brinton, the MS. was last seen c1790 by Cabrera. I suppose that it's still missing..?
• votan is quoted severally in these sources as meaning "heart" in Tzeltal; also (originally?) transcribed uotan
• Brinton (American Hero-Myths) remarks that "Even the usually cautious Humboldt suggested that [Votan's] name might be a form of Odin or Buddha!" (his exclm.), so there's at least some pedigree behind the confusion...

--cjllw ʘ TALK 07:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips! I will get back to this entry as I find the time. The calendric associations of Votan are intriguing. A footnote to the passage from Clavigero (1787) that I cited reads, "Votan is the chief of those twenty famous men whose names were given to the twenty days of the Chiapanese month." I don't know whether or not he got this from Nuñez de la Vega (whose original reference I'm still seeking), but I've spotted online references (without good citations) to Votan as a calendric day name. Hoopes (talk) 14:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a great quote about Humboldt from Brinton! I guess we should consider ourselves fortunate that more Maya names don't resemble those from Norse mythology or the Bible. Unfortunately, the confusion that has surrounded Votan from the start may have caused scholars to neglect clarification of the real story behind an interesting and significant figure in Tzeltal history and mythology who's now deeply entwined in recent Western mythology. Hoopes (talk) 14:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

My compliments on the content and the purpose of this article. I understand this is to be used to counter unfounded speculations. In that case it should communicate with a wide audience of non-academics. I suggest the word "spurious" should be replaced with something else, it seems to me (and I am a PhD) to be off-putting to most people, however common in academic discourse.

Also "This interpretation has been rejected by subsequent academic scholarship." seems as if it can actually be used to scoff at the ivory tower, and it unintentionally raises an opposition between "academics" and "others", perhaps inviting more debate than intended. Since argument *ad hominem* is not supposed to be valued in academia, the opinion of academics is not supposed to be believed merely because they are academics, but because the argument uses good data and logic. Academics can after all make mistakes and be an isolated elite too. How about "rejected by later careful studies by those who do not have an axe to grind." ? Something like that should be the substantive claim, and it *does* leave the person writing the article responsible to those criteria. It cannot be proven that *all* academics write with no axe to grind. We each have a few areas where others might at least suspect us of that, even if we ourselves think we are just talking about something really important. This is in no way a criticism of any of the content about Votan in the article here commented on. This is my first post to a Wikipedia discussion, and I am not comfortable editing anyone else's writing yet -- also do not have independent knowledge of this Votan controversy, so have nothing to contribute to the content other than the sort of note I am posting here. Lba2 (talk) 16:51, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliments and support! I completely agree that the opposition between "academics" and "others" should be neutralized, especially because non-academics have contributed extremely valuable scholarship to ongoing studies of Mesoamerica and the ancient Maya. Any implication otherwise is misinformed and divisive. The purpose of this article (and other Wikipedia entries) is to make available factual, objective information in a readily accessible context and to do so in as unbiased a manner as possible. That said, it is important to provide readers with a good sense of which interpretations are considered to be well supported and "mainstream", which are not well supported, highly speculative, and "fringe", and which lie somewhere in between. This can be a challenging task, and each of us may have a different axe to grind at the expense of others. For example, there is a large body of academic Mormon scholarship that finds a great deal of support for the presence of ancient groups from the Middle East in the Americas. This scholarship must be respected, but it cannot be considered authoritative given a large body of critique that it at odds with its conclusions. Wikipedia is a dynamic medium. It will be interesting to see how this entry evolves and changes, much like the identity of "Votan" himself. Hoopes (talk) 18:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Re cite requested for absence of Votan in Palenque inscriptions

A cite has been requested for the assertion, that the name 'votan' is absent from the corpus of current decipherments of inscriptions at Palenque. While possibly a fair request, it is rather difficult to 'prove a negative', and I doubt that any modern Mayanist author (writing since decipherments have been available) has explicitly examined the issue for the statement to be directly attributed. To the best of my knowledge the statement is correct, and well-known works of the modern period that are concerned with Palenque AFAIK make no mention at all. I provided instead a cite to a compendium/concordance of Palenque's inscriptions, noting that votan is not a term appearing there. --cjllw ʘ TALK 03:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The cause of this - - request was a Did You Know entry that I made here. I was also a bit surprised when the DYK reviewer stuck that tag on this sentence since, as you note, it's hard to prove a negative. It would even be hard to prove that Abraham Lincoln is not mentioned at Palenque, for goodness sakes. CJLL or Hoopes, you're welcome to join the discussion on the DYK page. Thanks for jumping in, Madman (talk) 05:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, the recent citations that you added, CJLL, have allayed the concerns of the DYK reviewer and it looks like this article will be mentioned on the front page some time on February 4th or 5th.

By the way, are there some images that could be added to this article? Would the A. P. Maudslay drawing of Pacal the Great be appropriate, or is that too 'fringe"? By the way, does anyone know the provenance/source for that drawing? Presumably it was taken off some building relief or stela at Palenque, but it was uploaded long before we were so fastidious about references etc. Thanks, Madman (talk) 15:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess the article does look a little bare at the moment. I've quickly added in an img of the calendar glyph for akbal, the day called votan in highland chiapas according to nunez de la vega. Maybe one of Pakal could do as well, though that's more tangential.

Re that particular pakal drawing, I belive it's from Maudslay's Biologia Centrali-Americana vols., published no later than 1902; given that, and since it's his own drawing and he died (a little over) 70 years ago, I think it's safe in free use terms. --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

An appropriate image might be one from Antonio Del Río's 1786 publcation, such as the one of Pakal on the jaguar throne (now destroyed) - http://olivercowdery.com/texts/145.gif —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hoopes (talk • contribs) 03:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Hoopes, that one might do nicely. Will look to upload it, after checking that there isn't one already there in Commons.--cjllw ʘ TALK 04:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Commentary/discussion transposed from article to talkpage

I have removed the recent addition placed in the article by Dreemw (talk · contribs), since its content seems to be a discussion or commentary on one aspect of this article, rather than an attempt to add encyclopaedic material to the article itself. Likely this was intended to be posted to the article's talkpage (ie here) instead; so am pasting the addition here below in full, plus adding Dreemw's sig to it for tracking. (ps. 'Aztlan' is a reference to the AZTLAN mailing list, now hosted at the FAMSI website. The discussions referred to can be read in the archives there).--cjllw ʘ TALK 07:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Cut-paste of text removed from article--

Lately this phrase was sent to Aztlan regarding Votan:

"...there is no evidence that Votan was ever associated with Palenque..."

I concur, mainly because all evidence of the origins or ancestry of Pacal has been erased from the Palenque East panel in the Temple of the Inscriptions where his tomb of is located.

Today VOTAN is a very good word with a meaning of VDS. votan, (You [all] vote) from the verb VOTAR = to vote. .... Nevertheless, it is also an idiomatic term used for "confound it." probably left over from the magic used in the early days of the pre-Conquest enlightened rule, and therefore just might infer that "to confound" was the original intent of the verb votar (votan) as a possible substitute for Pacal

Votan as aword is translated as "Vituperio" in Tzetzal, spelled as Utan. “vituperative” or “to discredit someone,” It can be found in [(1571). A BocabvlvarÌque Lengvatzeltal (Translator: Domingo de Ara; AD 1616)] from a time when "U" was equal to "V." It comes from a third person pronoun "O" and "TAN" with the meaning of “wounding words,” or “reproach.”

However, in de Molina, F. A. (1970) Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana (Portilla, Miquel Leon, Trans.) Mexico, D F Mexico: Editorial Porrua, SA

The word Tepapacaliztli is very specific and very strong as derogratory word containing the name Pacal: Tepa-PACAL-iztli ... It seems that it may have been a deliberate inclusion of Pacal's name, probably to denegate and vilify his memory at the Temple of the Inscriptions and the Temple of the Sun.

Written by a Mexican author, Castillo Torre, José (1955) Por la Señal de Hunab Ku: Reflejos de la Vida de los Antiguos Mayas. Mexico DF, Mexico: Libreria de Manuel Porrúa, SA. Libreria de Manuel Porrua, SA.] the name Votan is asssociated with Palenque AND is translated in de Molina as "vituperio" which means “palabras afrentosas de vituperio” or “vituperative", words that are “reproachful,” and another concept: "baldon” or insult.

This would NOT mean that Votan or los Votanides are actually a name for any person.....It may have been just be a name concocted to use instead of the proper name, Pacal based on the implication of "magic" (since both Votan and Pacal are vilified with the same words and associated with the same city Palenque, by at least one author.

Knowing that most libraries of Mexico are not very extensive; that many excellent books are only in private collections; it is a strong possibility, that there may still be records in such private collections as to why the name Votan was used for Pacal and his associates and also why the Friars used the compound word and the probable substitute to vilify both names.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Dreemw (talk • contribs) 5 February 2010

Review need

Should we treating the unfound theories that Votan was linked with the people from Atlantis even worth mentioning. I am sure that there are serious experts on the field of Mayan mythology both could and should consulted instead.--96.46.201.195 (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)