by Garcilasso, Agustin de Zarate (ii. ch. 5).  Garcilasso, after denying the existence of temples to Pachacamac, mentions one, but only one.  He insists, at length, and with much logic, that He whom, as a Christian, he worships, is in Quichua styled Pachacamac.  Moreover, the one temple to Pachacamac was not built by an Inca, but by a race which, having heard of the Inca god, borrowed his name, without understanding his nature, that of a Being who dwells not in temples made with hands (ii. 186).  In the temple this people, the Yuncas, offered even human sacrifices.  By the Incas to Pachacamac no sacrifice was offered (ii. 189).  This negative custom they also imposed upon the Yuncas, and they removed idols from the Yunca temple of Pachacamac (ii. 190).  Yunca superstitions, however, infested the temple, and a Voice gave oracles therein.[15] The Yuncas also had a talking idol, which the Inca, in accordance with a religious treaty, occasionally consulted.

While Pachacamac, without temple or rite, was reckoned the Creator, we must understand that Sun-worship and ancestor-worship were the practical elements of the Inca cult.  This appears to have been distasteful to the Inca Huayna Ccapac, for at a Sun feast he gazed hard on the Sun, was remonstrated with by a priest, and replied that the restless Sun ’must have another Lord more powerful than himself.’[16]

This remark could not have been necessary if Pachacamac were really an article of living and universal belief.  Perhaps we are to understand that this Inca, like his father, who seems to have been the original author of the saying, meant to sneer at the elaborate worship bestowed on the Sun, while Pachacamac was neglected, as far as ritual went.

In Garcilasso’s book we have to allow for his desire to justify the creed of his maternal ancestors.  His criticism of Spanish versions is acute, and he often appeals to his knowledge of Quichua, and to the direct traditions received by him from his uncle.  Against his theory of Pachacamac as a result of philosophical thought, it may be urged that similar conceptions, or nearly similar, exist among races not civilised like the Incas, and not provided with colleges of learned priests.  In fact, the position of Pachacamac and the Sun is very nearly that of the Blackfoot Creator Na-pi, and the Sun, or of Shang-ti and the Heaven, in China.  We have the Creative Being whose creed is invaded by that of a worshipped aspect of nature, and whose cult, quite logically, is nil, or nearly nil.  There are also, in different strata of the Inca empire, ancestor-worship, or mummy-worship, Totemism and polytheism, with a vague mass of huaca = Elohim, kalou, wakan.