ive, of _ccuni_, I
give. "He Gives;" the Giver, would seem an appropriate name for the first
creator of things. But the myth itself, and the description of the deity,
incorporeal and swift, bringer at one time of the fertilizing rains, at
another of the drought, seems to point unmistakably to a god of the winds.
Linguistic analogy bears this out, for the name given to a whirlwind or
violent wind storm was _Conchuy_, with an additional word to signify
whether it was one of rain or merely a dust storm.[1] For this reason I
think M. Wiener's attempt to make of Con (or _Qquonn_, as he prefers to
spell it) merely a deity of the rains, is too narrow.[2]

[Footnote 1: A whirlwind with rain was _paria conchuy_ (_paria_, rain),
one with clouds of dust, _allpa conchuy_ (_allpa_, earth, dust); Holguin,
_Vocabulario Qquichua_, s.v. _Antay conchuy_.]

[Footnote 2: _Le Perou et Bolivie_, p. 694. (Paris, 1880.)]

The legend would seem to indicate that he was supposed to have been
defeated and quite driven away. But the study of the monuments indicates
that this was not the case. One of the most remarkable antiquities in Peru
is at a place called _Concacha_, three leagues south of Abancay, on the
road from Cuzco to Lima. M. Leonce Angrand has observed that this "was
evidently one of the great religious centres of the primitive peoples of
Peru." Here is found an enormous block of granite, very curiously carved
to facilitate the dispersion of a liquid poured on its summit into varied
streams and to quaint receptacles. Whether the liquid was the blood of
victims, the intoxicating beverage of the country, or pure water, all of
which have been suggested, we do not positively know, but I am inclined to
believe, with M. Wiener, that it was the last mentioned, and that it was
as the beneficent deity of the rains that Con was worshiped at this sacred
spot. Its name _con cacha_, "the Messenger of Con," points to this.[1]

[Footnote 1: These remains are carefully described by Charles Wiener,
_Perou et Bolivie_, p. 282, seq; from the notes of M. Angrand, by
Desjardins, _Le Perou avant la Conquete Espagnole_, p. 132; and in a
superficial manner by Squier, _Peru_, p. 555.]

The words _Pacha camac_ mean "animating" or "giving life to the world." It
is said by Father Acosta to have been one of the names of Viracocha,[1]
and in a sacred song preserved by Garcilasso de la Vega he is appealed to
by this title.[2] The identity of these two divinities s