Quirkancha, the temple or
house of the Sun was a site of religious worship in the imperial city of Cuzco
during the time of the Inca Empire. The
myth of its founding is narrated by the 16th century historian known
as the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (12 April 1539 – 23 April 1616). According to Garcilaso, on a hill called Huanacuari,
to the south of the city, the Inca king and his wife thrust a golden wand into
the earth, where it disappeared into the ground. The couple took this as a sign that their deity
wished for them to remain there. People
were gathered from all four directions, and were told “that their father the Sun had
sent them from the sky to be teachers and benefactors (43-44)."
To fully
appreciate this foundational myth as it has been handed down to us by the Inca
Garcilaso de la Vega, we must understand that the Incas did not have a written
language; they developed a system of mnenomic devices employing ropes and knots,
or quipus. As the illegitimate son of
an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador, Garcilaso (whose birth name was Gómez Suárez de Figueroa) was taught
to read and write in Latin and Castilian, and received a thoroughly Catholic
education.
Garcilaso traveled to Spain as a young man to further his
education with the expectation that he would receive his share of his father’s
inheritance. Met with frustration and
unable to overcome the stigma of his bastardy, he nonetheless made his home in
Andalucia, where he would embark on a course of study that produced one of Spanish America’s
most notable works: the Royal
Commentaries of the Inca and General History of Peru. In the words of translator Harold V.
Livermore: “The Royal Commentaries of
the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega is one of the first American classics—that is,
one of the earliest books about America by an American, that has generally been
accepted as a major work of the Spanish language… and if there are earlier
authors in America, none of them can genuinely said to be a figure on the great
stage of Spanish letters (xv).” Garcilaso’s
Royal Commentaries is still admired to
this day for its graceful style, and as a relevant source text of
Spanish-American literature.
As a baptized
Indian, one of mixed heritage—and a boy who spent his early years under Spanish
colonial rule—Garcilaso was profoundly aware of the tragedies that
domination by Europeans had wrought upon his mother’s people. What he most feared was that, with the
suppression of Inca culture, his mother’s world would pass into
oblivion. He writes: “…the name Peru, so famous in the world and rightly famous, since it has filled
the whole world with gold and silver, pearls and precious stones. But because it [the name] was imposed by
accident and is not one they [the Incas] have themselves given, the native
Indians of Peru, though it is seventy-two years since it was conquered, have
not taken this word into their mouths… They used to call it Tahuantinsuyu, meaning ‘the four
quarters of the world (17).'” This need
to correct and educate the Spaniards with regards to the territory they
arbitrarily called “Peru” is evident throughout the Royal Commentaries. With the onslaught of colonization came the
perils of obliteration, which Garcilaso no doubt found personally
unbearable but a loss of enormous cultural consequence to the rulers of his
homeland. He hoped that his history
would result in better conditions for the indigenous people of the region.
Although widely
respected, the Inca Garcilaso is also a controversial figure. Scholars have stressed that, because Garcilaso spent most of his life in Spain, his history relies heavily on secondary
accounts. Garcilaso does not hide this
fact in his work—comparing his version with those of Spanish chroniclers. He has also been criticized for catering to the colonizers
by presenting an idealized view of the Incas as the spiritual counter-part to
Christianity. In keeping with the European
Renaissance tradition in which Garcilaso was schooled, he naturally drew upon
tropes that would be familiar to Europeans. We do find in his telling of foundational myths constant
references to the “the Sun, our Father.”
Rhetoric of this sort would not be taken as pagan by the European humanists but in keeping
with the assimilation of Greco-Roman culture to Catholic theology. There is little
doubt with whom Garcilaso’s sympathies lay.
When he writes on the “naming” and “discovery” of Peru, he does not shy away
from asserting the degree to which the colonizers made a mess of things.
So what did the
Temple of the Sun mean to the peoples of Tahuantinsuyu
according to Garcilaso? Namely, that it
was the center of worship for the Inca Empire—a temple built to glorify their
god. The Spaniards looted the original
temple, robbing it of its splendor, but the foundation of Quirkancha remains,
on which the Dominican Convent of Santo Domingo was built. For
Garcilaso, the temple would always be a sacred monument—which he believed could be saved for posterity only
by writing his history of the Inca empire.
NOTES
Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru (Part
One), trans. Harold V. Livermore, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1966.
Kathryn A. Kopple is the author of Little Velásquez, a novel set in 15th century Spain.
Kathryn A. Kopple is the author of Little Velásquez, a novel set in 15th century Spain.
