writing from the mouths of Indians by Dr Valdez, the friend and sympathiser of the last of the Yncas. The old priest merely made the divisions into scenes, which suggest themselves, and introduced the stage directions in accordance with what he had himself seen, when the play was acted by the Indians.
A knowledge of Ynca civilisation, derived from the pages of Prescott, is sufficient for the appreciation of the argument of this curious drama, which is as follows. The time is placed in the reign of Pachacutec, an Ynca who flourished in the latter part of the fourteenth century, whose numerous reforms and conquests caused him to be remembered as one of the most famous of the Peruvian sovereigns.[1] The hero of the drama was a warrior named Ollanta, who was not of the blood royal, but who nevertheless entertained a sacrilegious love for a daughter of the Ynca, named Cusi Coyllur. Ollanta is a word without special meaning in Quichua,[2] but Cusi Coyllur means "the Joyful Star."[3] The play opens with a dialogue between Ollanta and his servant, Piqui Chaqui, a witty and facetious lad, whose punning sallies form
- ↑ G. de la Vega, ii. pp. 127–34, 145, 201–207. For his laws and sayings, see pp. 207–10.
- ↑ Señor Barranca remarks that the word Ollanta has the form of the accusative case, denoting that it is an incomplete part of a sentence. He suggests that it may be a poetic form of Ullata, accusative of Ullu, a word meaning the physical power of masculine love. He supposes Ccahuari to be the word understood, which means Behold. The name would thus be an expression of admiration for a manly lover.
- ↑ The Viceroy Toledo prohibited the Indians from giving the names of the moon, stars, birds, animals, stones, serpents, or rivers, to their children. Ordenanzas, lib. ii., tit. viii., ord. xiii. p. 144.
