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Mitchell Bailey wrote:
...
<< I don't by any
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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.>>
There are plenty of other details to corroborate the theory that it is original quechua being spoken, or at least that the autochthons are of quechua descent. The dress of the autochthons, their reed boats, the custom of drinking a tea called "mate" (a peruvian/bolivian term) through a metal straw (a custom practiced only, to my knowledge, in L. Am.), etc.
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