Like to this in meaning, though different in fancy, is the civilization-myth of the Incas. Men, said this Quichua legend, were savages dwelling in caves like wild beasts devouring wild roots and fruit and human flesh, covering themselves with leaves and bark or skins of animals. But our father the Sun took pity on them, and sent two of his children, Manco Ccapac and his sister-wife, Mama Occllo: these rose from the lake of Titicaca, and gave to the uncultured hordes law and government, marriage and moral order, tillage and art and science. Thus was founded the great Peruvian empire, where in after ages each Inca and his sister-wife, continuing the mighty race of Manco Ccapac and Mama Occllo, represented in rule and religion not only the first earthly royal ancestors, but the heavenly father and mother of whom we can see these to be personifications, namely, the Sun himself, and his sister-wife the Moon.[1] Thus the nations of Bogota and Peru, remembering their days of former savagery, and the association of their culture with their national religion, embodied their traditions in myths of an often-recurring type, ascribing to the gods themselves, in human shape, the establishment of their own worship.
The 'inconstant moon' figures in a group of characteristic stories. Australian legend says that Mityan, the Moon, was a native cat, who fell in love with some one else's wife, and was driven away to wander ever since.[2] The Khasias of the Himalaya say that the Moon falls monthly in love with his mother-in-law, who throws ashes in his face, whence his spots.[3] Slavonic legend, following the same track, says
- ↑ Garcilaso de la Vega, 'Commentarios Reales,' i. c. 15; Prescott, 'Peru,' vol. i. p. 7; J. G. Müller, pp. 303-8, 328-39. Other Peruvian versions show the fundamental solar idea in different mythic shapes (Tr. of Cieza de Leon, tr. and ed. by C. R. Markham, Hakluyt Soc. 1864, pp. xlix. 298, 316, 372). W. B. Stevenson ('Residence in S. America,' vol. i. p. 394) and Bastian ('Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 347) met with a curious perversion of the myth, in which Inca Manco Ccapac, corrupted into Ingasman Cocapac, gave rise to a story of an Englishman figuring in the midst of Peruvian mythology.
- ↑ Stanbridge, 'Abor. of Australia,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 301.
- ↑ H. Yule, 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' vol. xiii. p. 628.
