5]

the same age and had similar careers. Torres was born

in 1557 in Spain, joined the Jesuits in 1572, and arrived
in Peru in 1579. He died there in 1637 or 1638 (Rivet
1951:71). In 1967 Mario (to be distinguished from
Alejandro) Franco Inojosa published a version of the
Torres Rubio Arte in modern Spanish, giving the Aymara

in Torres' original spellings followed by transcriptions
in the official Peruvian alphabet for Aymara and Quechua
adopted in 1946.

After the middle of the 17th century the early
fervor of missionary activity subsided and for the next
hundred years little was published in Aymara except
occasional sermons, few of which have survived. As
described by Tovar (1961:186-194) the alternating lin-
guistic policies of the Spanish conquerors help explain
the relative dearth of materials published in Aymara
between the second half of the 17th century and the
late 18th century. In 1550 it was decided to teach
the Indians in Spanish. As this attempt proved unsuc-
cessful, in 1583 the policy of using native languages
was adopted, stimulating the production of grammars and
religious texts in those languages. By 1596 the earlier
policy was reinstated over the missionaries’ objections.
The impasse was resolved in practice by the use of gen-
eral languages which at first included Aymara although

during the 17th century it gave way to Quechua. By the