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Narrative threads Accounting and recounting in Andean
Khipu 1st Edition Gary Urton Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Gary Urton, Jeffrey Quilter
ISBN(s): 9780292769038, 0292769032
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 49.62 MB
Year: 2002
Language: english
Narrative Threads
e di t e d b y
ANDEAN STUDIES; PRE-COLUMBIAN STUDIES; ANTHROPOLOGY jeffrey quilter
& gary urton
quilter & urton

Also of interest
Accounting and Recounting JEFFREY QUILTER is Director of the
“A veritable encyclopedia of the khipu, this volume pulls together new and
in Andean Khipu Pre-Columbian Studies Program and
groundbreaking work by the foremost experts, attacking the problem from a Curator of the Pre-Columbian Collec-
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF NUMBERS wide variety of perspectives and integrating analysis from historical, archaeo-
A Quechua Ontology of Numbers and tion, as well as an active archaeologist, at
Philosophy of Arithmetic logical, and ethnographic perspectives. . . . It will be essential reading for Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.
b y g a ry urt o n Andeanists and will stimulate new thinking by students of writing systems
With the collaboration of and those concerned with the vexed issue of the relationship between orality GARY URTON is Charles A. Dana Professor
Primitivo Nina Llanos and literacy.” —th om as a. ab er c r om b i e , of Anthropology at Colgate University, as
Associate Professor of Anthropology, New York University well as a MacArthur Fellow (2001–2005).
Unraveling all the mysteries of the khipu His previous books with the University
will require an understanding of how The Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South of Texas Press include The Social Life of
number values and relations may have American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of Numbers
been used to encode information on network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and and Philosophy of Arithmetic.
social, familial, and political relationships artistry and a compelling mythology—all without the aid of a graphic writing system.
Narrative Threads
and structures. This is the problem Gary Instead, the Inka records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings—
Urton tackles in his pathfinding study of called khipu—on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization
the origin, meaning, and significance of and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these
numbers and the philosophical principles remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered.
underlying the practice of arithmetic In this benchmark book, thirteen international scholars tackle the most vexed
among Quechua-speaking peoples of the question in khipu studies: how did the Inka record and transmit narrative records by
Andes. means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of
angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of
ISBN 0-292-78533-X, hardcover narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put
ISBN 0-292-78534-8, paperback before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary
Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek
to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data.
As a whole, these essays represent the state-of-the-art in khipu research. At the
same time, the authors hope their findings will stimulate further exploration into the
mysteries of the khipu, which, unlike the ancient Mesoamerican writing systems, has
yet to yield up the key to its interpretation.
Jeffrey Quilter is Director of the Pre-Columbian Studies Program and Curator of
the Pre-Columbian Collection, as well as an active archaeologist, at Dumbarton
Oaks in Washington, D.C. Gary Urton is Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropol-
ogy at Colgate University, as well as a MacArthur Fellow (2001–2005).
JOE R. AND TERESA LOZANO LONG SERIES IN LATIN AMERICAN AND LATINO ART AND CULTURE
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN www.utexaspress.com 800.252.3206 TEXAS
printed in u.s.a.
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56 6616 Quilter / NARRATIVE THREADS / sheet 1 of 383
NARRATIVE THREADS
6616 Quilter / NARRATIVE THREADS / sheet 2 of 383
JOE R. AND TERESA LOZANO LONG SERIES IN

LATIN AMERICAN AND LATINO ART AND CULTURE
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
NARRATIVE THREADS
Accounting and Recounting
in Andean Khipu
EDITED BY JEFFREY QUILTER AND GARY URTON
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN

Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
COPYRIGHT © 2002 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2002
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to
Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819.
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Narrative threads : accounting and recounting in Andean Khipu / edited by
Jeffrey Quilter and Gary Urton.
p. cm. — ( Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American
and Latino art and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-292-76903-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Quipu—History—Sources. 2. Incas—Mathematics. I. Quilter, Jeffrey,
[date] II. Urton, Gary, [date] III. Series.
F3429.3.Q6 N37 2002
302.2'22—dc21 2002000247
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
FOR SARAH AND JULIA

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
PREFACE Jeffrey Quilter xiii
PART ONE BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY OF

KHIPU AND QUECHUA NARRATIVES
ONE An Overview of Spanish Colonial

Commentary on Andean Knotted-String
Records 3
Gary Urton
TWO Spinning a Yarn: Landscape, Memory,

and Discourse Structure in Quechua
Narratives 26
Rosaleen Howard
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
viii Contents
PART TWO STRUCTURE AND INFORMATION

IN THE KHIPU
THREE A Khipu Information String Theory 53

William J Conklin
FOUR Reading Khipu: Labels, Structure,

and Format 87
Marcia Ascher
FIVE Inka Writing 103

Robert Ascher
PART THREE INTERPRETING CHRONICLERS’

ACCOUNTS OF KHIPU
SIX String Registries: Native Accounting and

Memory According to the Colonial
Sources 119
Carlos Sempat Assadourian
SEVEN Woven Words: The Royal Khipu of

Blas Valera 151
Sabine P. Hyland
EIGHT Recording Signs in Narrative-Accounting

Khipu 171
Gary Urton
NINE Yncap Cimin Quipococ’s Knots 197

Jeffrey Quilter
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
Contents ix
PART FOUR COLONIAL USES AND TRANSFORMATIONS

OF THE KHIPU
TEN ‘‘Without Deceit or Lies’’: Variable Chinu

Readings during a Sixteenth-Century
Tribute-Restitution Trial 225
Tristan Platt
ELEVEN Pérez Bocanegra’s Ritual formulario: Khipu

Knots and Confession 266
Regina Harrison
PART FIVE CONTEMPORARY KHIPU TRADITIONS
TWELVE Patrimonial Khipu in a Modern

Peruvian Village: An Introduction to
the ‘‘Quipocamayos’’ of Tupicocha,
Huarochirí 293
Frank Salomon
THIRTEEN The Continuing Khipu Traditions: Principles

and Practices 320
Carol Mackey
CONTRIBUTORS 349
INDEX 351
Color illustrations follow page 204.

Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the outgrowth of a round table held at Dumbarton Oaks in 1997.
We thank Angeliki Laiou, then director of Dumbarton Oaks, for supporting
that round table. Janice Williams, who served as assistant to the director of
Pre-Columbian Studies, was essential in organizing the myriad details that
brought scholars from many different locations to Washington, D.C., for the
meeting and in attending to their well-being during it.
Transforming the round table into a publication was the work of many
hands. Rebecca Willson, in particular, successfully grappled with the huge
tasks of standardizing the authors’ manuscripts and of patiently working with
editorial anxieties and demands, both far and near. Although her tenure as
the assistant to the director, succeeding Ms. Williams, was brief, her role was
vital and she is much thanked. Cecilia Montalvo was third in succession to
the post and to the tasks associated with this book. She, too, ably lived up to
many demands and is thanked most heartily. At Colgate University, Kristen
Bentley (’99) and Bridget Benisch (’01) were successive research assistants
to Gary Urton and likewise provided meritorious service in the creation of
this book. Others at Dumbarton Oaks who variously helped to advance this
project were Carol Calloway, Loa Traxler, Jennifer Younger, Billie Follens-
bee, and Joe Mills.
We offer sincere thanks for editorial guidance and support from Theresa
May, Carolyn Wylie, and their staffs at the University of Texas Press, as well
as from freelance editor Nancy Warrington. And, of course, we appreciate
all the efforts given by our authors to producing the studies that constitute
this book.
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
PREFACE Jeffrey Quilter
In 1922, the founder of modern Mesoamerican iconographic research, Eduard

Seler, died in Berlin. Although a number of important advances in the study
of Maya hieroglyphic writing had already been accomplished, the field was
still in its infancy.1 A year later, in 1923, L. Leland Locke published The An-
cient Quipu or Peruvian Knot Record, in which he presented the basic under-
standing of khipu maintained to the present. Despite an early precociousness,
however, the study of khipu has lagged far behind the decipherment of Maya
glyphs. This seems all the more remarkable because Mayanists were handi-
capped for decades by Sir J. Eric Thompson, who, though he was only just
entering Cambridge University in 1922, later actively discouraged acceptance
of the glyphs as true writing. Though Locke did not have as much influence
over Andean studies as a whole as did Thompson over Mayanist studies, he
was insistent that khipu only recorded numbers. A principal goal of this book
is to question that dictum.
Given that Maya hieroglyphs and Andean khipu are two of the very few
elaborated record-keeping systems of the ancient New World, why have in-
vestigations in one advanced so rapidly in comparison to the other? The an-
swer to this question is not straightforward. One simple factor is that there
are far more Mesoamericanists than Andeanists. The countries of Middle
America have been easier to reach from Europe and the United States than
those of the distant Andes. Thus, more and a greater variety of scholars from
afar have traveled to the lands of the Maya, creating a fairly large international
scholarly community.
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
xiv Jeffrey Quilter
It may also be argued that initial conditions for scholarly research have
kept Mesoamerican and Andean studies following early established direc-
tions. Although Seler had wide-ranging interests in all of the Americas, he
specialized in Mesoamerica. His legacy, as well as those of other Mesoameri-
canist scholarly pioneers, engendered subsequent generations of students who
continued working in the same areas and on the same problems as their pre-
decessors while training the next generation of scholars, who did the same.
Another factor that has helped to encourage Maya studies is the attrac-
tion Maya art and architecture have had for Westerners. Even though we now
know that much of the tropical forest was cut down to support Maya cen-
ters, the discovery of ruins ‘‘lost’’ within dark jungles appealed to nineteenth-
century romantic sensibilities. When the forest was cut back, ruins exposed,
and tombs opened, Maya art was found to be mysterious but not entirely un-
approachable. Here were depicted human forms bedecked in elaborate cos-
tumes performing bizarre rituals, or monkey-headed figures swaggering with
strange accouterments. Although debate raged as to whether these were gods
or kings, the art was original, attractive, and recognizable as representational
to a greater or lesser degree.
Peering at the remains of this strange ancient world, early explorers found
glyphs everywhere. They were carved on buildings, painted on ceramics, in-
cised into jades, bone, and shell. They wrapped themselves around lintels and
doorways. They covered the backs of stelae and the fronts of large panels and
were delicately painted in the few Maya books preserved from destruction by
the Spaniards. The sheer quantity of hieroglyphs used in Maya elite life and
the way texts were inextricably associated with art made them impossible to
ignore. And, not least of all, the glyphs were beautiful. The labor and skill it
took to carve them in limestone or jade and the ways in which the symbols
themselves were ornamented or varied to produce an aesthetic statement of
their own, in addition to what they may have said, left no doubt that the Maya
considered these signs as important and valuable.
Maya hieroglyphics were exotic and strange, but though arguments were
made as to what these signs said, it was rarely doubted that they said something.
Sir Eric Thompson slowed the course of the study of Maya writing because
he believed that the glyphs could not be deciphered and that they only offered
information on calendrics and astronomy. They could not be deciphered, he
believed, because the system on which they were based was not a logical one
and the glyphs were not constructed phonetically. Information on calendrics
and astronomy was of interest, but, in Thompson’s opinion, studying these
arcane topics would not advance the understanding of larger issues of Maya
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
Preface xv
politics, economy, and other matters that could only be revealed through field
archaeology.
In the Andes, the keepers of the khipu, the Inka, have not appealed to the
romantic sensibilities of Westerners as have the Maya. Scholars of the Inka
have too long been caught up in debates as to whether the Inka Empire was
the ideal socialist state or the worst example of fascism, and in the process, the
Inka have come across as a people as cold, aloof, and abstract as their chilly
mountain home. If the Maya have been cast as the Greeks of the New World,
delighting in the pleasures of the senses, the Inka have been given the role
of the dull, stoical Romans, building a huge empire but not having much fun
while doing so. These images, of course, are the conceits of Western minds,
but they have contributed much to how the fields of study of these ancient
peoples have fared.
There are many differences between Maya hieroglyphs and Inka khipu.
Although glyphs could be carved as three-dimensional statues, they generally
were inscribed in two dimensions, on flat surfaces, much as in any other writ-
ing system. Khipu, however, are expressions of linearity, made up of cords,
which are at the same time three-dimensional objects. Hieroglyphs are
graphic and have a strong representational component, while khipu are ma-
terial and kinesthetic: the medium of the khipu is bound up with the message
in a way that hieroglyphs are not. Although there are variations in how glyphs
are rendered, ultimately, it is the formal characteristics of the inscribed signs
that convey meaning. For khipu, knots and their placements, the twists of
cords, color combinations, and likely other elements all seem to play impor-
tant roles in conveying information.
Perhaps as important as the points already made, if Maya glyphs can be
appreciated as art as well as a medium for communication, khipu seem to be
merely an extension of folk craft. Knotted strings, perhaps too reminiscent
of macramé wall hangings, do not appeal to Western artistic tastes as do the
brush strokes of a Maya scribe or limestone blocks carved as if they were but-
ter. This point could be a departure for discussion of the whole issue of the
Western distinction between art and craft, but it is more worthwhile to em-
phasize that khipu express their own form of beauty once one is familiar with
them and that such beauty is in their tactility—an aesthetic realm severely
underappreciated in the visually oriented West, where ‘‘Do not touch’’ signs
are all too prevalent. The aesthetic sensibilities of Andean peoples are still
waiting to be adequately discussed in Western literature. An assumption that
khipu were merely utilitarian devices—like tying a string around a finger so
as not to forget to feed the neighbor’s cat—may be partly to blame for lack
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
xvi Jeffrey Quilter
of interest in them. That khipu were more than simple reminders, that they
were sophisticated and complex systems, is another important message of this
book.
These various issues have led to different perspectives on approaching
khipu. Many scholars presumed early on that the Maya were conveying mean-
ings with their hieroglyphs, and khipu scholars knew that the Inka kept ac-
counts with knotted strings. But did they do more than record numbers with
khipu? As both Robert Ascher and Marcia Ascher point out in their chap-
ters in this book, numbers may be interpreted as magnitudes or quantities,
but they can also be interpreted as labels, and these labels may have narrative
properties and functions. Thus, numbers signified by knots, along with knot
directionality, the colors of cords, and other elements that made up khipu,
may all have been used to convey narrative information.
It is interesting that despite differences in the nature of Maya hieroglyphs
and Inka khipu, issues of understanding how these systems worked have re-
volved around similar problems of interpretation. These interpretive prob-
lems have not been due primarily to the inherent ways khipu and glyph sys-
tems were constructed but rather to the ways in which they were explained
to Spanish investigators in the sixteenth century and to subsequent assump-
tions about and interpretations of what the Spanish said concerning native
recording systems.
Diego de Landa, bishop of Yucatán, interviewed Maya scribes and had a
Spanish alphabet written with what he thought were the Maya equivalents of
Spanish letters. In doing this, he created a document that has been essential in
deciphering Maya script but has also produced confusion and debate. Landa
made the assumption that Maya writing was alphabetic, but it is not. When
Landa or an assistant spoke the sound for a letter of the Spanish alphabet, the
Maya scribes heard what they took to be a word or sound in their own lan-
guage. They then wrote down the glyph for the word or sound, not a letter.
This issue of the relation of signs to sounds was a chief problem in accept-
ing the Landa syllabary. Once what had happened in Landa’s scriptorium was
clarified, the Landa document became an important tool for understanding
how to read Maya hieroglyphs.
We have had no single authoritative colonial record of an extended inves-
tigation of khipu but rather a number of colonial authors who discuss khipu at
greater or lesser lengths. Much of what they say is unclear or contradictory,
yet there are strong indications that khipu did not simply record numbers
but also kept records of poems, histories, and other narratives. The earliest
breakthrough in understanding Maya writing was the identification of num-
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
Preface xvii
ber notation, but scholars now can read histories and other texts. For khipu,
though, there has been no significant advancement beyond the ability to read
numbers. In this book, however, Carlos Sempat Assadourian provides a care-
ful discussion of the remarks by the colonial author Antonio Calancha on
how to make a khipu that tells a story. The degree to which we can rely upon
Calancha’s account, however, is uncertain, and we may be on the same kind of
uncertain ground concerning his understanding of what Andean people were
telling him, as well as the accommodations those people made to allow their
system to be understandable to Calancha, as was the case with Landa and his
Maya scribes.
Understanding khipu thus involves not only finding and examining colo-
nial sources about how knotted-string records were made and used but also
evaluating how we should interpret those accounts, when found. Are the ap-
parently contradictory and unclear discussions of khipu due to lack of full
understanding by colonial authors of how khipu worked, or do at least some of
these different accounts express variations among khipu themselves? Added to
the exploration of narrativity and the demonstration of complexity in khipu,
the issue of standardization versus idiosyncrasy in khipu is the third theme
of this book. Although writing systems can tolerate a certain degree of de-
viation from some standard, such as variant spellings of words in British as
opposed to American English, there must be general intercommunicability
in a writing system, as was the case with Maya glyphs. For khipu to approxi-
mate a writing system, then, they had to have been able to be read by more
than just their makers.
Many of the important advances in the study of Maya hieroglyphs oc-
curred at or through the agency of Dumbarton Oaks. In this tradition, it
seemed appropriate to hold a meeting here on the issue of narrativity in An-
dean khipu. Gary Urton and I thus organized a meeting of leading scholars
on the topic at Dumbarton Oaks in April 1997. Many of the chapters in this
book are revised versions of papers given during that meeting, and others are
new contributions.
The book opens with two chapters intended to provide the reader with
background material. In the first chapter, Gary Urton reviews the history of
khipu studies, beginning with accounts from the early Spanish chronicles and
documents. Rosaleen Howard’s following discussion of narrativity in con-
temporary Quechua stories underlines the critical role language and linguis-
tic studies hold for decipherments. The study of Coptic was crucial for
the eventual decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Maya studies lan-
guished for many years because the earliest attempts at translation disre-
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
xviii Jeffrey Quilter
garded the study of contemporary Mayan languages and instead worked pri-
marily on solving the riddle of the glyphs solely as symbolic representations.
Thus, emphasizing language studies in the investigations of khipu may be
critical for future advances in decipherment, although alternate approaches
will undoubtedly have their own contributions to make, as well.
William Conklin discusses important technical issues on his way to devel-
oping a theory for the organization of information in knotted-string records.
Additional theoretical perspectives are provided in the contributions of Mar-
cia Ascher and Robert Ascher, with the former discussing numbers as both
magnitudes and labels while the latter explores how encipherment and deci-
pherment may have been performed on khipu without depending directly on
language.
Examining common features and variability in how communication sys-
tems develop and change will be important in future work, as I discuss in my
contribution. Gary Urton looks at such variability in khipu themselves in his
second chapter, comparing Garcilaso de la Vega’s commentaries in light of a
class of known non-numerical khipu. Carlos Sempat Assadourian provides in-
sight on another colonial commentator on khipu, Antonio Calancha, as noted
above. A third colonial writer, Blas Valera, is discussed in Sabine Hyland’s
contribution.
Following the discussions based on colonial sources’ descriptions of khipu
is a series of chapters on khipu use in the same era: Tristan Platt comments
on one of the few eyewitness accounts of khipu in use in a public setting, and
Regina Harrison focuses on rosaries and khipu in the arena of competing yet
analogous religious practices.
The chapters of the next section demonstrate that khipu are still vital parts
of native Andean culture. The contributions by Frank Salomon and Carol
Mackey reveal the rich sources of information available on the maintenance
of special places for khipu in the Andes and the continuing use of knotted-
string records, respectively.
Gary Urton and I and the other authors represented in this collection hope
that this book will not only establish a benchmark in khipu studies but also
stimulate a wider interest in investigating these materials. Considering re-
cent advances in mathematics, information theory, and other scholarship in-
volved with computers, software, and communications technology, the study
of khipu should appeal to many who are challenged and intrigued by puzzle
solving. Perhaps this book will stimulate someone to be the Jean François
Champollion of the khipu.
To call for a Champollion of the khipu implies that someone can ‘‘crack’’
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
Preface xix
the code of the knots in the same way that the great French Egyptologist
made a breakthrough in understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics. But it re-
mains uncertain whether we will ever be able to ‘‘read’’ a khipu the way we
now can read an Egyptian or a Maya hieroglyphic text. Even in the case of
Maya writing, its code was not so much broken—as a Gordian knot cleanly
sliced through—as it was chipped away at: a little hole was gradually made
bigger until, eventually, a critical mass was reached and the wall of ignorance
came tumbling down.
Will we be able to unravel the mysteries of the khipu? We are at such an
early stage of investigation—only beginning to tug at the knot—that it is hard
to say. The archives are full of documents yet to be seen or studied, and the
tradition of knotted-string records in the New World is hardly known. There
is not yet even a thorough inventory and description of the known khipu in
existence, a corpus of about five hundred items, which, if documented and
made easily accessible for study, would serve as a fundamental reference work
for all future khipu scholars. No code can be cracked, chipped at, or unraveled
unless the material to be worked on is within easy reach of those who wish to
solve the riddle.
Given that we barely understand even the limits of what we may know
about this complex and unique system of record keeping, it is quite likely that
our abilities to understand khipu at the end of the twenty-first century will
be far more advanced than they are now, at its beginning. If this book inspires
others to start tugging at the knots that secure the codes of Andean khipu,
then it will have served scholarship very well indeed.
NOTE
1. For a thorough and fascinating discussion of the history of investigations of
Maya hieroglyphic writing, see Michael D. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code (London and
New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992).
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
KHIPU AND QUECHUA NARRATIVES

BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY OF
PART ONE
An Overview of Spanish
Colonial Commentary on
Andean Knotted-String Records
ONE Gary Urton
INTRODUCTION
One of the most intriguing, yet enigmatic, topics of study pertaining to pre-
Columbian civilizations of the Andes concerns the device known as the khipu
(Quechua: ‘‘knot’’) or chino (Aymara: ‘‘knot record’’). Khipu were bunches of
(often) dyed, knotted strings that were used by the Inka and other populations
throughout the empire for recording a variety of different types of informa-
tion. We are aware of the contents of these records only indirectly, through
Spanish chroniclers’ commentary on them, or through the handful of docu-
ments containing (Spanish) transcriptions of their ‘‘reading’’ by native record
keepers, or through modern renderings of their numerical/quantitative ar-
rangements of knots. What we do not have are direct, native translations of
their contents unmediated by Spanish hands or voices. Nor, in those cases in
which we have transcriptions of khipu readings, do we have a khipu that was
the source of the record keeper’s account.
It is, in fact, from the recognition of the virtual absence of serious study
and reflection on the narrative aspects of the khipu recording system that
Jeffrey Quilter and I offer this collection of studies. The studies assembled in
this book represent, we believe, the best current understandings of the nar-
rative component, or dimension, of the khipu accounts and some of the most
productive strategies for the investigation of khipu narratives in the future.
In what follows, I provide an accounting of the forms and functions of
khipu as we learn about them from written documents produced during the
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
4 Gary Urton
Spanish colonial era (1532–1820s). In addition to simply informing the reader

of much (but by no means all) of what was said about khipu in the colonial
era, and by whom it was said, two larger objectives have guided my efforts
in producing this historical overview; the first objective is programmatic, the
second is substantive. As for the former, I present a record not only of who
said what about the khipu, but also of when they said it. It is my belief that
the absence of a clear understanding of the chronological sequence—or of
what, in some instances, constitutes a virtual ‘‘genealogy’’ of observations on
and claims about khipu—has encouraged an arbitrary selection of quotations
from sources from very different time periods during the colony to suit one
or another interpretation of what khipu were and how they were used. This
point merits further elaboration.
There are two fundamental problems with the ahistorical use of khipu
commentaries alluded to above. First, although several early colonial com-
mentators on khipu spoke from the personal experience of actually seeing
and hearing (former) Inka officials consult these devices in recounting infor-
mation on the past, later commentators (especially after the 1580s) generally
knew of khipu either from reading the earlier sources or from their own first-
hand experiences, but of a significantly transformed, late-colonial tradition
of khipu use. The earlier accounts undoubtedly provide more reliable testi-
mony on the types of khipu that were in use in pre-Columbian times and their
methods of encipherment and interpretation. This is not to suggest, however,
that we can discount the evidence provided by later commentators; rather
it is to stress the importance of maintaining a critical perspective on which
accounts were based on eyewitness testimony of the first postconquest gen-
eration of record keepers at work on their pre-Conquest records, and which
accounts were based on hearsay. It will become clear as we proceed that the
latter type of accounts often reflected shifts in attitudes about khipu that
emerged in late colonial times (see below).
The second reason the chronology of commentaries on the khipu is sig-
nificant is that whereas the Spaniards initially expressed considerable inter-
est in and respect for the knotted-string records—to the point that these
records served as the principal sources of information the Spaniards drew
on for developing an understanding of the Andean past—later colonial offi-
cials expressed deep ambivalence about the khipu and a general suspicion of
the native officials (called khipukamayuq: ‘‘knot makers/keepers’’) who kept
them. One major reason for the change in attitude about the khipu on the
part of the Spaniards was that the native records increasingly came into direct
competition (especially in legal disputations) with the Spaniards’ own written
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
Spanish Colonial Commentary 5
records. For both reasons noted above, then, it is important to be aware of

and exercise a critical perspective on the time period during which any given
commentary on the khipu was produced.
The second objective of the historical overview presented in this chap-
ter—its substantive contribution—is to take particular note of how different
sources characterized the extent to which khipu were said to encode some
form(s) of information (i.e., in their ‘‘recording units’’) that the khipu keepers
consulted, interpreted, or read in the production of historical, genealogi-
cal, and other types of narrative accounts of the past. As we will learn in
the course of this book, that narrative renderings of khipu were produced
by khipukamayuq is undoubted; however, what is fully under investigation
and often in open dispute in the pages of this volume are such questions
as: What was the nature of the recording units that were interpreted in a
narrative, discursive manner by the khipukamayuq? Did these units consist
solely of numbers read as labels? Might they also have taken the form of se-
mantic signifiers or syntactical markers signed by way of certain arrange-
ments of knot types; color patterning; and spinning, plying, and knotting
directions? And finally, might the narrative signifiers have taken the form
of woven, three-dimensional ideogram- or logogram-like representations, as
suggested by some of the Spanish chroniclers?
In addition to addressing such conundrums as those raised above regard-
ing the nature of the khipu signing units, certain of the works collected herein
are concerned with such matters as the relationship, in khipu-based narrative
productions, between units of information actually recorded on the khipu
and information that was retained in the memory. We will encounter very
different information and opinions on this crucial question in the chapters
collected here. A final, important issue addressed in some of the studies con-
cerns the degree to which the information recorded on any given khipu was
mutually intelligible, or ‘‘readable,’’ by knot keepers throughout the empire.
That is, were khipu legible only by the person who made them, or was there
a high level of shared signifying units, and techniques for the manipulation
of threads to produce those units, on the part of record keepers throughout
the empire? As the reader will find in the pages of this book, there is still no
clear consensus on these and other vital matters regarding the recording of,
and the retrieval of information from, the khipu.
The purpose of the present chapter is to provide some background on the
colonial source materials relevant to reading the formulations and debates
that follow regarding the several issues raised above.
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
6 Gary Urton
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ACCOUNTS
From virtually the earliest accounts written by Spaniards in the newly con-
quered territory of the Inka Empire, we read about encounters with knotted-
string records. For example, Hernando Pizarro, a brother of the conqueror
and first governor of Peru, Francisco Pizarro, tells us that on one occasion
in 1533, during the first year following the European invasion, he and his sol-
diers took certain items—firewood, ‘‘sheep’’ (llamas), corn, and chicha (corn
beer)—from an Inka storehouse along the royal Inka highway, and the native
accountants recorded the transaction on a knotted-string recording device
(H. Pizarro does not name this device for us). Pizarro notes that when he and
his men removed these goods from the storehouse, the record keepers ‘‘untied
some of the knots which they had in the deposits section [of the khipu], and
they [re-]tied them in another section [of the khipu]’’ (H. Pizarro 1920: 175,
178). Curiously, this is one of the few accounts we have, in the entire corpus
of colonial literature on khipu, of an actual event of ‘‘balancing the books’’ in
a khipu transaction.
Around the same time that Hernando Pizarro encountered khipu along the
Inka road to the highlands, another conquistador, Miguel de Estete, made an
important observation on a different type of information recorded on certain
of these devices. He noted that ‘‘although they [the Inka] don’t have writing,
they recall the memory of things by means of certain cords and knots, though
the most notable things are remembered in songs, as if lacking writing, we
were to remember past deeds by songs that recall them’’ (cited in Pease 1990:
67). The combined observations of Pizarro and Estete provide us with the
earliest evidence that khipu (of different types?) encoded at least two different
types of information: statistical and narrative/historical.
By the 1540s, the Spaniards had begun to write down the wealth of statisti-
cal information (e.g., census data, tribute lists) that the administrators of the
(now defunct) empire had registered on their khipu from before the time of
the conquest. The principal event that precipitated this initial episode of the
systematic transcription of statistical data from khipu into Spanish written
documents was the round of visitas (visits), or general inspections, ordered by
Pedro de La Gasca, president of the Real Audiencia in Lima in 1549. Presi-
dent La Gasca sent seventy-two teams of inspectors into the countryside to
collect and evaluate census figures and statistical data on economic resources
from various regions throughout the former empire. Though we have re-
covered only a fraction of these inspection records from archives, scholars
have mined certain of these accounts to provide us with an increasingly clear
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
understanding of the basic types of data that were recorded on these impor-
tant Inka bureaucratic recording devices, as well as some of the values and
principles organizing the registration of information therein (see Espinoza
Soriano 1971–1972; Galdós Rodríguez 1977; Murra 1982, 1987; Pärssinen
1992: 40–43; Pease 1990; Rostworowski 1993: 293–348, 349–362; and Urton
1998).
The interaction between Andean and Spanish records and record keepers
resulting from the procedures outlined above was by no means always of an
amicable nature. For instance, by the early to mid-1550s, accounts of the trib-
ute paid to the new Spanish overlords were being registered both on khipu
and in Spanish written documents. A few decades later, as the conquistadores/
encomenderos began dying off and transferring their wealth and privileges to
their heirs, and as native Andeans gained facility in manipulating colonial
judicial procedures, there was a marked increase in the number of legal pro-
ceedings involving disputes over differences in the native and Spanish trib-
ute records recorded earlier, during the 1550s. One case in point that has re-
cently received considerable attention focuses on a dispute between the heirs
of Alonso de Montemayor and the tributary Indians of Sacaca, Bolivia (e.g.,
A.G.I., Justicia 653, no. 2, pza. 1: f. 409r–v; Platt, Chapter 10, this book;
Solórzano y Pereyra 1972: 308–309; Urton 1998).
Moving to the decade of the 1550s, the soldier/chronicler Pedro de Cieza
de León (1553) compared the khipu favorably to the system of signs or ‘‘hiero-
glyphs’’ (carastes) used by the Mexicans. Cieza de León noted further that the
Inka used their knotted-cord records to keep track of reserves and expendi-
tures of state, as well as ‘‘other things that had occurred many years in the
past.’’ He also states that old, wise men were charged by the Inka with com-
posing and memorizing songs commemorating the deeds of the kings of the
Inka Empire (Cieza de León 1967: 34–37). Thus, as we saw in the earlier ac-
count by Miguel de Estete, narratives from the Inka past were both recorded
on khipu and composed and memorized by the court poet-philosophers, the
amauta. One problem that has yet to be addressed in a comprehensive and
critical manner is the relationship between the memory-based narrative pro-
ductions of the amauta and the khipu- (and memory-?) based narrations of
the khipukamayuq.
From the 1550s, we move forward more than a decade before we once again
encounter an appreciable number of references to khipu in the Spanish docu-
ments. These new references were at the core of a veritable explosion of docu-
ments produced as a result of a new round of inspection visits and fact-finding
activities ordered by the fourth viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo (1569–
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
8 Gary Urton
1581). With his reforms of colonial administration and tribute collection, as

well as the forced relocation of the formerly dispersed Andean populations
into new nucleated settlements, Toledo effected what was arguably the most
profound transformation of life in the Andean highlands between the time
of the European invasion and the wars of independence (in the 1820s). In-
numerable documents (such as visitas, composiciones de tierras, and probanzas de
mérito) derived from the Toledan activities, and these are housed in archives
in Spain and the various Andean nations. These documents provide an ex-
traordinarily detailed view of the sociopolitical and economic characteristics
of local populations and communities scattered throughout the Andes at this
time. Many make clear the critical role played by local khipukamayuq in sup-
plying Spanish officials with the baseline of statistical (e.g., demographic and
economic) information upon which the new, reorganized colonial state began
to take shape (Espinoza Soriano 1967, 1971–1972; MacCormack 1995; Murra
1991; Rostworowski and Remy 1992; Rowe 1985).
In addition to the collection and transferal into Spanish written docu-
ments of a massive amount of statistical information, the Toledan examina-
tion and inspection procedures also called for a more systematic collection
of historical information than had been carried out up to this time (i.e., the
1570s). For example, in collecting information to write his Historia de los Incas
(1942), Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa tells us that he interviewed more than
one hundred old khipukamayuq who lived at that time in and around Cusco.
He later assembled a group of more than forty members of the former Inka
nobility, some of whom had served as khipukamayuq, to verify the truth of
the historical account contained in his chronicle.
The points to stress with respect to this phase of the postconquest history
of the khipu are, first, that the (now aged) khipukamayuq were at the cen-
ter of the collection of preconquest ‘‘historical’’ data as well as the verifica-
tion of the histories of the Inka Empire that were constructed from those data
by the Toledan chroniclers (e.g., Molina 1916; Polo de Ondegardo 1916; Sar-
miento de Gamboa 1942); and, second, that the era of the Toledan investiga-
tions represents the initial phase of heightened tensions and conflicts between
khipu and written records. That is, by the time of the Toledan reforms, the
Spaniards had for some forty years maintained their own (written) accounts
of Andean statistical and historical records and were thus increasingly less in-
clined to defer to the native record keepers when their own records came into
conflict with those of the khipukamayuq.
As with several of the earlier sources, the Toledan chroniclers make it
clear that the khipukamayuq recorded both statistical data as well as narra-
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
tive/historical information on the khipu. As an example of the scope of his-

torical information recorded on these devices, one of the Toledan chroniclers,
Cristóbal de Molina (‘‘el Cuzqueño’’), noted that the Inka
used a very subtle method of accounting of knotted strings of wool

of different colors, which they call quipos; they can and did under-
stand so much by this accounting device that they were able to give
an accounting of all the things that had happened in this land for
more than 500 years. They had Indians who were very skilled and
knowledgeable in the quipos and accounts; these [Indians] passed the
knowledge down from generation to generation; and fixing in the
memory all that they learned, miraculously, nothing was forgotten.
(: --)
It is important to note that, with the above commentary, Molina introduced

into the written record the earliest note of ambiguity with regard to the ques-
tion of the relationship between information that was recorded on a khipu
as opposed to that which was memorized. The early part of this quotation
suggests that the information concerning what had happened in the past five
hundred years was recorded on the khipu, whereas the later part of the quo-
tation suggests that the historical information was retained in the memory of
the khipukamayuq. This ambivalence, which is virtually nonexistent before
the time of the Toledan chroniclers, increases from this time forward. In addi-
tion, a couple of decades later another chronicler of the (late) Toledan era,
Martín de Murúa, noted that different types of khipu, each with its own logic
and rationale, were utilized by different populations within the empire (1946:
124). Platt (Chapter 10, this book) has used Murúa’s observation and other
similar testimony to argue against the notion that there was a high degree of
mutual intelligibility among record keepers throughout the empire.
From the end of the Toledan era onward, the history of khipu may be fairly
characterized as a running confrontation between the khipu accounts and
the documents written in Spanish. Increasingly, the native officials (i.e., the
khipukamayuq) were forced into a posture of self-defense, for the Spanish
colonial officials were intent on undermining the authority of the khipu ac-
counts as well as the veracity and trustworthiness of the khipukamayuq them-
selves (see Platt, Chapter 10, this book; and Urton 1998). It is notable that
such confrontations overwhelmingly involved conflicts over the veracity of
statistical and economic (especially tribute) records. That is, to the best of
my knowledge, there were no major public disputes over the veracity of khipu
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
10 Gary Urton
accounts of Inka history as opposed to the histories written in the Toledan

chronicles or those from earlier times. The partial exception to this general-
ization involves genealogical disputes and conflicts over who had a legitimate
claim to authority, via a noble pedigree, to a local ‘‘lordship’’ (cacicazgo). In
both of these types of disputes, however, what was ultimately very much at
issue were economic considerations, since those who could prove that they
were descendants of (former) Inka nobility were excluded from the require-
ments to pay tribute and to perform personal service for the Spaniards.
As becomes increasingly clear in the documents of the period, the central
issue with regard to khipu in the 1570s–1590s was the political-economic ques-
tion: Who—natives or Spaniards?—would be in control of public records in
the colony? The khipukamayuq lost out decisively in this critical confronta-
tion. This result was formalized in the Third Council of Lima (1581–1583),
when the khipu were classified as idolatrous objects and were ordered to be
burned (Tercer Concilio Limense 1583, acto 3, ch. 37; see Mannheim 1991:
66–71).
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ACCOUNTS
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, we encounter a particularly
intriguing account of the types of information that were still recorded on
the khipu at that time, as well as a poignant illustration of the Spanish will
to destroy these knotted-string records, in keeping with the mandate of the
Third Council of Lima. The following passage comes from Diego Avalos y
Figueroa’s Miscelánea austral, from 1602:
In the valley of Xauxa, I met on the road an old Indian carrying a

bundle of quipus, which he tried to hide. When challenged, he ex-
plained that these quipus were the account he had to give to the Inca,
when he [the Inca] returned from the other world, of all that had
happened in the valley in his absence. In the account were included
all the Spaniards who had traveled on that royal road, what they had
wanted and bought, and all they had done, both the good and the
bad. The corregidor [high civil administrator] with whom I was travel-
ing took and burned these accounts and punished the Indian.
(   : )
It is clear that such latter-day khipukamayuq, descendants of the official rec-

ord keepers of Inka times, had entered a new era, one in which the precious
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
knotted records they retained were increasingly viewed with suspicion and
outright contempt.
One of the principal sources of information about khipu is an extraordi-
nary document, written at the end of the sixteenth century through the early
years of the seventeenth century, by a native chronicler, Felipe Guaman Poma
de Ayala (1980; see Adorno 1986; Cummins 1992). In his work entitled Nueva
corónica y buen gobierno, an approximately one-thousand-page ‘‘letter’’ to the
king of Spain, Guaman Poma not only alludes to the wide range of different
types of information encoded in the khipu (e.g., economic, demographic, as-
tronomical, astrological, and bureaucratic), but he also provides something
even more tantalizing and informative with respect to the role of this device
in Inka daily life: drawings of various Inka officials displaying, consulting,
and in other ways manipulating khipu (Brokaw 1999; Luxton 1979). Guaman
Poma’s drawings depict a variety of people handling these devices (e.g., ac-
countants, messengers, and astrologers) and also juxtapose khipu with other
types of cultural artifacts, such as gaming or counting boards (yupana), staffs
of office, particular styles of dress, and even a hand-held sign reading: carta,
‘‘letter’’ (see Quilter, Chapter 9, this book).
Both the text and the drawings of Guaman Poma’s so-called ‘‘letter to a
king’’ represent valuable sources of information on the khipu and their han-
dlers. Equally notable, though somewhat puzzling, is the degree to which
Guaman Poma’s drawings of khipu depict this device in schematic, virtually
iconic renderings; that is, none of Guaman Poma’s drawings show khipu with
knots tied into their pendant strings—all the strings are shown as plain, un-
knotted threads dangling from primary cords. Similarly, nowhere in his text
does Guaman Poma provide an explicit statement concerning the types of
information retained on the khipu nor how the information was recorded.
As Guaman Poma had a high regard for the khipukamayuq and amauta, as
well as a fairly sophisticated understanding of the ways the khipu—and pos-
sibly the Inka computing board, called yupana—were used by the Inka for
recording statistical and historical data (Radicati di Primeglio 1979: 31–46;
1990b; Wassén 1931, 1990), it is reasonable to assume that he ought to have
been capable of presenting accurate depictions and precise explanations of
the khipu. Perhaps for some reason as yet unclear to us Guaman Poma was
hesitant to expose the khipu to close scrutiny by the reader(s) of his ‘‘letter.’’
In other words, he may have chosen not to elaborate on the formal properties
of the khipu and the ways of manipulating them in reading.
By analogy with other recent analyses of certain topics discussed by Gua-
man Poma, we could even argue that the chronicler’s silence on this par-
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
12 Gary Urton
ticular matter may, in fact, be quite informative with regard to his view on
the nature of these records. For example, Rolena Adorno (1986: 27–29) and
Sabine MacCormack (1985: 464–466) have shown that Guaman Poma con-
structed a rather elaborate set of representations to the effect that Andean
peoples had known the god of Christianity before the arrival of the Euro-
peans; in addition, I have tried to show (Urton 1997: 201–208) that Guaman
Poma suggested—in image and text—that the Inka were familiar with Hindu-
Arabic numerals in pre-Hispanic times. Both of these topics elicited strong
rhetorical postures on Guaman Poma’s part, a fact that makes his silence on
the khipu all the more interesting, and curious. Since we know Guaman Poma
to have been a literate man who spent years learning the European arts of
reading and writing, and who understood the high regard Europeans had for
literacy, we might expect (by analogy with these other rhetorical sallies) that
if Guaman Poma was of the opinion that the khipu constituted a sophisti-
cated system of recording, not to mention a form of writing, he might also
have argued that the Inka actually had writing before the arrival of the Euro-
peans. (Such an argument was, in fact, made by another native chronicler—
Garcilaso de la Vega; see Urton, Chapter 8, this book.) However, Guaman
Poma himself did not make such an argument. We are therefore left with the
dilemma of deciding whether or not we are justified in making an argument
ex silencio in this instance; that is, can we say that since Guaman Poma did
not make such an argument, this must mean that he did not believe the khipu
constituted a system of writing? We cannot answer this question with any
certainty at the present time.
In addition to the continuing use of khipu accounts in legal proceedings,
there appeared during the first half of the seventeenth century a number of
more informative descriptions of the knotted records and of the variety of
methods used to record on, and read information from, these devices. For ex-
ample, near the beginning of the century (in 1602), we encounter an intrigu-
ing reference to a peculiar manner of registering information in, or of attach-
ing ‘‘signs’’ to, the khipu. This appears in an annual report from the head of
the Jesuits in Peru, P.R. de Cabredo, to General Aquaviva, the head of the
Jesuit order. In this report, we read that khipu were used by native peoples to
record their sins for the purpose of giving confession (for the use of khipu in
confessionals, see Harrison, Chapter 11, this book). We are told that in such
khipu, the faithful tied knots in the strings as an aid to the memory. Inter-
estingly, we are also told of one confessant who, in addition to tying knots,
made the khipu ‘‘from six varas of twisted cord with threads spaced along it
as well as some signs [señales] of stone or bone or feathers conforming to the
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
material of the sin being confessed’’ (Fernández 1986: 214; my translation and
emphasis).
In its presupposition of a direct, natural relationship between a sign and
the thing it signifies, the above account reflects a decidedly Neoplatonic
‘‘take’’ on the khipu. Neoplatonism was a long-lasting philosophical tradi-
tion in Europe with roots in humanist, neoclassical thinking; this interpretive
tradition was especially strong in Renaissance Italian scholarship (see Yates
1966). Neoplatonists saw the physical forms of things—such as chairs, pots
and pans, and hieroglyphic signs—as corrupted, worldly reflections of the
true forms that existed in the ideal realm of pure abstraction. Earthly forms
were merely the simulacra of these ideal forms. Furthermore, this world of
abstract ideals was the realm of deep and profound truths, a realm of knowl-
edge accessible only to the learned elite few—those who had been instructed
in the secret meanings of things.
In a fascinating study of Neoplatonic influences in the study of the Egyp-
tian hieroglyphs, Erik Iversen (1993) has shown how (especially) Italian hu-
manist scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many of whom were
members of the Jesuit order, constructed an approach to the hieroglyphs
based on a symbolic, allegorical interpretation of the hieroglyphic signs. This
tradition, which was based on a few classical sources that were significantly
uninformed on the subject of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, introduced ele-
ments of mysticism and humanist symbolic analysis into the study of the
hieroglyphic signs, thereby effectively delaying for centuries the recognition
of the ideographic and phonetic bases of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. In
fact, a strikingly similar history of Neoplatonic symbolic and mystical in-
terpretations impeded for many years the decipherment of the Maya hiero-
glyphs (see Coe 1992). In both cases, decipherment of these ancient scripts
was impeded because researchers of the times could not countenance the
notion that such elaborate and mysterious-looking ancient scripts could pos-
sibly have had any relationship to the mundane sounds of human speech.
In both cases, such presumptions proved to be profoundly wrong. We will
have reason later to question whether such references as that cited above—
in the Jesuit communiqué regarding khipu registering the material corre-
lates of sins—represent the appearance of Neoplatonic influences in the his-
tory of interpretations of the khipu (a similar suspicion clouds the evaluation
of the so-called ‘‘Naples document’’; see below and Hyland, Chapter 7, this
book).
The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, mestizo son of an Inka princess and a Span-
ish conquistador, was born in Cusco in 1539 and lived there until the age of
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
14 Gary Urton
twenty-one. Soon after his father’s death, Garcilaso went to Spain to claim
his inheritance, and he remained there for the rest of his life. In 1609, Gar-
cilaso completed his magnum opus, a work entitled Comentarios reales de los
Incas (1959). The Comentarios contains a wealth of information concerning
the khipu, which Garcilaso claims to have learned how to read as a youth in
Cusco. For instance, Garcilaso describes the decimal-based system of record-
ing numerical-statistical information (1966: 331–332); he describes the rela-
tionship between the generally numerical information recorded on the khipu
and the memorized poems and stories that inform and help flesh out the nu-
merical data into narratives (1966: 332); and he provides an account, based on
notes by the mestizo Jesuit Blas Valera, of the use of a type of iconography-
based khipu recording system to register Inka verse (1966: 127). In general
terms, Garcilaso provides us with a seemingly well informed, though occa-
sionally problematic (because of its idiosyncrasy), account of the technologi-
cal and intellectual traditions associated with Andean knotted-string records
(see Assadourian, Chapter 6, and Urton, Chapter 8, this book).
On the important question of the relationship between the nature of the
information registered on the khipu and the work of memory in retrieving
that information, Garcilaso gives contradictory testimony. For example, he
notes at one point that
. . . as the Incas had no knowledge of writing, they had to use what

devices they could, and treating their knots as letters, they chose
historians and accountants, called quipucamayus, to write down and
preserve the tradition of their deeds by means of the knots, strings,
and colored threads, using their stories and poems as an aid. This was
the method of writing the Incas employed in their republic.
(: )
Whereas the above account suggests, with some ambiguity, that the Inka
retained some manner of ‘‘writing’’ in the khipu, the following statement by
this chronicler suggests quite the opposite:
[T]he Indians recalled by means of the knots the things their par-
ents and grandparents had taught them by tradition, and these they
treated with the greatest care and veneration, as sacred matters re-
lating to the idolatrous religion and laws of their Incas, which they
contrived to retain in their memories because of their ignorance of
writing. (    : )
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
The Augustinian friar Antonio de la Calancha spent many years in the

Andes, primarily in Lima, Potosí, and Trujillo. Calancha comments exten-
sively on the khipu in his chronicle Corónica moralizada . . . (1974, 1: 201–212).
Calancha had read the works of several of his predecessors (e.g., Garcilaso
de la Vega, José de Acosta, and Blas Valera), and his ideas about the khipu
were formed from his reading of these earlier accounts as well as from di-
rect conversations with khipukamayuq. Calancha expresses his admiration for
the khipu early in his chronicle (Bk. 1, Ch. 14: 208), noting, for instance,
that these knotted records contained a wide variety of information, such as
history, law, ceremonial practices, and economic transactions. What is most
remarkable about the writings of Calancha on this subject, however, is that
he claims to have made personal inquiries into the techniques and modes of
recording information on the khipu. From his inquiries, Calancha describes a
hypothetical khipu account, complete with information on color symbolism
as well as indications of dating, royal succession, bureaucratic offices, and a
differentiation of signifiers denoting different levels of settlements in the Inka
Empire (206–207). With only a few exceptions (e.g., Garcilaso’s account of
the symbolism of colors used in the khipu), most of the information given
by Calancha is uncorroborated by other early sources. Scholars have there-
fore been hesitant to pursue studies of the khipu information system(s) based
on the data given by Calancha (exceptions include Pärssinen 1992: 31–43, and
Assadourian, Chapter 6, this book).
It is important to take note of the unusually explicit discussion Calan-
cha produced on both the types of information contained on the khipu and
the relationship between knowledge (the ability and the requirement to actu-
ally ‘‘read’’ information in the strings) and memory in the practice of the
khipukamayuq:
. . . the deeds, history, or rationale [of the past] were committed to

memory by the Quipo Camayos, who were like the Secretaries of
these archives, in order to provide an account of them to the Inga,
or to the Cacique, or whoever might ask about it, and the Arabicus
[Amauta?] who were their poets, composed brief verses and compen-
dia, in which they encapsulated the history, the events, or the mes-
sages, and these were recounted in the towns, or provinces through
which they passed, the father teaching them to his son, and he to his
[son]; and the Quipo Camayos, whether because of the privileges
with which they honored the office, or because, if they did not give
good accounting about that on which they were questioned they were
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
16 Gary Urton
severely castigated, were continually studying the signs, ciphers and

relations [in the khipu], teaching them to those who would succeed
them in office, and there were many of these Secretaries, each of
whom had assigned his particular class of material, having to suit the
story, tale or song to the knots of which they served as the indices,
and the point of site [or place] memory [punto para memoria local ].
By the same order, they give an account of their laws, ordenances,
rites and ceremonies, establishing the restitution, or punishment of
the deed, or transgression. The ceremonies of each festival, which
they performed to the Sun, or to the invisible God; they learned
with maximum veneration the histories of the kings, or the oracles
and sacrifices of their idols. The Secretary, or Quipo Camayo, was at
the pain of death if at any time he lost some of the truth, or ignored
something that he should know about, or if he differed [in his ac-
counting] from some of the deeds, legacy or oracles it [the khipu
record] contained. ( , : ;  )
Calancha’s testimony regarding the procedures for recording and reading

information on the khipu makes it clear that these practices required the com-
bination of certain information retained in the memory of the khipukamayuq
with specialized knowledge of khipu construction techniques (knowing how
and where to place certain types of information on the strings). Perhaps this
is how we should read the (apparently) contradictory testimony provided in
the two quotations from Garcilaso de la Vega (above).
The middle of the seventeenth century saw the completion of the Jesuit
priest Bernabé Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo (1979 and 1990). Cobo’s work
is informed by his reading of numerous earlier chronicles, particularly the
works of Polo de Ondegardo and Cristóbal de Molina (‘‘el Cuzqueño’’). Cobo
includes brief but interesting, and ultimately quite controversial, commen-
tary on the khipu. Cobo’s personal experience with khipu ‘‘readings’’ appears
to have been both limited and linked directly to the information provided by
descendants of the Inka nobility in Cusco. One of his main informants was a
man named Alonso Topa Atau, a grandson of Huayna Capac, the last undis-
puted Inca, who ruled until just before the arrival of the Spanish. Topa Atau
maintained a khipu in which he had recorded, and communicated to Cobo,
the official Cusco version of Inka history (Porras Barrenechea 1986: 512).
Cobo states that all manner of information was retained on these devices
(e.g., statistical and historical data) but that understanding the records re-
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
quired the memorization of information beyond that which was actually reg-
istered on the khipu. On the basis of this memorized information, the khipu-
kamayuq constructed a full narrative of the information in question. Now, as
we have seen, many other chroniclers testified to the necessity of combining
recorded and memorized information in the art of khipu recording and ‘‘read-
ing.’’ Cobo, however, goes on to state that ‘‘among the quipo camayos them-
selves, one was unable to understand the registers and recording devices of
others. Each one understood the quipos that he made and what the others told
him’’ (Cobo 1979: 254). Such a characterization of the khipu recording sys-
tem as based on ‘‘idiosyncratic’’ registers and units of notation is not, in fact,
expressed in such an explicit manner in any other account produced during
the previous 120 years of European writing on these devices.
If Cobo was correct in his characterization of the information system of
the knotted records as based not on shared, but rather on secret (individually
memorized), bodies of information, then we probably will have to refrain
from classifying the khipu records as a form of ‘‘writing.’’ This is because a
writing system requires a widely shared understanding of the basic record-
ing units on the part of all those involved in communicating by means of the
system in question. I have called into question Cobo’s characterization of the
khipu recording system on precisely this point (Urton 1998 and Chapter 8,
this book), although others have argued in support of his more restricted view
(see, for example, Platt, Chapter 10, this book; Rappaport 1994; and Rappa-
port and Cummins 1994: 100). However the matter is eventually decided, it
is undoubted that Cobo himself did not believe the Inka possessed a system
of writing. In fact, he was quite explicit in his views on this matter, stating at
one point in his chronicle of Inka history that
[t]here is no one who is not surprised and frightened to see that these
people’s [i.e., the native peoples of South America] power of reason
is so dull; this is not so much because they are short on reasoning
power, as some have alleged, as it is because of their very limited
mental activity. On the one hand this is because they have no written
literature, sciences, or fine arts, which generally cultivate, perfect, and
make the mind quicker in its operations and reasoning powers. On
the other hand, since the ingrained, savage vices to which they are
commonly given have nearly become innate, these vices have dulled
their ingenuity and obscured the light of their powers of reason.
( : ;  )
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
18 Gary Urton
EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY ACCOUNTS

We can be brief in discussing works concerning khipu published during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The arts of khipu making and read-
ing had clearly become ‘‘dis-established’’—eliminated from the practices of
record keeping among native officials—by this period. Their reemergence
(or rediscovery) would occur during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
when travelers, members of the Andean intelligentsia, anthropologists, and
others would encounter the use of khipu for everyday record-keeping pur-
poses (e.g., counts of livestock), as well as for ritual display in communities in
Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador (see Holm 1968; Mackey 1970, 1990a, 1990b, and
Chapter 13, this book; Mesa and Gisbert 1966; Núñez del Prado 1950; Ruiz
Estrada 1981, 1990; Salomon, Chapter 12, this book; Soto Flores 1950–1951;
and Uhle 1897).
Many of the references to khipu during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries are products of a general European antiquarian interest in hiero-
glyphs and other ancient, ‘‘exotic’’ writing systems at that time, as well as a
more pointed romanticizing of the supposed ‘‘lost art’’ of Inka writing (see
Ernst 1871; Pérez 1864; and, more recently, Miranda Rivera 1958). In the
latter category, we should note a couple of examples of what Radicati di Pri-
meglio (1979: 51) refers to as ‘‘apocryphal khipus.’’ These include the mention
of khipu writing in the work of Madame F. de Grafigny, a Parisienne whose
novella Lettres d’une Péruvienne (Letter from a Peruvian princess; 1747) was
inspired by information she obtained on khipu from Raimondo di Sangro,
Prince of San Severo. The latter produced a work entitled Lettera apologetica
. . . (1750) in which he diagrams some forty complex, iconography-laden khipu
knots, each signifying a distinct sacred identity or object in the Inka cosmos
(these knot signs are also reproduced in Rosny 1870).
The elaborate, iconographic khipu signs described by Sangro and Rosny
have recently reappeared in a curious document commonly referred to as the
‘‘Naples document’’ (Animato, Rossi, and Miccinelli 1989; Laurencich Mi-
nelli 1996; Laurencich Minelli, Miccinelli, and Animato 1995). This docu-
ment, whose authenticity is still very much in question (see Domenici and
Domenici 1996), purports to describe a system of syllabic writing—based
on the forty iconographic khipu knot signs mentioned above—by means of
a special class of khipu that was supposedly understood only by the amauta
(wise men) of the Inka court. The original source of the description of this
supposed syllabic writing system was the sixteenth-century Jesuit priest Blas
Valera (see Hyland, Chapter 7, this book). A perplexing item in regard to the
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
information contained in this document is the fact that Garcilaso de la Vega

says that he read similar information in the papers of Blas Valera (although he
does not allude to the existence of a syllabic writing system). Garcilaso even
reproduces a poem, called Sumaq Ñusta (Beautiful princess), which he claims
to have read in the papers of Blas Valera; curiously, this is the same poem used
to illustrate the syllabic writing system in the document from Naples. Is this
only a coincidence? Could the poem have been taken from Garcilaso in the
‘‘invention’’ (perhaps during the seventeenth or eighteenth century?) of an
Inka system of syllabic writing? The commentators on the Naples document
have so far failed to address this important and perplexing coincidence.
Under the label ‘‘apocryphal khipu’’ we should also reference a few
nineteenth-century publications characterizing khipu whose construction
features seem, from the elliptical descriptions we are given of them, sty-
listically similar to the ‘‘iconography-laden’’ type of khipu described in the
Naples document (for example, see Rivero y Ustáriz 1857; Strong 1827; and
Wiener 1880). In spirit and theory, these works are virtually direct descen-
dants of the Renaissance, Neoplatonic (i.e., symbolic and allegorical) inter-
pretations of writing systems of the ancient Near Eastern and Classical
worlds. Nonetheless, approached with caution, such works may deserve more
attention than they have received in the past, if for no other reason than
for the insight they afford into the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century
propensity for romanticizing ‘‘the other,’’ and for mystifying the nature and
status of signs in language and particularly in ancient writing systems.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

This overview of colonial commentaries on the khipu permits us to recog-
nize a few essential features of these devices and of the practices associated
with their reading or interpretation. In the first place, the evidence is clear
that the Inka and other peoples of the pre-Columbian Andes relied on khipu
for retaining records pertaining to the state of the political economy of the
societies in which they lived. This included demographic, economic, political,
and other types of structural information. By the term ‘‘structural,’’ I mean
information pertaining to the composition, disposition, and distribution of
material goods and other resources, including political power and authority,
in the Inka state. From what we read in the Spanish chronicles and docu-
ments, it seems indisputable that information of this type was registered on
the khipu by patterned variations of material; by the dyeing, spinning, and
plying of strings; and by the tying of different types and numbers of knots
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
20 Gary Urton
in the strings. The latter were often accorded numerical values in the deci-
mal (and perhaps duodecimal; see Platt, Chapter 10, this book) system(s) of
numeration used by the Inka and their subjects. This much we have under-
stood for quite some time (Ascher and Ascher 1997; Locke 1923; Urton 1994,
1997).
But, in addition, the sources from early to late colonial times make it clear
that Inka as well as local, non-Inka officials throughout the empire recorded
certain types of information that was ‘‘consulted’’ by the khipukamayuq in re-
counting historical and other types of narrative accounts. The major problem
we face today in the study of the khipu is the meaning of the seemingly inno-
cent term used above: ‘‘consulted.’’ What was involved in the process of ‘‘con-
sulting’’ a khipu to render a narrative account? Was this process comparable
to the act of reading any number of other ancient scripts, with—in the Inka
case—its full complement of grammatical units (subject/object/verb) regis-
tered in three dimensions on the khipu strings? Or was it perhaps more like
a registry of general signifiers (evoking classes of objects, actions, places, and
times) that were given more nuanced form and substance by a khipukamayuq,
who would have brought to the reading information retained in his memory,
as well as a range of creative, discursive practices for producing a narrative
appropriate to a given place and perhaps audience? Or were the procedures of
‘‘consultation’’ perhaps somewhere between the extremes of the continuum
between restricted (i.e., ‘‘literal’’) and free-form narrative productions out-
lined above?
To date, we have not even attempted to formulate answers to questions like
those posed above; this is the objective of the present book. The approaches
to these questions found in this volume are quite diverse. They include studies
of memory and narrative productions in contemporary highland Peruvian
communities (Howard); the structures and hierarchies of khipu construction
(Conklin); the logic of encoding narrative information in the form of num-
bers interpreted as labels (M. Ascher); the strategy of ‘‘encipherment’’ as a
route to interpreting the general information-encoding system of the khipu
(R. Ascher); the analysis of Spanish chroniclers’ testimony on the arts of en-
coding narratives in khipu (Assadourian, Hyland, Urton, and Quilter); the
study of khipu transcriptions retained in Spanish colonial documents (Platt);
the colonial use of khipu as confessional devices (Harrison); the present-day
display of khipu as emblems of ayllu identity and history (Salomon); and the
use of khipu for recording statistical information by Andean herders today
(Mackey).
It is important to stress at the beginning of this exploration of narrativity
Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
in the Andean knotted-string records that to date no one has succeeded in

producing a ‘‘reading’’ of a narrative khipu. The positive aspect of this other-
wise distressing state of affairs is that, without a paradigm directing our work,
the authors of these contributions are free to explore every conceivable ave-
nue of argumentation and interpretation. It is hoped that the contributions
assembled here, all of which are still innocent of the scourge of dogmatism
that often follows the establishment of a paradigm, will stimulate others to
take up the study of narrativity in the khipu.
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Tseng 2002.6.24 11:56
Other documents randomly have
different content
Perhaps you are older than some of your school-fellows,
and the little ones gather round you and say "Tell us a
story!"
Don't they love stories? And don't you love stories?
So did the people to whom our Lord spoke. He often put

a word-picture before their eyes, and it sank into their
hearts, and they remembered it ever after.
I am going to tell you about one of these Parables which

our Lord told to the listening multitudes.
This one was about "The Kingdom of Heaven." This is

the word picture which he put before their eyes.
He said that the Kingdom of Heaven was like a man who

had a field, and who sowed it with good seed.
But at night, under cover of the darkness, while men

were asleep, there came an enemy into this field.
He carried a basket in his hands, and as he went up and

down the field, he looked stealthily round him to make sure
that no one was aware of his presence. And then he took
handful after handful of seed from his basket and scattered
it all over the field. Then he crept away in the darkness.
SOWING THE TARES.
Why did he do it, do you think?
It was because he hated the owner of the field, and

wished to destroy his beautiful harvest.
By and by the seeds began to grow, and the little blades

came up green all over the field. Then the servants of the
master of the field, looking closely at the crop, saw that
some of the blades were of good wheat, but some looked
like tares, which were of no use to anyone and only injured
the wheat. So they hastened to the owner of the field, and
they said, "Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field; how
have the tares got there?"
And the owner said, "An enemy has done this."
Then the servants asked if they might root up the tares

at once.
I have read that when the little plants are young, the
blades of the wheat and the blades of the tares are so much
alike that it is difficult to tell them apart.
So the master of the field answered, "No; you had

better not try to pull up the tares, lest you should pull up
the wheat with them. Let them both grow together until the
harvest; and in time of harvest I will say to the reapers,
'Gather together the tares first, and bind them in bundles to
burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.'"
* * * * *
This is a story, as I said, of "The Kingdom of Heaven."

And it is important to all of us, because we all live in that
Kingdom. Our hearts ought to be God's throne here, we
ought to be growing up as His Good Seed, to be gathered
into His eternal Home when the Harvest comes!
You may not always live in England—you may go to

Canada, or Australia, or France, or Germany!
But in this Kingdom of Heaven you may always abide,

till the Harvest-day comes; and happy for you if you do!
God's Kingdom is a place where His Good Seed grows.

Perhaps your Mother or your Teacher tells you of Jesus
our Saviour, and of His love, and you long to be able to
serve Him. You would like to be kind and loving to those
round you; you are sorry when you do wrong, you are
happy when you do right. That is the Good Seed taking root
and growing in your heart!
But at other times you feel differently.
You are not so happy; you do not wish to do good

things so much; you even find yourself wanting to do wrong
things! You find it hard to be loving; you want so much to
do something you have been forbidden to do; you are sure
no one will see you if you do wrong, and you say to
yourself, "After all, it is such a little thing," or "It is only this
once!"
Ah! Those are the tares sown in your heart!
"How did they get there?" the servants asked the

Master.
And He answered, "An enemy has done this."
Satan is our enemy. It is true we cannot see him, but

he is near us all the same.
Like the enemy in the Parable, he creeps out when men

are asleep—when you are off your guard—when you have
forgotten to watch and to pray; and it is he who whispers to
you that:
"No one will see."
"That it is such a little thing."
"That it is so hard to obey!"

Ah! What must the little Christian boy do when he finds
tares in the field of his heart? What must the little Christian
girl do when she finds tares in God's Kingdom in her heart?
I think the best thing to do is to look up to Jesus

instantly, and ask Him to conquer the great enemy for you.
Say the Holy name Jesus softly to yourself, or out loud if
you are alone, Satan, our great enemy, will run away, you
will surely find.
He was named JESUS (which means Victory).
"For He shall save His people from their sins."
XXVIII. The Prodigal Son
There was a man who had two sons. He loved them

both very much, and did everything he could to make them
happy.
But the younger son was restless, and got tired of being
quietly at home. He had heard something about the world
outside, and he thought it must be a very fine place by all
accounts.
So one day he asked his father to divide what he had to

leave to him and his brother, so that he might do as he liked
with his share of it.
Not many days after, the younger son took his journey
into a far country, and as he had no one there to guide him,
and as he did not heed the advice of his dear father, he
began to waste his money and get into evil ways.
Very soon he had spent all his father had given him,
and had nothing left in his purse.
Up to this time he had thought he could do very well

without his father, but now he began to be in want. It was
so hard to be hungry, to find his clothes get ragged, and for
his companions to forsake him. And it made him sad and
afraid when he remembered that he had no house to sleep
in, and no friends near.
By and by a farmer took pity on him, and hired him to

go and feed his pigs; and he was so hungry that he could
almost have eaten the pigs' food. But no one gave him
anything.
At last as he sat dejectedly watching the pigs, he came

to himself! He began to remember his dear home and his
father's love. He no longer prided himself on what he could
do, and what he could buy. He saw his behaviour in its true
light. He told himself that he had been very naughty and
very disobedient, and he began to be sorry.
And when he came to himself he said, "How many of

my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare,
and I, his son, am dying of hunger! I will arise and go to my
father, and tell him I have sinned, and ask him to make me
one of his servants."
So he got up to go to his father.
His father had been very sad all the time his boy had
been away. His heart had ached terribly, though his son had
never thought of that.
Every day he looked out for his lost one, and watched
for him along the roads and over the mountains till it grew
too dark to see.
But one day, when the son was yet a great way off, his
father saw him coming! Then the dear father ran to meet
him, and fell on his neck and kissed him.
And the son said, "Father, I have sinned before Heaven

and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy
son—"
But he could not get any further than that in what he

meant to say! For his father's arms were round him, and his
father's voice was saying in the old familiar tones, "Bring
hither the best robe, and put it on him! And put a ring on
his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring here the fatted
calf and let us make a feast; for this my son was dead, and
is alive again; he was lost, and is found!"
Children, we have here a picture of the way our loving

Heavenly Father welcomes back those who have wandered
from Him.
His heart is full of love; He grieves that we want to take

our own way, and go far-off from Him.
But if we are sorry, and come back to His loving arms,

we shall find that they will open to receive us; He will put
the best robe upon us, and He will prepare a feast for us;
and there shall be joy in the presence of the angels of God
over one sinner repenting!
Do you want to know what the "best robe" means?

It is the Robe of Christ's righteousness. For Christ's
sake, who has shed His precious blood to make us clean
and white, we can be dressed in that perfect robe; and then
we shall be fit to join in the feast and the rejoicings, which
are coming by and by in heaven.
XXIX. The Pharisee and the Publican
Two men were wending their way towards God's Temple

at Jerusalem, a Pharisee and a Publican.
There, on a hill, stood the beautiful building with its

white marble pillars glistening in the sun; and as they
walked along the hot roads towards God's House, their
thoughts were very different.
They knew that God's Holy Presence was in that Temple

to which they were going, and one of them thought with
awe that he would soon be in the place where he would
meet with God.
The other man was thinking entirely about himself, and

nothing at all about God.
So they ascended the many steps leading up into the

Temple, and at last stood within the Sacred House.
* * * * *
And then the Pharisee thought of how he understood all
about God's law, and how he did not need anyone to teach
him what was written in the Scriptures.
But he did not know two things which would have made
him a different man—he did not know his own heart, and he
did not know God's heart.
He did not know that his own heart was full of pride and
love of self; he did not know that God's heart was full of
pity and tender love towards sinful men who came to Him
to be forgiven.
So the Pharisee began to pray. And when the Lord Jesus

told us this story about him, He said "he stood and prayed
thus with himself."
But he began his prayer like this:—
"God! I thank thee that I am not like other men! I am

not one who exacts more than I should from others; I am
not unjust or impure; or even like this Publican. I fast twice
in every week, and I give tithes of everything I have."
Then the Pharisee, having finished his prayer, went

down once more to his home.
He had not seen the vision of God! He had not come

near to Him, nor waited to receive the answer to his words.
He did not even know what he had missed!
* * * * *
And the other man who went up to pray was the

Publican.
He was a collector of the Roman taxes; and because of
the frequent cheating of these publicans, they were hated
by the Jews.
It was a calling which gave great opportunities for

dishonesty, and when some of the Jews, for the sake of
gain, engaged in it, they were despised and called traitors.
So this Publican, whom our Lord Jesus told about in this

story, was evidently a Jew, as he among other Jews "went
up into the Temple to pray."
And when he entered God's House, there stood the

Pharisee praying; but the Publican, standing afar off, not full
of his own good deeds, but feeling ashamed of his own
sinfulness, would not even lift up his eyes to Heaven, but
smote his breast saying:
"God be merciful to me, a sinner!"
* * * * *
And our Lord turned to those who were listening to Him

and said, "I tell you, this Publican went down to his house
justified, rather than the other."
Do you wonder what it is to be justified? Should we not

all like, when we have been naughty, or have done wrong,
to know that we may go down, like the Publican did to his
house, justified?
It means, I think, for a person to realise that some one

greater and richer than himself has undertaken to set him
free from his debt.
It means that we have come to God and told Him that
we are very sorry we have been naughty, and have asked
Him to have mercy upon us, and to forgive us for Jesus'
sake.
When we have done that, we may, indeed, like the

Publican, go away "justified."
Perhaps some boy gets into trouble at school, and owes

something to another boy, which he has no means of
paying.
So the boy who owes the money goes to his father. He

knows he has done wrong, but he tells his father all about
it, and asks him to help him. And the loving father sees to it
all for him, and pays the debt.
The school-fellows know nothing about this, but they

have heard about the debt, and they whisper to each other,
and jeer when the boy comes near.
But to their surprise, he raises his head now! "My father

has paid," he says, with shining eyes.
I think that is being "justified."
* * * * *
And it seems to me that that was how the Publican felt,

when he had told God he was a sinner, and had asked for
His mercy.
He went home happy, and forgiven!

GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME, A SINNER!
Here is a comforting promise for us all—
"This is a faithful saying . . . that Christ Jesus came into

the world to save sinners!"
XXX. An Uninvited Guest
One day the Lord Jesus was invited to dinner by a rich

man whose name was Simon.
Perhaps this rich man asked Jesus to dinner because he

wished to see Him do some miracle—something wonderful
which no one else could do; or he may have imagined that
people would think more of himself if he had Jesus for a
guest; at any rate, by what we read afterwards, I am afraid
Simon the Pharisee did not invite Jesus because he loved
Him.
But there was somebody present at that feast who did

love Jesus, but she was not invited.
In Eastern lands the houses are not shut up like our

houses, but because it is so warm, the dining-rooms are
often open to the air on one or two sides, or people take
their meals in the cool shady courtyards.
When a great man makes a feast, people hear of it, and

come round the house to look at what is going on.
In the city there lived a poor sinful and sorrowful

woman who had learned to love the Lord Jesus: perhaps
she had heard Him say these loving words, "Come unto Me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest."
When this sorrowful woman heard that Jesus was gone

to dinner at the Pharisee's house, she brought a little box
made of alabaster, which was filled with some very sweet-
smelling ointment, and she made her way into the open
dining-hall, and when she saw where the Lord was sitting or
reclining, as the custom was, on a sort of couch to the
table, she came up, and stood behind Him!
And as she stood there and thought of all His love and
compassion, she began to weep, and her tears fell down
over His feet as He reclined at the table.
Then she wiped His feet with her hair, and anointed
them with the sweet ointment.
But the Pharisee who had invited the Lord Jesus looked
on with anger. He thought if Jesus were a great teacher, He
would not have allowed a woman from the city to come and
wash His feet with her tears.
But Jesus knows all our hearts, and He could see that
the poor woman loved Him so much that she would go away
and try never to grieve Him any more.
By and by He turned to Simon, and told him to look at

this woman and compare her love with his.
Jesus said words something like this: "Simon, I was

tired and dusty with my journey when I came in, and you
did not give me water to bathe my feet, but she has washed
my feet with tears; you did not offer me a kiss, but this
woman has not ceased to kiss my feet; you did not anoint
my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with
precious ointment. She has loved me very much, because I
have forgiven her very much."
And turning to the woman, Jesus said to her, "Thy sins

are forgiven; . . . go in peace."
Oh, the joy of hearing Jesus say those words!

And we may have that joy too, if we come to Him with
humble loving heart, and tell Him that we are sorry.
He never turns anyone away who comes to Him; so,

dear little children, let us trust His loving heart, and though
we know we are very unworthy, do not let us stay away for
that, for Jesus longs that we may be forgiven, and so be
able to go away "in peace."
XXXI. The Barren Fig Tree
"Nothing but Leaves"
I have seen a picture of a fig tree, and I want to

describe it to you, that we may understand a little about
one of our Lord's Parables.
There are a great many Parables in the New Testament:

they are word-pictures to teach us God's great lessons.
At school your teacher has a large blackboard, and

sometimes she sketches an object, and explains it to you,
does she not?
One day she drew a cracked cup, the crack of which

grew wider under her clever fingers, and she turned round
and said to her class, "Is this cup of any use?" And there
were plenty of "No's" from all over the room; but one child
ventured "Perhaps it could be mended!"
And then the teacher gave a bright look, and she said,
"Yes, Charlie, you are right! And so are the others with their
'No's' all over the room. For unless the cup is mended, it is
of no use. The cup is a picture of our characters! If there is
a flaw in them, a crack that gets wider and wider, then the
cup is of no use, is it?"
"It might be thrown away!" ventured another child.
"Yes," said the teacher; "but, if it could be mended—as

Charlie said—then it could be used again. So what must we
do, Charlie?"
She turned her face to the little boy, and a smile came
over his features as he answered, "There's a china-mender
comes down our road every week—he could do it!"
And the teacher smiled back. Did Charlie know that he

had touched on a great truth? So she went on—
"Yes, we must 'have faith in God.' We must take our

cracked cups, and our faulty characters, to the Great
Mender, Jesus our Saviour, and ask Him to make us useful,
serviceable little Christians!"
So now, I am going to make an imaginary blackboard

and show you a branch of a fig tree!
Look at that fig growing out of the stalk; it is large, and

oblong, and plump, and it is firmly fixed to the big branch.
And then, above and below it are little sprouting leaves,

some just come out, some not yet burst from their little
buds; and soon the fruit, which is already ripe, will be
covered up by the leaves, as they grow larger and larger.
But suppose, when you lift the leaves, there is no fruit?
Then you come to the conclusion that the tree must be

a barren tree, and you turn away sorry and disappointed.
THE BARREN FIG TREE.

And this is a little word-picture of the barren fig tree,
about which our Lord gives us a Parable.
He was coming from Bethany, and it says He hungered.

Perhaps the Lord Jesus had been up all night praying to His
Father.
So, as He came near to the fig tree, He saw it was full

of leaves; but when He got close to it, He found there were
no figs under the leaves—it was barren.
And as He turned away He said, in the disciples'

hearing, "Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever."
Oh, how sad He was to have to say that!
And presently the fig tree withered away.
Just before this, the Lord came down the side of the
Mount of Olives, and in turning a corner of the steep path a
sight of the beautiful city of Jerusalem burst upon their
view. It says in the Gospel of Luke—
"And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and

wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at
least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy
peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes."
Jesus wept for all the sorrow that was coming on the
beloved city, and because the Jews would not have Him as
their Saviour.
This was indeed like the fig tree, which had leaves, but
no fruit.
The Jews ought to have known from their own

Scriptures of the Old Testament, which they read every
Sabbath, that on this very day it was foretold in the Book of
Nehemiah, and also in Daniel and Zechariah, that the
Messiah was to enter Jerusalem as King, meek and lowly,
and riding on an ass's colt.
They were proud of their knowledge, and of their

possession of God's Temple, and His Scriptures; but they
had not fruit under the leaves of their pride and unbelief.
They had even been plotting to kill Him. They had rejected
Him in their hearts, and in a few days' time they were going
to crucify Him!
The next day Jesus and His disciples passed by that fig
tree again, and it had begun to wither and dry up; and the
disciples said, "How soon is the fig tree withered!"
And the answer of our Lord must have astonished them.

"Have faith in God!" He said.
Now, like the teacher with the blackboard, I want to

gather up the lesson I have learned from this story—
Do not let our dear Lord, Who died for us, come and
look into our hearts and find no fruit, but only leaves!
How He must long to have us all we should be!
Do not let us be like the cracked and useless cup! But

let us go to the great Healer and Mender and Cleanser of
our poor characters, and ask Him to make us what He
would like to see us.
The only way to get "mended" and to bear fruit instead

of only leaves, is to go to Him Who died on the Cross to
save us, and to find in Him forgiveness, strength, and
peace.
XXXII. The Parable of the Talents
"What is a Talent?" perhaps some one asks.
A Talent in our Lord's time was a piece of money of

great value, of about £342, and in the story which Jesus
told the disciples, a Talent was described as something
precious which was given to the servants of a great lord, to
trade with, while he was on a long journey.
To one servant this lord gave ten Talents to trade with;

to another, five; to another, two; according to their several
ability; and to another, one.
And what do you think the servant who had only one
did with his Talent? He went away and digged in the earth,
and hid his lord's money!
Then the lord of those servants took his journey.
At length the time came for his return, and he called his
servants and reckoned with them.
The one who had traded with ten Talents brought ten
Talents more to his lord; and the man with five brought five
more; and the man with two brought two more. And the
lord was very pleased with these faithful servants, and said,
"Well done!" to each of them, and gave them great rewards.
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Research in Accounting Regulation Volume 15 Research in

Narrative and Consciousness Literature Psychology and the

A Dictionary of Accounting 3° Edition Gary Owen (Editor)

Advances in Accounting Volume 18 Advances in Accounting

Java Threads 3rd Edition Scott Oaks

Threads and Traces True False Fictive 1st Edition Carlo

Advances in Accounting Volume 19 Advances in Accounting

Beyond Narrative Coherence Studies in Narrative 11th

quilter & urton

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

JOE R. AND TERESA LOZANO LONG SERIES IN

EDITED BY JEFFREY QUILTER AND GARY URTON

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN

COPYRIGHT © 2002 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

FOR SARAH AND JULIA

PREFACE Jeﬀrey Quilter xiii

PART ONE BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY OF

ONE An Overview of Spanish Colonial

TWO Spinning a Yarn: Landscape, Memory,

PART TWO STRUCTURE AND INFORMATION

THREE A Khipu Information String Theory 53

FOUR Reading Khipu: Labels, Structure,

FIVE Inka Writing 103

PART THREE INTERPRETING CHRONICLERS’

SIX String Registries: Native Accounting and

SEVEN Woven Words: The Royal Khipu of

EIGHT Recording Signs in Narrative-Accounting

NINE Yncap Cimin Quipococ’s Knots 197

PART FOUR COLONIAL USES AND TRANSFORMATIONS

TEN ‘‘Without Deceit or Lies’’: Variable Chinu

ELEVEN Pérez Bocanegra’s Ritual formulario: Khipu

PART FIVE CONTEMPORARY KHIPU TRADITIONS

TWELVE Patrimonial Khipu in a Modern

THIRTEEN The Continuing Khipu Traditions: Principles

Color illustrations follow page 204.

PREFACE Jeﬀrey Quilter

In 1922, the founder of modern Mesoamerican iconographic research, Eduard

xiv Jeﬀrey Quilter

xvi Jeﬀrey Quilter

xviii Jeﬀrey Quilter

KHIPU AND QUECHUA NARRATIVES

Spanish colonial era (1532–1820s). In addition to simply informing the reader

Spanish Colonial Commentary 5

records. For both reasons noted above, then, it is important to be aware of

Spanish Colonial Commentary 7

1581). With his reforms of colonial administration and tribute collection, as

Spanish Colonial Commentary 9

tive/historical information on the khipu. As an example of the scope of his-

used a very subtle method of accounting of knotted strings of wool

It is important to note that, with the above commentary, Molina introduced

accounts of Inka history as opposed to the histories written in the Toledan

In the valley of Xauxa, I met on the road an old Indian carrying a

It is clear that such latter-day khipukamayuq, descendants of the oﬃcial rec-

Spanish Colonial Commentary 11

Spanish Colonial Commentary 13

. . . as the Incas had no knowledge of writing, they had to use what