Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/354

314 Aymara having been given to them. It is, therefore, quite certain that the name of Aymara was absolutely unknown in Colla-suyu, either before the Spanish conquest or for at least forty years after that event.

Whence, then, conies the name of Aymara? The answer is quite conclusive. It is the name of a small province on the upper waters of the Pachachaca river, bordering on the Quichuas. These Aymaras were a Quichua tribe wholly unconnected with Colla-suyu and the basin of Lake Titicaca. This is quite certain, and is proved in the same way as the position of the Quichuas is proved. Places are mentioned, in the course of the Inca conquests in Cunti-suyu, which were said to belong to the Aymaras then, and which are now actually in Aymaras, which is a province in the department of Cuzco.

The word is from AYMA, a harvest song, in the general language which the Spanish grammarians called Quichua. From the same root comes AYMARAY, the 'harvest month'; and AYMURANI, 'I gather the harvest.'

The question arises, why should the priests who first learnt the Colla language have given this name of Aymara, that of a purely Quichua tribe, to the language of the Lupacas which they were diligently learning? The explanation is perhaps to be found by a reference to the work of Fray Alonzo Ramos Gavilan published in 1620, and giving a history of the church of Copacabana,, near Juli. The great Inca Tupac Yupanqui, having conceived a devotion to the Titicaca myth, determined to erect a palace on one of the islands of the lake. Ramos tells us that he transferred a large body of mitimaes, or colonists, from the provinces of Cunti-suyu, that is the valley of the Apurimac and its tributaries, to the provinces of Colla-suyu.