Ollanta: An Ancient Ynca Drama/Introduction

by Clements Robert Markham

INTRODUCTION.

The literature of the Yncas of Peru consisted of love-songs, elegies, allegoric hymns, and dramatic compositions. Unfortunately, most of these evidences of ancient civilisation have disappeared, or are still in manuscript. The earliest writers knew little or nothing of them. They were preserved as traditions in the families of the conquered and fallen Yncas, and were not communicated to the Spaniards; who, indeed, took little pains to seek for them.

Garcilasso Ynca de la Vega^[1] was the only author, contemporary with the first conquerors, who had a correct knowledge of the language of the Yncas; and the only one, therefore, whose testimony has any real value. He tells us little, but that little is important. We learn from his pages that the Amautas or philosophers of the Ynca court composed dramas relating to the deeds of former sovereigns and heroes, which were performed by persons of rank.^[2] They also composed poems and love-songs with alternate long and short verses, having the right number of syllables in each; and Garcilasso describes them as resembling the Spanish compositions called redondillas.^[3] They had many other metres for these songs, and for the elegies recited by their Harahuicus or Trouvères. The Ynca poets also treated of the secondary causes, by means of which God acts in the region of the air to cause lightning, rain, and snow. Blas Valera preserved some verses of this kind, which he calls spondaics, and which are certainly of undoubted antiquity.^[4]

These verses, and four lines of a love-song in Garcilasso,^[5] are the only fragments of ancient Ynca literature that were preserved in the writings of early Spanish authors. Garcilasso also mentions a class of songs called haylli, in which the deeds of valiant warriors, and the hopes and fears of lovers, were celebrated. The word haylli, or "triumph," was used as a refrain or chorus; and the songs were chanted by the people when engaged in ploughing, and other field labours.^[6]

The means of preserving ancient songs and dramas were rude, but not altogether ineffectual. They consisted of oral transmission, the same means by which, as Max Müller believes, the whole Vedic literature was preserved for centuries; and the system of quipus or knots. In his own account of the quipus, Garcilasso nowhere says that songs and traditions were preserved by their means alone. He merely states that the Amautas put the narratives of the historical events into the form of brief and easily remembered sentences, while the Harahuicus^[7] condensed them into pithy verses, both forms being prepared with a view to their being learnt by heart, and handed down by the people. But the Quipu-camayocs, or "keepers of knots," appear to have combined the duties of preserving and deciphering the knot records, with those of remembering and transmitting the historical narratives and songs; and Garcilasso implies that their memories, in some way which he does not explain, were assisted by the knots. "Each thread and knot," he says, "brought to the mind that which it was arranged it should suggest; just as the commandments and articles of our holy Catholic faith are remembered by the numbers under which they are placed." In giving the verses preserved by Blas Valera, however, the Ynca quotes from that writer, who says that he found the verses in knots of different colours, which recorded certain ancient annals.^[8]

Such is all that is to be gathered from the writers who flourished in the century which witnessed the conquest of the Ynca empire by the Spaniards. We come next to the inquiry whether songs and dramatic compositions of præ-Spanish times were likely to be preserved, orally or in writing, by the Ynca chiefs and people. It was the policy of the Spaniards to treat the native chiefs with some consideration; they were allowed to retain the ancient insignia of their rank, and to appear in them in public religious processions,^[9] and they were placed in authority over their vassals as agents of the Spanish Corregidores.^[10] They wore their peculiar dresses down to the time of the rebellion of Tupac Amaru^[11] in 1780, after which their use was prohibited. It is thus clear that the Ynca chiefs were permitted by the Spaniards to retain a portion of their authority, that they were encouraged to continue the use of their costumes in order to increase the magnificence of religious processions, and that some at least of the old Ynca customs were preserved by special enactments. Under these favourable circumstances, the chiefs would almost certainly preserve the memory of the former grandeur of their country, and encourage the people to recite the ancient songs and dramas, some of which would eventually be committed to writing. The dramatic aptitude of the people was discovered by the Spanish priests almost immediately after the conquest, and they endeavoured, with notable success, to turn this talent to account, as a means of conveying religious instruction. Garcilasso tells us that the Jesuits composed dramas for the Indians to act, because they knew that this was the custom in the time of the Yncas, and because they saw that the Indians were so ready to receive instruction through that means. He adds that one of the Jesuits in a village near the shores of lake Titicaca, called Juli, composed a play in the dialect spoken in that part of the country,^[12] on the enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman, which was acted by Indian lads. Other plays on religious subjects were acted in the Quichua language at Potosi, Cuzco, and Lima; and Garcilasso assures us that the lads repeated the dialogues with so much grace, feeling, and correct action, that they gave universal satisfaction and pleasure, and with so much plaintive softness in the songs, that many Spaniards shed tears of joy at seeing the ability and skill of the little Indians.^[13] One of these dramas, composed by priests in the Quichua language, is in my possession, and is a most valuable relic of those early efforts to introduce the miracle plays of Spain into Peru.^[14]

In his monstrous sentence in 1781, the Judge Areche prohibited "the representation of dramas, as well as all other festivals which the Indians celebrated in memory of their Yncas."^[15] This proves that the ancient dramas of the Yncas were remembered and actually performed down to the year 1781; for those composed by Spanish priests cannot be intended, as they would not be prohibited by a Spanish judge.

These considerations will enable us to form an opinion of the antiquity of the drama of Ollanta; which is now, for the first time, translated from Quichua into English.

The first printed mention of this most important relic of early American civilisation is to be found in a periodical published at Cuzco in 1837.^[16] It is there stated that the drama was handed down by immemorial tradition, and that it was first committed to writing by Don Antonio Valdez, the Cura of Tinta, an intimate friend of the ill-fated Ynca Tupac Amaru, whose formidable insurrection was with difficulty suppressed by the Spaniards in 1780–81. The drama was frequently performed in presence of the Ynca Tupac Amaru. This account exactly coincides with the information I received in 1853 from Dr Don Pablo Justiniani, a descendant of the Yncas. He told me that the Cura of Tinta first reduced the drama to writing, and that the original manuscript was then in possession of his nephew and heir, Don Narciso Cuentas of Tinta. Dr Valdez, the Cura of Tinta, died at a great age in 1816.

Several copies were made from the original of Dr Valdez, for the lovers of Ynca lore, who abound in Cuzco, as well as in many a secluded town and village in the Peruvian Andes. Some extracts from the drama appeared in Peruvian newspapers, but the second notice of it (that in the Museo Erudito of Cuzco being the first) will be found in the Antiguedades Peruanas of Don Mariano Rivero and Dr Von Tschudi, which was published at Vienna in 1851.^[17] It is curious that these authors should not have been acquainted with the article in the Museo Erudito, and with the fact that the drama was first committed to writing by Dr Valdez. They give two extracts from the drama in Quichua. The complete text in Quichua was first printed at the end of his Kechua Sprache, by Dr Von Tschudi, a work which appeared at Vienna in 1853.^[18] This version is from a copy in the monastery of San Domingo at Cuzco, which is exceedingly corrupt; the copyist having modified what he could not read or understand as much as he thought proper, and having even introduced some Spanish words. In 1868 Don Josè Barranca published a Spanish translation of the Quichua drama of Ollanta.^[19] He took the corrupt version of Von Tschudi for his text, but corrected many passages.

My own version of the drama was transcribed by myself, with great care, from the copy in possession of Dr Don Pablo Justiniani, the aged Cura of Laris, and a descendant of the Yncas. That copy was taken by his father, Don Justo Pastor Justiniani, from the original manuscript of Dr Valdez. I have collated my version with a copy in possession of Dr Rosas, Cura of Chinchero, and with the printed version in the Kechua Sprache of Dr Von Tschudi. The latter collation has convinced me of the genuine antiquity of the drama, for in every single instance where a corrupt or Hispanicised word or phrase occurs in the Von Tschudi version, I find classical Quichua in the version of Justiniani. This proves that all the corrupt forms in the Von Tschudi version arise from the carelessness of a copyist, and that they have no existence in the original document. In my account of the drama in "Cuzco and Lima" I gave some translated passages, which were made with the assistance of a young student of Cuzco, named Bernardo Puente de la Vega.^[20]

The all-important question is whether the drama was handed down from the time of the Yncas, and merely committed to writing by Dr Valdez, who divided it into scenes, and inserted the stage directions; or whether Dr Valdez was the actual author, and composed the work himself in a classical and, in his day, almost archaic language. If the former opinion is the true one, the drama of Ollanta is certainly the most important relic of ancient American civilisation; while in the latter case, though still an interesting specimen of Quichua composition, its great value and interest will be lost.

I was told by Dr Justiniani, and by other Quichua scholars whom I met at Cuzco in 1853, that the drama of Ollanta was undoubtedly ancient and composed before the Spanish conquest. Rivero and Von Tschudi also appear to have had no doubt upon this point, and Barranca strongly advocates the same view. But I was led, during my visit to Peru in 1860, to think that Dr Valdez was the author, though the drama might contain ancient songs and speeches, and though the plot was undoubtedly ancient.^[21] I had not then carefully analysed the work itself. I have since done so, and this closer investigation has led me to revert to my earlier impression, and to concur with Justiniani, Rivero, Von Tschudi, and Barranca, that the drama is a pure relic of the ancient literature of the Yncas.

The internal evidence of the antiquity of the drama of Ollanta is, I consider, quite conclusive. We know from Garcilasso, that dramas were performed before the Yncas, and that the Indians had a special talent for acting; and we learn from the sentence of Areche that Quichua dramas were acted as late as 1781, to preserve the memory of the Yncas. They were performed before the ill-fated Tupac Amaru, whose intimate friend, Dr Valdez, committed the drama of Ollanta to writing, at about the time of the insurrection of the Ynca.^[22] Thus we have a chain of evidence connecting the drama of Dr Valdez with the performance enacted before Tupac Amaru, the words of which had been orally transmitted from ancient Yncarial times. To these considerations are to be added the far more conclusive proofs of antiquity derived from the work itself. There is not a single modern or Spanish word or phrase in the whole work; nor is there the remotest allusion to Christianity or to anything Spanish. Moreover, the drama contains many words and grammatical forms, some of which I have indicated in the notes, that are archaic and long since disused. The only object of a Spanish priest, in composing such a work, would be to inculcate Catholic doctrine; and not to preserve the memory of ancient pagan rites in absolute purity. The Quichua play of Usca Paucar, in my possession, which was undoubtedly composed by a Spanish priest, contains many words that have been introduced since the conquest; and, though it is written in excellent Quichua, it does not contain one of the archaic grammatical forms that occur in Ollanta. If the latter work had been due to the authorship of Dr Valdez, it would have had some trace, however slight, of its Spanish origin; and would have resembled the miracle play of Usca Paucar in its general structure. The fact that Ollanta is absolutely free from any indication of a Spanish touch, is a convincing proof that it is an ancient Ynca drama, handed down orally in order to be performed before the native chiefs, until 1780; and then committed to 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.^[23] 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,^[24] but Cusi Coyllur means "the Joyful Star."^[25] The play opens with a dialogue between Ollanta and his servant, Piqui Chaqui, a witty and facetious lad, whose punning sallies form the comic vein which runs through the piece. Their talk is of Ollanta's love for the princess, and to them enters the High Priest of the Sun, who endeavours, by a miracle, to dissuade the audacious warrior from his forbidden love. In the second scene the princess herself laments to her mother the absence of Ollanta, and her father, the Ynca Pachacutec, expresses warm affection for his child. Two songs of undoubted antiquity are introduced; the first being a harvest song with a chorus threatening the birds that rob the corn, and the second being one of those mournful love-elegies which are peculiar to the Peruvian Indians. In the third scene Ollanta presses his suit upon the Ynca, is scornfully repulsed, and finally bursts out into open defiance, in a soliloquy of great force. Then there is an amusing dialogue with Piqui Chaqui, and another love song concludes the act. In the opening scene of the second act the rebellion of Ollanta is announced to the Ynca, and a general named Rumi-ñaui, or the "Stone Eyed,"^[26] is ordered to march against him. The rebels hail the warrior Ollanta as their Ynca in the second scene, and prepare to resist the armies of Pachacutec; and in the third, Rumi-ñaui recounts the total defeat of himself and his armies by the rebel Ollanta. Meanwhile Cusi Coyllur had been delivered of a daughter, and for her crime she is immured in a dungeon of the convent of virgins, while her child, named Yma Sumac, is brought up in the same building without being aware of the existence of her mother. The long speech in which the child relates to her keeper the groans she had heard in the garden, and the strange feeling with which they fill her mind, is considered by Señor Barranca to be the finest passage in the play. Then follows an amusing dialogue between Rumi-ñaui and the scrapegrace Piqui Chaqui, during which the death of the Ynca is announced. Pachacutec is succeeded by his son Ynpanqui, who had been absent for many years, engaged in the conquest of the coast valleys, and who is supposed to be imperfectly informed of the events that had taken place round Cuzco. He entrusted the command against the rebel to Rumi-ñaui, who adopted a cunning stratagem. Concealing his army in a neighbouring ravine, he came to the stronghold of the rebels, and appeared before Ollanta covered with blood, declaring that he had been cruelly treated by the new Ynca, and that he desired to join the insurrection. He encouraged Ollanta and his troops to celebrate the festival of the Sun with drunken orgies, and, when all were heavy with liquor, he admitted his own men and captured the whole of the rebels. In the first scene of the third act there is a touching dialogue between Yma Sumac and her governess Pitu Salla, which ends in the child being allowed to visit her mother in the dungeon. In the second scene the successful stratagem of Rumi-ñaui is related to the Ynca by a messenger, and Ollanta, and his companions, are brought in as prisoners, by the victorious general. The great rebel is not only pardoned by his magnanimous sovereign, but restored to all his honours; and in the midst of the ceremonies of reconciliation, the child Yma Sumac bursts into the presence, and entreats the Ynca Ynpanqui to save the life of his sister and her mother. The Ynca and his nobles are conducted to the dungeon of Cusi Coyllur, who was supposed to have been long since dead. The unfortunate princess is restored to the arms of her lover, and receives the blessing of the Ynca.

I have endeavoured to give the bare literal meaning of the original, line by line, but it abounds in puns and double meanings which cannot be re-produced. Yet an idea will be conveyed to the mind of the reader, of the ancient literature of the Yncas, and of the poetic faculty to which they had attained, even by the present bald attempt at a translation. The Quichua and English are given in parallel columns. The different readings in the Von Tschudi version, of which there are many, are given in italics, and the passages in my version, which are omitted by Von Tschudi and Barranca, are also indicated. I cannot hope that the translation is free from numerous mistakes. The value of the present publication is that the text of an older and purer version than that already given to the world in the Kechua Sprache of Von Tschudi, will be preserved. The translation is the result of much careful study; and it does, I believe, in spite of many blunders which will doubtless be detected and corrected by future students, give the general sense of the original. Thus the purest and oldest text will now be accessible to inquirers in this field of research, while the translation will furnish additional material for judging of the sort of civilisation that was developed in this part of South America, before its discovery by Europeans. Such, at least, is my aim in this effort to give the old Ynca Drama an English dress.

The tradition at Cuzco in 1837, which was said to have been handed down in the families of the Caciques of Belen and San Blas, was that the drama was based on an historical event;^[27] but this seems more than doubtful. The stronghold of the rebel is placed among the magnificent ruins in the vale of Vilca-mayu, which are now called Ollanta-tambo from the classical associations connected with the drama, but the greater part of the ruins is far more ancient than the time of Pachacutec. A detailed account of the ruins, and of the vale of Vilca-mayu, will be found in one of my former works on Peru.^[28] A bust on an earthen vase was presented to Don Antonio Maria Alvarez, the political chief of Cuzco in 1837, by an Indian who declared that it had been handed down in his family from time immemorial, as the likeness of the general Rumi-ñaui, who plays an important part in the drama of Ollanta.^[29] The person represented must have been a general, from the ornament on the forehead called mascapaycha, and wounds were cut in the face. This, so far as it goes, is a confirmation of the genuine antiquity of the drama. Internal evidence inclines me to fix its date, in the reign of the great Ynca Huayna Ccapec, about A.D. 1475 to 1525.^[30] Love is allowed to break through the rigid laws of the Ynca court to some extent; but otherwise the state of society, and the manners and customs met with in the drama, agree generally, but not so closely as to justify a suspicion of plagiarism, with those described by Garcilasso and other early Spanish writers.

The drama of Ollanta is not alone in allowing a romantic passion to transgress the usages of the Ynca court. A still more interesting love story is told by Balboa,^[31] who relates the events as having actually occurred during the reign of Ynca Huascar, and as having been recounted to him by contemporaries. I mention it as a proof that the plot of Ollanta is not in opposition to probabilities; but space forbids the gratification of my natural wish to tell this second love tale of Ynca times.

I am in possession of twenty ancient Ynca songs, which I obtained from Dr Justiniani, and which had been first committed to writing in the last century by his grandfather and by Dr Valdez; and I also have some Quichua poems by Dr Lunarejo, the most elegant Quichua scholar of Spanish times. I hope hereafter to find time to complete the translation of these additional fragments of Ynca literature. Meanwhile I am fully persuaded that diligent research in the towns and villages of the Peruvian Andes would be rewarded by the discovery of further specimens of the ancient literature of the children of the Sun.

CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM.

August 1871.

1. All the references to Garcilasso, in this introduction, are to my English translation, printed for the Hakluyt Society.
2. See my translation, vol. i. p. 194.
3. Eight syllable lines broken into stanzas of four lines, and thence called redondillas or roundelays. See Ticknor, i. p. 102.
4. G. de la Vega, i. p. 197. See also my Quichua Grammar and Dictionary (Trübner, 1864), p. 10.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid. ii. p. 8.
7. G. de la Vega, ii. p. 125.
8. Ibid. i. p. 196.
9. They are so represented in the pictures in the church of Santa Ana, at Cuzco.
10. "Ordenanzas del Peru, por Don Francisco de Toledo, recogidas por el Lic. Don Tomas de Ballesteros" (Lima, 1685).
    Titulo VI. "De los Caciques Principales." By Ordenanza xix. the Caciques and principal people were ordered to dine in the plazas of the villages where their vassals were accustomed to assemble, because it was considered right that, in this, the ancient customs of the Yncas should be preserved, and that the chiefs should eat publicly with the poor Indians. By other Ordenanzas, in the same Titulo, the native chiefs were charged with the superintendence of the morals of the people, of the repair of andenes (terraces) and tambos (rest-houses on the roads), and with other similar duties.
11. In the sentence of death on Tupac Amaru, pronounced by the Visitador Areche at Cuzco, on May 15th, 1781, all dresses used by the Yncas and chiefs were thenceforth prohibited, including the uncu or mantle, and the mascapaicha or head-dress. All documents relating to the descent of the Yncas were ordered to be burnt, the representation of Quichua dramas was prohibited, all pictures of the Yncas were to be destroyed as well as musical instruments, and the Indians were ordered to give up their national dress, and to clothe themselves in the Spanish fashion.—MS. penes C. R. M. Also printed in Angelis.
12. This dialect was called Aymara by the Jesuits at Juli, a blunder which is carelessly repeated by Garcilasso. The nature and origin of the mistake has been explained by me elsewhere.
13. G. de la Vega, i. p. 204.
14. The MS. was kindly presented to me by a Cura at Paucar-tambo in 1853. (See Cuzco and Lima, p. 190.) It is entitled, "Usca Paucar, Auto Sacramental el Patrocinio de Maria, Señora Nuestra en Copacabana."
15. "Sentencia pronunciada en el Cuzco por el Visitador Don Josè Antonio de Areche, contra Josè Gabriel Tupac Amaru." This revolting but most curious and important state paper is published in vol. v. of the Coleccion de obras y documentos, by Don Pedro de Angelis. (Buenos Ayres, 1836–37.)
16. "Museo Erudito," Nos. 5 to 9. Edited by Don Josè Palacios.
17. P. 116.—Antiguedades Peruanas, por Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Juan Diego de Tschudi." (Vienne, 1851.)
18. "Die Kechua Sprache, por J. J. Von Tschudi, ii. (Wien, 1853.)
19. "Ollanta ó sea la severidad de un padre y la clemencia de un rey drama traducido del Quichua al Castellano, con notas diversas, por Josè S. Barranca." (Lima, 1868.)
20. Pp. 173–177, and 186.
21. See my "Travels in Peru and India," p. 139 (note).
22. For a narrative of the insurrection of Tupac Amaru, the last of the Yncas, in 1780–81, see my Travels in Peru and India, chap. ix. The texts of some of the official documents relating to the insurrection are printed in the collection of Angelis. Others, still in manuscript, are in my possession.
23. G. de la Vega, ii. pp. 127–34, 145, 201–207. For his laws and sayings, see pp. 207–10.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. A general under Atahuallpa had the same name; and it occurs, on two or three other occasions, in Ynca annals.
27. Museo Erudito, No 5, p. 9.
28. Cuzco and Lima, p. 179.
29. Museo Erudito, No. 5.
30. For my reason for fixing this date, see note 66, at the end of this volume.
31. Balboa, cap. xvi. pp. 224–304.