INTRODUCTION
The drama was cultivated by the Incas, and dramatic performances were enacted before them. Garcilasso de la Vega, Molina, and Salcamayhua are the authorities who received and have recorded the information given by the Amautas respecting the Inca drama. Some of these dramas, and portions of others, were preserved in the memories of members of Inca and Amauta families. The Spanish priests, especially the Jesuits of Juli, soon discovered the dramatic aptitude of the people. Plays were composed and acted, under priestly auspices, which contained songs and other fragments of the ancient Inca drama. These plays were called ‘Autos Sacramentales.’
But complete Inca dramas were also preserved in the memories of members of the Amauta caste and, until the rebellion of 1781, they were acted. The drama of Ollantay was first reduced to writing and arranged for acting by Dr. Don Antonio Valdez, the Cura of Tinto. It was acted before his friend José Gabriel Condorcanqui[1] in about 1775. Taking the name of his maternal ancestor, the Inca Tupac Amaru, the ill-fated Condorcanqui rose in rebellion, was defeated, taken, and put to death under torture, in the great square of Cuzco. In the monstrous sentence ‘the representation of dramas as well as all other festivals which the Indians celebrate in memory of their Incas’ was prohibited.[2] This is a clear proof that before 1781 these Quichua dramas were acted.
The original manuscript of Valdez was copied by his friend Don Justo Pastor Justiniani, and this copy was inherited by his son. There was another copy in the convent of San Domingo at Cuzco, but it is corrupt, and there are several omissions and mistakes of a copyist. Dr. Valdez died, at a very advanced age, in 1816. In 1853 the original manuscript was in the possession of his nephew and heir, Don Narciso Cuentas of Tinta.
The Justiniani copy was, in 1853, in the possession of Dr. Don Pablo Justiniani, Cura of Laris, and son of Don Justo Pastor Justiniani. He is a descendant of the Incas.[3] In April 1853 I went to Laris, a secluded valley of the Andes, and made a careful copy of the drama of Ollantay. From this Justiniani text my first very faulty line-for-line translation was made in 1871, as well as the present free translation.
The first printed notice of Ollantay appeared in the Museo Erudito, Nos. 5 to 9, published at Cuzco in 1837, and edited by Don José Palacios. The next account of the drama, with extracts, was in the ‘Antiguedades Peruanas,’ a work published in 1851 jointly by Dr. von Tschudi and Don Mariaiao Rivero of Arequipa. The complete text, from the copy in the convent of San Domingo at Cuzco, was first published at Vienna in 1853 by Dr. von Tschudi in his ‘Die Kechua Sprache. It was obtained for him by Dr. Ruggendas of Munich. The manuscript was a corrupt version, and in very bad condition, in parts illegible from damp. In 1868 Don José Barranca published a Spanish translation, from the Dominican text of von Tschudi. The learned Swiss naturalist, von Tschudi, published a revised edition of his translation at Vienna in 1875, with a parallel German translation. In 1871 I printed the Justiniani text with a literal, line-for-line translation, but with many mistakes, since corrected; and in 1874, a Peruvian, Don José Fernandez Nodal, published the Quichua text with a Spanish translation.
In 1878 Gavino Pacheco Zegarra published his version of Ollantay, with a free translation in French. His text is a manuscript of the drama which he found in his uncle’s library. Zegarra, as a native of Peru whose language was Quichua, had great advantages. He was a very severe, and often unfair, critic of his predecessors.
The work of Zegarra is, however, exceedingly valuable. He was not only a Quichua scholar, but also accomplished and well read. His notes on special words and on the construction of sentences are often very interesting. But his conclusions respecting several passages which are in the Justiniani text, but not in the others, are certainly erroneous. Thus he entirely spoils the dialogue between the Uillac Uma and Piqui Chaqui by omitting the humorous part contained in the Justiniani text; and makes other similar omissions merely because the passages are not in his text. Zegarra gives a useful vocabulary at the end of all the words which occur in the drama.
The great drawback to the study of Zegarra’s work is that he invented a number of letters to express the various modifications of sound as they appealed to his ear. No one else can use them, while they render the reading of his own works difficult and intolerably tiresome.