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.