Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World

TLACAPAYAN: Mountain-dweller! Tlacapayan seeks you. Now I have come. I come to reduce you to earth and dust, and to earth and dust I will turn you. What do you now fear when you hear of my fame and my words? Where have you abandoned our revered gods? You have given yourself over to foreigners, those bad priests. Know what it is that Tlacapayan desires. He had never lost his vision. You will be destroyed and you will perish. And stout is my heart.

TEPOZTECO: HOW is it that right at this time, why is it that right now you have come, when I am enjoying myself, resting, rejoicing, commemorating the eternal Virgin, the Mother of God, and our precious Mother? … Truly exalted is our precious Mother the lady Virgin as says the divine author in the book of the wise. There it is said in the holy songs that twelve stars circle her head and that with the luminous moon her feet are supported, thus over all earth and heaven it spreads forth. [558]

In Peru, attitudes to the lengua general were more complex. Quechua, like Nahuatl, was widely used to preach the gospel, and at the same time became the vehicle for a nostalgic literature harking back to life before the conquest. But it was also taken up by the criollo landowning class, not themselves descendants of Indians, as a symbol of local legitimacy: at once it distinguished them from the Spanish-speaking urban elite in Lima, but also denied the country people a linguistic means to keep their landlords at a distance. Nevertheless, over the two and a half centuries after the conquest, Quechua came increasingly to represent the dissatisfaction of the Peruvian peasants; this exploded into open uprisings in the last half-century, culminating in the general rebellion in 1780 under the self-styled Tupac Amaru II (’Royal Serpent’). It is said that, before the rebellion was crushed, the drama Ollantay had been staged before the leaders. This is known as the finest work of the Quechua theatre, and tells the tormented love story of an Inca princess and a warrior commoner, in the heyday of the great Incas Pachacutec and Tupac Yupanqui (mid-fifteenth century). Here is the section where the Inca, somewhat abruptly, shows the quality of his mercy.

INCA YUPANQUI:

Choose your penalties. Speak, Willac Umu.

WILLAC UMU:

To me the Sun gave a merciful heart.

INCA YUPANQUI:

Rumi, then you must speak.

Rumi ŇAwi:

The price of the misdeed must be a cruel death Inca, such is the desert of the man of the greatest sin…

INCA YUPANQUI:

Have you heard the stakes being prepared? Take these rebels there! Kill these evil men!

…

Release the prisoners:

stand up before me. You are saved from death: escape now, mountain stag. You are fallen at my feet: today the world will know The goodness of my heart. I have to raise you up A hundred times, O banished enemy. You were The Governor of Anti-suyu: and you, I witness today, If it so please me, shall reach whatever level you desire: Be Governor of Anti-suyu, and my captain for ever… [110]

Aymara, continuing to be spoken in the south of Peru and in what is now Bolivia (then the Audiencia of Charcas), underwent a kind of transfusion of vocabulary with Spanish: the many loans from Spanish were mostly for new Christian, or Western, ideas, but in some cases they were adapted to express traditional concepts: Wirjina (from Spanish virgen ) and Santa Tira (from Spanish Santa Tierra , ‘holy land’) both came to stand for the Earth Mother (in Quechua Pachamama). In many other cases, Aymara words came to have Christian senses, as jucha , ‘sin’, in this short extract from an eighteenth-century sermon, where the Spanish borrowings are marked in bold:

Kamsta, cristiano? Janiti aka isapasina kharkatita? … P’arxtama, machaõa jucha jaytama, racionaljama, chuymanixama Diosana unaõchapajama jakaskama : janiki animal kankaõaru katuyasimti, janik sutiwisa kankaõaru katuyasimti: tukuxpana machaõa jucha, tukuxpana, munatanakay.

What do you say, Christian? Do you not tremble to hear this? … Awake, put off the sin of drunkenness. As a rational being, be sensible, live in the path which God marks out. Do not make yourself an animal. Don’t return to being something nameless. Make an end of the sin of drunkenness, make an end of it, beloved. [559]

Guaraní is the only indigenous American language that ultimately achieved permanent recognition as an official national language. Partly, the low penetration of Spanish in the early years may be due to the extreme remoteness of the Guaraní-speaking areas in the Americas, and the resulting lack of Spanish-speaking women to found Spanish-speaking families there. But the language mostly owes its resilience to the exemplary settlement by Jesuit missions in Paraguay. Their reducciones , communities founded as a holy and philanthropic reaction to the oppressive system of encomiendas [111]around Asunción, dominated relations between European and Indian in the period 1609-1767. The work was disrupted by raiding slavers (the dreaded ’mamelucos’ ) in 1628-40, and persistently by encomenderos. In the reducciones , all teaching was carried out in Guaraní, and the language thereby gained a very strong basis in Christianised culture. The utopian nature of the world so created by the Jesuits can be seen in the literal meaning of some of the new words that became current: îbîrayararusú , ‘master of the big stick’, i.e. chief constable; kuarepotí , ‘excrement of the mines’, i.e. money (something that had no use in the reducciones )., [560]

INKA YUPANKI: Akllaychis k’ iriykichista. Willaq-Umu, qan rimariy.

WILLAQ UMU: Nuqaman ancha khuyaqtan Inti sunqota qowarqan.

INKA YUPANKI: Rumi, qanõataq rimariy.

RUMI ŇAWI: Hatun huchaman chaninqa K’iri waõuypunin kanqa: Chaymi runataqa hark’ anqa Huchapakunanta, Inka…

INKA YUPANKI: Ňachu uyarirqankichisõa Takarpu kamarisqata. Chayman pusay kaykunata! Awqataqa sipiychisõa!… Paskaychis chay watasqata: Hatarimuy kay õawk’iyman! Qespinkin waõuyniykita: Kuman phaway, luychu k’ ita. Ňan urmamunki chakiyman: Kunanmi teqsi yachanqa Sunqoypa llanp’u kasqanta. Huqariqaykin qanta , Pachak kuti awqa mink’ a. Qanmi karqanki wanin’ ka Anti-suyu kamachikoq: Qanllataqmi kunan rikoq , Nuqaq munayniy kaqtinqa, Chaymi maykamapas rinqa: Anti-suyuta kamachiy, Wamink’ ay kapuy wiõaypaq…

An explicit motive in the Jesuits’ language regime was to protect Indians from European vices. But cultivation of the decent obscurity of a classical language, specifically Latin, was a policy widely pursued by the learned friars in the Americas, not least because they were aiming to found a native priesthood there. Some of the friars became enchanted by the achievements of their pupils in classical learning. Fray Toribio Motolinía, one of the twelve original Franciscan missionaries to Mexico, preserves this anecdote of the collapse of a stout party from Castile:

A very fine thing happened to a priest recently arrived from Castile, who could not believe that the Indians knew Christian doctrine, nor the Lord’s Prayer, nor the Creed; and when other Spaniards told him they did, he remained sceptical; just then two students had come out of class, and the priest thinking they were from the rest of the Indians, asked one of them if he knew the Lord’s Prayer and he said he did, and he made him say it, and then he made him say the Creed, and the student said it perfectly well; and the priest challenged one word which the Indian had got right, and since the Indian asserted that he was right, and the priest denied it, the student had to ask what was the correct way, and asked him in Latin: Reverende Pater, cujus casus est? [112]Then since the priest did not know grammar, he was left quite at a loss, covered with confusion. [561]