XL] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 425 



ment that they were unable to understand by what processes such 

 buildings had been erected, proof enough that they were not the 

 builders. 



It is here made abundantly evident that the great temple and 

 surrounding edifices, which were never completed, date from 

 pre-Inca times, that they were dedicated to Viracocha, tutelar 

 deity of the Aymaras, and that the building operations were 

 arrested by the Incas, who regarded Tiahuanaco, seat of this cult, 

 as the rival of Paccaritambo, near Cuzco, centre of the Quechua 

 sun-worship. But after the complete conquest of Aymaraland the 

 original hostility between the two religious centres disappeared, 

 international jealousies, based more on political than religious 

 grounds, died out, and Viracocha himself was adopted into the 

 Quechuan pantheon. His name was even borne by one of the 

 Incas (Viracocha, son of Yahuar-Huacac) ; in the esoteric teach- 

 ings of the Peruvian priests he was identified with the " Unknown 

 God," said to have been worshipped under the name of Pacha- 

 camac in Upper Peru and of Viracocha at Cuzco 1 ; lastly this 

 Aymara deity's name became in later times a general title of 

 honour, and at present all Europeans are greeted by the natives 

 as Viracocha-tatai) "Our father Viracocha." With the Aymara 

 tutelar divinity were naturally appropriated the above described 

 myths and traditions, until Titicaca, home of the Aymaras, 

 became the mystic cradle of the sun-descended Incas, and thus 

 in the early writers (Piedro de Cieza de Leon, Garcilaso, etc.) 

 the Aymaras and all their works were merged in the dominant 

 Peruvian nationality-. Such would appear to be the solution of 

 perhaps the most interesting, certainly one of the most obscure 

 ethnico-historical problems in the New World. 



1 Cieza, however, the ''Herodotus of the New World," had his doubts, for 

 he writes: "V assi se tiene, que antes que los Ingas reynassen non muchos 

 tiempos, estavan hechos algunos edificios destos: porque yo he oydo afirmar a 

 Indies que los Ingas hizieron los edificios grandes del Cuzco, por la forma que 

 vieron tener la muralla o pared que se vee en este Tiaguanaco" (Chronica, I. 

 ch. 105). 



- It is very significant in this connection that, as Garcilaso himself confesses 

 (Bk. vi. ch. 21), the term Viracocha had no meaning at all in the Quechuan 

 language of his Inca forefathers. 



