Chapter IV: 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.

Viracocha was usually represented as a god bearded with water-rushes, and this hirsute adornment is so far significant in that it may have some connection with the older legends of the Peruvians which tell of a white and bearded race which advanced to Cuzco, the centre of civilisation, from the regions of Lake Titicaca. He is also spoken of as being without flesh or bone, yet swift in movement, and this description does not leave us long in doubt as to his real nature. He was the water-god, the fertiliser of all plant life. In the somewhat arid country surrounding Lake Titicaca that great body of water would undoubtedly come to be regarded as the generator of all fertility to be found in its vicinity. Hence Viracocha's origin. His consort was his sister Cocha, the lake itself. He, like Tlaloc among the Mexicans, had a penchant for human sacrifice, but his worship was by no means so sanguinary as was that of his Mexican prototype.

We must then regard Viracocha as the god of a faith anterior to the sun-worship which obtained in Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest. But we shall also be forced to admit that Pachacamac (whose name we bracketed with that of Viracocha a few paragraphs back), although a member of the Peruvian pantheon and a great god, was but there on sufferance. The name Pachacamac signifies 'earth-generator,' and the primitive centres of the worship of this deity were in the valleys of Lurin and Rimac, near the city of Lima. In the latter once stood a great temple to Pachacamac, the ruins of which, alone, now remain. Pachacamac would seem to have borne the reputation of a great civiliser, and to some extent he usurped the claims of Viracocha to this honour. Viracocha, so runs the legend, was defeated by him in combat, and fled, whereupon the victor created a new world more to his liking by the simple expedient of transferring the race of men then upon earth into wild animals, and creating a new and higher humanity. He was also a god of fertility, as on the remains of his temples fishes are to be found evidently symbolising this attribute.

The hostility of Pachacamac and Viracocha has a mythical significance. Pachacamac was the god of volcanoes, earthquakes, and subterranean fire, and was therefore hostile to water. His worship was much more mysterious than that of Viracocha. The Peruvians, in fact, regarded Pachacamac as a dreaded and unseen deity, at whose mutterings in the centre of the earth they prostrated themselves in dread. Rimac, indeed, where the worship of this god had its focus, means 'the speaker,' 'the murmurer,' and a kind of oracular character appears ultimately to have been associated with the name of this terrible deity, who on occasion demanded to be appeased by human sacrifice.

The myth of Pacari Tambo, the 'house of the dawn,' a legend of the Collas, a tribe of mountaineers dwelling to the south-west of Cuzco, throws some light on this strife between Viracocha and Pachacamac. Four brothers and sisters (runs the legend) issued one day from the caverns of Pacari Tambo. The eldest ascended a mountain, and cast stones to all the cardinal points of the compass to show that he had taken possession of the land. The other three were averse to this, especially the youngest, who was the most cunning of all. By dint of persuasion he managed to get the obnoxious brother to enter a cave. As soon as he had done so he closed the mouth of the cave with a great stone, and imprisoned him there for ever. He then, on pretence of seeking his lost brother, persuaded the second to ascend a high mountain, from which he cast him, and, as he fell, by dint of magic art changed him into a stone. The third brother, having no desire to share the fate of the other two, then fled. The first brother appears to be the oldest religion, that of Pachacamac; the second, that of an intermediate fetishism, or stone worship; and the third, Viracocha. The fourth is the worship of the Sun, pure and simple, the youngest brother, but the victor over the other older faiths of the land. This is proved by the circumstance that the name applied to the youngest brother is Pirrhua Manca, an equivalent to that of Manco Capac, the Son of the Sun.

This, however, does not altogether tally with what might be called the 'official' legend, the myth promulgated by the Incas themselves. According to this the Sun had three sons, Viracocha, Pachacamac, and Manco Capac. This stroke of policy at once blended all three religions; but by another stroke of politic genius, the earthly power was vested in Manco Capac, the other two deities being placed in subordinate positions, where they were concerned chiefly with the workings of nature. To Manco Capac, and his representatives, the Incas, alone, was left the dominion of mankind.

We will now pass to a consideration of the minor deities of the Peruvian mythology. These were numerous, and had been mostly evolved from nature forces and natural phenomena. Among the more important was Chasca, the planet Venus, the 'long-haired,' the 'Page of the Sun.' Cuycha, the rainbow, was the servant of the sun and moon. He was represented in a private chapel of his own, contiguous to that of the Sun, by large plates of gold so fired as to represent the various colours in the prismatic hues of the rainbow. Fire, also, was an object of profound veneration with the Peruvians, derived, as it was believed to be, from the sun. Its preservation was scrupulously attended to in the Temple of the Sun and in the House of the Virgins of the Sun, of which an account will be found in the next chapter.

Catequil was the god of thunder. He is represented as possessing a club and sling, the latter evidently being intended to symbolise the thunderbolt. He was a servant of the Sun, and had three distinct forms--Chuquilla (thunder), Catuilla (lightning), and Intiallapa (thunderbolt). Temples were erected to him in which children and llamas were sacrificed at his altars. The Peruvians had, and still have, a great dread of thunder, and sought to pacify Catequil in every possible manner. Their children were sacred to him as the supposed offspring of the lightning.

We now descend gradually and almost insensibly in the scale of deism, until little by little we reach a condition of gross idolatry, not far removed from that still practised by many African tribes. Here we find even vegetables adored as symbols of sustenance. The potato was glorified under the appellation of acsumama, and the maize as saramama. Trees partook of divine attributes, and we seem to see in this condition of things a state analogous to the reverence paid by the early Greeks and Romans to Sylvanus and his train, and the vivification of trees by the presence within them of dryads.

Certain animals were treated with much reverence by the Peruvians. Thus we find the serpent, especially Urcaguay, the keeper of subterranean gold, an object of great veneration. The condor or vulture of the Andes Mountains was the messenger or Mercury of the Sun, and he held the same place on the sceptre of the Incas as the eagle on the sceptre of the Emperor of Germany or Russia. Whales and sharks were also worshipped by the people who lived near the sea.

But in all this nature and animal worship it is difficult to detect a totemic origin.[6] The basis of totemism is the idea of blood-kinship with an animal or plant, which idea in the course of generations evolves into an exaggerated respect, and finally (under conditions favourable for development) into a full-blown mythology. At first it would appear as if the perfect organisation of the Peruvian state and its peculiar marriage laws had originated in a condition of totemism; but had totemism ever entered into the constitution of the Peruvian religion at any period of its development, it would have left as deep an impression upon it as it did in the case of the Egyptian religion--that is, some of the more important deities would have betrayed a totemic origin. That they betray an origin wholly naturalistic there is no room for doubt. And here the root difference between the Mexican and Peruvian mythologies may be pointed out--that although both systems had grown up from various constituents grouping themselves around the central worship of the Sun, the constituents of the Aztec religion were almost wholly totemic, whereas those of the Peruvian religion were naturalistic.[7]

But the factor of fetishism was not wanting in the construction of the Peruvian religion. All that was sacred, from the sun himself to the tomb of a righteous person, was _Huaca_, or sacred. The chief priest of Cuzco was designated Huacapvillac, or 'he who speaks with sacred beings,' but the principal use to which the term _Huaca_ was put was in reference to objects of metal, wood, and stone, which cannot be better described than as closely resembling those African fetishes so common in our museums. These differed considerably in size. The reverence for them was probably of prehistoric origin, and in this cultus we have the second brother whom Pirrhua Manca changed into a stone. They were believed by the Peruvians to be the veritable dwelling-places of spirits. Many of these Huacas were public property, and had gifts of flocks of llamas dedicated to them. The majority, however, were private property.

It will be necessary to mention one more deity. This is Supay, god of the dead, who dwelt in a dreary underworld. He was the Pluto of Peruvian mythology, and is usually portrayed as an open-mouthed monster of voracious appetite, into whose maw are thrown the souls of the departed.

For the study of the worship of old Peru the materials are less plentiful than in the case of the Mexican mythology. Stratum upon stratum of belief is discovered, like those in the ruins of some ancient city where each yard of earth holds the story of a dynasty. To the student of comparative religion an exhaustive study of the complex mythology of the ancient Peruvians offers an almost unparalleled opportunity for comparison with and elucidation of other mythologies, since in it the process of its evolution is exhibited with greater clearness than in the case of any other belief, ancient or modern.