But the intellectual movement and vigor of the Incas were not confined to the priesthood. The Amautas or learned men, the poets and reciters of history, the musical and dramatic composers, the Quipu-camayoc, or recorders and accountants, were not necessarily, nor indeed generally, of the priestly caste. It is probable that the Amautas, or men of learning, formed a separate caste devoted to the cultivation of literature and the extension of the language. Our knowledge of their progress and of the character of their traditions and poetic culture is very limited, owing to the destruction of records and the loss of oral testimony. The language has been preserved, and that will tell us much; but only a few literary compositions have been saved from the wreck of the Inca empire. Quichua was the name given to the general language of the Incas by Friar Domingo de San Tomas, the first Spaniard who studied it grammatically, possibly owing to his having acquired it from people belonging to the Quichua tribe. The name continued to be used, and has been generally adopted.[1195] Garcilasso de la Vega speaks of a separate court language of the Incas, but the eleven words he gives as belonging to it are ordinary Quichua words, and I concur with Hervas and William von Humboldt in the conclusion that this court language of Garcilasso had no real existence.[1196] It is not mentioned by any other authority. [Illustration: THE QUIPUS. [Following a sketch in Rivero and Tschudi, as reproduced by Helps. It shows a quipu found in an ancient cemetery near Pachacamac. There are other cuts in Wiener’s _Pérou et Bolivie_, p. 777; Tylor’s _Early Hist. Mankind_, 156; Kingsborough’s _Mexico_, vol. iv.; Silvestre’s _Universal Palæography_; and Léon de Rosny’s _Écritures figuratives_, Paris, 180. Cf. Acosta, vi. cap. 8, and other early authorities mentioned in Prescott (Kirk’s ed. i. 125); Markham’s _Cieza_, 291; D. Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, ii. ch. 18; _Fourth Rept. Bureau of Ethnology_ (Washington), p. 79; Bollaert’s description in _Memoirs read before the Anthropological Society of London_, i. 188, and iii. 351; A. Bastian’s _Culturländer des alten America_, iii. 73; Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _MS. Troano_, i. 18; Stevens’s _Flint Chips_, 465; T. P. Thompson’s “Knot Records of Peru” in _Westminster Review_, xi. 228; but in the separate print called _History of the Quipos, or Peruvian Knot-records, as given by the early Spanish Historians, with a Description of a supposed Specimen_, assigned to Al. Strong by Leclerc, No. 2413. The description in Frezier’s _Voyage to the South Sea_ (1717) is one of the earliest among Europeans. Leclerc, No. 2412, mentions a _Letter a apologetica_ (Napoli, 1750), pertaining to the quipus, but seems uncertain as to its value.—ED.]]