Paxil

De Paxil y K’ayala’, el lingüista k'iche' Sam Colop (2008: 128n90) dice: “Estos lugares mitólogicos han sido asociados a varios sitios, conforme a Recinos (1953:174). [Hubert] Bancroft opinaba que estaban en la región de Palenque y el Usumacinta y de acuerdo con Brasseur en la región de Tabasco. Tedlock (1996: 228) propone que este lugar es una montaña ubicada cerca de la carretera Panamericana, entre la frontera de México y Guatemala. El nombre Paxil efectivamente, como argumenta Tedlock (ibid.), puede derivarse de la raíz verbal paxi- 'quebrar' y k'ayala' de k'ayil 'amargura' y a' 'agua'. El estudio sobre el tema por Navarrete (2002) también apunta a aquella región como el origen del maíz. El nombre Paxil se ha mitologizado y de esa cuenta aparece la historia del origen del maíz en distintas áreas.” 

Along with K'ayala', Paxil is one of the places (along with K’ayala’) where maiz originates. Anthropologist Allen J. Christenson (2007: 224n585) translates the name as "Split Mountain." Similarly, Tedlock (p. 145) has maize originating in “Split Place” (Paxil) and “Bitter Water Place” (K’ayala’). In modern K’iche’, paxik means “to break, split open.” Later in the text, Christenson (2007: 193n454) explains that “Paxil means ‘broken, split, or cleft.’ Father Coto wrote that it refers in particular to the breaking in two of an ear of maize. Paxil is described as an ‘excellent mountain’ filled with the maize that would eventually be used to form the flesh of humanity (p. 194; lines 4886–4889). This was a widespread belief in ancient Mesoamerica, particularly among Maya (Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993, 138–139). According to the Central Mexican Codex Chimalpopoca, it was Quetzalcoatl himself who brougth the first maize out of the mountain Tonacetepetl (the mountain of our flesh and of our sustenance) from which he created the first men (León-Portilla 1980, 122 n. 42). The Pipil of Guatemala relate that maize was discovered when the mountain in which it was hidden was split open by the youngest of the rain dwarfs (Schultze-Jena 1935, 31–33). Contemporary Mam still identify one of their local mountains as Paxil, saying that it is ‘where a flea brought the first grains of maize through a narrow crevice to give our ancestors corn.’”