| Description |
Bird Jaguar, king of the powerful Mayan kingdom of Yaxchilan in the ninth century AD, played Jeweled Skull in a ballgame. Jeweled Skull, king of a rival Mayan state, found himself the heavy underdog. He was a captive of warfare and an inevitable offering to the gods, and victory for him did not exist as an option. The game's integrity did not demand that the stakes be even or that the competition be fair. The game itself transcended the physical realm, and a king's victory in the ballgame influenced the ritual sway of the Mayan world. Gods, ancestors and Vision Serpents swirled through the Mayan world, and the only qualified shaman in contact with this alternate reality was the king. In a world comprised of a myriad of dissonant forces, the king acted as a central hub around which the immediate cosmos turned. Through ritual acts of sacrifice in conjunction with the ballgame, the king reinforced his sublime role in the cosmos by bringing the forces of the world together on the court and claiming victory. The ritual ballgame survived throughout the Classic Mayan world for several centuries. Almost every site discovered to date contains a ceremonial court in its central architecture. Iconography left behind by the kings tell of the passionate ritual following; the game demanded. The game and its sacrificial conclusion renewed the forces of the Mayan world in many ways. The offering of human blood continued the fertility of the land and its people. The game possessed deep mythical roots in the very creation of the Mayan world, and the ritual game renewed the mystical qualities associated with the great games that had come before it. The king also renewed his kingship by legitimating his lineage and reinforcing the respect he demanded from his subjects. Mayan kings inherited the power associated with the game by permanently adding it to their ritual repertoire. Spanning the scope of time and nature, connecting to what exists apart from himself in order to instill a state of harmony, performing an age-old dance on a stage acting as a portal to the Otherworld, this was the role of the king in the ritual ballgame. |
