writing[1], either hieroglyphic or phonetic. A very important question concerning the culture of the Incas is to determine to what extent knot records took the place of writing. Nearly all writers on Peruvian history and archeology, during and since the Conquest, have detailed, at more or less length, the practice of using knotted strings, or quipus,[2] not only for numerical records but for the preservation and transmission of royal orders, orations, poems, traditions, and historical data.[3]
The most reliable information given by one who actually understood[4] and used the quipu is to be found in the works, cited above, of Garcilasso de la Vega. The writer was born at the Inca capital, Cuzco, in 1539. He was the son of a Spanish cavalier of the same name, and his mother was the Inca princess, Chima Ocllo, a niece of the Inca Huayna Ccapac. The young Inca spent the first twenty years of his life among his mother's people, imbibing their culture and traditions.
There are five sources upon which a comparative study of the quipu may be based:
1. A compilation[5] of statements from Spanish sources following the Conquest.
- ↑ Commentarios Reales, por el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Madrid, 1723, vol. I, vi, chapters 8-9, pp. 181 et seq. Vol. II is entitled Historia General del Peru, Madrid, 1722. References to Vega in this paper are uniformly to this edition. Tradition says that in the reign of Huanacauri Pirua, the third of the old kings of Peru in the list of Montesinos, the use of letters was known and the art of writing on plantain leaves, and that the eighty-first king, Tupac Cauri Pachacuti, prohibited the use of plantain parchment and introduced knotted strings.
- ↑ The word quipu in the so-called Quichua language means "knot", and those in charge of the records were called quipucamoyas.
- ↑ Vega, I, chapters 8-9, II, 23, p. 29; Polo de Ondegardo, Corregidor of Cuzco in 1560, Relaciones, MS., quoted by Prescott, Conquest of Peru, I, p. 123; Cristoval Vaca de Castro, Discurso, p. 5, quoted by Bandelier, Islands of Titicaca, p. 332.
- ↑ Yo tratè los Quipus, y ñudos con los Indios de mi Padre, y con otros Curacas, quando por San Juan, y Navidad venian à la Ciudad, à pagar sus tributos. Los Curacas agenos rogavan à mi Madre, que me mandase les cotejase sus Cuentas; porque como gente sospechosa, no se fiavan de los Españoles, que les tratasen Verdad en aquel particular, hasta que yo les certificava della, leiendoles los traslados, que de sus Tributos me traìan, y cotejandolos con sus ñudos; y desta manera supe dellos tanto como los Indios. — Vega, I, vi, 9, p. 183.
- ↑ The writer is completing a bibliography of the quipu and such a compilation. He wishes to express his appreciation for much help and suggestion generously given by Mr A. F. Bandelier.
