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Earth Institute News
posted 01/27/00 10:OO A.M. EST Science and Folklore Converge
Pachacuti Yamqui's Relación de antiguedades deste Reyno del Pirú is a long account of Inca history and religion. Among many other details, it contains a description of Coricancha ("enclosure of gold"), the most important temple in the capital city of Cusco. Pachacuti Yamqui described a wall of this temple and drew a chart to show the objects that were displayed or depicted on it. Few drawings made by indigenous people survive from this period, and this chart is one of the most elaborate. As such, it has attracted a good deal of attention from scholars, who have been able to identify most of the features from the labels in Spanish and Quechua that accompany them, from the accompanying text, and from other written descriptions of Coricancha.
The five-sided cosmological chart displays bilateral symmetry around an axis that runs from the peak to the center of the bottom. The large oval near the top is a gold disk that stood for Viracocha, the Inca creator-deity. The cross above it represents Orion. The three stars in the middle, labeled "orcorara" or three equal stars, form the belt of Orion (Alnitak, Orionis; Alnilam, Orionis; Mintaka, Orionis), with Betelguese, Orionis above and Rigel, Orionis below. The cross below it represents the Southern Cross, to which it bears a close resemblance. The other objects are organized in pairs. The features on the left generally correspond to masculine elements in the universe, those on the right to feminine elements. The sun is to the left, the moon the right. Below them appear the morning star, drawn as a black dot with many rays coming out, and the smaller evening star, drawn as a smaller group of rays. Below them is, on the left, a cluster of stars, the Pleiades, labeled Verano, which means summer, or dry season (possibly in association with Pleiades ritual at the summer solstice during the dry season), and, on the right, nube inbierno, winter clouds. Continuing down, the Earth Mother (Pachamama) is on the left, with a rainbow above it, a set of circles (labeled "ymaymana ñauraycunañawin," or springs of abundance) below, and a bolt of lightning near the left edge; and, on the right, Mother Sea (Mamacocha), fed by a spring, with a tree next to it and off near the right edge, Chuquechinchay, a cat-like creature, which may represent an Inca constellation named for a cat. Between these two groups of objects stand a couple, a man on the left and a woman on the right. Below them is a grid-like pattern labeled "collca" or storehouse.
Pachacuti Yamqui was an indigenous nobleman, born after the Spanish Conquest in the province of Canas y Canchis, near the villages marked 6 and 7 in Fig. 1. He spent time in Cusco and had close ties with people who had witnessed Inca religious practice before the conquest. He saw the Coricancha only after the conquest, probably when it had already been stripped of its Inca ornaments and converted to a Catholic church. His writings formed part of debates in early seventeenth century Spain over the nature of religion in the Andes. Educated under the influence of the Spanish monastic orders that had come to the Andes, he was a Christian, eager to demonstrate in his writings that the Inca religion was close to Christianity, and that the Incas themselves followed the same precepts as the Catholic Church. This concern led him to stress certain aspects of Inca religion over others; for example, he emphasizes the aspect of Viracocha as creator, rather than as sun god, though both aspects were present. This concern also led him to include extensive detail about Andean religion. His document remains one of the fundamental sources on the history, beliefs and rituals of this religion.
The document is found on folio pages 131-174 in an untitled volume in the National Library of Madrid, numbered 3169 in its collection of manuscripts. The cosmological chart is found on fol. 144v.
In addition to references 4 and 19 in the bibliography, useful sources on Pachacuti Yamqui and his document include
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