Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/232

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as the Peruvians called them. In Tiahuanaco, where the creation, or rather manufacture of men took place, the creator turned many sinners into stones. The sun was made in the shape of a man, and, as he soared into heaven, he called out in a friendly fashion to Manco Ccapac, the ideal first Inca, "Look upon me as thy father, and worship me as thy father." In these fables the creator is called Pachyachachi, "Teacher of the World." According to Christoval, the creator and his sons were "eternal and unchangeable," but it is impossible to say how far these philosophic ideas are due to Christian influences. Among the Canaris men descend from the survivor of the deluge, and a beautiful bird with the face of a woman, a siren in fact, but known better to ornithologists as a macaw. "The chief cause," says the good Christoval, "of these fables was ignorance of God."

The story, as told by Cieza de Leon, runs thus:[1]—A white man of great stature (in fact, "a magnified non-natural man") came into the world, and gave life to beasts and human beings. His name was Ticiviracocha, and he was called the Father of the Sun. There are likenesses of him in the temple, and he was regarded as a moral teacher. It was owing, apparently, to this benevolent being that four mysterious brothers and sisters emerged from a cave,—Children of the Sun, fathers of the Incas, teachers of savage men. Their own conduct, however, was not exemplary, and they shut up in a hole in the earth the brother of whom they were jealous. This incident is even more

  1. Second Part of the Chronicles of Peru, p. 5.