And now it is high time that we examined that religion which was so closely associated with the whole national life of Peru.
From all that I have said already, you will easily understand that the Sun has never been worshipped more directly or with more devotion than in Peru. It was he whom the Peruvians regarded as sovereign lord of the world, king of the heaven and the earth. His Peruvian name was Inti, "Light." The villages were usually built so as to look eastward, in order that the inhabitants might salute the supreme god as soon as he appeared in the morning. The most usual representation of him was a golden disk representing a human face surrounded by rays and flames. In Peru, as everywhere else, a feeling existed that there was a certain relation between the substance of gold and that of the great luminary. In the nuggets torn from the mountain sides they thought they saw the Sun's tears.[75] The great periodic fêtes of the year, the imperial and national festivals in which every one took part, were those held in honour of the Sun.
Immediately after him came his sister and consort the Moon, Mama Quilla. Her image was a disk of silver bearing human features, and silver played the same part in her worship that gold did in that of the Sun. It appears, however, that they performed fewer sacrifices to her than to her august consort, which is quite in harmony with the inferior position assigned to woman in the Peruvian civilization.[76] Like Selene amongst the Greeks, Mama Quilla, and her incarnation in human form, Mama Ogllo, were weavers. And that is why the latter was said to have taught the Peruvian women the art of spinning and weaving. This is a mythological conception suggested by likening the moonbeams to twisted threads, out of which on fair clear nights the brilliant verdure in which the earth is clad is spun.
But before going on to the gods who form the usual retinue of these two official and imperial deities, I must speak of two great Peruvian gods whose worship was likewise widely spread, but who nevertheless are not attached to the solar family, or at least are only so attached by an after-thought and by dint of harmonizing efforts which the Incas had their motives of policy for favouring: I mean the two great deities, Viracocha and Pachacamac.
The myth of Viracocha is the first instance we shall cite of traces of a certain civilization prior to the Incas, or at any rate of a belief widely spread in some parts of Peru that civilization had not really been, as the legend of the Incas would have it, the sole work of that sacerdotal family. The name of Viracocha must be very ancient, for it became a generic name to signify divine beings. It was given to Manco Capac himself as a title of honour, and the Spaniards on their arrival passed as Viracochas in the eyes of the people. This name, according to Spanish authorities, followed by Prescott,[77] signifies Foam of the sea or of the lake. This would make the deity a male Aphrodite. He was represented with a long beard, and human victims were sacrificed to him. At the same time, they said that he had neither flesh nor bone, that he ran swiftly, and that he lowered mountains and lifted up valleys. The following legend was told of him.[78]
There were men on the earth before the Sun appeared, and the temples of Viracocha, for instance, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, are older than the Sun. One day Viracocha rose out of the lake. He made the sun, the moon, the stars, and prescribed their course for them. Then he made stone statues, put life into them, and commanded them to go out of the caverns in which he had made them and follow him to Cuzco. There he summoned the inhabitants, and set a man over them called Allca Vica, who was the common ancestor of the Incas. Then he departed and disappeared in the water.
Evidently this myth belongs to a different body of tradition from that of the Incas. When it says that the earth was peopled before the Sun appeared, it is only a mythical way of asserting that there were men and even cities in Peru before the establishment of Sun-worship by the Incas. Now the latter claimed direct descent from the Sun, the supreme god, and they would not have readily allowed that this supreme deity had been made by another. One is rather tempted to find in this myth the echo of the claims put forward with equal resignation and persistency by a priesthood of Viracocha, that bowed its head before the supremacy acquired by the solar priesthood, but insisted all the same upon the fact that it was itself its elder brother.
But to what element can we affiliate the god Viracocha himself?
His aquatic name, Foam of the sea or lake, in itself leads us to suppose that he was closely related to the water. The supposition is confirmed by the saying that he had neither flesh nor bone, and yet ran swiftly. We can understand, too, why he lowers mountains and raises valleys. He rises from the water and disappears in it. He is bearded, like all aquatic gods, with their fringes of reeds. Finally, his consort and sister Cocha is the lake itself, and also the goddess of rain. An old Peruvian hymn that was chanted under the Incas, and has fortunately been preserved, raises the character we have assigned to Viracocha above all doubt.[79] The goddess Cocha is represented as carrying an urn full of water and snow on her head. Her brother Viracocha breaks the urn, that its contents may spread over the earth. Here is the hymn, which is composed in nineteen short verses or lines: