that when Huayna Capac died, a thousand members of his household incurred a voluntary death that they might go with him to serve him. The widows, however, were not compelled to take this step, and we know that the Incas had organized the support of widows without resources. But public opinion was not favourable to those who refused to follow their husbands to the tomb. It was regarded as a species of infidelity.[1] We see, however, from other well-established facts, that the Peruvian religion had been gradually softened. In Peru, as in China, instead of the living beings that they used formerly to bury with the dead, they now placed statuettes of men and women with him in his tomb to represent his wives and his servants.[2]
We must also mention those "columns of the Sun" which appear never to have been absent in countries dominated by a solar worship. We have
- ↑ Montesinos, p. 121; Acosta, Lib. v. capp. v. xix., Lib. vi. cap. xxii.; Prescott, Bk. i. chaps, i. ii.; Garcilasso, Lib. vi. cap. v.; Acosta, Lib. v. cap. vii.; Velasco, Lib. iii. § 1, sec. 1
- ↑ Gomara, p. 234a. Cf. Montesinos, p. 68, and Pöppig in Ersch u. Gruber's "Encyklopädie," art. Incas, p. 287b, note 35.
