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The Good Shepherd Francisco Davila's Sermon To the Indians of Peru (1646)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Georges Dumézil
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Extract

      à Mauritz Friis
      en souvenir des soirées
      de Görväln et de Pampachica

Francisco was born in 1573 in the old capital of the Incas, a pretty town stretching along a high valley of the Andes 11,000 feet above sea level but close enough to the earth's breast to enjoy a gentle springtime throughout the year, even in winter. 1573: forty-two years since the first Spaniards, three of them, reached the city as emissaries of the conqueror, who was then especially occupied with the last Inca whom he held prisoner in a northern village and of whom he demanded an enormous ransom. Guided and protected by officers of the empire, they came to hasten the despoiling of temples and palaces and to collect vases and plaques of gold ordered by Atahualpa, who vainly hoped to gain his freedom. Three years later, on March 23,1534, before an astonished crowd of Indians, opening a new era in the name of the king and the pope, the founding of the new Spanish and Christian order in Cuzco solemnly took place. Then, one after another, material catastrophes occurred: in 1536 the conqueror's brother, the first governor, endured the siege of an army of twenty thousand Indians commanded by a phantom Inca, the second Manco, and the city, its thatched roofs ravaged by fire, was blown up by mines and countermines; in 1538 the newly rebuilt houses were destroyed by the rivalry of Pizarro and Almagro; in 1541, after the assassination of the former, new troubles caused new ruins.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 5 , Issue 20 , December 1957 , pp. 68 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © 1957 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1. I am summarizing the biography established by José Toribio Poro, "Un quichuista," Collección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Peru, XI (1918), xv-xxxi (Paul Rivet and G. de Créqui-Monfort, Bibliographie des langues aymará et kičua ["Travaux et Mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie," Vol. LI (Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie, 1951), No. 1615]).

2. Rivet, Bibliographie, Nos. 38 (the manuscript), 437 (English trans. Clements R. Mark ham), 2647-49, 2975, and 3101-2 (H. Trimborn), 3129 (H. Galante).

3. Rivet, Bibliographie, No. 69.

4. For Quechua words, I follow here Davila's spelling. Today we would write: ama suwa, ama llula, ama qilla. The other words quoted in the rest of this article would be written (q being a back-velar guttural, c equivalent to tch and ‘ denoting a glottal contraction): llawi "key," Qarapurku (= Carabuco), queqi "silver," chapaq "powerful" (whence: rich), Putuqci (= Po tosi), Rimaq (= Lima), Titiqaqa, T'unapa, umu, waka, Wankawillka (= Huancavelica).

5. In the Preface to the Tratado, Davila innocently mentions several painful examples of his police success.

6. Tratado, pp. 152-54.

7. Davila calls the Indians either Indio-cuna, "los Indios," or, as they themselves do, runa cuna; runa properly means "man." To designate the white Spaniard, the Indians and Davila use the word Uiraccocha, name of an ancient god, which is today (wiraquca) the usual translation of señor, "Mr."

8. Tratado, pp. 223-24.

9. Tratado, p. 390. A sermon of Holy Week explains to the Indians that Pilate was a virrey.

10. Tratado, II, 98-99. The sermons of this second, posthumous volume lack the brilliance of those of the first, are not so finished, and it is possible that the licenciado Florian Sarmiento Rendon, who "sacado a luz" the volume, completed and retouched it here and there. But there is no reason to doubt that, by and large, these sermons (from the feast of Trinity to the end of the liturgical year) are Davila's.

11. Ricardo Rojas, Himnos Quechuas (Buenos Aires, 1935) (Rivet, Bibliographie, No. 2778), pp. 404, 407, 412-13, 420-21, second hymn of Salcamayhua, a text daringly "emendado," with translations by Mossi, Markham, and Beltroy. On Ttunapa (T'unapa), see the equally daring Ensayo mitológico of S. A. Lafone Quevedo (1892) (Rivet, Bibliographie, No. 822), republished in the appendix (pp. 283-353) of Tres relaciones de antigüedades peruanas (1950) (Rivet, Bibliogra phie, No. 3731).

12. Tratado, pp. 234-36.

13. Ibid., p. 237.

14. Ibid., pp. 474-81.