There is yet another version of this historical legend, written forty years after Christoval’s date by Don Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti-yamqui Salcamayhua.  He ranks after Garcilasso and Christoval, but before earlier Spanish writers, such as Acosta, who knew not Quichua.  According to Salcamayhuia, the Inca Uiracocha was like James III., fond of architecture and averse to war.  He gave the realm to his bastard, Urca, who was defeated and killed by the Chancas.  Uiracocha meant to abandon the contest, but his legitimate son, Yupanqui, saw a fair youth on a rock, who promised him success in the name of the Creator, and then vanished.  The Prince was victorious, and the Inca Uiracocha retired into private life.  This appears to be a mixture of the stories of Garcilasso and Christoval.[34]

It is not, in itself, a point of much importance whether the Creator was called Uiracocha (which, if it means anything, means ’sea of grease!’), or whether he was called Pachacamac, maker of the world, or by both names.  The important question is as to whether the Creator received even human sacrifices (Christoval) or none at all (Garcilasso).  As to Pachacamac, we must consult Mr. Payne, who has the advantage of being a Quichua scholar.  He considers that Pachacamac combines the conception of a general spirit of living things with that of a Creator or maker of all things.  ‘Pachacamac and the Creator are one and the same,’ but the conception of Pachayachacic, ‘ruler of the world,’ ’belongs to the later period of the Incas.’[35] Mr. Payne appears to prefer Christoval’s legend of the Inca crystal-gazer, to the rival version of Garcilasso.  The Yunca form of the worship of Pachacamac Mr. Payne regards as an example of degradation.[36] He disbelieves Garcilasso’s statement, that human sacrifices were not made to the Sun.  Garcilasso must, if Mr. Payne is right, have been a deliberate liar, unless, indeed, he was deceived by his Inca kinsfolk.  The reader can now estimate for himself the difficulty of knowing much about Peruvian religion, or, indeed, of any religion.  For, if Mr. Payne is right about the lowest savages having no conception of God, or even of spirit, though the idea of a great Creator, a spirit, is one of the earliest efforts of ‘primitive logic,’ we, of course, have been merely fabling throughout.

Garcilasso’s evidence, however, seems untainted by Christian attempts to find a primitive divine tradition.  Garcilasso may possibly be refining on facts, but he asks for no theory of divine primitive tradition in the case of Pachacamac, whom he attributes to philosophical reflection.

In the following chapter we discuss ‘the old Degeneration theory,’ and contrast it with the scheme provisionally offered in this book.  We have already observed that the Degeneration theory biasses the accounts of some missionaries who are obviously anxious to find traces of a Primitive Tradition, originally revealed to all men, but only preserved in a pure form by the Jews.  To avoid deception by means of this bias we have chosen examples of savage creative beings from wide areas, from diverse ages, from non-missionary statements, from the least contaminated backward peoples, and from their secret mysteries and hymns.