All
that we know about the customs of Guatemalans points to the conclusion
that Dr. Stoll was right in declaring that they had no notion of true
love.
IV. Of the Peruvian expressions relating to love in the comprehensive
sense of the word, Dr. Brinton specifies five. Of one of them,
_munay_, there were, according to Dr. Anchorena, nearly six hundred
combinations. It meant originally "merely a sense of want, an
appetite, and the accompanying desire to satisfy it." In songs
composed in the nineteenth century _cenyay_, which originally meant
pity, is preferred to _munay_ as the most appropriate term for the
love between the sexes. The blind, unreasoning, absorbing passion is
expressed by _huaylluni_, which is nearly always confined to sexual
love, and "conveys the idea of the sentiment showing itself in action
by those sweet signs and marks of devotion which are so highly prized
by the loving heart." The verb _lluyllny_ (literally to be soft or
tender, as fruit) means to
"love with tenderness, to have as a darling, to caress
lovingly. It has less of sexuality in it than the word last
mentioned, and is applied by girls to each other and as a
term of family fondness."
There was also a term, _mayhuay_, referring to words of tenderness or
acts of endearment which may be merely simulated signs of emotion.
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