ANCIENT AMERICAN LANGUAGES.
(Continued from Vol. vi., pp. 60, 61.)
Since communicating to you a short list of a few books I had noted as having reference to this obscure subject, I have stumbled over a few others which bear special reference to the Quichua: and of which I beg to send you a short account, which may be worthy a place in your valuable pages.
The first work upon the Quichua language, of which I find mention, is a grammar of the Peruvian Indians (Gramatica ó arte general de la lengua de los Indios del Perù), by the brother Domingo de San Thomas, published in Valladolid in 1560, and republished in the same year with an appendix, being a Vocabulary of the Quichua. The demand for the first edition appears to have been considerable; or, what is more likely, from the extreme rarity of the work, the careful author
suppressed or called in the first edition, in order to add, for the benefit of his purchasers, the vocabulary which he had found time to prepare within the year.
The work of San Thomas seems to have glutted the market for some twenty years; for we do not find that any one made a collection of words or grammatical forms until the year 1586, when Antonio Ricardo published a kind of introduction to the Quichua, having sole reference to that language, without anything more than an explanation in Spanish.[[1]] This work, like that of his predecessor, was immediately remodelled and re-published in a very much extended form in the same year. Ricardo's books are amongst the first printed in that part of America.
Diego de Torres Rubio is the next writer of whom I am cognizant. He published at Seville, in 1603, a grammar and vocabulary of the Quichua; the subject still continuing to attract attention. Still, as was to be expected, the Quichua language was of more consequence to the Spaniards of Peru. No doubt, therefore, that Father Juan Martinez found a ready sale for his vocabulary, published at Los Reyes in 1604. Indeed, the subject is now attracting the attention of the eminent Diego Gonzalez Holguin, who published first a new grammar (Gramatica nuevu) of the Quichua and Inca dialect, in four books, at the press of Francisco del Canto, in Los Reyes, 1607; and second, a vocabulary of the language of the whole of Peru (de todo el Perù), in the same year and at the same press.
It is worthy to remark, as confuting somewhat fully the assertion of Prescott (Conquest of Peru, v. ii. p. 188.), that the Spanish name of Ciudad de los Reyes ceased to be used in speaking of Lima "within the first generation," that the books of Ricardo, Holguin, and Huerta (of whom presently) are all stated to have been printed in the Ciudad de los Reyes, though the latest of these appeared in 1616. In 1614, however, to confine myself strictly to the bibliographical inquiry suggested by the heading of my article, a method and vocabulary of the Quichua did appear from Canto's press, dated Lima,—a corruption, as is well known, of the word Rimac.
That, however, the Castilian name should be employed later, is curious. At any rate, it occurs for the last time on the title of a work printed by the same printer, Canto, in 1616; and written by Don Alonso de Huerta, the old title being adhered to, probably from some cause unknown to us, but possibly in consequence of old aristocratic opinions and prejudices in favour of the Spanish name. That the name of Lima had obtained considerably even in the time of the Conquerors, Mr. Prescott has sufficiently proved; but as an official and recognised name it evidently existed to a later period than the historian has mentioned.
The work of Torres Rubio, already mentioned, was reprinted in Lima by Francisco Lasso in 1619. From this time forward, the subject of the native language of Peru seems to have occupied the attention of many writers. A quarto grammar was published by Diego de Olmos in 1633 of the Indian language, as the Quichuan now came to be called.
Eleven years later, we find Fernando de Carrera, curate and vicar of San Martin de Reque, publishing an elaborate word bearing the following title:
"Arte de la lengua yunga de los valles del obispado de Truxillo; con un confesonario y todas las oraciones cotidianas y otras cosas: Lima, por Juan de Contreras, 1644, 16mo."
Grammars and methods here follow thick and fast. A few years after Carrera's book, in 1648, comes Don Juan Roxo Mexia y Ocon, natural de Cuzco, as he proudly styles himself with a method of the Indian language: and after a few insignificant works, again another in 1691, by Estevan Sancho de Melgar.
The most common works on the Quichua are the third and fourth editions of Torres Rubio, published at Lima in the years 1700 and 1754. Of these two works done with that care and evident pleasure which Jesuits always, and perhaps only, bestow upon these difficult by-roads of philology, I need say no more, as they are very well known.
Before I close this communication, allow me to suggest to the readers and contributors to the truly valuable "N. & Q.," that no tittle of knowledge concerning these early philological researches ought to be allowed to remain unrecorded; and with the position which the "N. & Q." occupies, and the facilities that journal offers for the preservation of these stray scraps of knowledge, surely it would not be amiss to send them to the Editor, and let him decide as he is very capable of doing, as to their value.
Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie.
February 20. 1854.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
Arte y Vocabulario de la lengua, Uamada quichua. En la Ciudad de los Reyes, 1586, 8vo.