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The individual books of the Chilan Balam are known by the names of the villages in which they were found, and in a few cases the name of the village may have been derived from the presence of the book. The most important of these books are Nabula, Chun-may-el (which means “something of the first” or “original”), Kua, Man, X-kutz-cab, Ixil, Tihosuco, and Tixcocob.

Just when these books were written is not known, but there is evidence that the book of Mani was written prior to 1595 and the book of Nabula tells of an epidemic which occurred in 1663. While teaching the natives to write the Maya language in Spanish characters, Bishop Landa employed a rather original method, which is our only key to reading these writings and which serves as our only clue to the more ancient hieroglyphs. The ancient Maya writings were purely picture writings, but to some extent the hieroglyphs had lost their original picture significance and had come to have a somewhat symbolic meaning.

In arranging the so-called Maya alphabet (which was first used by the priests in writing out the prayers for the Mayas), Landa employed a very ingenious method and one that was practical at the time. He took the Spanish alphabet and beginning with “A” he asked the educated Indian to draw the character for him in which the sound of “A” was predominant. Naturally, after many attempts by the Indian to furnish such a character he finally selected the hieroglyph ac, which is a picture of a turtle’s head and which in Maya means “turtle” or “dwarf” or something having a slow movement. Next he took the letter “B” and eventually chose the character be, which means “road,” “walk,” “run,” and consists of the picture of a footprint. Therefore—not to go into a lengthy description of the system—he had “A” from ac, “B” from be, etc. With this extemporized alphabet the priests were able to write out the Catholic prayers in such a way that the Indian could repeat them in Spanish by using the sound of the first part of his hieroglyph for the sound of each Spanish letter.