The next objection is that rebellion is approved in the drama of _Ollantay_, and that such countenance would be impossible at a despotic court like that of the Yncas. The remark applies equally to the court of Spain. It may be admitted that the encouragement of rebellion as a principle would not be tolerated unless it eventually redounded to the credit of the sovereign. Successful rebellion was not unknown in Ynca history, and Yupanqui Pachacutec himself, the sovereign of the play, deposed his brother Urco, according to Cieza de Leon. That story would not be heard with displeasure. Nor would that of _Ollantay_, where the rebel is subdued, and where the magnanimity of the sovereign is celebrated.
The whole of the arguments of the General, based on internal evidence afforded by words and passages in the play, may be set aside, because none of the words upon which he relies as evidence of Spanish origin are to be found in the true version. The true version must be considered as that which excludes all words and passages which are not common to _all_ the older manuscripts. On this principle all the words relied upon by the General are corrupt readings which have crept in through the carelessness of copiers.[50]
General Mitré objects that the High Priest alludes to the broken thread of destiny, which is a strictly Greek image. He misunderstands the passage. The High Priest compares the consequence of the act, which will bring destruction on Ollantay, not with the thread of destiny entangled and severed, but with the wool and frame of a native weaving machine overturned and broken, a natural and indigenous figure suggested by things often before the speaker’s own eyes. The remainder of the General’s attack is occupied in efforts to find traces of old world ideas in _Ollantay_, most of his analogies being very far-fetched. There is a _yaravi_ or song, describing the beauty of the heroine, which the General compares with the Song of Solomon. The only resemblance is that both describe personal beauty by comparisons with the beauties of nature, and this is common to nearly all poetry. But General Mitré, by using Zegarra’s somewhat free translation, attributes figures to the song which it does not contain, such as a “countenance white and transparent as alabaster, bosoms as white as pieces of ice, cheeks like roses fallen on snow, eyebrows like bows sending forth burning and slaughter-dealing arrows, fingers like bolls of opening cotton.” There is nothing of all this in the authentic text. In the real song all the similes are strictly and essentially Quichuan. Her forehead is compared to _Quilla_, the moon; her eyes, not to arrows, but to two suns; her eyebrows to rainbows, the insignia of the Yncas. Her tresses are black, mixed with gold, just as the plaited hair of an Ynca princess is represented in an ancient picture at Cuzco. The bloom of her cheek is compared with the _achancaray_, a red flower peculiar to Peru; her bosoms, not to snow, but to the _utcu_ swelling out of the bolls, a simile which is also essentially Peruvian. These figures show that the _yaravi_ could not possibly have been composed anywhere but in the land where the _achancaray_ and the _utcu_ flourish within sight of the snows of the Andes. General Mitré objects to a copper-coloured beauty being praised for her fairness, and to her skin being compared with snow. The Ynca princesses, as we know from some ancient pictures and descriptions, were naturally much fairer than the common people, and this striking difference would as naturally lead to fairness of skin being prized, celebrated, exaggerated, and, by a poetical licence, compared with the fairest thing in the Peruvian landscape.