There are ample proofs of the antiquity of the tradition, and that the name of Ollantay was known in the days of the Yncas, and was applied to the famous ruins near Cuzco. Father Cristobal de Molina, a very high authority, writing in 1580, mentions Ollantay-tampu in connection with a curious sacrificial ceremony.[44] Salcamayhua, a writer of the seventeenth century, also mentions Ollantay.[45] The name, therefore, was well known before the Spanish conquest.[46] The name of Rumi-ñaui, which means “stone-eye”, as that of the general who, by the stratagem of mutilating his face, deceived Ollantay, is not uncommon in Ynca history. A general of Atahualpa had the same name. It is a curious fact, as corroborative of this part of the story, that in 1837 an Indian presented to Don Antonio Maria Alvarez, then Prefect of Cuzco, an ancient earthen drinking vessel, moulded into the shape of a man’s head and bust. He said that it had been handed down in his family for generations, as the likeness of Rumi-ñaui. The person represented must have been a general, from the _masccapaycha_ or ornament on the forehead, and wounds are cut on the face in accordance with the argument of the drama. But the chief reasons for assigning a date before the Spanish conquest to the speeches and dialogues of _Ollantay_, have reference to the internal evidence. Throughout the piece there is not the remotest allusion to Christianity, an impossible phenomenon if the drama had been written in Spanish times, like the comedy of Dr. Lunarejo and the _Usca-paucar_. It contains songs of indubitable antiquity, and in use among the purest Quichua people. The language is archaic; there are many words which have long disappeared from the spoken Quichua, and are now only found in the earliest vocabularies. The grammatical forms, such as _cca_ instead of _pa_ for the genitive, are ancient. The state of society represented in the drama is entirely Pagan, without a sign of Spanish contact. The metre is octo-syllabic, like that of the Ynca song preserved by Blas Valera, and is the same as the most ancient verses in the collection of Dr. Justiniani. In the early and pure copies there is not an allusion to anything, or any animal, introduced by Europeans. All arguments must of course be based on the most authentic text, and not on later copies into which many errors have crept, such as the substitution of words like _misi_ (a cat), and _asna_ (a donkey), corrected in another copy to _llama_, for the original word, in both cases, _atoc_ (a fox).