How the huacas were

TIe Fvesidenl and FeIIovs oJ Havvavd CoIIege
FeaIod Museun oJ AvcIaeoIog and ElInoIog

Hov lIe Iuacas Weve TIe Language oJ SuIslance and TvansJovnalion in lIe HuavocIiv
QuecIua Manuscvipl
AulIov|s) FvanI SaIonon
Souvce BES AnlIvopoIog and AeslIelics, No. 33, Fve-CoIunIian Slales oJ Being |Spving,
1998), pp. 7-17
FuIIisIed I TIe Fvesidenl and FeIIovs oJ Havvavd CoIIege acling lIvougI lIe FeaIod Museun oJ
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How the huacas
were
The
language
of substance and transformation in the
Huarochiri
Quechua manuscript
FRANK SALOMON
Two of the most
important
verbs relevant to Andean
concepts
of
being
have
already
been well dealt with
by
researchers:
camay,
or
roughly
"to
animate,
to
impart
specific
form and force" in G.
Taylor's
article
(1974-1976);
and
hua?uy,
or "to die" in Urioste's article
(1981).1
Other clues to
assumptions
about existence
appear
in Duviols's
(1978)
and
Taylor's
(1980)
clarifications of
upani,
or
roughly
"shade,"
which seems
related to colonial
Quechua supay,
or "demon." This
essay
sketches further
usages
and
implications
of the
lexicon about
being
and substance and transformation
of
beings
as we know them from the one and
only
available
early
text that
presents
an Andean belief
system
in an Andean
language, namely
the
anonymous
Quechua manuscript
of Huarochiri
(circa 1608;
for
translations,
see
Taylor
1987;
Salomon and Urioste
1991).
It is
important
to understand at the start
that,
while the Huarochiri book contains
origin myths,
legends,
and
priestly
lore of
clearly pre-Hispanic
derivation,
the colonial
Quechua language
and the
writing practices
in which
they
are
expressed by
1608
had been much influenced
by
the Church's labors
toward
making
the former
"Language
of the Inca" into
an
evangelical interlingua
(Mannheim 1991,
Duviols
and Itier
1993).
Thus the
concepts
of
being implicit
in
colonial
Quechua
language
and
writing practices
are
not
necessarily
disconnected from the
largely
Aristotelian and
Augustinian philosophic
discussion that
lies in the
background
of Peruvian
evangelization.
The source for the
Quechua manuscript
is a
multilayered compendium containing
testimonies
by
villagers
from a
group
of
agropastoral
settlements on the
western Andean
heights overlooking
Lima and also
containing
editorial material
by
the native researcher
who
gathered
the stories. In the
paragraphs
that
follow,
most
examples
come from
passages
of the former
sort,
but a few
(such
as
chapter
titles,
and so
on)
come from
1. The
orthography
is colonial.
Throughout
the
present essay
Quechua
lexicon is
quoted
as found in sources rather than
rephonologized.
the latter. The master
argument
of the
manuscript
concerns how a
group
of
formerly marginal herding
lineages
rooted in the
high
tundra advanced under the
patronage
of the mountain
deity
Paria Caca into the
richer middle and then lower
valleys, conquering
the
aboriginal
Yunca
peoples,
and at the same time
welding
themselves into the
complex
ritual
regimen
the Yuncas
had
possessed.
It accords
great importance
to the
aboriginal
female
deity Chaupi ?amca,
who is in some
ways
Paria Caca's
down-valley counterpart.
If we curb
assumptions
that "verbs of
being"
in the
Quechua manuscript correspond
to familiar notions of
being
and
becoming, regularities
in their semantic
domains and
usages emerge
and become useful for
interpreting
the
manuscript's implicit
world view.
In this discussion I will
occasionally
use the word
ontology,
not with
any
claim to
discovering ontological
categories
in Andean
thought,
but rather
using
familiar
western
ontological categories
as an aid to textual
exegesis by making explicit
the attributes we think we
recognize
in Andean assertions about
being,
substance,
and
change. Panayot
Butchvarov
(1995:490)
reviews
ontology
in its Aristotelian sense of "first
philosophy,"
that
is,
"the
study
of
being qua being,
i.e.,
of the most
general
and
necessary
characteristics that
anything
must
have in order to count as a
being,
an
entity
(ens).,f
The
root
problem
in
ontology
is that
(at
least in
languages
known to
European philosophers)
the
range
of
"things"
that can be
subjects
of the verb "to be"?that
is,
the
range
of
percepts
that can be
recognized
as discrete
features on a common
spaciotemporal grounding?is
in
most
respects
a non-set: not
apples
and
oranges,
but
apples,
events,
and abstractions. The common
ontological categories
are,
in Butchvarov's
summary:
individual
things
(Socrates,
a
book)
properties
(Socrates' baldness,
a book's
rectangularity)
relations
(marriage,
the
priority
of one book to
another)
events
(Socrates' death,
a book's
publication)
states of affairs (Socrates'
having
died,
the fact that a book
is in
print)
sets
(the
set of Greek
philosophers
or
books)
8 RES 33 SPRING 1998
Concerns of western
ontological philosophy
include,
for
example, asking
whether some individual
things
are
"substances in the Aristotelian
sense, i.e.,
enduring
through
time and
changes
in their
properties
and
relations,
or whether all individual
things
are
momentary";
"whether
any entity
has essential
properties,
i.e.,
properties
without which it would not
exist/'
and "whether
properties
and relations are
particulars
or universals"
(Butchvarov 1995:490).
Do the
implicitudes
of a nonwestern
source,
the
Quechua manuscript
of
Huarochiri,
allow us to
glimpse
any
Andean
assumptions
about
problems
of this order? It
may
be worth
trying
out the
following suggestions.2
1 :
Cay
and
tiay
are in
complementary
contrast as
qualitative
and
dynamic being
versus situated
being
We can start
considering
the lexicon of
being by
noting
that the
language
of the Huarochiri writer tends
to
place
two verbs of
being
in
contrasting opposition,
as
if
suggesting
that the two between them name the
attributes that make
anything
or
anybody ontologically
present.
The first substantive
chapter
(Ch. 1)
of the
Huarochiri
manuscript
is one of the six that have
Spanish-language headings:
Como fue
anteguam[en]te
los
ydolos
. . .
y
como auia en
aquel tiempo
los
naturales,
or "How the Idols of Old Were
. . .
and How the Natives Existed"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec. 3
The
revealing point
here is the
Quechua
interference in
Spanish?not
the "incorrect"
non-pluralization,
which
simply
reflects
Quechua's optional pluralizing
rules
(for
both nouns and
verbs),
but the fact that the author
contrasted "ser" with "haber" in a fashion
imparallel
to
their usual
Spanish
senses. He did so because he was in
need of a
way
to translate a distinction between two verbs
that
posit ontological presence?both necessary
to the task
of
introducing
huacas,
that
is,
superhuman beings,
but
neither one semantical
ly congruent
to "ser" or "haber"
(or
"estar").
We learn what these verbs are in a later
chapter's
heading,
which
similarly
offers an introduction to a huaca.
This instance is not forced into
Spanish:
ymanam chaupi
?amca carean
maypim
t?an,
or "How
Chaupi
?amca was and where she is
[situated]''
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec. 141
Here cascan and tiascan stand in
complementary
contrast;
the former concerns what and how she
was,
that
is, acted,
and the latter concerns where she
was,
that
is,
situated. The distinction concerns
being
as
activity
versus
being
as situated existence. This
particular
quotation highlights
the
separability
of the
concepts by
using
different
tenses;
the
great
female
power Chaupi
?amca
"was,"
"acted"
(carcan)
in a
past-tense form,
because
prior
to the time of
writing
Christians had
already
desecrated and ritual
ly
deactivated
her,
but she
"is" at the time of
writing
still "situated"
(tian),
because
her stone embodiment "is" still hidden where she was
buried
(at
a
specified
site,
Tumna
Plaza).
Similar contrasts
occur in sections 14 and 126 of the
manuscript.
A
being may
have either or both of these
attributes,
with somewhat different
ontological implications.
We
will therefore examine each one
separately.
Point 1a:
Cay
denotes
qualitative being
manifested
in action
There does not
appear
to be
any
such semantic
isolate as mere
existence,
certainly
no verb
exclusively
glossed by
"to exist" as
opposed
to nonexistence. The
best colonial
lexicographer, Gonc?lez Holgu?n,
understood
cay
as
meaning
"ser de essencia o de
existencia"
("to be,
in the sense of essence or of
existence," Gonc?lez Holgu?n
1952
[1608]:668).
Like similar verbs in
many languages, cay
can function
as a
simple copula
(for
example, pirn canqui,
or "who are
you"
[Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds. 1991: sec.
238]).
As an
auxiliary
verb combined with an
agentive
form it
signifies
habitual action
(muchac carcan,
or
"they
used to
worship"
[Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec.
7]).
Beyond
that, cay
brackets
together
cases of
being
as
specificity
(of condition, attribute,
identity)
manifested
via action
through
time. In
usages
like:
. . .
ymanam
casac
?ispa tapuspam,
or ".
. .
asking, saying
'how shall I
[or we] be?'"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991 :sec. 472
2. In the
examples,
references are made to
chapters
of the
original
with the abbreviation "Ch." and references to
passages
are made
by
section
number,
for
example,
(Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec.
3)
meaning
section
(not
page)
3 of the Salomon-Urioste translation. This
citation form facilitates
comparison
with the
Quechua original,
which
is section-numbered in
parallel.
Salomon: How the huacas were 9
the
petitioner merely
wants to know a future
qualitative
state of welfare
(similar
usages
occur in sections
31,
131,
and
286).
What is distinctive about
cay
in the texts is a
tendency
to include senses translatable as "to act" or "to
happen."
The nominalized
perfect
form of the verb
cay,
or "to
be"(casca)
means "events" not "entities"?that
which
somebody
or
something
did. Casca can refer to
the sum of a
being's
activities or its characteristic
activities. One
might accept
a remote
gloss
like the "nature"
of that
entity,
but "deeds" is also often
appropriate:
cay cunirayap
cascanracmi ?ahca vira
cochap
cascanman
tincon,
or "this Cuni
Raya's
deeds
('nature'?
Identity'?)
almost match Vira Cocha's deeds"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991 :sec.
7;
see also sees.
1,
126
Gerald
Taylor,
a careful semantic
analyst,
also includes
culto,
or "the
religious
interaction of
people
and
superhumans," among
his
glosses
for casca
(1987:50-51).
In the latter sense its semantic
component "activity"
seems far broader than that
implicit
in the
English
verb "be."
In the two
chapter headings
cited
above,
each
heading
asks an
implicit question
as to '"how
[the
huaca]
was." The answers to the
question
"how was
s/he?" is not a statement about either
momentary
condition or about
unchangingly predicated
attribute,
but the whole
story
of the
person's
action?that
is,
the
whole
chapter
(Chs. 1,
10 for the cited
examples).
All
told, casca,
the
"being"
of a Huarochiri
actor,
seemingly
accentuates the notion of event as constitutive of
entity.
The huacas
have,
in some
contexts,
individuality
and
properties,
but in others
they
are
seemingly imagined
as
long-term overarching sequences
of
phenomena
or deeds.
Point 1b:
T/ay
denotes situated
being
Tiay
in
Gonc?lez Holgu?n's dictionary
meant
"sentarse estar
sentado,
estar en
alg?n lugar
morar
habitar"
(1952 [1608]:340),
or "to sit
down,
to be
seated,
to be in some
place,
to
dwell,
to inhabit." He
then
gives many
derived
terms,
all
implying decreasingly
kinetic states. For
example,
he
gives
a
Quechua phrase
comparable
to the
English
transitive
usage
"to still
(something)." Tiaycuchini
sonconta
(with
forced
literalism one could
gloss
this as "I make her/his heart
sit")
meant "to calm someone's
anger."
Derivatives
meant "to be in an
available,
motionless
state,"
for
example,
of merchandise on sale. With the
"dynamic
modifier"
(Urioste 1973:174) -ku,
it
yields tiacoy,
or "to
dwell" or
"stay."
In the Huarochiri text:
cananpas
sutilla
escay
runi runahina
tiacon,
or "two stones
just
like
people
are
[located]
there even now"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991 :sec.
18;
see also sees.
14, 32, 34, 50,
etc.
Tiay
is the verb that seems to
emphasize individuality
as
substance: that
singularity
of a huaca that endures
throughout
its
changes
and
relationships. Tiay
often
expresses
the idea of existence in a
permanent
location
and endurance in the form of hard
materials,
like
rock,
or in the form of
permanent corporations,
like
villages
or
priesthoods. Chaupi
?amca,
whose casca is
spoken
of
in a
perfect
nominalized
form,
is the
subject
of active verb
tian
long
after her
"happening"
seems to have ended.
2:
Accumulating
action and
changing
situation
modify
ontological
accent
Various researchers mentioned below have
suggested
that in Andean
speculation,
the
trajectory
of all
being
through
time is
basically
uniform.
Huacas,
like
people,
plants,
and
animals, pass through
a
gradient
from
kinetic,
fleshly, fast-changing being
toward
static, hard,
slow-changing being.
The more
energetic
and fateful
their
actions,
the farther
they
move from soft biotic
states,
full of
potential,
to the hard
states,
full of
permanence,
seen in deified mountains and other land features. This
point
has
already
been well
explored by
Allen and other
researchers whose work is summarized below. It is useful
to
notice, however,
that
though
the
myths speak
of
purportedly
continuous entities?substantial
beings,
in the
Aristotelian sense of entities that survive
changes
of
property
and relations?to refer to them in their successive
states entails
emphasizing
different
categorical
sorts of
being, by
which I mean the sorts of
being
summarized
above
by
Butchvarov. This
shifting emphasis might
be
called
change
of
ontological
accent. For
example,
the
being
Paria Caca is
spoken
of as the
following:
5
eggs
5 falcons
5 heroic
"men,"
collectively
called "the five of him"
(pichcantin)
a
snowcapped, double-peaked
mountain
storm,
red rain and
yellow
rain,
flood and earthslide
a
person
and voice
[that is, oracle]
What, then,
is Caca the
eponym
of? The first three
instances refer to his
theophany,
in the form of five
eggs
that hatched five falcons who became five men, each
the founder of one of the five
large putative
descent
groups
understood as
belonging
to a
single
maximal
ethnic
entity.
In the first three instances
then,
the
ontological category
"set" is salient
(the
ideological
implication being
the
"reality"
of the set formed
by
five
ethnically
related
political
units).
In the first and
third,
the
category
"relation" is
salient;
the
metaphorical
tension between human
sibling
bonds (which
have birth
order)
and the
simultaneity
of a clutch of
eggs
(which
lack
it)
is the main
implication.
Like
hatchlings,
the five
groups
are
equals by
birth, yet
like brothers
they
are not.
The
fourth,
Paria Caca's final form
(and
his tiascan or
located
being)
accentuates
individuality
and
substantiality.
The fifth accentuates the
category
"event,"
insofar as Paria Caca was the
event,
a storm of red and
yellow
rain. The sixth does as
well,
but also
emphasizes
"state of
affairs/'
namely
the state of Paria Caca's
having
ordained a social order.
The
thinking expressed
here embraces the
perception
of
experience
as
ontological ly heterogeneous,
as
Aristotle
taught.
But it deals with this not in the
Aristotelian fashion noted
above,
that
is,
by sorting
out
percepts according
to different sorts of realness we can
accord
them,
but rather
by organizing ontological
heterogeneity
in terms of
single beings
that unite
multiple
sorts of realness and demonstrate them
through
varied manifestations.
Thus the accumulation of eventful
being
is treated as
altering ontological
status itself. The conveners of the
meeting
from which this
essay
derives called attention to
the
concept
of a continuum from
transitory
to durable
modes of
being.
This idea derives from
insights by
Catherine Allen
(1982)
and
George
Urioste. Urioste's
1981
essay
on the death
gradient
is itself an
exegesis
of
the Huarochiri
manuscript.
His conclusion has since the
date of
writing
been confirmed
by ethnographic findings
(Paerregaard
1987,
Valderrama
1980,
Salomon
1995).
His
point
is that unlike Euro-American models of
death,
which treat death as a durationless moment of division
between the "live" status before
expiration
and "death"
after
it, Quechua
hua?oc
("die-er")
brackets those soon
to
expire
with those
recently expired.
The moribund and
the
recently
deceased form a
single
class of
beings,
whose duration extends between the
"living"
(causad)
and the enshrined ancestor
(aya) phases
of
being.
This
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Figure
1. The
snowcap Rariacaca,
in the western Andean cordillera south of
Lima,
is
a
permanent
manifestation of the
multiply
realized
deity
who dominates the
Huarochiri
Quechua
text. This
photograph
shows the south
peak
of the double
peaked snowcap,
which is
probably adjacent
to Paria Caca's ancient shrine. Photo:
Frank Salomon.
transition can be seen as one
segment
of a more
inclusive view of life and death in continuum. Duviols
(1978)
and Allen
(1982)
have each
independently
emphasized
a
pervasive "vegetative metaphor,"
which
connects the
tender,
juicy,
wet character of
young beings
(new
plants,
babies)
with the ever more firm and
resistant,
but also
dryer
and more
rigid
character of older
ones
(adults,
mature
plants)
and
finally,
with the
desiccated but
enduring
remains of
beings
who have left
life and been
preserved (preserved crops
like freeze-dried
potatoes
or ch'u?u
[mummies]).
The most
permanent
of
all
beings
are
geological
features such as mountains
(Rubina 1992).
The
dynamizing
feature of this
cosmology
is the
circulating
and ever
re-fecundating relationship
among beings differently
located in action and time. The
"soul"
(which
in the Huarochiri source is often called
by
the
Spanish
word
anima,
or
"spirit")
is visualized as a
small
flying
creature that
departs
from the dead
person,
much as a seed
departs
from a
dying plant,
and
conserves its
vitality
in a sacred
space,
Uma Pacha. In
idolatry
trials,
some defendants
gave
voice to an
image
of
Uma Pacha as
being
a farm where
spirits,
like
seeds,
could flourish back toward
fleshly
life. The destination of
souls is sometimes also identified with the
origin
shrines
of
ego's group, again emphasizing
a
circulating principle.
At the
highest
extreme of
permanence, beings
of
prototypical importance?those
whose actions
actually
shaped
the conditions of existence?are
spoken
of as
having
hardened into
everlasting
material,
namely
stone
or other land features. These most durable
beings
provide,
indeed
literally
become,
the
ground
on which
new transient
beings emerge.
The overall direction is to
map general
structures of
congruence among living
human
collectivities,
ancestral or
legendary society
(whose
material substance is shrines and the consecrated
dead),
landscape
forms
(mountains
and
waterways),
and
cosmological
facts
(cosmological
bodies,
the
climate).
However this is not to assert that the world of huaca
devotees was of the sort that Bellah
(1964)
recognized
in
speaking
of societies where
divinity
is so close as to
be
ontological ly merged
with
society. Although people,
mummies, huacas,
and the cosmos are kindred
beings,
they
relate to
temporality
and the laws of nature in
dissimilar
ways.
The individual
being passing through
eventful time
actually changes
in
ontological
accent or
association. The mode of life described as characteristic
of huaca devotees is characterized
by
a
complex
regimen
of ritual behaviors
governing relationships
between
beings
of unlike
standing.
3: Communication
among beings
of
unequal
metaphysical
or
ontological standing
occurs
through
"slides"
along
the vital
gradient
Since ritual consisted of
reciprocity among beings
of
all
classes,
human and
nonhuman,
it
implied
communication
among beings
of unlike
ontological
standing.
The rituals described in the
Quechua
source,
as well as some
ethnographical ly
observed
rites,
which
embody
continuities with
them,
have a common
metaprogram
or
genre
scenario for
achieving
this.
As was
suggested
in the
example
of Paria
Caca,
huacas were cultural
postulates
whose interest was
rooted
precisely
in the fact that
they
united in
"persons" heterogeneous perceptions
of
reality
as
substance, event,
category,
and so on. The attributes of
beings
in different
parts
of the vital continuum with
their
differing ontological
accents,
appealed
to
differing
ritual
needs,
with the
predominant
mode
being approach
to more
exalted,
permanent,
and
empowered beings by
lower, softer,
more mutable
ones. These
approaches
tend to be
governed by
a
fairly
regular program.
The actors are:
(1)
at least one sacred
being;
(2)
a
person, generally acting
as
part
of a
collectivity, transacting
a
reciprocal gift;
and
(3)
at least
one
person
who acts as mediator. The
collectivity
and
the mediator
engage
in
divergent
actions. The
collectivity
enters ritual states of
heightened vitality
and
solidarity,
in which
they display
themselves as
themselves
only
more
so;
alcohol
(Saignes
1987)
serves
to liberate
huge discharges
of social and
physical
energy
and
appetite.
Invocations to
deity
are made in
first
person plural?interestingly,
in the inclusive
voice,
implying
that the
deity
addressed
partakes
of the
condition or action of the
collectivity.
The role of the mediator is more
complex.
I would
describe
mediating
roles as "slides"
along
the
continuum of
being,
in which humans assume statuses
closer to those of the
superhuman person
addressed.
These "slides" often have an
aspect
of transient
death,
or transient return from death:
Abstention
(sa?iyj
from
"lively"
behavior. The mildest
degree
of
distancing
from
daily
life is the
preparation
required
of
persons
about to
perform
duties to huacas or
recently
in contact with them. Persons
returning
from a
visit to the female
power Urpay
Huachac had to abstain
from sex and seasoned food for a
year (Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec.
183),
because this huaca unlike
others had no
priest
and demanded
personal
contact.
Parents who had to ritual
ly
avert the bad
consequences
of
a twin
birth?namely,
a death to make
up
for the
anomaly
of an extra life?likewise
accompanied
their sacrificial
gifts
with a
year
of abstention. These were conditions for
dialogue
with Paria Caca. The common denominator of
ritual abstentions seems to be avoidance of intense
bodily
sensations.
5/eep (po?oyj
and
dreaming (muscoyj:
The human
sleeper,
a
person temporarily
removed from
daily vitality,
is
brought
into contact with nonhuman
beings
and
knowledge.
In
chapter
5
(Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds.
1991:sec.
42),
Huatya
Curi,
while
sleeping
and
presumably dreaming,
learns from two
talking
foxes the
secret of the illness that afflicted the fraudulent lord Tamta
?amca. This
supernatural knowledge
would
prove
the seed
of their
reciprocal
role reversal. The crucial
example
is
chapter
21,
entirely
concerned with a
dream,
in which the
protagonist
Don Crist?bal
Choque Casa,
comes into
apparent
contact with his deceased
(hua?uc)
father and
into
dialogue
with the huaca whom that
"die-er,"
that
is,
recently
dead
man,
worshiped
(Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds.
1991:sec.
248).
Assumption
of a deathlike
aspect
or
wearing
dead skins:
Repeatedly,
humans achieve crucial
dialogue
with
superhuman powers by placing
on themselves the
skins,
that
is,
outer
appearances,
of dead animals or
people.
Huatya
Curi
acquired
the
magical power
to beat his
challenger by turning
into
(tucoy)
a dead
guanaco
and
thereby stealing power
from a rival huaca
(Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec. 60). The most dramatic
acting
of
wearing
death is the
donning
of the
huayo
or
flayed-face
mask,
made from a sacrificed
captive,
which imbues the
wearer with the
power
of Uma
Pacha,
the
mythical high
farm wherein the
departing
anima of the dead were
replanted
and
regenerated
(Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds.
1991 :secs.
322-324, 404). The skin of a dead animal also
empowered
a
person
to
approach
the sacred
patron
or
owner of the animal and was
among
the most common
ritual
gestures
(Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:secs.
21,
64, 150, 455-458);
it is still
practiced
in at least one of
Huarochiri's communities
today.
Paria Caca consoled his
people
for the loss of a treasured headdress
by giving
them
a wildcat skin:
And as he'd
foretold,
on
Chaupi
?amca's
festival,
in the
courtyard
called Yauri Cal I
inca,
on
top
of the
wall,
a
very
beautifully spotted
wildcat
appeared.
When
they
saw it
they
exclaimed
joyfully,
"This is what Paria Caca meant!"
and
they
held
up
its skin as
they
danced and
sang
with it.
(Hernando
Cancho
Uillca,
who used to live in
Tumna,
was
in
charge
of it. But
by
now it's
probably gone
all
rotten.)
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991: sec. 314
4:
Passage
between states
accenting
dissimilar
ontological
statuses are
expressed
with
tucoy
In
passages concerning
the
assumption
of a
magical
disguise,
as with
Huatya
Curi
"turning
into a dead
guanaco,"
the verb
employed
is
tucoy.
This is
among
the
most
important
words
signifying
transformation. It
may
usefully
be contrasted with
cay,
or "to be." It has a
usage
as an
auxiliary
verb
comparable
to that of
cay,
but
emphasizing process,
like
English "get":
ynataccho pincay
casac,
or "shall I be shamed so?"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec. 313
and man
carcoy tucorcan,
or
"they got swept away
into the
jungle"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec.
9;
see also 228 and
100,
an
ambiguous
instance
As a
freestanding
verb,
tucoy
covers
processes
in which
a
being
assumes a new outer
aspect.
Some of these
could well be translated as "become":
?a
paria
caca ru ?aman
tucuspas,
or "Paria
Caca,
becoming
human"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991: sec. 74
tuylla pachampitac
rumi
tucorcan,
or
"right
then and there
she turned to stone"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991 :sec. 69
But
tucoy
is more
inclusive,
covering
as it does the
sense "to
feign, pretend
to be":
cay
cuni
raya
vira cochas ancha
?aupa
hue runa ancha
huaccha
tucospalla purircan,
or "In
very
ancient times this
Cuni
Raya
Vira Cocha used to
go
around
posing
as a
miserably poor
man"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec. 9
ancha
yachac tucospa pissi yachascanhuan,
or
"pretending
to be
very
wise with the little that he knew"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991 :sec. 40
chaypim
huanaco
tucospa
hua?usca
siriconqui,
or "there
pretending
to be a
guanaco you'll
lie dead"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec. 58
These instances show that the semantic
scope
of
tucoy
includes
change
of
aspect
without
any premise
about
whether a
change
of what
Gonc?lez
Holgu?n
called
"essence" is entailed.
Because this
noncongruence
occurred close to the
core
meanings
of
conversion,
which
Christianity taught
Figure
2.
Today,
inhabitants of
Tupicocha,
Huarochiri,
still don animal skins?most
importantly,
the
puma?to perform
festival dances. This
puma skin,
used
by
dancers of the Sibimol
Society
in the Pascua
Reyes cycle,
is reminiscent of the
spotted
wildcat skin mentioned in the
Quechua Manuscript's chapter
24. Photo:
Frank Salomon.
people
like the
editor/compiler
to think of as a
change
of
essence,
the
language
of
"becoming
Christian" is
itself
ambiguous
when it talks about
religious change.
huaquin
runacunaca christiano
tucospapas manchaspallam
pactach padrepas pipas yachahuanman
mana alii
cascayta,
or "some
people becoming/feigning
to be Christians
[said]
'Watch
out,
the
padre might
find out how bad we've been'"
Salomon and
Urioste,
eds. 1991 :sec. 134
Knowing
that in at least one of the
languages they
used,
Andean converts
employed
a semantic isolate that
classed
together changes
of form
regardless
of
"authenticity"
of
motive,
helps
one understand
why
the
period
in
question
saw so
many
attacks on the
sincerity
of "Indian"
Christianity. Spanish
Catholics
thought
the
Andean
powers' way
of
influencing
native
people
was
by "lying" (llollaycuy)
to
them,
and this
may
be
influenced
by
the notion that Andean
metamorphoses
(tucoy)
were
deceptions,
the
typical practice
of
European
demons.
Converts,
on the other
hand, may
have understood the
requirements
of
Christianity
as a
matter of
changing appearance appropriately
(much
as
one did in huaca
devotions)
in order to
partake
of
connected
ontological
accents,
rather than a matter of
changing
"essence"?a
concept perhaps
unavailable to
them. The assertion that Andean
people engage
in a
"double"
religious
life has been a
longstanding
one;
it is
still
prevalent
in middlebrow media
representations
of
Andean
Christianity
as a "veneer"
hiding
an authentic
"core" of Amerindian culture. This
representation,
with
its subtextual
imputation
of intentional
deception,
arises
from
(among
other
things)
a failure to
grasp
local
notions about
appearance
and
reality.
It is
perhaps
the
saddest of
many misunderstandings?because
it is the
most
damaging?that
went into the
making
of colonial
relations between the Church and rural
society.
This
exegesis
illustrates
why,
within the
sphere
of the
huacas,
one made transits toward
beings
of more
durable
standing by taking
on a second
skin,
an
appearance,
closer to their
standing
as
durable,
dry,
"dead"
beings.
One
might
communicate across diverse
states of
being by process
of
tucoy, changing
outer
appearance,
for
example, by costuming
oneself as a
huaca's animal to commune with it or
by putting
on the
flayed
face of a dead man to communicate with the
place
of the dead.
From the huaca devotees'
point
of
view,
in which the
"ontological categories" appear
as attributes or
evidences of
single beings
in different instances of their
existences,
no such
problem
arose. The human who
"becomes/pretends
to be" a dead
guanaco
is not
substituting
an unreal for
a real
identity
because his
humanity
is not
imputed
to him as an
unchanging
essence in the first
place.
5: The
hierarchy
of
durability
versus transience often
represents
received ideas about social rank
Up
to this
point
the
argument
has concentrated on
the emic
viewpoint, sketching implicit
ideas
expressed
in ritual and
myth.
But these
beliefs,
of
course,
expressed
an orientation toward a
particular
observed
social
system
as its members understood it.
(The
oral
authors of the
stories,
and the
Quechua compiler/editor
themselves had different
viewpoints
about this
system,
the latter
being apparently
a
strong
Christian convert
alienated from the world view of the
tellers.)
In discourse that refers to the
upper
brackets of
social/superhuman/cosmological hierarchy,
the salience
of the
category
"set"
(as
opposed
to
"thing," "person")
is
high.
Ancestor-focused
imagery,
which
places
durable
beings
at
apical positions
in the natural-social
world,
expresses
an
ideology
that reifies the real-life
processes
of social
reproduction
into
segmented kinship
corporations.
A common
example
of this is the
usage
of
inca or
sapa
inca to
identify
the
person
who stands
highest
in the set
containing
all incacuna
(persons
affiliated to Inka descent
groups).
In effect the
eponymous
use of the term Inca as the name of a
supreme god-king
denotes the entire "set" of Inkas. The
same structure is
pervasive
at lower
levels,
for
example,
in the various Huarochiri instances where the firstborn
of a sib bears a name that is also that of the
sib,
so that
his name is the name of a
category.
When the tellers
assigned
Paria Caca
supremacy
among
the deified
mountains,
and attributed to him a
fivefold essence manifested
through
five heroic
anthropomorphic
selves and their
respective
"children,"
each "child"
being
the ancestor-hero of a
major
branch
of the dominant
population,
the tellers
appear
to have
been
recognizing
and
explaining
a taxonomic likeness
(perhaps
of
language
as well as cultic
practice) among
disparate
and
politically separate,
but
mutually
known
and sometimes allied
invading populations.
(Of
course
in
doing
so,
they may
have been
appropriating
a Paria
Caca cult older and more multiethnic than the
manuscript
allows;
Guarnan Poma 1980
[1615]:113,
185, 264, 268, 269, 329, 335, 884, 915).
These
apical
beings
themselves,
including
Paria Caca once he
"ascended" to
expel
older
deities,
existed in the form of
completely
hardened and durable
geological
matter?
social
practices
"reified" in the strictest sense.
Beings embodying
medial and lower nodes of
segmentation
are
imagined
as former humans or
humanlike,
typically
"hardened"
by
mummification and
enshrinement,
Tutay Quiri
of the Checa
being
the most
elaborated
example,
and ?an
Sapa apparently
another
such. The historical
origins
of mallkis taken to
embody
the heads of medial taxa are unknown. But to allow for
their relative exaltation thousands of other bodies must
have received relative
neglect.
The
passion
for
protecting
important
mummified "mothers" and "fathers" of
corporate
collectivities
(which
so fascinated the
"extirpators
of
idolatry")
was a
part
of
political symbolic
process,
in which kurakas attributed to ancestors of
leading (putatively
senior)
descent lines whatever
prosperity
the
community
achieved and voiced the
community's
needs to them. We know from
extirpation
inquiries
into the funerals of Huarochiri lords who died
in the era of the
manuscript
that the
aggrandizement
of
political
leaders to
primacy among
ancestors continued
after
Spanish conquest
(Salomon 1995,
Marzal
1988,
Saignes
1998).
The
passage
to durable
being
was
accordingly
distributed
unequally though society
in favor of
persons
through
whom the interests of
kinship corporations
were
effectively
transmitted. And the
landscape
over which
ancestor
shrines, huacas,
and deified land features were
spread
could be taken as an
integrally
naturalized
map
of social
hierarchy,
so that one lived enclosed
by
an all
encompassing correspondence
structure across
ontological
levels.
The idiom of ancestor
cult,
as
opposed
to that of
apical
deities,
did concretize taxa in focalized
persons,
but their names never stood for whole sets as do the
highest
names. Rather their
ontological
accent seems to
fall on the
category
"relation."
They
were like milestones
for
measuring
the
spaces
of relatedness. A milestone is a
thing,
but a
thing
whose
significance
is to
express
the
relation between it and other
points
in
space,
and the
relation called "mile" has no
meaning except
the
space
between such
points.
So
major
ancestors became not
just
markers of relation but were accented to relational
concepts
of
genealogy
and
political
affiliation.
6:
Notwithstanding
this
schema,
mythology centrally
includes a trickster
principle,
which
upsets
and
relativizes hierarchies of
being
One of the most
interesting properties
of the
manuscript
is that
although
it idealizes a
priestly
order,
it
also
contains,
as Fioravanti-Molini?
(1987)
has
shown,
a
principle relativizing
that
order,
namely
the
principle
of
the
trickster-demiurge.
His name in the Huarochiri
source is Cuni
Raya
Vira Cocha.
Half of his name?Cuni
Raya?is,
as Rostworowski
(1989) ascertained,
the name of a
far-flung
coastal
deity
associated with the transformation of landforms
by
water.
In the desiccated Andean
landscape,
water
signifies
two
things: longed-for fertility
(via
rain or
irrigation)
and
dreaded
danger
(because
rain often takes the form of
devastating
earthslides and flash
floods).
Thus the
mythic
persona
of water tends to be a
life-giving
but
tricky,
uncontrollable,
and
dangerous
one. In the Huarochiri
manuscript,
Cuni
Raya's
tricks
generally
take the form of
seduction or sexual
provocation by magical
means,
resulting
in unwanted
pregnancy
(Ch. 2)
or
elopement
(Ch. 31),
that
is,
unpredictable
and
irregular
unions that
produce fertility
but do so in
ways
that
upset
the normal
social and
productive arrangements?as
water does
when it
gets
out of control.
The
compiler,
like
many Europeans,
was influenced
by
the
misleading
but
already popularized equation
between Vira Cocha and the God of
contemporary
Catholicism. Cuni
Raya's ability
to create whole
landscapes by fiat?probably
an allusion to the
way
water can transform land
dramatically?led
the
compiler
to think of Cuni
Raya
as a creator
deity,
like
Dios,
the
Christians' God. He was therefore
puzzled by
his
inability
to
verify
from oral
testimony
that Cuni
Raya
had
the
expected
divine attribute of
priority
to all other
superhumans
(Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec.
7,
189,
ch.
15).
Cuni
Raya
Vira Cocha is the
exception
to
every
rule
about huacas.
Although
at one
point
he
(like
most
huacas)
is said to have lithified in a determinate
place
(Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec.
90),
a
transformation that
usually
marks the
passage
from
humanlike action to
permanence,
he is
present
at all
ages
and
places, popping up
in
primordial, mythic,
legendary,
and Inka times. The invasion of the
Spaniards
in
chapter
14 is
explained
as
yet
another of his tricks. In
all his
interventions,
he
brings people
to act
by
their
normal desires and
expectations, yet
in such a
way
as to
bring
about
disruptive
and transformative results.
Many
of these actions include his
"becoming/feigning"
beguiling appearances
of various kinds.
On one
level,
one
might guess
that Cuni
Raya
personifies
the
paradoxes
inherent in
irrigation
technology;
the "normal" control of water
brings
into
the
landscape
the
very
force that
frequently
breaks
through
and
reshapes things catastrophically.
On a more
general
level,
one could think of him as the
anW-huaca,
the
joker
in the
deck,
who made it
possible
for the
huaca outlook to include a
deep appreciation
of
mutability
and the
unpredictable.
Cuni
Raya
seems to
occupy
a
category
all
by
himself. In the
terminology
of
Aristotelian
ontology,
the
"thing"
he
points
toward is a
permanent
"state of affairs." This vivid
deity personifies
the
fragility
of all structures and
categories
and focalizes
paradox,
even humor. The Andean
person struggling
to
learn
appealed
to his evasive wit as to the source of
amauta
cay,
which is sometimes
glossed
"wisdom" but
strongly implies
"discernment"
(Gonc?lez Holgu?n
1952
[1608]:148).
In
Huarochiri,
weavers
appealed
to the
trickster-demiurge
before
trying
to
warp
a
complex
design: "Help
me work it
out,
Cuni
Raya
Vira Cocha"
(Salomon
and
Urioste,
eds. 1991:sec.
8).
If the
Huarochiri
manuscript suggests
a
concept
of
wisdom,
it
is the
deep appreciation
of the attribute of
being
that
Cuni
Raya,
stood for.
To sum
up:
the Huarochiri
manuscript's
tellers seem
to have been habituated not to
analytically separated
portions
of
reality?ontological categories
like those
outlined at the start of this
essay?but
to a web of
socioritual connections with
persons
who each in their
complexity
embodied and familiarized the
multiple
attributes of
"being." Reasoning
about such
problems
as
the relations between a set
(for
example,
a
corporate
kin
group),
which "exists" in one
sense,
and those of
persons,
who "exist" in
another,
is not abstracted but
expressed
in the interaction of
beings
who accentuate
different kinds of existence. Routine
problems
about
entities such as
taxa, events,
and
persons
were then
processed unselfconsciously through
the idiom of
huacas. What the West
troublingly experienced
as the
fundamental
incommensurability
of
experienced reality's
parts?and
the need for a
metaphysical ground
on
which to
place
them
together?found expression
in
these
myths
as
disparity
but also connectedness
among
clusters of
meaning personified
as
superhuman beings
but not limited to
superhumanity
in their manifestations.
The coherence of cosmos
was, then,
asserted not
by
a
unifying theory,
but
by
social mediation on the
part
of
its inhabitants.
They
were the ones who
brought
all
sorts of
beings
into
relationship.
It was ritual that held
things together.
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