Shaun P. McGonigal
Mythology:
the origins of a people and the impact of oral history
How stories are passed down over long periods of time is an
amazing thing to study. Words are a
very skilled sculptor of intricate patterns,
or stories, that stimulate philosophical thought, religion, and
understanding of ourselves. However, it
makes it much more difficult to pass down information of any kind when a
civilization does not have an established writing system, as the Incas did not.
The Incas did use the quipu system
(the cords with knots tied on them) but it was not a comparative record keeping
devise because very few people could translate them. So the Inca, like many African cultures, had a tradition of
passing down stories, myths, and history by remembering the stories and
reciting them to the next generation.
One thing that we see with the Inca mythology, is a disagreement about
the Empire’s origins. There are several
primary versions of origin stories, all have some things in common, but each of
these break down in the details, some having thousands of different
versions. It is a goal to show how it
could be possible that all the myths have some common origin, and that they
only differentiated because of geographic reasons, as well as a breakdown of
memory (possibly due to too much chicha and coca). I will only be mentioning a few stories about the Inca’s
beginnings, and will share some insight into their religion, spirituality, and
society.
An important aspect of the myths to explore are the stories
about the earth, the Moon, the Sun, and many of their gods, and to find some
verification of their validity in the society that they lived in. For instance, we see in one story, a
separation of the North and south regions of Cuzco, by the Man and Woman who
founded it and traveled the opposite ways from the hill of Huanacauri (South of Cuzco) to find and gather people from the
surrounding lands. In the maps of
Cuzco, as it was before the arrival of the Spanish, we see that separation of
the North, or hanin (upper) Cuzco and south, or hurin (lower) Cuzco. This same separation created a separation of
not only geographical locations of the people, but in their lineage and
districts as well. This is only one of
the many instances of myth making itself apparent in the society of the Incas,
and it will be discussed in greater detail later on.
Perhaps the most important aspect of mythology is the
Metaphysics of the culture that holds
the myth. This is important because
understanding how the culture, in this case the Incas, understands the universe
they live in, will help us understand their point of view. The way that they see the earth, moon, the
Sun, and life will be reflected in the mythology, and we will be able to draw
better comparisons between the stories, and the actual life of the people. The primary God that the Incas worshipped, Inti (and I have found a case where he
was referred to as Apu-Punchau, but
not anywhere else) is the sun. It is commonly believed by the Indians of Inca
rule, that they were all descendants of Inti,
thus making him a direct ancestor.
Being the sun, Inti was seen
as the giver of life, God of farming and of agriculture. The Inca himself, that is the king (Inca
actually refers to the king, and is generalized today to mean the Indians) is
seen as a relative of Inti, more
direct then the common people. Because
of this, the Inca would marry a sister too keep the blood line of royalty
stronger. Marrying one’s sister was not
allowed generally, but was allowed for the Inca for preservation purposes.
Like all other royalty, the god Inti had a sister who was
thought to be his wife, another light in the sky that they called Mama kilya, which means “mother
moon.” It was the moon who supposedly
gave birth to the people, and because of the lunar cycles, became the mother of
the calendar. A month, or moon, was the
breakdown of years, and this was separated by four weeks, which broke up into
unnamed days of the week. The moon was
thought of as female because of the similarity of the cycles of full moon/new
moon and of the menstrual cycles that a women experiences. The Sun and Moon where generally worshipped
and loved, but when an eclipse occurred, whether it be lunar or solar, the
people would be very scared. In the
case of the sun, an eclipse was seen as the sun being angry, or the opposite,
that is was dying, and if it were to die then the sun would bring the sky down
on the empire and crush them. They did
not know the cause of eclipse, so they feared them as a sign from the gods,
anthropomorphizing the celestial masses as living deities that influences the
Universe. If it was a partial eclipse,
they would be less fearful, thinking of it in terms of severity as one would
judge a sickness. A full eclipse of the
moon would bring people into the streets, yelling and screaming, beating dogs
until they would bark loudly, trying to call the moon back. When the Moon would escape the eclipse, the
people would thank Pachacamac, the
upholder of the universe, for making her better.
It seems that the dogs would howl at the moon in the
kingdoms of the Inca as they do now, and the Incas thought that the dogs
barking was significant, as if the moon would listen to them more than they
would the people. There is a mention of
some myth about dogs and moons, with no detail, that tells us about some favor
dogs did for the moon, making her very fond on the dogs. In this case, the myth seems to be a clever
observation of the connection, or at least attraction that dogs and more often
wolves, have for the moon. We are very
aware that the wolf climbs to a high point, upturns its head and howls with
wonderful voice at the moon in the sky, it seems that the Incas were aware of
this phenomenon as well. What other
reason could you come up with, if you believed in a purpose, an
interconnectedness of the universe, other than the moon and the dogs having
some relationship that they haven’t told us about.
The Incas believed in this connectivity of the world for
the very reasons I have just touched on; the Incas are very spiritual people
who believe that all of the universe has an underlying purpose and/or
inter-connectivity that underlies all of Nature. They had certain places and things that they called huaca, meaning “sacred.” They would tell the people fortunes using
spider webs and coca leaves at the bottom of a dish. They believed that the Condor was their link to the heavens and
that the Anaconda was their link to the underworld, or hell (like the serpent
of Christian mythology). The Puma was
the animal spirit, this is probably why they chose to design the city of Cuzco
in the form of a Puma. The Inca tried
to integrate everything in Nature, essentially thinking of themselves as part
of the grand design of the universe.
What do we mean when we say Nature?
In the modern definition Nature is in essence the whole universe and all
of it’s complexity and laws. I believe
that if we were to put it in Inca terms, we could do so in one word—Pachacamac. I believe that we could say that this deity, this God of fire,
son of Inti, invisible upholder of
the universe, was the very basis of their nature and religion. Ironically, Pachacamac was not even and Inca god originally. He was the primary god of a pre-Inca
civilization that lived in the city that we now call by the name
Pachacamac. In normal Inca fashion,
this god was integrated into the religion of the Incas by the Incas themselves,
just as the original people of Pachacamac were integrated into the culture of
the kingdom. In Inca mythology, Pachacamac is the rejuvenator of the
world that Tici-Viracocha originally created, as if Tici-Viracocha is the
architect, and Pachacamac is the maintenance man of the world.
The Incas had many gods, another is Apu Illapu, or the “rain giver,” a god mostly of agriculture. Thunder and lightning are called Illapu, after this god, but itself is
not a god but is placed as phenomena in the sky, like a rainbow is. But the
duty of giving the earth rain was also given to a maiden, that is, a daughter
of a king who was put in the sky with a pitcher of water that she would use to
essentially “water” the earth with when it was needed. Her brother, who is up there with her, is
believed to get angry every once in a while and break the pitcher, making the
sound that we call thunder. For the Incas, this separates the difference in
temperament of men and women; women being compassionate and caring, men being
passionate and fierce. Where does Apu Illapu fit in with all this? Perhaps
he is the emotions of tenderness and ferocity behind these people in the sky,
but it is important not to take these myths too seriously because it is the job
of a myth to explain things that don’t always explain themselves, not to give
facts.
It seems as if there is an Inca god for just about
everything that was. As Garcilaso de la
Vega put it: “They had for gods not
only the four elements each separately, but also the compounds and forms of
them.” (royal Commentaries of the Incas, Garcilaso de la Vega, page
32). There seems to be a god behind
every action in nature, behind every movement and beauty, as if each facet of
reality was in itself a god. Tici-Viracocha, mentioned earlier, is
not a primary god among the general influence, that is, he wasn’t of the
caliber of the sun and Moon. In one of
the myths of the Inca origin, as told by Pedro de Cieza de Leon, Tici-Viracocha
is the creator of all things. The myth
goes like this:
Before the Incas came to reign in these kingdoms. . .a
long time went by in which they did not see the sun. . .there emerged from the
island of Titicaca, which lies in the great lake [Titicaca]. . .the sun in its
splendor, at which all rejoiced. After
this had occurred, they say that out of the regions of the south there came. .
.a white man, large of stature, whose air and person aroused great respect and
veneration. (The Incas, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, page 27)
The story goes on to tell how he, who is called Tici-Viracocha, is the “Creator of all
things” (Cieza, p. 27), and supposedly “called into being men and animals”
(Cieza, p.27). Besides being called Tici-Viracocha, he is also referred to
as Tyapaca and Arnaun (depending on who you talk to). But whatever we call him,
he went away, with no detail as to why or where he went. The similarity of the description of Tici-Viracocha is strikingly similar to
how our society views what Jesus Christ looked like. This does not need to be significant, because nobody really knows
what Jesus looked like, we can only assume that he was white (he was a
descendent of a people known to us to have darker skin). As far as it can by known, Tici-Viracocha never returned.
At some later date, another man of similar description came
to the same location, carrying out amazing tasks; curing the sick, blind,
etc.—biblical miracles. He did not give
himself a name, he just traveled through the land and did his deeds. But he was not accepted as a god by
everyone, but persecuted:
And in this manner, working great things with his
words, he came to the province
of the Canas, where close to the village called Cacha. . .the natives rose up
without consideration and advanced on him with the intention of stoning him. .
.they saw him kneeling, with his hands raised to heaven as though imploring
divine aid against the danger that threatened. . .a great fire appeared in the
sky, so that they thought they should be consumed. Filled with fear and trembling, they crowded toward him whom they
wanted to kill, and with loud cries they begged him to have mercy. (Cieza, p.
28)
He put out the fire, and the natives saw what it had done
to the ground and the rocks and knew he had done it. But the story does not end here; according to Pedro de Cieza de
Leon, he left:
he went until he came to the shore of the sea, where,
spreading his cloak, he moved on over the waves, and never again appeared nor
did they see him. And because of the
manner of his departure they gave him the name of Viracocha, which means ‘foam
of the sea.’ (Cieza, p. 28)
But the
fact that Viracocha never appeared again was not necessarily true. According to accounts given, a man appeared
to a prince, whose father, Inca Yahuar Huacac, didn’t believe the story I am
about to recite. According to the story
told by Garcilaso de la Vega in his book called Royal Commentaries of the
Inca, the prince, who was then unnamed (to our knowledge), was lying down
in the garden when a bearded man with a robe came to him, calling the prince
“Nephew.” He identified himself as “Viracocha Inca,” and said that he was sent
from the sun to warn the Inca, his brother, that “the provinces of Chinchasuyu.
. .and others not subject to him are in rebellion and have brought together
many people to come with a powerful army and overthrow his thrown” (de la Vega,
p.231). The prince would warn his
father, but his father would only send him away. If it had not been for the other royalty, who suggested that they
not disregard the warning, the city of Cuzco would not have been ready to
defend itself and defeat the rebelling armies.
The prince, because of this apparition he had, was known in his rule as
Viracocha Inca.
The empire
remained intact, but how did it come to be?
Perhaps we will never really be sure, the stories vary from place and
even in who was involved. The story
that I referred to before, about the separation of hanin and hurin Cuzco, began
with a time of troubles for the people of the Andes. supposedly, the sun saw that the people were in a bad state, and
in need of divine assistance. The sun
sent two people, a son and a daughter, down to lake Titicaca. Upon arriving on the earth, they began to
teach the people basic laws, trades, worship of the sun, etc. The son, who like his wife and sister,
remained nameless in the story, carried a golden wand. This wand was a half of a yard in length,
and two fingers in thickness. The duty
of the two was to travel north stop occasionally and stab the wand into the
ground; if it sank, then they would stop and settle, if it did not sink, they
would move on. When they reached the
hill of Huanacauri, just south of the
place where Cuzco would be, the wand sank and was never seen again. The place would be called Cuzco, which means
“navel” and it was from here, on the hill, that the two would begin the
separation. The man walked north and
his wife south. The people that the man
gathered would settle in the north or hanin
Cuzco, and the woman would settle the south or hurin Cuzco. The city would
be divided as such, and remained the basis of the class divisions of the Inca
Empire’s capital city of Cuzco. It
would help create gaps in the city, the Aillu (or Ayllo) which means lineage or
family, and would even divide the society into districts of higher
authority. Garcilaso de la Vega makes
it clear in describing this situation as not a means to subordinate certain
people. According to his understanding,
the division was like that of an eldest brother to the rest of his brothers. All the people were equal in that they saw each other as brothers, it was
just that the architects, noblemen, and others of the hanin ayllo saw themselves as the older brothers, having more
privileges.
In all
religions there is some sort of understanding of how we got here, how the
universe was created. But with the Incas,
it is more about how the gods improved the earth for the people so that they
could all live more comfortably. It
seems that all origin myths are about how the people were improved. In this particular story I will now tell, we
see an incredible similarity to a story that all Christians know very
well. According to Inca legend, there
was a great flood, called the great deluge.
this flood ended, but no description of the state of the world is
given. Supposedly, a man (possibly
Viracocha) appeared at Tiahuanaco (I am assuming it was already there), and
with his incredible power he divided the world into four parts. The West was given to a man named Pinahua, the east to Tocoy.
The south was to be conquered by Colla
and the north to Manco Capac. It is the last two that interest me
most. Manco Capac was the name of the first Inca, as this myth follows to
say. The name Colla is not mentioned again, but has an uncanny resemblance to the
word “Coya”, which means “queen” (especially if you consider a possible Spanish
influence; “ll” is pronounced like a “y” in Spanish). Manco Capac ruled to
the North, and Colla to the
south—this holds a striking similarity to the myth that I just finished
telling; where a man and his wife (if it were Manco Capac, the king, his wife
would be the Coya), separated the city of Cuzco this way. Despite the fact that this happened at
Tiahuanaco, and the other story in Cuzco, it is still valid because the
separation of hanin/hurin was supposed to have sent out cultural shock-waves,
possibly confusing two different versions of the same story. In both stories, they began at Tiahuanaco,
and prior to both, there was problems, in the latter story it was actually
described as the great flood. It is
then possible that the two myths are one-in-the-same, only to be changed over
time due to a purely oral tradition of passing them down.
And of
course, there is another myth. This one
is a little different from the other two.
It is not mentioned where this took place, but supposedly four men and
four women, all brothers and sisters (husbands and wives) came out of a
rock. Actually, it was the center
“window” of three windows that appeared in a rock. This window is referred to as the “Royal Window” in Inca
mythology, and is represented in many places such as temples and shrines
throughout he empire. Like the last
myth, there where four men, but this time they all had different names with
exception of one—Manco Capac. His wife who came through the Royal Window
with him was Mama Occlo, and history
agrees with this, this is the name of the first Queen (the names of the other
women were not given). The other three
men were called Ayer Cachi (salt), Ayer Uchu (Pimento), and Ayer Sauca (rejoicing, satisfaction, or
delight). The word Ayer has no meaning in Quechua as far as we know today, but the
other words are used in Quechua still today, perhaps this is there origin. What happened after their appearance is so
obscure and so repeated that it has a thousand different versions, at least
that is what Garcilaso de la Vega has to say about it. In another myth, which was not told in great
detail, there were only three brothers;
one was new, his name was Ayer Oco,
but Ayer Cachi and this time, Ayer Manco (who would be known later as
Manco Capac) came out of the a place called Paccaric-Tampu
or “origin-house.” Here, Ayer Cachi was
very powerful, and he misused his powers, scaring the people. The other two brothers locked him in the
cave that they came from, and Ayer Cachi’s anger caused earthquakes. Ayer Cachi would appear to them later, with
wings, saying:
Do not be afraid or troubled; I come only that the
empire of the Incas shall begin to be known.
Therefore leave, leave this settlement which you have built, and go
farther down until you come to a valley where you will then found Cuzco, which
is what will be of worth. . .in a near-by hill I shall remain in the shape and
form you now see. . .the name you shall give it is Huana-Cauri” (Cieza, p.
33-34)
This is
the same hill Huanacauri, in which
the wand sank for the man sent by the sun. This brings forth a similarity of
myths that let us suspect that they
originated from a single story, only to be distorted over time. Even though not all the myths have one
common detail, all of them have something in common with another, with no more
contradiction than the Bible has.
Noah’s Arc, the story of the great flood in the
Judeo-Christian tradition had within its story four men and women that survived
the flood. It has been theorized that
the story of Noah’s arc somehow reached the Incas and they adopted it, but with
the Mayans and Aztecs having flood stories, it is possible that there is more
to it. The only thing that is sure
about the rest of the story is that Manco Capac and Mama Occlo settled new
lands and taught the people agriculture, and even such ideas as love thy
neighbor as you love yourselves, and Do unto others as you would have done unto
you. The similarity of the Inca Myth
and the Christian tradition is a little too convenient to be pure chance,
perhaps the Spanish has a hand in it, or perhaps some Christian explorer had
found the land centuries before. There
is really no way of being absolutely sure at this point. Either way, the myths
stand, and Peru is a Spanish speaking Country now (some still speak Quechua)
with a Roman Catholic Religion, although, in the tradition of the Inca is very
integrated with the Indians religion.
With these
last three myths, and the story of the two Viracochas, we see a variety of
different stories with some common ground; the world was in trouble, the people
were in a bad state, etc. And whether
it was no sun, or there was a flood, or whatever, somebody came to the
rescue. It was either Manco Capac and
friends or Tici-Viracocha who did the saving, the myths do not tell a story
about the creation of the world as much as they tell about the creation of the
empire, which in the eyes of the Inca, is the origin of their
world.
Supposedly,
when Viracocha left by walking over the sea, he mentioned something about
promising to return. Now, we know what
Viracocha was supposed to look like; a white bearded man. And we know what the Spanish explorers
looked like, white bearded men. The
prophecy of the coming of the Spanish explorers is not necessarily believed to
be the return of Viracocha, but when the Spanish arrived the Incas called them
Viracocha, the Spanish did not mind being called the name of one of the Inca
Gods. Huaina Capac, believed to have
been one of the greatest Incas was known to be an intelligent man. And he knew that the other Incas before him
knew of the prophecy that a new race would come. In response to this, as his dying words, Huaina-Capac said; “I
bid you obey them and serve them as men who will be completely victorious, for
their law will be better that ours and their arms more powerful and invincible
than ours.” (de la Vega, p. 577). Many
years later, after the Spanish had been in Peru for many years, an elder Indian
commented on how the Spanish defeated the Inca empire so quickly. He responded by repeating the story of the
prophecy, and Huaina-Capac’s last words: “These words, which were the last our
Inca uttered, were more effective in overcoming us and depriving us of our
empire than the arms (of the Spanish) brought to this country.” Pedro de Cieza de Leon believes that he
meant to convey that the Incas honored what the Inca kings told them, and that
they did not win because Huaina-Capac told them not to. Inca law was Inca law.
In the Inca kingdom, looking at the sun was supposed to be
disrespectful of the god, Inti. So when
the Inca himself stood among his people, looking up towards the sun, his high
priest, one of his uncles asked him why he would do such a thing. he replied by saying that the Sun couldn’t
be God, because it never stopped. This
is the dialogue that he had with his uncle:
“what are you doing, Inca? Do you not know it is unlawful
to do that?” he continued; “Sole Lord, look what you are doing, for not only is
it forbidden for us to look freely on our father the sun, as disrespectful, but
you are setting a bad example to the whole court and your empire”
To which the Inca replied; “I wish to ask you two questions
in reply to what you have just said. I
am your king and universal lord: would any of my subjects dare to make bold to
bid me rise from my place and make a long journey at his behest?”
“Who could be so mad as that?”
“And is there any curaca
among my subjects, however rich and powerful, who would not obey me if I
bade him go by road from here to Chile?”
“No, Inca”
“Then I tell you that our father the Sun must have another
greater lord more powerful than himself, one who bids him undertake this
journey he daily performs without stopping; for if he were the supreme lord, he
would every now and then desist from his journey, and rest at ease, even though
there were no need for him to do so.”
I believe Huaina-Capac was aware of something here that the
rest of his kingdom was not; that because the sun never stopped, and that
possibly that it was so timely, there must be some power governing it. It is the only time when we see the
possibility among the Incas that there is some more powerful force then that
which they can see. I find it
interesting that I find this story in the same book in which Garcilaso de la
Vega says “(the Incas) did not understand, as the gentile Romans did, how to
create abstract gods. . .for their thoughts did not rise to invisible things,
and they worshipped what they saw, some in one way and others in another” (de
la Vega, p. 31) if he were to look a
little closer at what he wrote about, he would see that at least one Inca could
conceive of something beyond the senses.
As far as belief in the invisible, the Incas believed in three worlds. The first is called Hanan Pacha, or “the Upper world,” the second is Hurin Pacha, or “the Lower world,” the
final world is called Oca Pacha, or
“the world below,” although some call it the “house of the devil,” which
translates Cupaica Huacin. It seems that the Incas were aware of much
more than the world that they saw, for nobody alive can see heaven or
hell.
The myths told by the Indians are fascinating. No matter who you hear them from, somebody
seems to be stating how ridiculous the stories are, yet, they are all
Christians who believe the stories of the Bible. Imagine what would have happened to the biblical stories if there
had never been a written language, do you think that all Christians would all
agree about how Jesus was crucified, or how God created the universe in 6
days. The stories told by the Inca are
a jumbled mix of time, people, memories, and origins that did happen because
the Incas were there. The Inca were
aware of the Nature of the universe, on a smaller scale, that modern science is
just beginning to conceive. As far as
we are able to theorize today, the universe is a completely interconnected
jumble of matter, energy, fields, unseen laws, and infinite gods that represent
every facet of the universe. And the
Incas knew a little about this hundreds of years ago.
Works Cited Page
The Incas, Pedro
deCieza de Leon. Translatedby Harriet
dr Onis. University of Oklahoma Press,
1959.
Royal Commentaries of the Incas; and general history of Peru. Garcilaso de la Vega, Ellnca.
Translated by HaroldV. Livermore University of Texas press, Austin,
1966.