n fact, but known
better to ornithologists as a macaw. "The chief cause," says the good
Christoval, "of these fables was ignorance of God."

(1) Rites and Laws of the Yncas, p. 4, Hakluyt Society, 1873.

The story, as told by Cieza de Leon, runs thus:(1) A white man of great
stature (in fact, "a magnified non-natural man") came into the world,
and gave life to beasts and human beings. His name was Ticiviracocha,
and he was called the Father of the Sun.(2) There are likenesses of
him in the temple, and he was regarded as a moral teacher. It was owing
apparently to this benevolent being that four mysterious brothers and
sisters emerged from a cave--Children of the Sun, fathers of the Incas,
teachers of savage men. Their own conduct, however, was not exemplary,
and they shut up in a hole in the earth the brother of whom they were
jealous. This incident is even more common in the marchen or household
tales than in the regular tribal or national myths of the world.(3) The
buried brother emerged again with wings, and "without doubt he must
have been some devil," says honest Cieza de Leon. This brother was Manco
Ccapac, the heroic ancestor of the Incas, and he turned his jealous
brethren into stones. The whole tale is in the spirit illustrated by the
wilder romances of the Popol Vuh.

(1) Second Part of the Chronicles of Peru, p 5.

(2) See Making of Religion, pp. 265-270. Name and God are much disputed.

(3) The story of Joseph and the marchen of Jean de l'Ours are well-known
examples.

Garcilasso gives three forms of this myth. According to "the old Inca,"
his maternal uncle, it was the sun which sent down two of his children,
giving them a golden staff, which would sink into the ground at the
place where they were to rest from wandering. It sank at Lake Titicaca.
About the current myths Garcilasso says generally that they were "more
like dreams" than straightforward stories; but, as he adds, the Greeks
and Romans also "invented fables worthy to be laughed at, and in greater
number than the Indians. The stories of one age of heathenism may be
compared with those of the other, and in many points they will be found
to agree." This critical position of Garcilasso's will be proved correct
when we reach the myths of Greeks and Indo-Aryans. The myth as narrated
north-east of Cuzco speaks of the four brothers and four sisters who
came out of caves, and the caves in Inca times were panelled with gold
and silver.

Ath