Page:Ollanta An Ancient Ynca Drama.pdf/14

6 In his monstrous sentence in 1781, the Judge Areche prohibited "the representation of dramas, as well as all other festivals which the Indians celebrated in memory of their Yncas." This proves that the ancient dramas of the Yncas were remembered and actually performed down to the year 1781; for those composed by Spanish priests cannot be intended, as they would not be prohibited by a Spanish judge.

These considerations will enable us to form an opinion of the antiquity of the drama of ; which is now, for the first time, translated from Quichua into English.

The first printed mention of this most important relic of early American civilisation is to be found in a periodical published at Cuzco in 1837. It is there stated that the drama was handed down by immemorial tradition, and that it was first committed to writing by Don Antonio Valdez, the Cura of Tinta, an intimate friend of the ill-fated Ynca Tupac Amaru, whose formidable insurrection was with difficulty suppressed by the Spaniards in 1780–81. The drama was frequently performed in presence of the Ynca Tupac Amaru. This account exactly coincides with the information I received in 1853 from Dr Don Pablo Justiniani, a descendant of the Yncas. He told me that the Cura of Tinta first reduced the drama to writing, and that the original manuscript was then in