quichuan
 

Quichuan Religion._The religion was poly­theistic and idolatrous. It recognized a creator and governor of the universe, variously styled Tupanqui, Pachacamac, or Viracocha, besides an almost infinite number of subordinate divinities, including the spirits of all the heavenly bodies, of many notable topographical features of the earth, many meteorological phenomena, and the souls of all dead men. The chief object of worship was the sun, who alone of all the deities had a temple in every large town, and whose temple in Cuzco was the grandest ecclesiastical building in the empire, and the place ‘where the chief acts of public worship were cele­brated, the emperor himself officiating there as chief priest.

There was no incompatibility between the religion of the Quichuans and that of the surrounding nations. The idols of the conquered countries were taken to the temple or temples of Cuzco, and kept there in honor; and the people of the subject provinces were allowed to worship their idols and their ancestors; but they were also re­quired to adore the sun as the divinity of the empire. Many of the divinities had a local character, and their priests were also subordinate priests of the imperial deities.’

The ceremonies of worship were prayer with face towards the sun, singing, instrumental music, dancing, pro­cessions, offerings of fruits, flowers, incense, and fermented liquors, and sacrifices of llamas and on rare occasions of human beings. In the temples all the offerings were made by the priests, in dwellings every male head of a family made offerings to his household gods. The chief worship was that of the ancestral spirits.

Many llamas were sacrificed, and in Cuzco, on rare occasions six hundred on one day. The sacrifice was followed by a feast, in which the meat of the victim was eaten, and a small portion of the consecrated food was distributed to everybody in the town or city, to the com­mon people as well as to the nobles. All had the same worship, and seem to have been equal before their gods. When a monarch was crowned, an heir to the throne born, or a military expedition sent out, a human victim was sacrificed, but no part of the flesh was eaten.

All the high priests were nobles; and all of the high nobles were priests, but few of them devoted themselves exclusively to the sacerdotal profession. Their ecclesi­astical authority was an incident of political rank, and they had no more thought of controlling the sovereign in matters of church than in those of State. Although religious ideas had a great influence over the people, the priests never attempted to get control of the government as they did in Egypt, India, and many other countries.

Some of the priests dressed in white, but there was no costume or sets of costumes distinctive of any grade of the sacerdotal occupation; nor was there any life-long and strictly ascetic monasticism, nor any chance for per­sonal aggrandizement by exciting the admiration of the most ignorant people. The priest had power to absolve from sin after confession, which was required at least once a year from all the people; and he determined by lot whether the confession was truthful and complete. If not he imposed a severe penance.

Burial was the common method of disposing of the dead. The body was bent together in a sitting posture with the knees to the chin, wrapped with cloth, and seated upright in the grave with the face to the west. In some districts, it was sewed up in llama skins, or put into a large vase of pottery. In the Aymara region, peculiar, tower-like tombs, called Chulpas, were erected for the dead. Usually these Chulpas were of stone, pear­ shaped, and largest near the top. Some thirty-nine feet high, nineteen wide near the top, and sixteen at the base. Some of the Aymara dead were buried in arched vaults; and at Ollantaytambo, tomb chambers were cut into the rocky cliffs. The high nobles were buried in vases of precious metal. The emperors were embalmed, and their mummies were pre­served in the Cuzco temple. Meat, drink, weapons, tools, clothes, and ornaments of gold, silver, and gems, were put into the graves to feed the dead; and some tombs had pipes leading down from the surface, so that drink could be poured down frequently. At the funerals of the emperors and high nobles, some of their wives and servants were slain to keep them company into the fut­ure life. At the funeral of Lluayna Capac, the last em­peror who died before the arrival of the Spaniards, one thousand persons were sacrificed.

 Quichuan Temples.—Temples were numer­ous, and most of them were dedicated to the sun; a few to Yupanqui, the creator of the universe. The chief temple of the sun at Cuzco, called also the Golden Pal­ace, was three hundred feet long and two hundred wide, and was built with an elegance of masonry for which Sarmiento knew only two equals in Spain. A thick sheet of gold, six inches wide, ran round the outside of the edifice as a frieze; and there was a similar dec­oration in every apartment. The room of the sun had a large plate of the same metal, shaped and engraved to represent the god of day, and decorated with prec­ious stones, so placed on the western wall that at cer­tain seasons the rays of the rising sun should shine upon it through a large, open doorway. On both sides of the golden luminary were the mummies of deceased emperors, embalmed with gums and spices, sitting on golden chairs. Another room, dedicated to the moon, had a silver plate representing that heavenly body, and numerous ornaments of the same metal. Other cham­bers were dedicated to the stars, to lightning, and to the rainbow. Attached to the temple was a large gar­den, containing ornamental plants, and also imitations of trees, bushes, flowering plants, and animals in gold. The vases for fruits and flowers, the ewers to hold water for temple use, the pipes leading water into the temple, and even the tools for cultivating the temple ground, were of precious metal. Among the vases were twelve of silver, each more than eight feet high and ten feet in circumference.’ The ecclesiastics employed in this building numbered four thousand. The temples occupied the most central and beautiful sites in the towns; they were surrounded with grounds planted with trees, and were ornamented with idols in the form of men and brutes. The temple on Titicaca Island had six hundred men and one thousand maidens within its walls, and that at Guanuco had 30,000 men in its service, perhaps many of them as tillers of its soil.

The larger temples of the sun had convents filled with maidens, nearly all of Inca blood, selected by the high priests. In these convents, they were educated, and were employed in guarding the sacred fires, and in spinning, weaving, and doing other work for the imperial family. Though not priestesses, these virgins of the sun were re­quired, under penalty of death, to preserve their chastity, and were guarded by eunuchs. They could never leave the convents unless to marry an emperor, or some Inca by imperial order, and no man save the emperor could lawfully enter the precincts of the convent. The great temple of the sun at Cuzco had fifteen hundred of these vestals.

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Last modified: 06/27/08