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The Indian Christ, the Indian King: The Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual . By Victoria Reifler Bricker. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. xiv + 368 PP. $45.00.

The main point of this elaborate investigation into native rituals in southern Mexico and Guatemala is to determine their historical origins and current meaning. By comparing bodies of myth with historical data, the author has clarified a tangled historiographical situation with considerable skill and has substantiated her own interpretation of both Spanish and Indian literary evidence with the results of extensive fieldwork. Much of her data were thought to be precontact native ceremonies that survived invasion and forced Christianization. But Bricker makes a convincing case that the most effective ritual phenomena among natives have postconquest origins, not aboriginal ones. They constitute a classic revitalization pattern that has sought repeatedly to throw off the yoke of foreign domination as well as to invest the symbols of Catholicism with local meaning. An Indian rebellion among the Chamulas (1712), native expressions of Christ's Passion (1868, 1847-1901), and proclamations of an Indian king (1761, 1820) serve as recurring incidents in this eclectic theme. Painstaking analysis of solid fieldwork and detailed reconstruction of documentary sources build toward weighty conclusions regarding this basic theme.