The Incas of Peru/Appendix B

by Clements Robert Markham

APPENDIX B

NOTE ON THE NAMES QUICHUA AND AYMARA

The dialects still existing, to some extent, at the time of the Spanish conquest, besides the separate Mochica language on the coast, were the speech used in the northern part of the empire of the Incas, called Chinchay-suyu, differing very slightly from the Runa-simi, and the Cauqui, a form of the Chinchay-suyu, spoken by the mountaineers of Yauyos. In the Colla-suyu a language was spoken which was more distinct, its declining and conjugating particles differing from those of the general language, but it contained a great number of roots which were the same. A wild aquatic tribe, living on fish among the reeds in the south-west angle of Lake Titicaca, spoke a dialect called Puquina.

The Spanish administrators, especially the priests, at once saw the importance of acquiring a knowledge of the highly cultivated Runa-simi, or general language, before turning their attention to the dialects. Several Spanish soldiers studied and mastered the language, including Juan de Betanzos, husband of Atahualpa's daughter, and the only Spanish lay Quichua scholar whose writings have reached us. To the priests, some of whom were burning with impatience for the means of teaching the natives the tenets of their Church, it was a matter of greater importance. One of their first duties, as they understood them, was to make the language accessible to their fellow priests. The very first to undertake the task was a Dominican friar named Domingo de Santo Tomas. His name occurs several times in the story of the conquest. He was an indefatigable inquirer and traveller, even studying the difficult Mochica language and founding a monastery in the coast region of the Chimu. Santo Tomas eventually became Bishop of La Plata.

This worthy Dominican was the first to construct a grammar of the Runa-simi, or general language of Peru, which was published at Valladolid in 1560. A second edition appeared at Lima in 1586.^[1] Santo Tomas, in his title-page, calls the Runa-simi 'the general language of the Indians of the kingdom of Peru,' and gives it the name of Quichua. But he does not inform his readers of the reason for giving it that name.

The Quichuas formed a group of ayllus or village communities in the valley of the Pachachaca. We know the area which this group occupied with a fair amount of exactness, because places, the positions of which are fixed, are mentioned by Sarmiento and others, in relating the course of the Incas' conquests, as being in the territory of the Quichuas. This Quichua province is small as compared with the area over which the general language was spoken, nor was it of much importance. It is, therefore, an inappropriate name for the general language of the Incas. It can only be supposed that the name was given by Santo Tomas because it was in the Quichua province that he studied the language.^[2] Some name was needed, and that first given by Santo Tomas was adopted by subsequent grammarians. The Jesuits, who came to Peru some thirty years after the Dominicans, devoted themselves to the study of the languages. Diego Gonzalez Holguin was appointed Interpreter-General to the Viceroy of Peru on September 10, 1575. He published his vocabulary of the general language at Lima in 1586, calling it 'Quichua, or the language of the Inca.'^[3] His elaborate grammar was published in 1607.^[4] Another Jesuit, Diego de Torres Rubio, published his 'grammar and vocabulary of the general language of Peru, called Quichua,' at Seville in 1603.^[5] In 1607 the excellent Bishop Luis Geronimo Oré, a native of Guamanga in Peru, published his 'Rituale seu Manuale Peruanum' at Naples. It contains specimens of the different languages and dialects.

The Jesuits established a mission at Juli, on the west coast of Lake Titicaca, and studied the language of the natives of Colla-suyu. Other priests had studied that language before the Jesuits were established at Juli, and had given it the name of Aymara, which is even more inappropriate for the language of Colla-suyu than the name of Quichua is for the Runa-simi, or general language of the Incas. The Jesuits had a printing-press at Juli, and were very active in the work of conversion. The native tribe at Juli and on the west side of the lake of Titicaca was called Lupaca. To the north were the Collas, to the south the Pacajes, and on the east side of the lake were the Pacasas. As the Collas were the most powerful, all the tribes in the basin of Lake Titicaca were usually referred to by the early Spanish writers under the generic name of Collas.

Colla would, therefore, be the correct name for the language of the Collas, and not Aymara. None of the early writers ever mentioned the inhabitants of Colla-suyu except as Collas. There is not one single instance of the name Aymara having been given to them. It is, therefore, quite certain that the name of Aymara was absolutely unknown in Colla-suyu, either before the Spanish conquest or for at least forty years after that event.

Whence, then, conies the name of Aymara? The answer is quite conclusive. It is the name of a small province on the upper waters of the Pachachaca river, bordering on the Quichuas. These Aymaras were a Quichua tribe wholly unconnected with Colla-suyu and the basin of Lake Titicaca. This is quite certain, and is proved in the same way as the position of the Quichuas is proved. Places are mentioned, in the course of the Inca conquests in Cunti-suyu, which were said to belong to the Aymaras then, and which are now actually in Aymaras, which is a province in the department of Cuzco.

The word is from AYMA, a harvest song, in the general language which the Spanish grammarians called Quichua. From the same root comes AYMARAY, the 'harvest month'; and AYMURANI, 'I gather the harvest.'

The question arises, why should the priests who first learnt the Colla language have given this name of Aymara, that of a purely Quichua tribe, to the language of the Lupacas which they were diligently learning? The explanation is perhaps to be found by a reference to the work of Fray Alonzo Ramos Gavilan published in 1620, and giving a history of the church of Copacabana,^[6], near Juli. The great Inca Tupac Yupanqui, having conceived a devotion to the Titicaca myth, determined to erect a palace on one of the islands of the lake. Ramos tells us that he transferred a large body of mitimaes, or colonists, from the provinces of Cunti-suyu, that is the valley of the Apurimac and its tributaries, to the provinces of Colla-suyu. He gives a list of the tribes so transferred, and among them were the Aymaras. These Aymaras, according to Blas Valera, were settled at Juli. They had been there for three generations. The priests would learn the language of the Lupacas, the original inhabitants, from them, intermingled with a great number of Quichua words. This is actually what appears to have happened. Finding that the language of the Lupacas was practically the same as that spoken by the Collas, Pacasas, and other tribes of the basin of Lake Titicaca, a generic name was required for the whole group, and the word Aymara was adopted, being the name of the mitimaes with whom the priests were associated at Juli. This would explain the puzzle.

The word Aymara, as applied to the language of Colla-suyu, first occurs in 1575.^[7] We find it again in a 'Doctrina Christiana,' published in 1583, but applied to the language, not to the people. The word was not applied to the people until many years afterwards. The Jesuits had settled at Juli in about 1576. Their name for the language appears to have been adopted by others, as soon as the Jesuits began to use it. Garcilasso de la Vega mentions it once, referring to the language: so does Huaman Poma. Morua mentions it twice, writing in 1590, applied to the language, but never to the people. The Italian Jesuit, Ludovico Bertonio, composed a grammar and dictionary of the Lupaca language for which his colleagues at Juli had adopted the name of Aymara. It was published at Rome in 1603. A second edition was issued from the Juli press in 1612.^[8] Diego de Torres Rubio published a grammar and vocabulary of the same language in 1616.

An examination of the Bertonio dictionary either shows the extent to which the general language had been made to prevail in Colla-suyu, or else that the language of the Collas and Lupacas was merely a dialect. My conclusion is that it was originally the distinct language of tribes living in the region which was once the centre of the great megalithic empire. It is just as the Arabs now encamp among the ruins of Babylon, and the Kurds build huts within the walls of Ecbatana. The auxiliary verb in the Colla-suyu language has the same root, can, as in the general language; but the particles forming the declinations of nouns and conjugations of verbs are different. The first person singular indicative ends in Ni in the general language, in Tha in the language of Colla-suyu. Four of the Colla numerals are borrowed from the general language, the rest, beyond six, being compound.^[9]

It may be assumed, judging from the dictionaries of Bertonio and Torres Rubio, that the extension of the general language over Colla-suyu had already made considerable progress at the time of the Spanish conquest. The system of numeration had been improved, and though a large proportion of the roots in the two languages were originally the same, the ability to give expression to many abstract ideas was acquired by the additions from the general language which enriched that of Colla-suyu.

The usage of three centuries has made it inevitable that the names Quichua and Aymara for the general language of the Incas and the language of Colla-suyu should continue to be used, although they are inappropriate and misleading.

1. A reprint was published at Leipzig in 1891.
2. Mossi derives the name from Quehuariy, to twist rope; and Ychu, grass.
3. Second edition, Lima, 1607.
4. Ibid., Lima, 1842.
5. Ibid., Lima, 1629; third, 1700; fourth, 1754. A vocabulary of Chinchay-suyu, by Juan de Figueredo, is bound up with Torres Rubio's.
6. The Augustine monks had charge of the sanctuary of Copacabana from 1589 to 1826. A full account of it and its images is given by the Augustinian chronicler Calancha, as well as by Ramos
7. In Tit. xv. p. 84 of Ordenanzas del Peru. Ballesteros (Lima, 1685).
8. Reprinted at Leipzig in 1879.

9. General Language.		Colla.		General Language.		Colla.
   1,	Huc	. .	Maya		6,	Socta	. .	Socta
   2,	Iscay	. .	Paya		7,	Canchis	. .	Pa Allco
   3,	Quimsa	. .	Quimsa		8,	Pussac	. .	Quimsa Allco
   4,	Ttahua	. .	Pusi		9,	Yscun	. .	Llalla Tunca
   5,	Pichca	. .	Pichca		10,	Chunca	. .	Tunca

   Three and five are missing, but we may assume that they once existed in the Colla language, for the Collas must have counted at least to five, the fingers and thumb of one hand. Three, five, and six were borrowed from the general language in Bertonio's dictionary. The Colla word for three is lost. Seven, eight, and nine are compound words, seven and eight with the word Allco. Possibly Allco was the Colla five. Then we have—

   Maya Allco	. .	6	= 5 + 1	= Socta
   Paya Allco	. .	7	= 5 + 2
   Quimsa Allco	. .	8	= 5 + 3
   Pusi Allco	. .	9	= 5 + 4
   Allco Allco	. .	10	= 5 + 5	= Tunca or Chunca

   The tribes of Colla-suyu made progress in civilisation after the Inca conquest, and of course required a more complete system of numeration.