and direction of affairs was organized in a very remarkable manner, well
calculated to consolidate the Inca's power. All the officials held their
authority from him, and represented him to the people, just as he
himself represented the Sun-god. At the bottom of the scale was an
official overseer for every ten families, next above an overseer of a
hundred families, then another placed over a thousand, and another over
ten thousand. Each province had a governor who generally belonged to the
family of the Incas. All this constituted a marvellous system of
surveillance and espionage, descending from the sovereign himself to the
meanest of his subjects, and founded on the principle that the rays of
the Sun pierce everywhere. The lowest members of this official
hierarchy, the superintendents of ten families, were responsible to
their immediate superiors for all that went on amongst those under their
charge, and those superiors again were responsible to the next above
them, and so on up to the Inca himself, who thus held the threads of the
whole vast net-work in the depths of his palace. It was another maxim of
the Peruvian state that every one must work, even old men and children.
Infants under five alone were excepted. It was the duty of the
superintendents of ten families to see that this was carried out
everywhere, and they were armed with disciplinary powers to chastise
severely any one who remained idle, or who ordered his house ill, or
gave rise to any scandal. Individual liberty then was closely
restrained. No one could leave his place of residence without leave. The
time for marriage was fixed for both sexes--for women at eighteen to
twenty, for men at twenty-four or upwards. The unions of the noble
families were arranged by the Inca himself, and those of the inferior
classes by his officers, who officially assigned the young people one
to another. Each province had its own costume, which might not be
changed for any other, and every one's birthplace was marked by a ribbon
of a certain colour surrounding his head.[43] In a word, the Jesuits
appear to have copied the constitution of the Peruvian society when they
organized their famous Paraguay missions, and perhaps this fact may help
us to trace the profound motives which in either case suggested so
minutely precise a system of inserting individuals into assigned places
which left no room for self-direction. The Incas and the Jesuits alike
had to contend against the disconnected, incoherent turbulence of savage
life, and both alike were thereby thrown upon an exaggerated system of
regulations, in which each individual was swaddled and meshed in
supervisions and ordinances from which it was impossible to escape.
Having said so much, we must acknowledge that, generally speaking, the
Incas made a very humane and paternal use of their absolute power. They
strove to moderate the desolating effects of war, and generally treated
the conquered peoples with kindness. But we note that in the century
preceding that of the European conquest, they had devised a means of
guarding against revolts exactly similar to the measures enforced
against rebellious peoples by the despotic sovereigns of Nineveh and
Babylon; that is to say, they transported a great part of the conquered
populations into other parts of their empire, and it appears that Cuzco,
like Babylon, presented an image in miniature of the whole empire.
There, as at Babylon, a host of different languages might be heard, and
it was amongst the children of the deported captives that Pizarro, like
Cyrus at Babylon, found allies who rejoiced in the fall of the empire
that had crushed their fathers. For the rest, the Incas endeavoured to
spread the language of Cuzco, the _Quechua_, throughout their
empire.[44] Nothing need surprise us in the way of political sagacity
and insight on the part of this priestly dynasty. Its monarchs seem to
have hit upon every device which has been imagined elsewhere for
attaching the conquered peoples to themselves or rendering their
hostility harmless. Thus you will remember that at Mexico there was a
chapel that served as a prison for the idols of the conquered. In the
same way there stood in the neighbourhood of Cuzco a great temple with
seventy-eight chapels in it, where the images of all the gods worshipped
in Peru were assembled. Each country had its altar there, on which
sacrifice was made according to the local customs.[45]
The Spaniards, amongst whom respect for the royal person was
sufficiently profound, were amazed by the marks of extreme deference of
which the Inca was the object. They could not understand at first that
actual religious worship was paid to him. He alone had the inherent
right to be carried on a litter, and he never went out in any other
way, imitating the Sun, his ancestor, who traverses the world without
ever putting his foot to the ground. Some few men and women of the
highest rank might rejoice in the same distinction, but only if they had
obtained the Inca's sanction. In the same way, it was only the members
of the Inca family and the nobles of most exalted rank who were allowed
to wear their hair long, for this was a distinctive sign of the
favourites of the Sun. None could enter the presence of the reigning
Inca save bare-footed, clad in the most simple garments and bearing a
burden on his shoulders, all in token of humility; nor must he raise his
eyes throughout the audience, for no man looks upon the face of the Sun.
It seems that the Incas possessed "the art of royal majesty" in a high
degree. They could retain the impassive air of indifference, whatever
might be going on before their eyes, like the Sun, who passes without
emotion over everything that takes place below. It was thus that
Atahualpa appeared to the Spaniards, who remarked the all but stony
fixity of the Peruvian monarch's features in the presence of all the new
sights--horses, riding, fire-arms--which filled his subjects with
surprise and terror.[46] And such was the superhuman character of the
Inca, that even the base office of a spittoon--excuse such a detail--was
supplied by the hand of one of his ladies.[47] The salute was given to
the Inca by kissing one's hand and then raising it towards the Sun. At
his death the whole country went into mourning for a year. The young
Incas were educated together, under conditions of great austerity, and
were never allowed to mingle with young people of the inferior
classes.[48]
The army of the Incas was the army of the Sun. The obligation to
military service was universal, since the Sun shines for all men. Every
sound man from twenty-five to fifty might be called on to serve in his
company. Thus numerous and highly-disciplined armies were raised, for
the spirit of obedience had penetrated all classes of the people. The
Incas had abolished the use of poisoned arrows, which is so common
amongst the natives of the New World.[49]
Justice was organized after fixed laws, and, as is usually the case in
theocracies, these laws were severe. For in theocracies, to the social
evil of the offence is added the impiety committed against the Deity and
his representative on earth. The culprit has been guilty not only of
crime, but of sacrilege. The penalty of death was freely inflicted even
in the case of offences that implied no evil disposition.[50] The
palanquin-bearer, for instance, who should stumble under his august
burden when carrying the Inca, or any one who should speak with the
smallest disrespect of him, must die. But we must also note certain
principles of sound justice which the Incas had likewise succeeded in
introducing. The judges were controlled, and, in case of unjust
judgments, punished. The law was more lenient to a first offence than to
a second, to crimes committed in the heat of the moment than to those of
malise prepense; more lenient to children than to adults, and (mark
this) more lenient to the common people than to the great.[51] The
members of the Inca family alone were exempted from the penalty of
death, which in their case was replaced by imprisonment for life. They
alone might, and indeed must, marry their sisters, for a reason that we
shall see further on. Thus everything was calculated to set this divine
family apart. Polygamy, too, was only allowed to the Incas and to the
families of next highest rank after them, who, however, might not marry
at all without the personal assent of the sovereign.[52] But the Incas
strove to make themselves loved. Herrera tells us of establishments in
which orphans and foundlings were brought up at the Inca's charges, and
of the alms he bestowed on widows who had no means of subsistence.[53]
The same deliberate system shows itself in the attempts to spread
education. The Incas founded schools, but they were opened only to the
children of the Incas and of the nobility. This is a genuine theocratic
trait. Garcilasso tells us naively that his ancestor the Inca Roca
(1200--1249) in founding public schools had no idea of allowing _the
people_ "to get information, grow proud, and disturb the state."[54] The
instruction, which was given by the _amautas_ (sages), turned on the
history or traditions of the country, on the laws, and on religion. We
have said that writing was unknown. There were only the mnemonic Quipos,
pictures on linen representing great events, and some rudimentary
attempts at hieroglyphics which the Incas do not seem to have
encouraged. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the hieroglyphics
found graven on the rocks of Yonan are anterior to the Inca
supremacy;[55] and it is said that a certain _amauta_ who had attempted
to introduce a hieroglyphic alphabet, was burned to death for impiety at
the order of the Inca.[56]
The most remarkable results of the rule of the Incas are seen in the
material well-being which they secured to their people. All the
historians speak of the really extraordinary perfection to which
Peruvian agriculture had been carried, though the use of iron was quite
unknown. The solar religion fits perfectly with the habits of an
agricultural people, and the Incas thought it became them, as children
of the Sun, to encourage the cultivation of the soil. They ordered the
execution of great public works, such as supporting walls to prevent the
sloping ground from being washed away; irrigation canals, some of which
measured five hundred miles, and which were preserved with scrupulous
care; magazines of guano, the fertilizing virtues of which were known in
Peru long before they were learned in Europe.[57] The Spaniards are far
from having maintained Peruvian agriculture at the level it had reached
under the Incas. Splendid roads stretched from Cuzco towards the four
quarters of heaven; and Humboldt still traced some of them, paved with
black porphyry, or in other cases cemented or rather macadamized, and
often launched over ravines and pierced through hills with remarkable
boldness.[58] The Incas had established reservoirs of drinking water for
the public use from place to place along these roads, and likewise
pavilions for their own accommodation when they were traversing their
realms, on which occasions they never travelled more than three or four
leagues a day. Bridges were thrown across the rivers, sometimes built of
stone, but more often constructed on the method, so frequently
described, that consists in uniting the opposing banks by two parallel
ropes, along which a great basket is slung.[59] A system of royal
courier posts measured the great roads as in Mexico. There were many
important cities in Peru, and, according to a contemporary estimate
cited by Prescott, the capital, Cuzco, even without including its
suburbs, must have embraced at least two hundred thousand
inhabitants.[60] Architecture was in a developed stage. We shall have to
speak of the temples presently. The Inca's palaces--and there was at
least one in every city of any importance--were of imposing dimensions,
and a high degree of comfort and luxury was displayed within them. Gold
glittered on the walls and beneath the roofs which were generally
thatched with straw. They were provided with inner courts, spacious
halls, sculptures in abundance, but inferior, it would seem, to those of
Central America, and baths in which hot or cold water could be turned on
at will.[61] In a word, when we remember from how many resources the
Peruvians were still cut off by their ignorance and isolation, we cannot
but admit that a genuine civilization is opening before our eyes, the
defects of which must not blind us to its splendour. And since this
civilization was in great part due (we shall see the force of the
qualification presently) to the continuous efforts of the Incas, our
next task must be to ascend to the mythic origin of that family, which
we borrow from the narrative of their descendant, Garcilasso de la
Vega.[62]
Properly speaking, this narrative is the local myth of the Lake
Titicaca and of Cuzco, transformed into an imperial myth.
Before the Incas, we are told, men lived in the most absolute savagery.
They were addicted to cannibalism and offered human victims to gods who
were gross like themselves. At last the Sun took pity on them, and sent
them two of his children, Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo (or Oullo, Ocollo,
Oolle, &c.), to establish the worship of the Sun and alleviate their
lot. The two emissaries, son and daughter of the Sun and Moon, rose one
day from the depths of the Lake Titicaca. They had been told that a
golden splinter which they bore with them would pierce the earth at the
spot in which they were to establish themselves, and the augury was
fulfilled on the site of Cuzco, the name of which signifies _navel._[63]
Observe that, in classical antiquity, Babylon, Athens, Delphi, Paphos,
Jerusalem, and so forth, each passed for the navel of the earth. Manco
Capac and Mama Ogllo, then, established the worship of the Sun. They
taught the savage inhabitants of the place agriculture and the principal
trades, the art of building cities, roads and aqueducts. Mama Ogllo
taught the women to spin and weave. They appointed a number of overseers
to take care that every one did his duty; and when they had thus
regulated everything in Cuzco, they re-ascended to heaven. But they left
a son and daughter to continue their work. Like their parents, the
brother and sister became husband and wife, and from them descends the
sovereign family of the Incas, that is to say, the Lord-rulers, or
Master-rulers.
Such is the legend, from which the first deduction must be that the Inca
family has nothing in common with the other denizens of earth. It is
super-imposed, as it were, on humanity. It is because of this difference
of origin that the laws which restrain the rest of mankind are not
always applicable to the Incas. For example, they marry their sisters,
as Manco Capac did, and as the Sun does, for the Moon is at once his
wife and his sister. It is thus that they are enabled to preserve the
divine character of their unique family.
For ourselves, we can entertain no doubt that this is a cosmic myth.
Mama Ogllo, or "the mother egg," and Manco Capac, or "the mighty man,"
are two creators. The myth indicates that there existed an ancient solar
priesthood on one of the islands or on the shores of the Lake of
Titicaca (at an early date the focus of a certain civilization), and
that this priestly family became at a given period the ruling power at
Cuzco. It was thence that it radiated over the small states which
surrounded Cuzco, embracing them one after another under its prestige
and its power, until it had become the redoubtable dynasty that we know
it. Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo, the creator and the cosmic egg, have
become the Sun and Moon, represented by their Inca high-priest and his
wife. There is no practice towards which a more wide-spread tendency
exists in America than that of conferring the name of a deity on his
chief priest. And if Garcilasso fixes the appearance of Manco Capac at
about 1000 A.D., it is simply because the historical recollections of
his family mounted no higher, and that about that time it began to rise
out of its obscurity. It had the advantage of numbering in its royal
line both successful warriors and, what is more, consummate
politicians, instances of whose ability we have already seen and shall
see again.
The point at which the legend preserved by Garcilasso is clearly at
fault, is in its claim for the Incas as the first and only civilizers of
Peru. We shall presently meet with other Peruvian myths of civilization
which do not stand in the least connection with Manco Capac and the
Incas. The kingdom of Quito, which the Inca Huayna Capac had recently
conquered when the Spaniards arrived, though not on the same level as
Peru proper, was far removed from the savage state, while as yet a
stranger to the influence of the Incas. The country of the Muyscas, the
present New Granada or land of Bogota, though standing in no connection
with Peru, was the theatre of another sacerdotal and solar religion _sui
generis_, which, though very little known, is highly interesting. The
valley of the Rimac, or Lima, and the coast lands in general, were
likewise centres of a pre-Inca civilization. The Chimus especially,
themselves dwellers on the coast, were possessed of an original
civilization differing from that of the Incas. They were the last to be
conquered. To sum up, everything leads us to suppose that various
centres of social development had long existed, up and down the whole
region, but that, under the presiding genius of the priesthood of Manco
Capac, the civilization of Cuzco had gradually acquired the
preponderance, till it consecutively eclipsed and absorbed all the
others.
Garcilasso labours hard to impress us with the belief that the
sovereigns of his family maintained an unbroken age of gold, by dint of
their wisdom and virtues. But we know, both from himself and from other
sources, that as a matter of fact the Incas' sky was not always
cloudless. They had numbered both bad and incapable rulers in their
line. More than once they had had to suppress terrible insurrections,
and their palaces had witnessed more than one tragedy."[64] But after
making all allowances, we must admit that they succeeded in governing
well, and more especially in maintaining intact their own religious and
political prestige.
Now this very cleverness, this conscious and often extremely deliberate
and astutely calculated policy, compels us to ask how far the Incas
themselves were sincere in their pretension to be descended from the
Sun, and their faith in the very special favour in which the great
luminary held them. There is so much rationalism in their habitual
tactics, that one cannot help suspecting a touch of it in their beliefs.
And the truth is that their descendant, Garcilasso, has recorded certain
traditions to that effect, which he has perhaps dressed up a little too
much in European style, with a view to convincing us that his ancestors
were monotheistic philosophers, but which nevertheless bear the marks of
a certain authenticity. For the reasoning which Garcilasso puts into the
mouth of the Incas closely resembles what would naturally commend itself
to the mind of a pagan who should once ask himself whether the visible
phenomenon, the Sun, which he adored, was really as living, as
conscious, as personal, as they said. Thus the Inca Tupac Yupanqui
(fifteenth century) is said to have reasoned thus:[65]
"They say that the Sun lives, and that he does everything. But
when one does anything, he is near to the thing he does; whereas
many things take place while the Sun is absent. It therefore
cannot be he who does everything. And again, if he were a living
being, would he not be wearied by his perpetual journeyings? If
he were alive, he would experience fatigue, as we do; and if he
were free, he would visit other parts of the heavens which he
never traverses. In truth, he seems like a thing held to its
task that always measures the same course, or like an arrow that
flies where it is shot and not where it wills itself."
Note this line of reasoning, Gentlemen, which must have repeated itself
in many minds when once they had acquired enough independence and power
of thought calmly to examine those natural phenomena which primitive
naivete had animated, personified and adored as the lords of destiny.
Their fixity and their mechanical and unvarying movements, when once
observed, could not fail to strike a mortal blow at the faith of which
they were the object. That faith was transformed without being radically
changed when it was no longer the phenomenon itself, but the personal
and directing spirit, the genius, the deity that was behind the
phenomenon, but distinct from it and capable of detaching itself from
it, which drew to itself the worship of the faithful. But in his turn
this god, shaped in the image of man, must either be refined into pure
spirit, or must fall below the rational and moral ideal ultimately
conceived by man himself. When all is said and done, Gentlemen, Buddhism
is still a religion of Nature. It is the last word of that order of
religions, and exists to show us that, at any rate in its authentic and
primitive form, that last word is _nothingness_. And that is why
Buddhism has never existed in its pure form as a popular religion. For
in religion, and at every stage of religion, mind seeks mind. Without
that, religion is nothing. Note, too, the observant Inca's remark, that
if the Sun were alive he must be dreadfully tired. You may find the same
idea in more than one European mythology, in which the Sun appears as an
unhappy culprit condemned to a toilsome service for some previous fault;
or, again, an iron constitution is given him, to explain why he is not
worn out by his ceaseless journeying.
Now Tupac Yupanqui would not be the only Inca who cherished a certain
scepticism concerning his ancestor the Sun. Herrera tells us that the
Inca Viracocha denied that the Sun was God;[66] and according to a story
preserved by Garcilasso,[67] the Inca Huayna Capac, the conqueror of
Quito, who died shortly after Pizarro's first disembarkment, must have
been quite as much of a rationalist. One day, during the celebration of
a festival in honour of the Sun, he is said to have gazed at the great
luminary so long and fixedly that the chief priest ventured on some
respectful remarks to the effect that so irreverent a proceeding must
surprise the people. "I will ask you two questions," replied the
monarch. "I am your king and universal lord. Would any one of you have
the hardihood to order me to rise from my seat and take a long journey
for his pleasure?... And would the richest and most powerful of my
vassals dare to disobey if I should command him on the spot to set out
in all speed for Chili?" And when the priest answered in the negative,
the Inca continued: "Then I tell you there must be a greater and a more
mighty lord above our father the Sun, who orders him to take the course
he follows day by day. For if he were himself the sovereign lord, he
would now and again omit his journey and rest, for his pleasure, even if
he experienced no necessity for doing so."
Once more: I will not vouch for the exact form of these audacious
speculations of the free-thinking Inca. But such reminiscences,
collected independently by various authors, correspond to the
conjectures forced upon us by the extreme political sagacity of the
Incas. None but theocrats, in whose own hearts faith in their central
principle was waning, could develop such astuteness and diplomacy. A
sincere and untried faith has not recourse to so many expedients
dictated by policy and the fear lest the joint in the armour should be
found. It is to be presumed, however, that these heterodox speculations
of the Incas themselves never passed beyond the narrow circle of the
family and its immediate surroundings. Nothing of the kind would ever be
caught by the ear of the people. But the evidence as to Huayna Capac's
scepticism derives a certain confirmation from the fact that he was the
first Inca who departed (to the woe of his empire, as it turned out)
from some of the hereditary maxims that had always been scrupulously
observed by his ancestors.
Huayna Capac had considerably extended the Peruvian empire by the
conquest of the kingdom of Quito. In the hope, presumably, of
consolidating his conquest, he resided for a long time in the
newly-acquired territory, and married the conquered king's daughter, to
whom he became passionately attached. This was absolutely contrary to
one of the statutes of the Inca family, no member of which was allowed
to marry a stranger. By his foreign wife he had a son called Atahualpa,
and whether it was that he thought it good policy to allow a certain
autonomy to the kingdom of Quito, or whether it was due to his
tenderness towards Atahualpa's mother and the son she had borne him,
certain it is that when he died at Quito in 1525, he decided that
Atahualpa should reign over this newly-acquired kingdom, whilst his
other son Huascar, the unimpeachably legitimate Inca, was to succeed him
as sovereign of Peru proper. This, again, was a violation of the maxim
that the kingdom of the Incas, which was the kingdom of the Sun, was
never to be parted. It was in the midst of the struggles provoked by the
hostility of the two brothers that Pizarro fell like a meteor amongst
the Peruvians, who did not so much as know of the existence of any other
land than the one they inhabited.
But the hour warns me that I must pause. When next we meet, I shall
have to recount the fall of the great religious dynasty of the Incas,
and we shall then examine more closely that Peruvian religion of which
we have to-day but sketched the outline.
LECTURE V.
FALL OF THE INCAS.--PERUVIAN MYTHOLOGY, PRIESTHOOD.
I.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,