Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 1 (of 8): Aboriginal America
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 1 (of 8): Aboriginal America
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
=II.= THE QUICHUA LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.—No real progress can be
made in the work of elucidating the ancient history of Peru, and in
unravelling the interesting but still unsolved questions relating to
the origin and development of Inca civilization, without a knowledge
of the native language. The subject has accordingly received the close
attention of laborious students from a very early period, and the
present essay would be incomplete without appending an enumeration of
the Quichua grammars and vocabularies, and of works relating to Inca
literature.
Fray Domingo de San Tomas, a Dominican monk, was the first author who
composed a grammar and vocabulary of the language of the Incas. He gave
it the name of Quichua, probably because he had studied with members of
that tribe, who were of pure Inca race, and whose territory lies to the
westward of Cuzco. The name has since been generally adopted for the
language of the Peruvian empire.[1311]
Diego de Torres Rubio was born in 1547, in a village near Toledo,
became a Jesuit at the age of nineteen, and went out to Peru in 1577.
He studied the native languages with great diligence, and composed
grammars and vocabularies. His grammar and vocabulary of Quichua first
appeared at Saville in 1603, and passed through four editions.[1312]
A long residence in Chuquisaca enabled him to acquire the Aymara
language, and in 1616 he published a short grammar and vocabulary of
Aymara. In 1627 he also published a grammar of the Guarani language.
Torres Rubio was rector of the college at Potosi for a short time, but
his principal labors were connected with missionary work at Chuquisaca.
He died in that city at the great age of ninety-one, on the 13th of
April, 1638. Juan de Figueredo, whose Chinchaysuyu vocabulary is bound
up with later editions of Torres Rubio, was born at Huancavelica in
1648, of Spanish parents, and after a long and useful missionary life
he died at Lima in 1724.
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