With the Peruvians each month had its appropriate festival. The solstices and equinoxes were of course the occasions of the most remarkable of these, and four times a year the feast of Raymi or the dance was celebrated with all the pomp and circumstance of which this strange and bizarre civilisation was capable. The most important of these was held in June, when nine days were given up to the celebration of the Citoc Raymi, or gradually increasing sun. For three days previous to this event all fasted, and no fire might be kindled in any house. On the fourth great day the Inca, accompanied in procession by his court and the people, who followed en masse, proceeded to the great square to hail the rising sun. The scene must have been one of intense brilliance. Clad in their most costly robes, and sheltered beneath canopies of cunning feather-work in which the gay plumage of tropical birds was æsthetically arranged, the vast crowd awaited the rising of the sun in eager silence. When he came, shouts of joy and triumph broke from the multitude, and the cries of delight were swelled by the crash of wild melody from a thousand instruments. Louder and louder arose the joyous tumult, until topping the eastern mountains the luminary shone in full splendour on his worshippers. The riot of sound culminated in a mighty pæan of thanksgiving. Libations of maguey, or maize-spirit, were made to the deity, after first having touched the sacred lips of the Inca. Then marshalling itself once more in order of procession, all pressed with one accord to the golden Temple of the Sun, where black llamas were sacrificed, and a new fire kindled by means of a concave mirror. Divested of their sandals the Inca and his suite spent some time in prayer. Occasionally a human victim—a maiden or a beautiful child—was offered up in sacrifice, but happily this was a rare occurrence, and only took place on great public occasions, such as a coronation, or the celebration of a national victory. These sacrifices never ended in cannibal feasts, as did those of the Aztecs. Grain, flowers, animals, and aromatic gums were the usual sacrificial offerings of the Peruvians.
The Citua Raymi was the festival of the spring, and fell in September. It was known as the Feast of Purification. The country must be purified from pestilence, and to secure this, round cakes, kneaded in the blood of children, were eaten. To secure this blood the children were merely bled above the nose, and not slaughtered, as with the more ferocious Aztecs—almost an example of the substitution of the part for the whole. These cakes were also rubbed upon the doorways, and the people smeared them all over their bodies as a preventive against disease. The circuit of the state of Cuzco was then made by relays of armed Incas, who planted their spears on the boundaries as talismans against evil. A torchlight procession followed, after which the torches were cast into the river as symbolic of the destruction of evil spirits.
The festival of the Aymorai, or harvest, fell in May, when a statue made of corn was worshipped under the name of Pirrhua, who seems to be an admixture of Manco Capac and Viracocha in his rôle of fertiliser. The fourth great festival, Capac Raymi, fell in December, when the thunder-god shared the honours paid to the Sun. It was then that the younger generation of Incas after a vigorous training received an honour equivalent to that of knighthood.
The Peruvians possessed a fully developed conventual system. A number of maidens, selected for their beauty and their birth, were dedicated to the deity as 'Virgins of the Sun.' Under the guidance of mamacones, or matrons, these maidens were instructed in the nature of their religious duties, which chiefly consisted in the weaving of priestly garments and temple-hangings. They also watched over the sacred fire which had been kindled at the feast of Raymi. No communication with the outside world was permitted to them, and detection in a love-affair meant living burial, the execution of the lover, and the entire destruction of the place of his birth. In the convent of Cuzco were lodged between one and two thousand maidens of the royal blood, and at a marriageable age these became brides of the Sun in his incarnate shape of the Inca, the most beautiful being selected for the harem of the monarch.
Sorcery and divination were frequently employed by the Peruvians, and the Huacarimachi, 'They who make the gods speak,' were held in great veneration by the ignorant masses. The oracles in the valleys of Lima and Rimac were much resorted to, and auguries of all descriptions were in popular favour.
The Peruvians were ignorant of morality as we appreciate the term. That they were, however, a most moral people there is every evidence. But as has been before pointed out, all crime was a direct offence against the majesty of the Inca, who, as viceroy of the Sun on earth, had been blasphemed by the breaking of his law. Under such a régime the true significance of sin was bound to be obscured, if not altogether lost. Terror took the place of conscience, and the necessity for implicit obedience gave no scope to the true moral sense—probably to the detriment of the entire community.
The political and religious history of Peru is unique in the annals of mankind, and its study offers a startling instance of what prolonged isolation may work in the mind of man. That the Peruvian mind, isolated in a remote part of the world as it was, was never wholly blind to the existence of a great and beneficent creative Power, the degradation of a cramping theocracy notwithstanding, is triumphant proof that the knowledge of that Power is a thing inalienable from the mind of man.
CHAPTER VI