Xbalanque

Also Known As: K’iche’ Xb’alanke, containing the word for jaguar; younger of the Hero Twins of the Popol Vuh, brother of Hunahpu; the equivalent figure in Classic Maya art is usually called Yax Balam
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Mayan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: He improvises under pressure, which in the Popol Vuh is a more useful gift than strength and considerably rarer.
Role in Mythos: He is the younger Hero Twin, the one who keeps the plan running after his brother is beheaded and who designs the trick that finishes the lords of Xibalba.
Relation to Humans: Human beings are not made until after his part of the book is over, and his service to them is done in advance: he clears the underworld of the powers that had been eating the world before there was anyone in it to eat.

His brother has been dead for about a minute and the bats are still moving overhead. Xbalanque asks the dark twice whether the dawn has come, gets no answer, and works out what has happened. The text records exactly one line of grief from him, which is that they have already given in, and then he stops feeling anything about it and starts organising.

He calls the animals. All of them, small and large, in the last of the dark, and asks each one to bring the food it eats. The coati brings a squash. He takes it and carves it into a head, and the text is careful to say that the carving was done well, that it looked like a real head, and that it worked. Then he puts it on his brother’s shoulders and takes him out to play ball with a vegetable for a face against the assembled lords of death.

Xbalanque is the younger of the two boys the K’iche’ Maya called the Hero Twins, and he is the one who wins. This is easy to miss, because his brother has the older name, the calendar day and most of the disasters. But the pattern of the Popol Vuh is consistent: things go wrong, Hunahpu is at the centre of what went wrong, and Xbalanque is the one who says what happens next.

The name carries a jaguar in it. The middle of it is the ordinary Maya word balam, and Classic-period painters give the matching figure patches of jaguar skin on his arms and face, which is why he is generally called by a jaguar name in the lowland material. That is the whole of his physical description in the entire tradition. The book itself never says what he looks like.

The two of them are born of a skull’s saliva to a daughter of the underworld, grow up shooting birds with blowguns, are bullied by two older half-brothers whom they turn into monkeys, and eventually take up the ballgame that had already killed their father. The summons to Xibalba comes down the same road it came down for him.

What follows is a very long sequence of tests, and every one of them is passed by preparation rather than by courage. A mosquito is sent ahead to bite the seated lords, who then say each other’s names out loud and hand over the entire roster. The wooden dummies planted among the lords are greeted with silence rather than politeness. The torch that must be returned unburnt is given a red macaw feather in place of a flame, and the cigars that must be returned whole are given fireflies at the tips, and the guards report all night that the prisoners are burning through their allowance.

Then the House of Bats takes his brother’s head, the squash is carved, and the rabbit is sent to hide in the tomato patch at the end of the ballcourt with one instruction: when the ball comes past, run, and keep running until I have finished. The rabbit runs. Every lord in Xibalba chases what he thinks is the ball into the undergrowth, and by the time they come back the real head is on the real neck and the squash is being kicked around the court.

The final move is the one that makes him more than a trickster. He understands that the tests cannot be won, only outlasted, and that the only way to get at the lords is to be dead and keep an appointment. Two seers are briefed on exactly what to tell Xibalba to do with the bodies. The brothers then walk to the pit oven and jump in together rather than be pushed, and their bones are ground on stone and thrown into the river, and five days later two ragged strangers turn up in the villages with an act.

They dance the Whippoorwill and the Weasel, the Armadillo and the Centipede. They burn a house down in front of an audience and then it is standing again, unharmed. And then, as the finish, one of them kills the other, opens him up, and brings him back whole. The Xibalbans hear about it and send for them. The lords watch the act. Then they ask for it to be done to them, which is not a decision anyone made for them.

He kills One Death first, and does not revive him. Seven Death sees this happen and, according to the text, does not fight but pleads. He is killed as well. After that the remaining lords run for the ravine and pile in on top of each other, and the ones who are caught are told what they will be allowed to have from now on: not the sons of light, not the great houses, only broken pottery and the wretched and the guilty.

His powers are entirely practical. He can make a working replacement for a human head out of a gourd overnight. He can brief a rabbit. He can persuade his own brother to walk into an oven. Nothing in the story requires him to be strong or to be lucky, and the one supernatural thing he does, killing and reviving on demand, is set up as a performance long before he uses it as a weapon.

His weaknesses are the ones you would expect from a plan-maker. He cannot protect anybody in the moment, and his brother dies less than an arm’s length away from him without warning. Every recovery is expensive, slow and dependent on other creatures doing exactly what they were asked. And the last trick works only because the lords of death want to be entertained. Against an enemy with no appetite for a show, he has nothing.

When it is over the brothers dig up their father, ask him to name the parts of his own face and find he cannot manage much beyond his mouth, tell him he will be remembered anyway, and leave him where he lies. Then they go up into the sky as the two central lights, one the sun and one the moon, and the book does not record which of them took which.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Xbalanque?

Xbalanque is the younger of the Hero Twins in the Popol Vuh, the K’iche’ Maya creation book, and the brother of Hunahpu. He is the planner of the pair, responsible for recovering his brother’s severed head and for the trick that destroys the lords of the underworld. His name contains the Maya word for jaguar.

What did Xbalanque do when Hunahpu was beheaded?

He summoned every animal and asked each to bring its food, took the squash the coati brought, and carved it into a working replacement head. He then sent a rabbit to hide by the ballcourt and bolt when the ball came past, so that while the lords chased the rabbit he could swap the squash for his brother’s real head.

How do the Hero Twins kill the lords of Xibalba?

They have themselves burnt in a pit oven and their ground bones thrown in a river, return five days later disguised as ragged performers, and become famous for an act in which one kills the other and revives him. When One Death and Seven Death ask to be killed and brought back too, the twins kill them and simply stop.

What does the name Xbalanque mean?

The middle of the name is balam, the ordinary Maya word for jaguar, and Classic Maya painters give the equivalent figure patches of jaguar pelt on his skin. The full sense is disputed, with readings ranging from jaguar sun to little jaguar deer, and no one translation is settled.

Which twin became the sun?

The Popol Vuh does not say. It states only that the brothers rose into the sky as the central lights, one as the sun and the other as the moon, and that the four hundred boys killed earlier in the book rose after them and became a constellation. Later commentators have usually assigned the sun to Hunahpu, but the text itself leaves it open.