 The manuscript, initially kept by the Xahil lineage in the town of Sololá in Guatemala, was later discovered in the archives of the "San Francisco de Guatemala" convent in 1844.It was subsequently translated by the abbot Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg in 1855 (the same translator of the Rabinal Achí), and then passed through several more hands before being published in an English translation by Daniel G. Brinton in 1885.The mythical and legendary part of the manuscript, which must have been orally preserved for centuries, was finally collected and preserved by members of the Xahil "tinamit" or lineage.