These fragments, broken chips from a great wreck, have at last reached us. We know from them that, in their inmost hearts, the intellectual and more instructed section of the Incas and their people sought for a knowledge of the unseen creator of the universe, while publicly conducting the worship of objects which they knew to be merely God's creatures. Garcilasso de la Vega gives the sayings of several Incas respecting the obedience of the sun, in its daily and yearly course, to the behests of a higher power. There are one or two points connected with Uira-cocha which have been puzzling, and which will be better discussed in a footnote.[1]
- ↑ Gomara and Betanzos are responsible for a god they called Con. No other authority knew of it. Gomara had never been in America. He recorded a story of a being named Con, child of the sun, who created men, but afterwards, being enraged with them, he turned the land into deserts, and gave no more rain, so that they only had water from the rivers. This is evidently a story from the coast. It is merely a version of the Huarochiri legend, and Gomara's Con is Coniraya Uira-cocha, the god ruling over the heat of the sun. He was superseded on the coast by the fish god and oracle, Pachacamac. Betanzos is a more important authority, as he was many years in Peru, and spoke Quichua. He gives Con titi as a prefix to the name of Uira-cocha, while all other authorities give the words Illa Tici. The manuscript has Con titi, but the editor altered it to Con Tici, to be nearer the other authorities. Titi is no doubt a clerical error. Probably it should be Inti, when it would be Conip Inti, the sun giving warmth; like Coniraya, appertaining to warmth, attributes of the Deity, not a separate person. The name Con occurs five times in the first and second chapters of Betanzos, but not in any of the other chapters.
Salcamayhua, in relating a version of the Titicaca myth, mentions two servants of Uira-cocha named Tonapa and Tarapaca. Sarmiento spells the latter Tahuapaca. Cieza de Leon has Tuapaca.
