The Inca religious term huaca discussed in the text Comentarios Reales de los Incas by the Peruvian chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega of the 16th–17th centuries is considered in this article. It is a Quechua noun related to the concept of the supernatural. Based on long-term acquaintance with the ancient culture and religion of the Incas, the article’s author has become ever more convinced that the concept under discussion occupied a central place in the official solar cult of the Incas as well as in their folk religion. At the same time, it is interesting to note that the term huaca has not been discussed sufficiently thoroughly in scholarly literature.
The structure of the article. First, the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega and his Comentarios Reales de los Incas, the complete text of which has hitherto not been translated into Estonian, are introduced. Then, the translation of the texts related to the concept of huaca from Spanish to Estonian is presented (most of the chapter Libro II, Capitulo 4. De muchos dioses que los historianes españoles impropiamente aplican a los indios and an important relevant part of the chapter Libro II, Capitulo 5. De otras muchas cosas que el nombre Huaca significa). Commentaries on them are provided between the paragraphs of the translated text and in the footnotes. The following Spanish texts were used for the translation: the printed edition of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Los Incas: Comentarios Reales de los Incas [1609]. Edición completa e ilustrada. Arequipa: Ediciones El Lector S.R.L., 2019 and the online edition http://shemer.mslib.huji.ac.il/lib/W/ebooks/001531300.pdf. Finally, conclusions are presented.
The author and the work. Garcilaso de la Vega (12 April 1539 – 23 April 1616), born Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, also known as El Inca, was the son of a Spanish captain and a princess of the former imperial line of the conquered Inca state Tahuantinsuyu. At an older age, Garcilaso recorded the authentic historical information he had heard as a child from members of his mother’s side of the family in the chronicle Los Comentarios Reales de los Incas (Royal resp. true reports about the Incas), which was printed in Lisbon in 1609.
The work consists of two parts. The first part, entitled Comentarios Reales de los Incas, is a valuable historical source. The second part of the Historia general del Peru (General History of Peru) recounts the events of the conquest of Peru in the 16th century.
Since Garcilaso’s mother’s family was the imperial dynasty that had ruled Peru until the Spanish conquest, the author understandably portrays the Incas in a biased and positive light: the Inca country was prosperous and had just laws. However, Garcilaso conveys historical events, the political system, economic life, traditions, religion, customs, and everyday life quite thoroughly and relatively close to the truth. Of course, he described and commented on all this as a true Christian and a Spaniard by upbringing.
Conclusions. Based on the translated text of Garcilaso’s chronicle, the author concludes that the word huaca means the following: (1) Gods, temples, burial places, domestic sanctuaries, beings, and phenomena, that is, everything that belongs to the sphere of holiness; (2) Objects, places, phenomena, and creatures that are either unusually beautiful and beautiful, ugly and terrible, extremely large and extremely small, or altogether strange and unseen, i.e. everything that differs from the usual.
Sir C. Markham has suggested that huaca may be similar in meaning to the word taboo from the islands of Oceania. This point of view is close to the truth. Based on the chronicle text, the meaning of huaca coincides with Mircea Eliade’s concept of ‘holy’ and ‘sanctity’, which includes everything that is outside of experience in a positive or negative sense, unusual and incomprehensible, simultaneously sacred and cursed, and therefore associated with taboos.