THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT PERUVIANS
The civilisation of the Ancient Peruvians, although in many ways analogous to that of the Aztecs, was strangely dissimilar in some of its aspects. The peoples of the two empires were totally unaware of each other's existence, and were divided by dense tracts of mountain, plain, and forest, where the most intense savagery prevailed. It seems probable that the Peruvian culture had its origin in the region of Lake Titicaca, and that it was of an indigenous character admits of little doubt. Like the Mexicans, the Peruvians had displaced an older civilisation and an older race. What was the nature of that civilisation, and thanks to what people it flourished, it is at present impossible to say. Scattered over the surface of the Peruvian slope are Cyclopean ruins, the sole remnants of the works of a more primeval people. These ruins are chiefly to be found in the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca and Cuzco, the ancient metropolis of the Incas. Whatever may have been the architectural ability of this ancient people, the usurpers had little to learn from them in this respect, or, more strictly speaking, having borrowed their methods, continued faithful to them. The temples and mansions of the Peruvians were massive and handsome, but for the most part covered only with a thatch of Indian maize straw. They made long, straight, macadamised roads which they pushed with surprising engineering skill through tunnelled mountains, spanning seemingly impassable gorges with marvellously constructed bridges. The temples and the palaces of the Incas were adorned with gold and silver ornaments of fabulous value and skilful design. Sumptuous baths, supplied with hot and cold water by means of pipes laid in the earth, were to be found in the houses of the aristocracy, and a high state of comfort and luxury prevailed.
To describe the social polity of the Peruvians is to describe their religion, for the two were one and the same. The empire of Peru was the most absolute theocracy the world has ever seen, much more absolute, for example, than that of Israel under the Judges. The Inca was the direct representative of the sun upon earth. He was the head, the very keystone of a socio-religious edifice to equal which in intricacy of design and organisation the entire history of man has no parallel to offer.
The Inca was the head of a colossal bureaucracy which had ramifications into the very homes of the people themselves. Thus after the Inca came the governors of provinces, who were of the blood-royal; then officials were placed above ten thousand families, a thousand families, a hundred, and even ten families, upon the principle that the rays of the sun enter everywhere. Personal freedom was a thing unknown. Each individual was under direct surveillance, as it were, branded and numbered like the herds of llamas which were the special property of the sun incarnate, the Inca. Rules and regulations abounded in a manner unheard of even in police-ridden Prussia, and no one had the opportunity in this vast social machine of thinking or acting for himself. His walk in life was marked out for him from the time he was five years of age, and even the woman he was to marry was selected for him by the responsible officials; the age at which he should enter the matrimonial state being fixed at not earlier than twenty-four years in the case of a man and eighteen in that of a woman. Even the place of his birth was indicated by a coloured ribbon (which he dared not remove) tied round his head.
The Peruvian legend of the coming to earth of the sun-race, of whom the Inca was held to be the direct descendant, told how two beings, Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo or Oullo, the offspring of the Sun and Moon, descended from heaven in the region of Lake Titicaca. They had received commands from their parent, the sun-god, to traverse the country until they came to a spot where a golden wedge they possessed should sink into the ground, and at this place to found a culture-centre. The wedge disappeared at Cuzco, which Garcilasso el Inca de la Vega (the most important of the ancient chroniclers of Peru) interprets as meaning 'navel,' or, in twentieth-century idiom, 'Hub of the Universe,' but which possibly possesses a more exact rendering in the words 'cleared space.'
The city founded, Manco Capac instructed the men in the arts of civilisation, and his consort busied herself in teaching the women the domestic virtues, as weaving and spinning. Leaving behind them as earthly representatives their son and daughter, they reascended to heaven, and from the children they left upon earth the race of Incas was said to have sprung. Thus it was that all Peruvian monarchs must marry their sisters, as it was not permissible to defile the offspring of the blood of the Son by mortal union—the breaking of which law assisted in the ruin of the Peruvian empire.
Like the Mexicans, the Peruvians appear to have acknowledged the existence of a Supreme Being. The attributes of this Supreme Being, through the fostering care of a special cultus, soon developed the rank of deities, each having a strongly marked identity.
The most important individual deities next to the Sun were Viracocha and Pachacamac, and these, curiously enough, were deities who had been admitted to the Peruvian pantheon from a still older faith.
The name Viracocha was, besides being the specific appellation of a certain deity, a generic name for divine beings. It signifies 'Foam of the Water,' thus alluding to the legend that the god had arisen out of the depths of Lake Titicaca. On his appearance from the sacred waters Viracocha created the sun, moon, and stars, and mapped out for them the courses which they were to hold in the heavens. He then created men carved out of stone statues made by himself, and bade them follow him to Cuzco. Arrived there he collected the inhabitants, and placed over them one, Allca Vica, who subsequently became the ancestor of the Incas. He then returned into Lake Titicaca, into the waters of which he disappeared.
It is evident that this legend clashes strongly with that of the solar origin of the Incas, and it would seem to have been put forward by a rival priesthood which had survived the introduction of solar worship, but which was not powerful enough to combat it.