PLATE XXXVII.
Vase painting of the sky-god, Tiahuanaco style, from Pachacamac. Compare Plates [XXXI], [XXXIV], [XXXV], [XXXVI]. After Baessler, Contributions to the Archaeology of the Empire of the Incas, Vol. IV, Plate CIV.
The tales are surely explanatory of the monuments; and in both we see the general outlines of the ancient Peruvian religion. Supreme in the pantheon was the great creator-god, High Heaven itself, Illa Tici Viracocha. Attendant upon this divinity (perhaps ancient doublets in some cases) was a group of two or three servants or sons, who were assuredly also celestial—Sun and Moon, or Sun and Moon and Morning Star, or Sun and Thunder (for in Peru bidentalia were everywhere). Tonapa (whom Markham regards as properly Conapa, "Heat-Bearing," and the same being as Coniraya) is the Peruvian equivalent of Quetzalcoatl and Bochica[145]—the robed and bearded white man, bearing a magic staff, who comes from the east and after teaching men the way of life, departs over the sea. It is no marvel that the first missionaries and their converts saw in this being, with his cruciform symbol, an apostle of their own faith who had journeyed by way of the Orient to preach the Gospel. Yet certainly it is no mere imagination to find another interpretation of the story—what better image could fancy suggest for the daily course of the sun than that of a bright-faced man, bearded with rays, mantled in light, transforming the world of darkness into a world of beauty and the domain of the concealed into a domain of things known, before his departure across the western waters, promising to return, or to send again his messengers of light, to renew the luminous mission? When the Spaniards came, bearded and white, in shining mail and weaponed with fire, the Indians beheld the embodied form of the mythic hero, and so they applied to them the name which, is still theirs for a white man—viracocha. In such devious ways have the faiths and the fancies of Earth's two worlds commingled.
What ground there is for the ascription of something approaching monotheism to the Peruvians centres in the sky-deity rather than in the Sun, whose cult under the Incas, to some extent replaced that of the elder supreme god. "No one can doubt," says Lafone Quevado,[146] "that Pachacamac and Viracocha were gods who correspond to our idea of a Supreme Being and that they were adored in America before the coming of Columbus; and it is logical to attribute to the same American soil the idea of such a conception, even when it occurs among the most savage tribes, since that simply presupposes an ethnic contact to which are opposed no insuperable difficulties of geography. The solar cult is farther from fetishism than is the idea of the Yahveh of the Jews from the solar cult: from this to the true God is a step, and the most savage nations of America found themselves surrounded by worshippers of the light of day."
V. THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN
The most striking feature of the Inca conquests is their professed motive—professed, that is, in Inca tradition, especially as represented by the writings of Garcilasso de la Vega—for the Incas proclaimed themselves apostles of a new creed and teachers of a new way of life; they were Children of the Sun, sent by their divine parent to bring to a darkened and barbarous world a purer faith and a more enlightened conduct. Garcilasso tells[147] how, when a boy, he inquired of his Inca uncle the origin of their race. "Know," said his kinsman, "that in ancient times all this region which you see was covered with forests and thickets, and the people lived like brute beasts without religion nor government, nor towns, nor houses, without cultivating the land nor covering their bodies, for they knew how to weave neither cotton nor wool to make garments. They dwelt two or three together in caves or clefts of the rocks, or in caverns under ground; they ate the herbs of the field and roots or fruit like wild beasts, and they also devoured human flesh; they covered their bodies with leaves and with the bark of trees, or with the skins of animals; in fine they lived like deer or other game, and even in their intercourse with women they were like brutes, for they knew nothing of cohabiting with separate wives.... Our Father, the Sun, seeing the human race in the condition I have described, had compassion upon them and from heaven he sent down to earth a son and daughter to instruct them in the knowledge of our Father, the Sun, that adoring Him, they might adopt Him as their God; and also to give them precepts and laws by which to live as reasonable and civilized men, and to teach them to dwell in houses and towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks, and to use the fruits of the earth as rational beings, instead of existing like beasts. With these commands and intentions our Father, the Sun, placed his two children in the lake of Titicaca, saying to them that they might go where they pleased and that at every place where they stopped to eat or sleep they were to thrust into the ground a sceptre of gold which was half a yard long and two fingers in thickness, giving them this staff as a sign and a token that in the place where, by one blow on the earth, it should sink down and disappear, there it was the desire of our Father, the Sun, that they should remain and establish their court. Finally He said to them: 'When you have reduced these people to our service, you shall maintain them in habits of reason and justice by the practice of piety, clemency, and meekness, assuming in all things the office of a pious father toward his beloved and tender children; for thus you will form a likeness and reflection of me. I do good to the whole world, giving light that men may see and do their business, making them warm when they are cold, cherishing their pastures and crops, ripening their fruits and increasing their flocks, watering their lands with dew and bringing fine weather in proper season. I take care to go around the earth each day that I may see the necessities that exist in the world and supply them, as the sustainer and benefactor of the heathen. I desire that you shall imitate this example as my children, sent to earth solely for the instruction and benefit of these men who live like beasts; and from this time I constitute and name you as kings and lords over all the tribes that you may instruct them in your rational works and government.'"
Viewed as theology, this utterance is remarkable. Even if it be taken (as perhaps it should be) rather as an excuse for conquests made than as their veritable pretext, the story still reflects an advanced stage of moral thinking, since utterly barbarous races demand no such justification for seizing from others what they desire; and in this broader scope the successors of Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo soon interpreted their liberal commission. The third Inca, Lloque Yupanqui, decided, Garcilasso says,[148] that "all their policy should not be one of prayer and persuasion, but that arms and power should form a part, at least with those who were stubborn and pertinacious." Having assembled an army, the Inca crossed the border, and entering a province called Cana, he sent messengers to the inhabitants, "requiring them to submit to and obey the child of the Sun, abandoning their own vain and evil sacrifices, and bestial customs"—a formula that became thenceforth the Inca preliminary to a declaration of war. The Cana submitted, but, the chronicler says, when he passed to the province of Ayaviri, the natives "were so stubborn and rebellious that neither promises, nor persuasion, nor the examples of the other subjugated aborigines were of any avail; they all preferred to die defending their liberty." And so fell many a province, after vainly endeavouring to protect its native gods, as the realm of the Incas grew, always advancing under the pretext of religious reform, the mandate of the Sun.