Subject: Re: (urth) Inca Head of Day RE: postmodernism, OTism, continent-ism

From: Mitchell A. Bailey <mab at lindau.net>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 15:55:52 +0000

JMCAzurin wrote:
> 
> This is just an idle observation. I'm not certain if it's been brought up
> before but....Wolfe translates 'Apu-Punchau' as 'Head of Day'. In Tagalog,
> at least, and possibly other languages spoken here in southeast asia, the
> word 'apo' means leader.
...
>   Does anyone speak native south american languages? Those people crossed
> over into the Americas over the land bridge at the Bering Strait, and are
> of Asian descent too. Perhaps there is a similar word for 'leader'?
> 
> Mikah
...
Greetings, Mikah. Not such a crazy theory - thanks for the interesting
observations re Tagalog, etc takes on the title "Apu". I don't by any
means claim to "know" Quechua, the language of the Inca of Peru/Bolivia,
but I have enough information on hand to ba able to state that
"Apu-Punchau" is an authentic Inca title; as Mantis points out, it is an
alternate appellation for Inti, the sun god of the Quechua-speaking
peoples. The name literally means "Apu" = lord, cheiftain, honorific
applied to noblemen and deities; "Punchau" refers not I'm told to the
literal sun itself but to the sun-image used in the Inca state religion,
the personification of the solar deity. And I've seen somewhere else
independent of Wolfe "Apu-Punchau" translated "Head of Day".

I've remarked on this matter a time or two. A couple of archive vlumes
back, I raised the question of whether we were to read "Apu-Punchau" as
literal Quechua from the literal preimperial Quechua people, or as a
substitute for a future autochthonous language in the manner the Latin
"Terminus Est" , et al, was employed as an alias for some future dead
language rather than literally Latin.

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/