CERRON-PALOMINO, R. M. (2012). Unravelling the Enigma of the ‘Particular Language’ of the Incas”. En HEGGARTY, Paul y David Beresford-Jones (eds): Archaeology and Language in the Andes. A Cross-Disciplinary Exploration of Prehistory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 265-294. 11 Unravelling the Enigma of the 'Particular Language' of the Incas RODOLFO CERRON-PALOMINO Yes de saber que los Incas turieron otra lengua particular que hahlaua[n} entre ellos, que no la entendian los demas Yndios, ni /es era licito apre[n jderla, coma lenguage diuino. (And it must be known that the Incas had another particular language spoken among them, which language was not understood by the rest of the Indians, neither were they allowed to learn it, as it was a divine tongue.) Inca Garcilaso ([1609] 2002: VII, L 166) Introduction THIS CHAPTER FOCUSES ON THE SO-CALLED 'particular language' referred to by Garcilaso as spoken only among the Inca nobility, in contrast to the 'general language', namely Quechua. With justified scepticism, historiographers have cast considerable doubt on references to this supposed private and exclusive speech, which has been widely viewed as just another element of Garcilaso 's fantasized portrayal of the Inca realm in his Comentarios. Yet his is not the sole source alluding to the existence of this obscure language. And while closer inspection of the mostly lexical linguistic material he provides has so far failed to dispel the doubts surrounding it, in what follows I shall offer new pointers that do permit us to maintain that it did indeed exist. Its identity and linguistic affiliation, intensely debated in recent years, will then be subjected to particular scrutiny. Information on the 'Particular Language' As observed above, Garcilaso is not alone in his mention of the secret language of the Incas. This in itself should undermine the doubts insinuated as to its existence. Such, at least, was the opinion of J.J. von Tschudi ([1891] 1918: I, 64), on coming upon a passage in Rodrigo Cantos de Andrada's Proceedings of 1111! Bri1ish Acudem_r. 173. 265 294. t: The British Academy 2012. 266 Rodolfo Cerr6n-Palomino Relaci(m on the Villa Rica de Oropesa and the Huancavelica mines, in which he too, quite independently, makes reference to this secret language. Indeed, in almost the same terms as Garcilaso would later use to evoke it, he states: There is much variety in tongues among the natives; but in its entire extent the caciques and principales of the repartimientos were required to know the general language they call Quechua, so that they could know and understand the mes- sages sent to them by the Inca, and so that, upon visiting his court, they could understand without an interpreter; and among the Inga and his lineage and orejones they ｾｰｯｫ･＠ another language, ll'hich no cacique nor other person of the realm H"as allo\\'ed to learn a single 1rord of (Cantos de Andrada [1586] 1965: 307; emphasis added) This constitutes our earliest account of the particular language, penned long before Garcilaso's. From it one may safely deduce, then, that the existence of the language was recalled not only by descendants of the imperial nobility like Garcilaso himself, but also among the peoples of the former empire. Nor did notice of the language escape the attention of the Mercedarian friar Martin de Murua, whose account of the special education received by the Inca nobility relates that the first of their four masters 'began by teaching the language of the Inga, 1rhich 1ras the particular one .1poken by him, different from Quichua and Aymara, 11"1ich are the t1ro general tongues of this realm' (Murua [1613] 1987: II, XII, 377; emphasis added). As with Cantos de Andrada, everything points to this source being independent of Garcilaso's.1 While the same cannot strictly be said of the further report by the historian Bernabe Cobo, for he was of course familiar with Garcilaso's work, he none- theless verified the claim against the testimony of Alonso Topa Atau, grand- son of Huaina Capac. Cobo writes, 'besides the language of Cuzco, which is the general language introduced by the Incas in their empire and was spoken by all their subjects, they kne11· another, 1rhich they used solely 1rhen they 1rere dealing 1rith and conversing with those of their mm lineage' (Cobo [l 653] 1956: XII, III, 64; emphasis added). Furthermore, the author adds credence to his report by affirming that Alonso Topa A tau, a descendant of the Inca nobility, 'still recalled ... some words of it'. Regrettably, he refrained from inquiring about them, robbing us of invaluable data on the language, and leaving us just the meagre examples provided by Garcilaso. Cobo goes on to report that Don Alonso Topa certified to him that the language was 'the same as is spoken among the Indians of the Tampu valley', that is, the modern Ollantaytambo. Finally, like Garcilaso, Cobo too informs us that 'with the changes in this realm wrought by the new rule of the Spaniards, the descendants of the Incas have forgotten about it' (Cobo [1653] 1956: XII, III, 64). 1 Not so the references to the particular language by the chronicler Anello Oliva, which derive from his having read the corresponding passages in Garcilaso's work, as may be deduced from the citations he makes (Oliva [1631] 1998: L 1, 34). Note that. throughout the chapter. the roman numerals in citations refer first to the book number and second to the chapter number. THE "PARTICULAR LANGUAGE' OF THE INCAS 267 Lexical Corpus Lexical material ascribed to the particular language by Garcilaso consists of thirteen epithets or lineage names, four toponyms, and one common noun. Following the established linguistic convention of enclosing the precise spell- ings reported inside < > signs, the names in the first category are: (I, XVlll, 17), (I, XXIV, 22v), (II, XVI, 42), (II, I, 56v), , , , , , , , ,2 and the generic (IX, XL, 263v). The toponyms are (I, XVIII, 17; II, XI, 37), (VII, Vlll, 173), (VII, VIII, l 73v), and (VII, VIII, 174). Finally, the common noun, in this case the name of a species of bird, is (VI, XXVIII, I 54v). In total there are eighteen names, all of them foreign to the 'general language', in this case Quechua. Of these, fourteen are explicitly attributed to the 'particular language' and the remaining four (namely , , , and ), while not explicitly ascribed to it, do appear to form part of this corpus, given how intimately they are related to Inca history. In these cases, Garcilaso interprets them as 'proper names' whose meanings, like all of the other words but one, are unknown to him. The exception is , whose supposed meaning as ·navel (of the world)' is unwarranted, but is referred to twice (see Cerron- Palomino 2008: 11-10, where the meaning Garcilaso supplies is shown to be entirely unfounded). In a previous preliminary survey (Cerron-Palomino 1998: §2) I have pointed out that of the seventeen terms examined, eight (namely, , , , , , , , and ) could in fact be ascribed to Quechua, four to Aymara (, , , and ), and one () pos- sibly to Puquina, leaving the affiliation of the remainder ( , , , and ) unresolved. Here I shall maintain those earlier suggestions (some of them subject to future revisions), but refrain from re-examining the list in detail, in order to focus on the as yet unidentified remainder, and introduce the further term . Before inquiring into their etymologies, three important aspects of the material as a whole demand attention (with the exception of , which will be dealt with below). ' This is actually a mistake for . since otherwise Garcilaso simply assumes that the word , to designate the ruler of Cuzco. is Quechua. although my own view is that it is most likely of Puquina origin. So when referring, for instance, to Manco Capac-previously known as Manco Inca, we are told-Garcilaso states: The name Inca, when used for the prince, means lord, or King. or Emperor, and in the rest means lord, and to interpret it in its full significance, means man of royal blood" ([1609] 2002: I, XXIV, 22v). Furthermore, Sarmiento de Gamboa's chronicle registers the term as (Sarmiento (1572] 1965: (47]. 253). 268 Rodo(fo Cerr6n-Palomino Some of the roots of these words may be shared with Quechua and/or Aymara. 2 Some of the words seem to have passed through the 'filter' of Quechua or Aymara, that is, they have reached us only in a 'Quechuanized' or 'Aymaranized' form. 3 Most interestingly, many may in fact be Quechua or Aymara reformu- lations of older roots alien to either, and thus ascribable to a third language. Having made these first general observations, I shall now proceed to analyse the names individually. The toponym , one of the Inca 'neighbourhoods' of the imperial city of Cuzco, can now be confirmed as an entirely Quechua designation. Its internal structure had already been identified as a root , whose meaning was unknown to me at the time, plus the obsolete -nqa. form of the nominalizing suffix, later simplified to modern -na. The root has finally been identified as the Quechua word qharmi (Cerr6n-Palomino 2008: II: 3, §1.2.2), meaning an 'extension' or 'addition'. The toponym, then, may have meant 'extension (place)', or 'added (place)'. In any case, there seems little doubt that it was the archaic nature of the suffix that misled Garcilaso here. For the obviously compound word structure of the lineage, Markham ([1871] 1923: 54-6) offered the partial reading of as 'children's cradle', based on Gorn;alez Holguin's dictionary entry ([l 608] 1952: I, 310: ), but left unexplained the remainder, i.e. . This, however, was actually a misreading of original , as per the correct version provided by the Jesuit priest Acosta,' among others. Present also in names such as that of the mythical ethnic group of the , this component appears to be of Aymara rather than Quechua origin, and as such would mean 'prophet' or 'seer', as reported by the Indian chronicler Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua.4 Identifying the second element as k'irair 'cradle' on the basis of Quechua is thus erroneous: we are actually dealing with the Aymara root , i.e. khira, which as a noun refers to the 'joists laid across roof-beams' (Bertonio [1612] 1984: II, 198). In this composite word, however, appears in its equivalent verb form ('to lay joists in a ·1 He relates that, in effect. 'Ingaroca ... founded a family or ayllo that they know as Vi.;aquirao' (Acosta [l 590] 1998: VI. XX. 200). In passing, those who attempted to etymologize the meaning of based on the cacographic version of it. namely . as it appears in other sources. were totally misled. • His chronicle reads. ·ualla ui.;as. y conti ui.;as. were divining people' (Pachacuti [1613] 1993: fol. 17). Note that the additional information between the < > signs was added by two of the three scribes employed to write the text. as were the notes in the margin alongside the mention of 'the ui.;as' on fol. 13. stating that 'ui<;a means like prophets be they false or true'. THE "PARTICULAR LANGUAGE' OF THE INCAS 269 roof'), but nominalized by means of the locative suffix -1ri, hence khira-1ri, ultimately Quechuanized as khirmr (for treatment of this -11· suffix in toponyms, see Cerr6n-Palomino 2008: II, 3, §2.2). The name may be rendered as '(the) priests' redoubt' or 'bastion'. Incidentally, it follows that the meaning ·cradle of gold' ascribed to the archaeological site of is a similarly mistaken association, and that the term registered by Gon<;alez Holguin is very likely an Aymaranism within Quechua, extended metaphorically also to mean 'cradle'. Semantically more plausible, then, would be a translation along the lines of "stockade' or 'bastion of gold'. The anthroponym might be argued to contain the root *maya- ·ask, implore, request', shared by Quechua and Aymara, followed by the Aymara participial suffix -ta, to refer to a thing or person "required' or ·implored'. Yet in all Aymara dialects now known, at least, this suffix is not among those that truncate the preceding vowel, so the expected result in this case would be more akin to *maya-ta. That said, it is conceivable that the original (Cuzco Aymara?) variety from which the expression was taken may not have been governed by the rules of normative colonial Aymara, not to mention modern varieties. So on this interpretation, the meaning of the full name of the lineage, recorded as , would be 'the (lineage) of Mayta the Small'-provided one accepts the etymology of as the Aymaranization of the Quechua root *uchuk 'small' (for the rules involved in this Aymaranization process, see Cerr6n-Palomino 1998: note 5). Alternatively, may be a native Quechua word based on the verb 'beg' (Gon<;alez Holguin [1608] 1952: I, 358), and thus close in meaning to *maya- ·implore'. In other words, it may well be that the designation is a tautological expression, with as the equivalent of , a reduplication to strengthen the original meaning of as it became ever more opaque. As for , which in Garcilaso's Comentarios appears wrongly cop- ied as (see note 2), there seems little doubt as to its eminently Aymara origin: Bertonio, in his invaluable reference dictionary of the normative colonial form of the language, registers as equivalent to Quechua ·woman from the noble caste of the Ingas' (Bertonio [1612] 1984: II, 175). Finally, in (Phalcoboenus megalopterus), the sacred bird whose plumage adorned the Inca's brow, and known in Aymara as allqamari, we have another composite word whose components are not immediately evi- dent. My initial examination isolated the initial element , identified with Quechua quri (gold), but the enigmatic remained. I have since been able to identify it with the sacred bird whose name survived, in the form quingue - quinga, within the oral tradition of the ancient Huamachucos (cf. the name of the local sanctuary . which can be glossed as "Land of quingues'), such that the whole word might now be rendered as 270 Rodolfo Cerr6n-Palomino 'gold(en) bird' (i.e. highly treasured). That the word , reconstruc- tible as *qinqi, vanished from Quechua is not unduly surprising in the light of the similar fate of the word 'owl', of Aymara origin, which only survived and ultimately came to fame as the name of the Inca capital (Cerr6n- Palomino 2008: II, 7). A Third Language? Closer inspection of Garcilaso's lexical corpus has allowed me to postulate, then, that with the exception of , most if not all the names he attributes to the so-called 'particular language' may after all be construed as either Quechua or Aymara in origin. Does this mean that we should-in the absence of any linguistic material as conclusive evidence-therefore reject the existence of any such language whose use was strictly limited to private dealings of the Inca court? Not at all, for notwithstanding the lack of hard linguistic evidence, the reports of its existence preserved within the Inca oral tradition and trans- mitted by independent sources must doubtless contain some grain of historical truth. In fact, although the words in question may, as we have seen, be tenta- tively related to Quechua and Aymara, it is equally true that several of them-belonging exclusively to the lexicon of the cultural universe of the Inca Empire, and alien to the Quechua and Aymara of the time-bear many signs suggestive of their stemming from a third language, which may well be the 'particular' one we have been trying to pin down. It comes as no surprise, then, that some of the terms studied, like many others for which etymologies have been proposed (Cerr6n-Palomino 2008), should appear to be the results of remodel- ling at various stages through their history. If originally of such a third language, their exact original structures and meanings would have been irrevocably forgotten as speakers switched to the new one. Increasingly opaque, they would have been reinterpreted in terms of the new language into which they were incorporated-first Aymara and then Quechua-by simple association in form and meaning with existing, familiar words in either language. Debate on the 'particular language' of the Incas had come to something of a dead-end before it was revived in the I 990s, thanks to the publication of the first full edition of the early chronicle by Juan Diez de Betanzos, some four and a half centuries after it was first written (Betanzos [1551] 1987). Hitherto known solely for its first eighteen chapters, the pages of the first of the 'new' ones, namely chapter nineteen, yielded a chant accredited to Pachacutiy Inca Yupanqui, which the chronicler took down from his Quechua informants. The value of this text, which commemorates the Inca's conquest of the ethnic group of the Soras, is that it appears to be not in Quechua, as might have been expected, but in some different tongue. This fact escaped Betanzos himself, who does indeed label it as Quechua, casting doubt on his THE 'PARTICULAR LANGUAGE' OF THE INCAS 271 much-vaunted proficiency in the language, as he implies (Betanzos [1551] 2004: 'Dedicatoria'). As the text became known, the question arose as to whether we now at last had before us proof of the 'particular language' of the Incas, sparking an intense debate among those who ventured interpretations of the chant as to which language it was written in. The first to call attention to it was the Polish historian Jan Szeminski ( 1990, 1997: 92-3, 195-7), who, after offering his own interpretation, felt that he had found the long sought-after text that would finally establish that the secret language of the Incas was indeed neither Quechua nor Aymara, but Puquina. In response, the Peruvian linguist Alfredo Torero (1993) immediately rejected Szeminski's thesis-in order, as he put it, 'to save non-linguist scholars from being led astray by [its] erroneous conclu- sions'-holding instead that the text recorded by Betanzos proved on the contrary that the secret language was merely a variant of Aymara, albeit with traits that diverged from the standard variety. At this point I attempted to intervene in the controversy, offering another interpretation of the disputed text (Cerr6n-Palomino 1998, 1999) to argue that while the underlying grammar was indeed Aymara, crucially it also revealed clues hinting at a typically Puquina construction, which in turn would prove that the Incas' secret language was none other than that tongue. Both earlier commentators also returned to the issue: Szeminski (l 998) abandoned his pro-Puquina hypothesis, overwhelmed by the objections of Torero (2002: ch. 3, §3.6.8), who in turn responded to my own proposal. Given how brief the actual text of the chant is, discussion on the secret language of the Incas has focused on Aymara or Puquina as possible candi- dates, with Quechua ruled out altogether. I shall not reopen the debate on this occasion; suffice it to say that my position remains unaltered in favour of Puquina as the original 'secret language'. Rather, my aim in what follows is to elaborate upon certain ideas in my earlier publications, to strengthen hypoth- eses, and to contribute new data both from onomastics and from Andean history and archaeology. The Third Language Although acknowledged by viceregal authority5 as one of the three 'general languages' of Peru, Puquina did not truly enjoy that status in practice, for it ' See Viceroy Toledo's decree. signed in Arequipa and dated 10 September 1575, which reads, · ... I grace the said Gonzalo Holguin by naming him and providing for him to be general interpreter and translator of the said languages Quichua, Puquina and Aimara. which are the ones generally spoken by the Indians of these Kingdoms and Provinces of Peru .. .' (Toledo (1569-74] l 986: II. 97-100). Note. of course. that 'the said Gonzalo Holguin' is not the well-known Quechua specialist Diego Goni;alez Holguin, who only arrived in Peru in 1581. 272 Rodolfo Cerron-Palomino was by then already bound for complete dissolution, as its speaker popula- tions continued apace along a long-term trajectory by which they progres- sively switched to Aymara and/or Quechua. This explains, at least in part, why in the case of Puquina we lack the manuals and vocabularies that have survived for other major tongues (and even a language of lesser standing such as Mochica), and can count only on the scarce evangelizing materials compiled and published by the H uamanga creole Jeronimo de Ore. 6 Even as Blas Valera was reporting (as cited by Garcilaso) that once Tahuantinsuyo had fallen those peoples not yet fully Quechuanized-among them, the Puquina-had reverted back to their 'own languages' and rejected 'that of Cozco' (VII, III, l 67v), in reality Puquina was already in retreat, first in the face of Aymara and then of Quechua; and this even in its homeland, the Altiplano region with Lake Titicaca at its heart.7 It would survive only in peripheral areas,8 until finally becoming extinct in the second half of the nineteenth century.9 Our meagre documentation on Puquina, coupled with the dearth of historical data on the peoples who spoke it, makes for one of the great unwritten and frustrating chapters of Andean linguistics. What scarce data we do have 6 His Puquina material consists of a total of twenty-six texts of varying lengths (from baptismal formulae to questions to prepare for communion), included within his monumental work Rit\'{//e sel' Manuale Perranl'm. .. published in Naples in 1607. Part of Ore's material was supplied to him by the famous Jesuit polyglot Alonso de Barzana. who is credited with the authorship of a grammar and lexicon of Puquina ( 1590), of which no copies have ever been found (De la Viiiaza [1892] 1977: 45). ' In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. the approximate distribution of Puquina. as mapped by Torero (l 987: 343-5) on the basis of colonial documentation. encompassed the environs of the lake and extended also into the valleys of the western cordillera (southwards of Arequipa at least as far as Arica). and the foothills of the eastern cordillera immediately to the east of Lake Titicaca. with a further pocket in the south-eastern cordilleras of the Altiplano between Sucre and Potosi, in the ancient territories of the Yamparaes (Barragan 1994: ch. 1, §2). On the lakeshore itself. only two settlements remained Puquina-speaking by this date: Capachica and Coata (Bouysse-Cassagne 1987: II. ｾｉｉＮ＠ 112). ' According to documents uncovered by Durston (2007: ch. 4, 124) the 1591 Synod of the bishopric of Cuzco, which at the time encompassed Huamanga and Arequipa, resolved on the use of Puquina (alongside Aymara and Quechua) for the purposes of evangclization within its jurisdiction. Furthermore. in 1638, the synod presided over by Archbishop Pedro de Villagomez ordered an official translation into Puquina of the catechism and confessionary of the Third Lima Council, with the task assigned to Alvaro Mogrovejo, parish priest of Carumas. and to Miguel de Arana. likewise priest of Ilabaya. recognized as the foremost experts in the language. To the best of our knowledge, however, it appears that these tasks were never undertaken. 9 The last known reference to Puquina as a language still spoken appears to be the mention by Clemente Almonte ( 1813 ), priest of Andahua (Condesuyos, Arequipa), according to a document published by Millones ( 197 l ). On this issue, it can hardly be stressed enough that it is high time that we cease confusing Puquina with Urn, as can still be seen in non-specialized texts (see, for instance. under in Aranibar 1991. but also Hiltunen 1999: ch. IV. §2.2, 257). For we are speaking here of two languages entirely unrelated to each other (albeit in long-term contact in the Titicaca Basin). as already observed by Jose Toribio Polo (l 901 ). See also Galdos' (2000) timely update on this issue. THE 'PARTICULAR LANGUAGE' OF THE INCAS 273 derive from the analysis and interpretation of Ore's material, the basis for inferring some fragments of its grammar (Torero 2002: ch. 5, §§5.2.3-5.2.5; Adelaar with Muysken 2004: ch. 3, §3.5) and for extracting a limited vocabulary list (De la Grasserie 1894: 13-21; Torero 1987: ＳＶＴＭＷＰＩｾ｢ｯｴｨ＠ tasks con- strained by all the provisos that necessarily attend any such linguistic analysis. Yet for all its obvious limitations, Ore's text remains invaluable as a source for investigating, if not quite confirming beyond doubt, the grammatical structures and lexicon that might be attributed to Puquina. It harbours a total vocabulary of some 260 words, from which one then has to subtract the inev- itable Quechua and Aymara loanwords. As one might well imagine, it is in the nature of such a small corpus that its value as a source of data or corrobora- tion on any given point of linguistic interest ends up reduced to a matter of pure chance. For lack of any more extensive and more direct dataset on the language, then, particularly a more comprehensive vocabulary, we are left with nothing but onomastics as a possible further avenue by which to uncover more of the language: whether by examining extant colonial documentation; by conducting fieldwork in formerly Puquina-speaking territories, following the example set by Adelaar in the Moquegua region (1987); or, last but not least, by consulting the lexical material of the Callahuaya language spoken by the itinerant herbalists of Charazani, descendants of the former Puquina speakers of the region.10 Collas and Puquinas: Speakers of the Language As a rule of thumb, whenever the chronicles do provide information on the Puquinas, this turns out to be very vague, if not contradictory, and locates them in lands contiguous or identical to those occupied by the Collas. Witness, for instance, the following excerpt in which Garcilaso narrates the conquests of Inca Roca: 'The Yndios of the Puchina and Canchi nations, that lay in those lands [Collasuyu], very simple in their natural condition, and very prone to believing any tale, ... easily obeyed the Inca, submitting to his rule' (II, XVI, 42v). Beyond the idyllic vision of this conquest offered here by Garcilaso, 10 By comparing this Callahuaya material with the vocabulary extracted from Ore, Torero suggests that the two languages share some 45 per cent of their basic lexicon, leading him to posit that 'lexically, Callahuaya may be classified together with Puquina within the same linguistic group' (Torero 1987: 364). Not that this means that Callahuaya can be considered a surviving branch of Puquina, for its grammar is basically Quechua, as demonstrated by Stark (1972) and Muysken ( 1997). Nor, as is equally clear. can Callahuaya be taken as the 'secret language of the Incas', as proposed by Oblitas Poblete (1968) and suggested by Girault's (1989) misleading title. 274 Rodolfo Cerr6n-Palomino for our purposes the key point is that the 'nations' alluded to were peoples akin to the Collas.11 In Guaman Poma's chronicle likewise, the Puquinas are identified even more inseparably with the Collas: for him they are the (Guaman Poma [1615] 1966: 11, 85, 69, 169, 271, 901), referring to them as a particular group among the Collas. Furthermore, and a point hitherto quite overlooked in the Andean historiographical tradition, it turns out that the , to whom both Garcilaso and Guaman Poma refer, are also none other than the Puquinas. That this is beyond doubt emerges from the following passage, in which the latter chronicler warns us that The Poquina Collas were also a caste of Yngas, who on account of their sloth failed to attend the distribution of ears by the Ynga and are thus known as poquis millma rinri[,] they have ears of white wool because they did not reach the Tanbotoco' (85, emphasis added). Garcilaso too records part of the same tradition, although he takes it to allude to a separate 'nation', overlooking that they were in fact the same people. Thus, he relates how Manco Capac 'ordered that a small tuft of white wool be brought to him, which from one and the other part of the ear may protrude like the tip of the thumb, and these were the nation known as Poques' {I, XXIII, 21 ). To the best of my knowledge, no scholar has yet related this name to , presumably because the superficial difference in form has stood in the way of any lexico-semantic association between the two terms (but cf. Szeminski 1997: 366). The etymology of the name, however, has already been put forward, with the root *puqi proposed as the common underlying component (Cerr6n-Palomino 1997: §5.2.4).12 Let me hereby reassert that hypothesis, one that I hold to be soundly based. If one now takes both terms together, it follows that references to this ethnic group suddenly become less infrequent, and their presence in the tale of the origins and formation of the Inca state rather more notable than has been supposed hitherto. The 'almost phantasmal aspect' of the Puquina people through history, to borrow Torero's (1987: 343) phrase, thus 11 Both toponymy and onomastics offer hints that, contrary to existing assumptions (Torero 1987: 346; Glave 1992: ch. 1) , the Canas and Canchis also seem to have been Collas. initially Puquina-speaking but who switched to Aymara at an early date. If so, Puquina's northern boundary may have lain in the upper Vilcanota drainage. One might even then speculate that the chronicler Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua. given his ancestry among the Canas and Canchis, might thus be identified as the Puquina historian claimed by Torero. '2 I shall not reproduce here the arguments put forward on that occasion, though it is worth recalling that the proposed etymology is based not only on the documentary evidence (that the term was recorded as with betrays the preceding stop consonant as uvular /q/, not velar /k/), but also on the form in which the word has survived amongst Uro speakers. namely among the Uros of the Bay of Puno, according to Lehmann ( 1937). Furthermore, the remaining <-s> in and <-na> in - are interpreted as Quechua and Aymara suffixes respectively, the first of which would later be lost from southern dialects of Quechua (Cerr6n-Palomino 2008: II, 4, §I.I).

Unravelling the Enigma of the ‘Particular Language’ of the Incas

Similar Unravelling the Enigma of the ‘Particular Language’ of the Incas