The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 11: Latin-American

by Hartley Burr Alexander

But while the extension of the solar cult was made the excuse for the creation of an empire, it was more than a political device; for the Incas called themselves "children of the Sun" in the belief that they were directly descended from this deity and under his special care. Molina[149] tells of an adventure which he ascribes to Inca Yupanqui, meaning, apparently, Pachacuti, the greatest of the Incas. While, as a young man, the Inca prince was journeying to visit his father, Viracocha Inca, he passed a spring in which he saw a piece of crystal fall, wherein appeared the figure of an Indian. From the back of his head issued three very brilliant rays, even as those of the Sun; serpents were twined round his arms, and on his head there was a llautu [the fringe, symbol of the sun's rays, worn on the forehead by the Incas as token of royalty] like that of the Inca. His ears were bored, and ear-pieces, resembling those used by the Incas, were inserted; he was also dressed in the manner of the Inca. The head of a lion came from between his legs, and on his shoulders there was another lion whose legs appeared to join over the shoulders of the man; while, furthermore, a sort of serpent was twined about his shoulders. This apparition said to the youth: "Come hither, my son, and fear not, for I am the Sun, thy father. Thou shalt conquer many nations; therefore be careful to pay great reverence to me and remember me in thy sacrifices." The vision vanished, but the piece of crystal remained, "and they say that he afterward saw in it everything he wanted." The solar imagery and the analogy of this figure, with its lions and serpents, to the monumental representations of celestial deities, are at once apparent; and there is, too, in the tale, with its prophecy and its crystal-gazing more than a suggestion of the fast in the wilderness by which the North American Indian youth seeks a revelation of his personal medicine-helper, or totem. The Incas all had such personal tutelaries. That of Manco Capac was said to have been a falcon, called Inti; and the word came to mean the Sun itself in its character as deity—or, perhaps, as tutelary of the Inca clan, since the name Inti appears in the epithets applied to the "brothers" of more than one later Inca. Serpents, birds, and golden images were forms of these totemic familiars, each buried with the body of the Inca to whom it had pertained.

Just as individuals had their personal Genii of this character, so each clan had for ancestor its Genius, or tutelary, which might be a star, a mountain, a rock, or a spring. The Sun was such a Genius of the Incas, and it came to be an ever greater deity as Inca power spread by very reason of the growing importance of their clan; while its recognition by members of allied and conquered septs came to be demanded very much, we may suppose, as the cultic acknowledgement of the Genius of the Roman Emperor was required in expression of loyalty to the reigning race.

The Inca pantheon was not narrow.[150] Besides the ancestral deities, there were innumerable huacas—sacred places, oracles, or idols—and whole classes of nature-powers; the generative Earth (Pacha Mama) and "mamas" of plant and animal kinds; meteorological potencies, especially the Rainbow and Thunder and Lightning, conceived as servants of the Sun; and, in the heaven itself, the Moon and the Constellations, by which the seasons were computed. Remote over all was the heaven-god and creator, Viracocha, with respect to whom the Sun itself was but a servitor. Salcamayhua declares that Manco Capac had set up a plate of fine gold, oval in shape, "which signified that there was a Creator of heaven and earth." Mayta Capac renewed this image—despising, tradition said, all created objects, even the highest, such as men and the sun and moon—and "he caused things to be placed round the plate, which I have shown that it may be perceived what these heathen thought." In illustration Salcamayhua gives a drawing which many authorities regard as the key to Peruvian mythology. At the top is a representation of the Southern Cross, the pole of the austral heavens. Below this is the oval symbol of the Creator, on one side of which is an image of the Sun, with the Morning Star beneath, while opposite is the Moon above the Evening Star. Under these is a group of twelve signs—a leaping puma, a tree, "Mama Cocha," a chart of this mountainous Earth surmounted by a rainbow and serving as source for a river into which levin falls, a group of seven circles called "shining eyes," and other emblems—the whole representing, so Stansbury Hagar argues, the Peruvian zodiac. Salcamayhua goes on to say that Huascar placed an image of the Sun in the place where the symbol of the Creator had been, and it was as thus altered that the Spaniards found the great Temple of the Sun at Cuzco.

It would appear, indeed, that the action of Huascar was only a final step in the rise of the solar cult to pre-eminence in Peru. Doubtless the sun had been a principal deity from an early period, but its close relation to the Inca clan made it progressively more and more important, so that by the time of the coming of the Spaniards it had risen, as a national divinity, to a position analogous to that of Ashur in the later Assyrian empire. Meantime the older heaven-god, Viracocha, presumably the tutelary of the pre-Inca empire and of Tiahuanaco, had faded into obscurity. To be sure, there was a temple to this god in Cuzco (so Molina and Salcamayhua attest); but to the Sun there were shrines all over the land, with priests and priestesses; while Cuzco was the centre of a magnificent imperial cult, the sanctuary honoured by royalty itself and served not only by the sacerdotal head of all Inca temple-service, a high priest of blood royal, but also by hundreds of devoted Virgins of the Sun, who, like the Roman Vestals, kept an undying fire on the altars of the solar god.

Yet Viracocha was not forgotten, even by the Incas who subordinated him officially to the Sun; and few passages in American lore are more striking than are the records of Inca doubt as to the Sun's divinity and power. Molina says of that very Inca to whom the vision of the crystal appeared that "he reflected upon the respect and reverence shown by his ancestors to the Sun, who worshipped it as a god; he observed that it never had any rest, and that it daily journeyed round the earth; and he said to those of his council that it was not possible that the Sun could be the God who created all things, for if he was, he would not permit a small cloud to obscure his splendour; and that if he was creator of all things, he would sometimes rest, and light up the whole world from one spot. Thus, it cannot be otherwise but there is someone who directs him, and this is the Pacha-yachachi, the Creator." Garcilasso (quoting Blas Valera) states that the Inca Tupac Yupanqui likened the Sun rather to a tethered beast or to a shot arrow than to a free divinity, while Huayna Capac is credited with a similar judgement. In the prayers recorded by Molina, Viracocha is supreme, even over the Sun; and these petitions, it must be supposed, represent the deepest conviction of Inca religion.

VI. LEGENDS OF THE INCAS

Stories of Inca origins, as told by the chroniclers, present a certain confusion of incident that probably goes back to the native versions. There are obviously historical narratives mingled with clearly mythic materials and influencing each other. The islands of Titicaca and the ruins of Tiahuanaco appear as the source of remote provenance of the Incas; a place called Paccari-Tampu ("Tavern of the Dawn"), not far from Cuzco, and the mysterious hill of Tampu-Tocco ("Tavern of the Windows") are recorded as sites associated with their more immediate rise; yet as Manco Capac is associated with both origins, and as the narratives pertaining to both contain cosmogonic elements, the tales give the impression of blending and duplication.

PLATE XXXVIII.

"Temple of the three Windows," Machu Picchu. Windows are not a frequent feature of Inca architecture, and when Bingham discovered at Machu Picchu the temple with three conspicuous windows, here shown, this discovery seemed to give added plausibility to the theory that Machu Picchu is indeed the Tampu-Tocco of the Incas. See pages [248] ff. and compare Plate [XXX]. From photograph, courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale Peruvian Expedition.