Editorial
The river around us, the stream within us, the traces of the sun
and Inka kinetics
TOM CUMMINS and BRUCE MANNHEIM
The stones of the Inka wall were larger and stranger than I
had ever imagined; they bubbled beneath the whitewashed
second story, which facing the narrow street, was blind
(i.e. no windows). Then I remembered the Quechua songs,
which continually repeat one pathetic phrase: yawar mayu,
river of blood; yawar unu, bloody water; puk-tik’ yawar
k’ocha, lake of blood that boils; yawar wek’e, “tears of
blood.” Couldn’t one say yawar rumi, “stone of blood,” or
puk’ tik’ yawar rumi, “boiling stone of blood”? The wall was
stationary, but its lines were seething and its surface was
changeable, as that of the flooding summer rivers, which
have similar crests near the center, where the current flows
the swiftest and is the most terrifying. The Indians call these
muddy rivers yawar mayu, because when the sun shines on
them they seem to glisten like blood. They also call the most
violent tempo of the war dances, the moment when the
dancers are fighting, yawar mayu.
Puk’tik yawar rumi! ’ I exclaimed aloud, facing the wall.”1
—José María Arguedas, Rios Profundos (1958)
How are we to understand this passage? What is it
that provoked Arguedas’s narrator and protagonist to
cry out “boiling stone of blood” when he first saw the
Inka walls of Cuzco? What did it mean for him to hear
Inka walls in the lyrics of Quechua songs? What could
one experience in the stationary and oh so solid Inka
walls that make them so animate and fluid to be bloody
1. “Eran más grandes y extrañas de cuanto había imaginado las
piedras del muro Inkaico; bullían bajo el segundo piso encaldo, que
por el lado de la calle angosta, era ciego. Me acordé. Entonces de las
canciones quechuas que repiten una frase patética constante: ‘yawar
mayu,’ río de sangre; ‘yawar unu‘ agua sangrienta; ’puk-ti‘ yawar
k’ocha,’ lago de sangre que hierve; ’yawar wek’e,’ lágrimas de de
sangre. ¿Acaso no podría decirse ’yawar rumi,’ piedra de sangre o,
’puk’ tik’ yawar rumi,’ piedra de sangre hirviente? Era estático el muro,
pero hervía por todas sus íneas y la superficies era cambiante, como
las de los ríos en el vernao, que tienen una cima así, hacia el central
de caudal, que es la zona temible, la más poderosa. Los indios llaman
’yawar mayu‘ a eso ríos turbios, porque muestran con el sol un brillo
en moviemento, semejante al de la sangre. También llaman ‘yawar
mayu’ al tiempo violento de las danzas guerreras, al momento que los
bailarines luchan.
¡Puk’tik yawar rumi!—eclamé frente al muro, en voz alto (Arguedas
1958:11).
and boiling? What was it that a twentieth-century song
could evoke in its “pathetic” words and music, such
that vivid and fluid images could be envisioned and be
heard? Could it be that this is merely the literary flourish
of the individual imagination of an author? Or, is there
something more to be seen and felt by an Andean than
is experienced by the most inveterate visitors, be they
poets, scholars, or tourists?2 What kind of synaesthetics is
this in which the natural world, the animate world, and
the cultural world are mixed so thoroughly by one’s own
physical experience?
After all, for most anyone coming from the outside,
the natural world of the Andes gives, on first glance, the
appearance of immutability, austerity, and intractability,
almost anything other than being alive and animate.
Yet this is a sacred world of the Inka, and Inka art and
architecture, which, for Arguedas at least, is alive,
shimmering, and liquid and integral to that world. For
others, however, Inka art and architecture seems only
to mimic the starkness, stillness, and harshness of the
Andes. Or, at least, this is the impression of George
Kubler who wrote of Inka art that “the intrinsic meaning
of Inka art reinforces the general impression of an
oppressive state. It is as if, with the military expansion
of the empire, all expressive faculties, both individual
and collective, had been depressed by utilitarian aims to
lower and lower levels achievement.” (Kubler 1975:335).
Kubler finds an odd bedfellow in Georges Bataille who
wrote some fifty years earlier that “by the meticulous
organization of an immense army the Inkas’ power
spread over a considerable part of South America. [. . .]
Everything was planned ahead in an airless existence.
[. . .] Given these conditions it is not surprising that
the Inka Civilization is relatively dull” (Bataille [1928]
1986:3–5). And lest we attribute the judgments of
these scholars to the closure of the academy, consider
the words of one of the great poets of the twentieth
2. Scholarship on the Inka basically follows a European model of
focusing on a single medium of expression, be it stone, metal, textile,
ceramic, or architecture.
6 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011
century, Pablo Neruda, reflecting on the Inka walls of
Machu Picchu ([1948] 1985: 127): “Piedra en piedra,
el hombre, dónde estuvo?” (“Stone on stone, and man,
where was he?”), opening a poetic argument that is
similar to Bataille’s.
Perhaps, what these men say about the Inka may
appear to be true for some: that they are dull and
lacking of any expression. But then again maybe not, or
a least not in the terms by which these men measured
Inka art and civilization, even though they arrived at
their conclusions from radically different perspectives.
Or perhaps they did not, not really, come from such
different perspectives. But that is a discussion for another
time and place. What interests us here is how inert and
lifeless they saw Inka art and culture to be, and how
fundamentally, perversely wrong they both were; if we
are to read seriously what Arguedas so beautifully wrote
about Inka walls. But what could Arguedas mean, a
meaning that is so different from that of such erudite men
of France, and Chile, and the United States? What we
shall ultimately argue is that they literally could not see
past either the forest or the trees, or more precisely liquid
or water; earth or sky; stone or mountain to understand
and appreciate the dynamics of Andean expression, and
especially Inka art, as something that was and still is so
carefully attuned with the coursing of life and movement
that it is impossible to distinguish between the natural
and cultural, sacred and mundane. It is an aesthetic that
takes light and liquid, hardness and softness as sources of
expression and casts them in various guises across skies
and landscapes, buildings and bodies. Nothing in the
Andes of the Inka is as it appears to the likes of Kubler,
Bataille, Neruda and so many lesser others.3 Neither they
nor the first Spaniards could see (or even now when so
many archaeologists witness only the cold remains of
things) that a crafted, created world was so animated
that those who lived it, inhabited it, could sing it aloud,
such that the hard stones were experienced as turbulent
rushing waters.
Mayu/qaqa: river/stone
And so we begin with an Inka ritual payer, a prayer
that was surely sung before it was ever written down.
It was transcribed in the early seventeenth century
by a native Peruvian provincial lord, Juan de Santa
3. To be fair, there are also an increasing number of scholars such
as Van de Guchte (1990), Paternernosto (1996) and Dean (2007) who
have studied Inka art (sculpture, textiles, and ceramics) with much
more nuanced approaches and sympathies.
Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui, who wrote an account of Inka
dynastic mythology in which he included ritual poetry. A
portion of the poem has the following invocation of the
deity Wiraqucha ([1613] 1993:f.9v [200]):
Intiqa Sun
Killaqa Moon
P’unchawqa Day
Tutaqa Night
Puquyqa the season of ripeness
Chirawqa the season of freshness
Manam yanqachu do not simply exist
Kamachisqam purin [but] are ordered
Wiraqucha, the Inka deity of the beginning, was given
the epithet pacha yachachiq, “the one who causes
the world to have practical knowledge or language”
(Betanzos [1551] 1987:14; Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui
[1613] 1993:f.14r [209]). In another prayer transcribed
by Cristóbal de Molina, Wiraqucha divides male and
female by saying, kay qhari kachun, kay warmi kachun
(let this be man, let this be woman), creating men and
women in six short words (Molina [1576] 2008). The
invocations of Wiraqucha recorded by Santa Cruz
Pachacuti Yamqui and by Cristobal de Molina “El
Cuzqueño” (1576) celebrate the ability of Wiraqucha to
align the order of the world to language.4 The passage
that we quoted before by Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui
(so evocative of Genesis 8:21) asserts that the sun and
the moon, day and night, the season of ripeness and the
season of freshness are not yanqa, a Southern Peruvian
Quechua word for purposeless being, useless action,
and speech uttered without conviction. The sun and
moon, day and night, and the seasons do not simply
exist. Instead, they are kamachisqa (ordered, organized,
imbued with vital force), a word derived from the root
kama (to order, to organize, or to have essence). The
invocation to Wiraqucha can be paraphrased thus:
“The sun and moon, day and night, and the seasons of
ripeness and freshness do not simply exist, but exist by
virtue of an order among them.” This belief is reflected in
the form of the invocation. The terms are introduced in
mutually defining matched pairs. Each term is followed
by the suffix -qa, the semantically emptiest suffix in
the language, which makes the set of words more than
just a list: It is the simplest form of semantic coupling,
a characteristically Quechua poetic device, in which
two semantically related words appear in successive
lines, in identical morphological contexts. The suffix -qa
4. Sarmiento de Gamboa ([1572] 1988:84) also attributes this
generative power to the mytho-historic Inka king Viracocha.

is the minimum possible morphological context.5 The
fullness of the linguistic analysis appears in Mannheim
(1998), but here we want simply to stress two issues that
are fundamental to understanding how the Inka might
have thought about the images they created. First, the
terms of the couplets do not exist in isolation—they
are relational, mutually defining in such a way that
neither can exist without the other. And they are not
merely static categories, but have a kinetic existence,
their kinesis signaled by the verb puriy. Puriy has
sometimes been mistranslated as “to travel,” but it is far
more inclusive, comprehending anything with a kinetic
existence: the gears of a wristwatch, the workings of a
political program, the sexual act, and the existence of the
mountain deities—the Apus—who puriy even, though
they physically stay in one place (ibid.:244 ).
And so let us begin again and this time with a passage
from 1553, in which Cieza de León tells us about the
nature of the men and women of Peru. About the women
he says that one sees them everywhere constantly
spinning the wool of llamas and vicuñas; whereas one
sees men standing with a cup filled with aqha (corn
beer) held in one hand and while in the other they hold
their member as they urinate.6 We shall return to the
latter, non-distaff part of this passage, but it is enough to
say now that these two descriptions refer to an Andean
world in motion and circulation that, unbeknown to
Cieza de León—who found the first instance a sign of
industry and propriety and the second a sign of disrepute
and idleness—was integral to a circulation of the
sustaining life forces of Andean cosmology. This is to say
that Cieza de León was a soldier who wrote about what
he saw with little understanding or depth, very much like
5. At the same time, we recognize with Itier (1993, 1995) and
Duviols (1993) that the Quechua orations registered by Pachakuti
Yamqui and by Molina were shaped by their contexts within Christian,
monotheistic apologetics and cannot be taken to be mere “repetition”
of “remembered” prayer. The use of semantic couplets in the text
reflect specifically Quechua poetic traditions (there is no chain of
transference that can link them causally to the parallelistic traditions
in the Hebrew Bible; Quechua semantic couplets work structurally in
ways that are different from Hebrew parallelism; and they pervade non-
religious contexts more than religious ones, so they do not likely have
a specifically religious source), contra Itier (1993:140) that there are no
specifically Quechua rhetorical moves in the orations. There is a minor
difference in the syntactic interpretation of the passage quoted from
Itier, reflecting a distinct reading of the holograph, based on whether or
not a mark was intended as a comma. The difference in interpretation
does not affect the argument here.
6. “[. . .] muchos tienen con la mano la vasija con que estan
bebiendo y con la otra el miembro con que orinan.” Cieza de León
[1553] 1986:282. See also Allen (2009).
Cummins and Mannheim: Editorial 7
Kubler and Bataille, but who nonetheless possessed a
much more penetrating observation of things and actions
that were and still are meaningful to the generation and
sustenance of an Andean world. And as we will see,
they are part and parcel of the visions of an Inka wall as
voiced by Arguedas.
His passage also allows us to talk more about the
concept of kinetic in the Andes and in Inka art in
particular: It is to enter into a physical world of aesthetic
and metaphysical activity that is fully corporeal; a
world that is non-Cartesian. Let us first then look at an
environment so transformed in appearance and being
that all that might seem so solid, immoveable, inanimate,
and inert flows with movement or in turn exerts a will
not to be moved. If we cast a gaze onto the magisterial
slopes of Machu Picchu there are, of course, the ever
so famous tiered and carefully groomed terraces that
seem to ascend magnificently and geometrically in ever-
reduced curved retaining walls (fig. 1). At the same time,
however, there is the living rock that is also skillfully
worked so as to simulate the flowing motion down the
grades of terraces as if appearing almost to be liquid
but caught, almost momentarily frozen, in place. The
geometric pattern of the stepped terraces so laboriously
built are here counterbalanced by the “natural” boulders.
But these are not merely natural boulders, left where
they are because they could not be moved. Rather, they
have been left and perhaps worked so as to allow the
appearance of a flowing motion down the mountain
side. If we look at their exposed surfaces we see that
they are all angled to appear as if moving in a downward
direction. Here the hardness and stability of the lithic
appears to have been liquefied, as if pouring, like the
channeled waters gushing onward, into the great river
below and eventually reaching the ocean.
In fact, the sky above and the ground below are
recognized as conduits for an ever-flowing source of
cosmic force that transforms the state of being as it
courses through the universe of which stone is a part.
This may sound abstract but it is very concrete, as one
comes to see it manifest in various forms of Inka art and
architecture. Kinesis, meaning an energizing or dynamic
rather than mechanical sense of movement, is a principle
of Inka aesthetics that integrates rock, light, water, and
air. For example, as Gary Urton has demonstrated, the
Milky Way, something that is so brilliant in the Andean
night sky, is conceived as a river, in fact called Mayu or
“river.” It flows across the sky, perpetually in motion,
arising out of the sea (Mamaqucha) and settling back
into it. As it courses through the night it seeds the sky
with a fructifying rain that falls, then flows down the
8 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

Figure 1. Western slope of Machu Picchu with terraces and worked boulders, ca. 1500.
Photograph by Tom Cummins.

rivers into the earth until it reaches back to the ocean. reason of the mundane.7 What is more, even in the
Beginning the never-ending cycle again, the water precincts of the state, circulation of water was imbued
from Mamaqucha rises to flow through the Milky Way with practical politics (Sherbondy 1987).
and carries with it the cosmic llamas, foxes, and other If we return to the invocation to Wiraqucha with
animals that form the constellations in the sky and which we began this article, we can understand this
which are the master animals that ensure their increase relationship between stone and water a bit better.
on earth (Urton 1981:38, 56–65, 106–150). This is a Remember it was as follows:
cosmic circulation that fructifies and sustains the world, Intiqa Sun
a movement that is augmented in a variety of ways Killaqa Moon
though a host of microcosms. All this movement and P’unchawqa Day
circulation finds expression in Inka art and architecture Tutaqa Night
by harnessing the medium of expression (stone, metal, Puquyqa the season of ripeness
body) with the kinetic medium—be it light, water, Chirawqa the season of freshness
shadow, or direction. For example, at Ollantaytambo, Manam yanqachu do not simply exist
the course of water leads through the valley so that Kamachisqam purin [but] are ordered
it streams over the face of a worked boulder (fig. 2). The tradition of “semantic couplets” appears not only in
It highlights by the contrast of wet and dry stone the the invocation to Wiraqucha and in other early conquest-
recursive step-fret motif that is sometimes given the era sources on Peru, but in the modern Quechua
Quechua name chakana, which according to González
Holguín ([1608], 1989:84), simply means escalera or
stairs, but which is also replicated in the cosmos in
7. There is a substantial ethnographic literature on the practical,
the constellation of Orion’s belt. As Urton’s work—
political, and ritual logic of the circulation of water in the Andean
developed initially in a small community outside of region today. Three excellent starting points (all from the Colca Valley
Cusco—shows, Inka ethnoaxiology is fully grounded of Arequipa) are Valderrama and Escalante (1988); Treacy (1994); and
not as the self-reflections of a state, but in the practical Gelles (2000).

Figure 2. Fountain at Ollantaytambo, ca. 1500. Photograph by Tom Cummins.
sung poetry of huaynos, a popular music that is still
pervasive in the central Andes, which inspired Arguedas’s
protagonist. These songs draw on the same stock of
couplets, including such frequent ones as:
mama/tayta mother/father
munay/waylluy desire/love affectionately
waqay/llakiy cry and feel sorrow/feel sorrow
llaqta/ wasi (home) town/house
ripuy/pasay go back/go back (Spanish)
mayu/qaqa river/rock
wakcha/pobre orphan, poor/poor
inti/killa sun/moon
The sequential order of the terms in semantic couplets
is almost always the same, a relatively unmarked term
paired with a relatively marked one, closely related to
the first—with no possibility of another term intervening
in the relationship. For abstract concepts like munay/
waylluy (desire/love affectionately) or waqay/llakiy (cry
and feel sorrow/feel sorrow), the relationship between
the terms is fairly transparent—the second term in the
pair is more specific than the first one, narrowing the
semantic field, as it were. For very concrete nouns such
as mama (mother)/tayta (father) or llaqta ([home] town)/
wasi (home), the second term seems to presuppose the
existence of the first. Pairs like these, and mayu (river)/
Cummins and Mannheim: Editorial 9
qaqa (rock), and inti (sun)/killa (moon) are misleading
in their naturalness, in that they seem to be exact
counterparts of their English or Spanish translations.
But the cognitive organization of these word stems in
Quechua cannot be approached without considering the
cognitive structures within which they are embedded,
including lexical domains, implicit theories, and tacitly
related cultural assumptions. At first glance, it seems odd
that mayu (river) should form a pair with qaqa (rock),
but as we have seen, Quechua speakers understand
rock to be a substance that flows like water in the veins
of the mountains. River and rock are also associated in
mythology. The question that must be posed is how do
semantic couplets reflect both broader patterns in the
organization of the lexicon and the specifically cultural
logic of word? Semantic couplets, then, take lexical
relationships that are normally covert and bring them
to the surface. Qaqa (rock) is the marked counterpart
of mayu (river)—both flow. Qaqa (rock) is in turn the
unmarked counterpart to rumi (segmented rock, stones).
Compare two pairs constructed by similar principles:
rit’i (snow, solid water)/chullunku (ice, segmented); and
(in southern Quechua prior to the nineteenth century)
unu (water as a substance)/yaku (water under irrigation).
(Today, Southern Quechua speakers use one word or the
10 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011
Figure 3a. “Acalla Praying to the Sun,” folio 7v in Martín de
Murúa Historia del Origen y Genealogía Real de los Reyes del
Piru, de sus hechos, costumbres, trajes, maneras de gobierno,
begun ca. 1589, finished ca. 1613. Private collection.
Photograph by Tom Cummins.
other to mean “water.”) In each of these sets, the kinesis
that inheres in the first, unmarked, term is harnessed in
the second.
It is important here to follow the logic of the language,
not of the objects that the words denote or the translation
of the words into English or Spanish. It makes as little
sense to question the rationality of the mayu/qaqa (river/
rock) relationship with reference to the objects that the
words “river” and “rock” denote as it does to account for
the fact that the Navaho expression for “sorrow” belongs
to a covert “round” class (Whorf [1945] 1956:91) by
searching for a universal characteristic of sorrow that
would make it round.
“The wall was stationary, but its lines were seething and
its surface was changeable”
The slopes of Machu Picchu are a visual instantiation
of the pairing formed by mayu and qaqa, by river and
rock. The hard stone is cut like tapered boulders, thin at
the top and bulbous at the base, such that it appears to
flow off the mountainside through nature’s force, a force
Figure 3b. “Coricancha,” folio 64v in Martín de Murúa Historia
del Origen y Genealogía Real de los Reyes del Piru, de sus
hechos, costumbres, trajes, maneras de gobierno, begun ca.
1589, finished ca. 1613. Private collection. Photograph by Tom
Cummins.
that carries the water that is channeled ever downward
to the river below. We shall return to the coursing of
liquid, but first we want to look at the other energizing
force that is so ever-present in Inka expression.
This is, of course, the sun, worshipped as the
paramount deity, Inti. The sun is naturally a brilliant
object in the sky and is manifest again as light and
shadow as it casts itself upon the earth. If we look at two
late sixteenth-century watercolors (figs. 3a and b) we see
the sun both as the solar being in the sky and its image
worshipped within its temple known as the Coricancha
(golden enclosure). There is something else to be seen in
these watercolors, which are the temples themselves—
unadorned, simple stone structures with yellow grass
roofs, bathed in sunlight. These images capture neatly
the fact that the Inka did not use figural sculpture to
mark the presence of the sacred. We will suggest that the
sacred is manifest directly by the sun just as it is by water
and stone. It is marked directly on the walls through the
sun’s own sacred energy; the stone on the wall upon
which it reveals itself also possesses a sacred energy that
is made visible.

Figure 4a. “Inca Urcun and the Tired Stone,” folio 37v in
Martín de Murúa, Historia del Origen y Genealogía Real de
los Reyes del Piru, de sus hechos, costumbres, trajes, maneras
de gobierno, begun ca. 1589, finished ca. 1613. Private
collection. Photograph by Tom Cummins.
Inka sites are justly famous for their masonry, but
to some scholars, such as Kubler or Bataille, their
appearance suggests the utilitarian or the dull, as they
lack the exuberance of architectural sculpture. But the
“unadorned” walls of Cuzco, for example, are in fact
stunningly beautiful as the high Andean sun rakes across
them. Cut to precision such that the individuality of
each stone embraces and fits with all surrounding ones,
one can see the state’s capacity to command the labor
to build them. The labor-intensive character of Andean
social organization is articulated through the carefully
beveled joins of multi-angled stones of sometimes
cyclopedian dimensions.8 Protrusions on the surface that
probably were used to help place the stones by means
of logs are left in place. These are intentional masonry
8. The labor and social identity as being an expression with the
construction and maintenance of a wall has been suggested for the
Moche at Huaca de Luna and Wari walls at Pikilllaqta and has been
brilliantly described and analyzed in contemporary communities by
Urton (1988).
Cummins and Mannheim: Editorial 11
Figure 4b. “The ninth captain, Urcon Inka,” p. 161 in Felipe
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, ca.
1615. Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark, GKS 2232 4°.
Photo courtesy of Royal Library, Copenhagen.
details that are intensified by the light and shadow that
is cast by the sun. To understand that the articulated
joins of Inka walls in Cuzco participate in a pan-Andean
(aesthetic?) understanding of a wall in relation to the
sun, one need only stand and look at these walls in the
rarified air at eleven thousand feet. There is much less
atmospheric interference at this altitude, which makes
light and shadow much more intense. This effect is
captured by the walls.9
Before we continue with a discussion of the animating
force of the sun on the Inka walls, it is important to
reiterate that the stone itself is not necessarily inert.
If we study two other images by the Andean artist
Guaman Poma we can see how this animating force was
articulated visually using Western-style drawing (figures
4 a and b). Though the images come from different
manuscripts, they both depict an event that is similarly
described in their respective texts, which concerns a
large stone that is being dragged from one site to the
9. See also Billie Jean Isbell (1982).
12 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011
next.10 At a certain point the stone becomes too tired,
weeps blood and eventually comes to rest where it
is. And although the texts describe the stone’s travels
differently—it is either carried from Quito to Cuzco in
one version, which is a north to south direction; or from
Cuzco to Guanaco Pampa in the other version, which is
a south to north direction—they are depicted traveling
in the same direction. That is, composition overrides any
difference in the narrative of the event. The figures also
are arranged slightly differently, but, again, the narrative
moment is the same. However, the stone, the protagonist
of the story, is treated entirely differently. In Guaman
Poma’s own image in the Nueva Coronica, the natural
shape of the stone is suggested by the undifferentiated
roundness that defines its contours. The weeping of
blood is indicated by a patterning of streaming lines
that become thicker as they pour down the side, and
therefore is reminiscent of the abstract sign of the
stigmata as used in the Franciscan coat of arms, which
is often used in the woodcut frontispieces of devotional
and catechetical texts. Below the two horizontal rows of
blood is written “Lloró sangre la piedra,” so as to ensure
the correct iconographic reading of the liquid. The use
of the stigmata form also ensures that there can be an
unarticulated association between the bloody tears of the
stone and the animating force of Christ’s blood. One also
can make the association between this bloody stone and
the Inka walls as described by Arguedas.
The stone in the first version treats its animacy in an
entirely different way. First, the outline of the stone is
not conventionalized as a rounded shape but is given an
irregular outline. However, within this form is sketched
the regular form of an ashlar block, into which it would
be carved once it reaches its destination in Cuzco. In
other words, the form of what is to become is already
existent within its natural state. This may sound like a
modernist sculpture’s manifesto, but what is visually
expressed is, we believe, the Quechua idea of kamay,
or the potentiality existent within any natural state to be
10. The exertion of the will of an object to come to rest at a specific
but unintended place is a rather common belief, and many Christian
objects including architecture are ascribed similar histories. It is the
aspect of kamay and how it is illustrated in these two images that
distinguishes the Andean version of the story.
11. Gerald Taylor (1976) has written a penetrating analysis of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century uses of the root kama-. As regards
the verbal form, kamay, “nous le traduisons par ‘animar’ en donnant
à ce terme la valeur multiple que lui accorde Garcilaso, c’est-à-dire:
‘transmettre la force vitale et la soutenir, protéger la personne ou
la chose qui en sont les bénéficiaires.’ Le monde animé des Andes
realized as a metaphysical presence of the sacred.11 This
notion is intensified by the anthropomorphism of the
stone itself. Guaman Poma endows it with a pair of eyes
that look forward and in the direction it is moving. These
differences in the image are only slight, but they create
an entirely different expression and mood. The Guaman
Poma image of 1590 is one that is more revealing about
what is at stake in the narrative whereas the Nueva
Coronica drawing is more illustrative of the facts of
the narrative and align the animating force with that of
Christianity.
If we then move back to the real walls of Cuzco
and elsewhere, we can perhaps think of the way the
walls are made of light and shadow cast against the
physical properties of a wall as having critical Andean
metaphysical importance articulated through the
carefully beveled joins of multi-angled stones as well
as subtle carvings on the surface. This relationship
between wall and sun as a kinetic expression of cosmic
forces is born out in the mythology as recorded in
Huarochiri, the only colonial-era narrative in Quechua,
the language of the Inka. In explaining the origins of the
cult of Pariacaca, the paramount divinity of the area, the
narrator says:
Pariacaca began to lay down the rules for his worship. His
law was one and the same in all the villages: We are all of
one birth (i.e. ayllu).
They say that Pariacaca gave a command to one
particular person in each village: “Once every year you
are to hold a celebration every year commemorating the
customs I have established.” He then said “As for their title
of these people they will be called huacsa.” The huacsa will
dance three times each year bringing coca in an enormous
leather bag.
To first become a huacsa, people in fact perform a
certain ritual.
évoque un horizon beaucoup plus vaste que son équivalent occidental;
toute chose que possède une fonction ou une fine est animée a fin que
sa fonction ou sa fine puissent être réalisés: les champs, les montagnes,
les pierres aussi bien que les hommes” (Taylor 1976:235). We would
add the note of caution that the meanings “animate” and “transmit a
vital force” do not require the action kamay to have an agent. For this
reason, the Third Council of Lima (Tercer Concilio Limense 1584:77v)
chose to use the word ruraque (one who makes something) rather than
camaque in the Quechua translation of the Nicene Creed. Were they
to have used camaque, the translation would have been ambiguous,
since camaque can also be understood as the agent of the vital force,
an entity or person infused with a vital force, or as the prototype for a
species or object. (They were not consistent in their usage, however;
see ibid.:5r) The word kamachisqa is a nominalized [-sqa] causative
[-chi] form of kamay. According to Taylor (1976:236), the causative
suffix -chi indicates that the vital force is received from elsewhere: “on
fournit à l’autre la capacité ou l’autorisation d’agir.”

Figure 5. Sun on a wall at Ollantaytambo, ca. 1500. Photograph by Tom Cummins.
It is like this: a man of the Caca Sica ayllu functions as
the officiant for these ceremonies. From early times these
officiants were only one or two people, and, as for their
title it was yanca (priest entitled by heredity) The same title
is used in all the villages. This man observes the course
of the sun [esta es la sombra que va haziendo la pared]
[pirca is the word used in Quechua] from a wall in perfect
alignment. When the rays of the sun touch this wall, he
proclaimed to the people, “Now we must go.”
—(Anonymous [ca. 1607] 1991:71–72)
What can be heard in the written version of this oral
account are the critical elements of sunlight, shadow,
and stone. They are not fixed but caught momentarily,
and therefore index the constant state of change as
light moves across a surface. Here, on a specific day,
one could see time marked by the celestial movement
of the sun as it touches walls and sets in motion rituals
of initiation. There is no tangible mimetic sense of
surrounding images such as can be found for the Aztec
in their pictorial personifications of the sun. Of course,
there were Inka images of the sun made in gold, but
we do not know what they looked like, and it is most
likely that whatever images there were, their significance
was understood to reside in their reflective qualities
Cummins and Mannheim: Editorial 13
rather than any figural iconography. The paramount
Inka temple dedicated to the sun, the Qurikancha, and
other buildings in Cuzco seem to have been girded
with golden plaques. If this is the case, then the sun’s
reflection on these golden surfaces shared in the shifting
state of sunlight’s essential elements (brilliance, shadow,
and warmth) and also manifested divine presence. At
Ollantaytambo in the sacred valley, the protuberances
left on the face of the stones of its monolithic wall
catch the sun and seem to ignite into pure energy (fig.
5). This play of light and shadow is also how we are
to understand the enigmatic step fret design (chakana)
carved in very low relief on the same wall. It catches the
sun and marks a crisp shadow that sharply outlines the
geometric shapes as a mark of time on the surface.
And just as the light moves across the stone surface
of a wall so as to highlight in a variety of ways, water
courses through the Andes pouring down and darkening
through moisture and flickering brilliance of the stones.
The relationship between the two cosmic celestial
forces of light and fluid in relation to stone is expressed
in part by a common visual vocabulary just as it is in
Quechua song poetry through semantic couplets. That
is, the step-fret design (chakana) carved in low relief
14 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011
Figure 6. Boulder in Saphi River above Cuzco, ca. 1500. Photograph by Tom Cummins.
on the wall of Ollantaytambo is the same as the one
caved into the living rock of the fountain below, where
water animates the stone as it flows over it and into a
pool. The design cut into the stone can be activated
either by having the water pour over it or reflect upon
it. This image is cut into a boulder in the Saphi River
that originates behind Sacsahuaman and then flows
into the sacred city of Cuzco, becoming the Huatanay
and defining one of the borders of the sacred city.
This boulder and the carving became a focal point of
the December ritual sacrifice called Mayucati when
all the remains of the year’s sacrifices were gathered
together. At the same time a series of dams were built
in the river.12 When the first dam was broken, the water
rushed forward, bursting through all the other dams built
below, thereby picking up ever-increasing force until
the water rushed though Cuzco carrying the residue
of all the year’s sacrifices with it (Cristóbal de Molina
[1576] 2008:108–109). Where the Saphi joined the
12. Several chroniclers including José de Acosta (2002:305–306,
312, 317) and Bernarbé Cobo (1990:146), mention this ritual. The best
description, however, is by Molina ([1576] 2008:31–33).
Tullumayu, the second river that defined the Cuzco’s
other border, called Puma Chupan, the Inka stood on
either side awaiting the rushing water in order to throw
the sacrificial remains into the river as an act of thanks,
so as to not appear ungrateful to the “Hacedor de todas
cosas (Virachocha). They were ordered to follow the
waters as far as Ollanntaytambo, where they offered
more sacrifices, so that if Virachoca resided in the sea, he
would receive them” (ibid.). It is therefore interesting that
the same design is cut into the fountain at Ollantaytambo
whose waters also joined the river as it rushed to the
Mamaqucha.
Whether these two designs were related through ritual
cannot be determined, but it is important to note that the
design cut into the stone sitting in the streambed of Sapi
river clearly participated in this December ritual (fig. 6).
As late as in 1981 stone residue of the damming process
could still be seen on the banks of the Saphi just below
the Chakana boulder. During the ritual, the water backed
up above the dam, deepening and becoming calmer
before it was released. Before that release, the boulder
must have appeared almost to be floating in the water,
because just below the design a deep recess is carved,
so that it allows any lapping to occur unseen and thus
 Cummins and Mannheim: Editorial 15

creates a smoother reflective surface. The pool is un-

dammed, and water rushes into the city to cleanse it and
take the year’s evil away. The purification ritual of the
Inka recognizes the cycle nature of time and life through
the coursing of this water. It fuses the image of the stone
with the water and its rushing force as it channels them
through the city and down the river to join again in
endless circulation.
The coursing of liquid is also channeled in various
other ways and forms, such as a pakchapakcha cut
into a rock. The flow of corn beer passes down the
carved channel to then drain into the earth. The idea of
a pakchapakcha is that the liquid courses through the
channel and is transformed from one state to another.
This is similar ontologically to the transformation of
light on stone. The transformation can also be produced
by bringing discrete objects of different materials
together in proximity or by forming objects in a single
material so as to express their relationship. The latter
is best seen in a ceramic pakchapakcha that join the
sculptural form of an urpu (aryboloid-shaped jar for
transporting corn beer) and a chaki taklla (footplow)
into a single composition (fig. 7), such that the offering
Figure 7. Pakchapakcha composed of an urpu and chaki taklla,
of aqha (corn beer) is first poured into the urpu
Chimu Inka, ca. 1500. Ceramic. Photograph by Tom Cummins.
which then passes through the chaki taklla, finally
emptying into the ground thereby completing a cycle of
planting, harvesting, fermentation, and consumption as
understood through these “utilitarian objects” and their
quotidian use (Carrión Cachot 1955; Stone-Miller 2006, others that serve for those from the lowlands, and for
Cummins 2007:278–279). the women of these (two regions) there are also different
The kinetic here is a transformative act, engaging time entrances [. . .]13
and motion. To understand further what the kinetics of Medina describes the temple compound with its
liquid can mean in terms of transformation, we turn to entrance as having same horseshoe or “U” shape, similar
a mid-colonial Relación written by Felipe de Medina. It to one of Peru’s oldest and most famous ritual centers:
begins with his account concerning a coastal huaca, or the “Old Temple” at Chavín de Huántar, wherein stood
sacred place, that he discovered still being used. Medina an image known popularly as the Lanzón, which could
found that it was the principal huaca (sacred image) of be thought of as a surrogate for the image that Medina
the area and that it attracted an ongoing interregional destroyed. Medina describes the ingress, noting that the
pilgrimage. The importance of the sacred is underscored traveler was led through one of four entrances into the
as he not only describes its form and its destruction, huaca’s innermost chamber not only proceeding along
but he also gives an account of the architectural layout a passageway, but also the labyrinthine interior. Each
of the entrance to and interior of the temple as well as
the significance of the rituals dedicated to the principal
image, through which the idol gains a transformative 13. “[E]l adoratorio cae en una media loma, a mano derecha del
agency. Medina writes about the sanctuary that camino real; empiezase a caminar y entrar a este adoratorio por un
callejón de paredes, por una y otra banda, hecho a mano de piedra y
the temple lies on a low hill, on the right hand side of the
barro, bien formado y muy curioso; tiene mas de una cuadra largo y
camino real; entering this temple by a narrow path way of se entra al adoratorio (que tambien está cercado y hecho de la misma
walls built on either side, hand made of stone and mud, and pared que el callejón) por diferentes compartimientos y divisiones,
one enters the temple, which is also walled and made the unas que servian para los serranos y otros para los yungas, y para las
same material as the pathway, by different compartments mujeres destos hacían tambien diferentes entradas [. . .]” (Medina
and divisions, some that serve for those of highlands and [1650] 1904:215).
16 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011
entrance was differently accessed, depending upon both
the sex and the geographic/ethnic identity of the pilgrim.
All four passages came together the center of the temple,
arriving from four different directions. In the center of the
adoratorio there was what Medina called an idol, which
he describes in the following manner:
[. . .] the idol was (made) of an extraordinary stone, and not
like any from this area, rather it was brought from far away;
I noted that it stood three and a half varas and three varas
wide. It has very small eyes carved into surface and done
appropriately; it also has carved in to it two very large horns
that twist downward in the form of canals, with a depth of
about two inches, ending in the snout itself, by which they
pour the blood and chicha that they offer to it in sacrifice
and there they study (interpret) its (the idol’s) signs.
I found further on, a small (statue) of native sheep [llama]
that they call mama llama, (made) the increase of them [. . .]
Medina ends his Relación by describing how the
sculpted image was used and what its name was in
Quechua: “[I]t is the case that when they offer it (the
statue) sacrifices of corn beer and blood it (the liquid)
ran through the canals of the idol, and it gave the
appearance of how urine or some other liquid spilled
onto the ground. The idol is called Ispana which means
urinal or place one urinates.” While Medina focused on
the concreteness of urination in translating the Quechua
hisp’ay, the Quechua word could be used for any liquid
flowing from a body.
The surface of Choque Ispana was carved, not fully in
the round, but as Medina writes, grabado. That is, the
surface was carved in low relief, such that the lines that
formed the anthropomorphic features of eyes, horns,
and so on, also created the channels through which the
libations poured from the top, coursing down the figure
until they spilled to the ground. This ritual act is
nominalized by the sculpture, at least as understood by
Medina. He specifically says that the sculpture is called
Ispana, a term that he translates as “place where one
urinates.” It is clear that this is the name of the figure and
that it is associated to the way the rituals enliven the
sculpture; however, what is the ispana really intended
to mean?
It is important first to think of the kinetic quality of
the scultures/huacas. Chicha and/or blood are poured
down the figure, emphasizing the relation of the huaca
to the ground in and on which it is placed. In the case
of the huaca Ispana, the liquids, blood and chicha, are
offered to it by being poured at the top or head so as to
run down the figure through the incisions that create its
iconography. The orientation of the sculptural form can
Missing word? “appeared there in?” “appeared in three”?
therefore only be conceived as being downward, just as
it is with the Lanzón at Chavín de Huantar, even though
its iconography suggests a standing figure. Moreover this
movement acts to transform the liquids as they course
down the canals such that they take on a different state
of being, from blood to urine. Urine is thus one liquid,
which essentially is in a continuous transformational
process, a process that at Huacho is given a specific
manifestation by the kinetic or fluid movement of the
liquid down the canals of the idol called ispana. The
transformation of chicha or blood into urine is not
then to be understood as something disagreeable, as
human waste, but rather as part of the essence of liquid,
the continuous circulation of which is essential to the
fecundity of the earth. Certainly this is implied in a
prayer printed fewer than twenty years earlier, before
Medina wrote his Relación concerning the “idolo
choqque Ispana.” Juan Perez de Bocanegra (1631) in
the southern highlands wrote a prayer in Spanish and
Quechua dedicated to irrigation sources. In the Spanish
version, rain is prayed for in the following “[. . .] madre
fuente, laguna o manatial, dame agua sin cessar, orina
sin parar[. . .],” the verb orinar reflecting a Southern
Quechua ispay (hisp’ay). In this sense, the circulation
of liquid in the form of rain as it becomes lake and
river water to then pass to the ocean and back again is
understood within the cosmic circulation of the Milky
Way as we described earlier. All nature’s secretions
are hisp’ay, just as are the secretions of liquid from
humans—such as blood, urine, and perhaps even sweat,
milk, semen, tears, and others. They all form a part of
the process of the unending flow and transformation
from one stage to another. This is, of course, what
pakchapakchas are. The nature of liquid as well as the
sun in the Andes is about transformation, a process
unknowingly described by Medina.
Equally important, the god called Huari in 1656 by
Hacas Poma not only distributed land but also water.
As Hacas Poma told it to a priest inquisitor, the huari,
Coricuicyan
urinated in two parts and two puquios (springs) appeared
called Ocopuquio and Cucupuquio that are in the fields
of this Ayllu, and Capabilaca urinated in three parts and
appeared three puquios called Ucupampa, Colcacocha
and Muchacpuquio that are also next to the fields of this
Ayllu with which they water them and those from this Ayllu
venerate [mochan] them [puquios] with live guinea pigs that
they offer them and these said idols recognizing the power
and knowledge that they had became friends and divided
the fields between themselves and when they died they

“since”? not “sense”?
turned to stone, those from this Ayllu have venerated these
idols ever sense.14
The “idol” found and described by Medina only six year
prior to Hacas Poma’s testimony was called Choque
Ispana, and so clearly associated with urination and
water.
But what does the act of urinating mean? Let us look
at one myth about the form of the Inka’s punishment of
guests who had come to Cuzco a year before and
complained a bit too loudly that he had not provided
enough drink (Santa Cruz Pachacuti [ca.1613] 1993:254).
The following year he gave them a great cups of corn
beer all day but did not allow his guests to get up to
urinate. This punishment suggests more than mere
physical discomfort. The Zapa Inka threatens the
subsistence of his guests by breaking the chain of acts
required for a bountiful agricultural year. Urine is
equated with sufficient water supply as recorded in Pérez
de Bocanegra’s prayer to irrigation sources, “[. . .] madre
fuente, laguna, o manatial, dame agua sin cessar, orina
sin parar [. . .].” Human urine conceptually is part of a
water cycle and fecundity, especially during drinking
feasts. An eyewitness details how during such a feast in
Cuzco’s main plaza there were “two drainage canals [. . .]
which must have been made for cleanliness and for
draining rainwater in the plaza [. . .] (that) ran all day
long with their urination.” “[D]os vertedores [. . .] que
debían ser hechos para la limpieza y desaguadero de
agua de las lluvias que caían en la plaza [. . .] (que)
corrían todo el día orines, de los que en ellos orinaban
[. . .]” (Estete [ca. 1535–1540] 1924:55).
“Muchos tienen con la mano la vasija con que estan
bebiendo y con la otra el miembro con que orinan”
Cieza de León ([1553] 1984:282).
And so if we first return to Cieza de León’s remarks
about Andean men, his observations may signify much
more than he realized. Drinking and urinating were
related acts within the cosmic circulation of nature, as
14. “Y el dicho Coricuicayan orinó en dos partes y salieron dos
puquios llamados Ocopuquio y Cucupuquio que estan en las chacaras
deste aillo y Capabilaca orinó en tres partes y salieron tres puquios
llamados Ucupampa, Colcacocha y Muchacpuquio que estan tambien
junto a las chacras deste aillo con que las riegan y los mochan los
de este aillo con cuyes vibos que les ofresen y estos dichos ydolos
conociendo el poder y sabiduria que tenian se hisieron amigos y
repatieron las chacras en si y quando murieron se conbirtieron en
piedras y los deste aillo an mochado siempre estos ydolos.” (Hernando
Hacas Poma 1656, folio 28 as cited in Duviols 1973:156–157).
Cummins and Mannheim: Editorial 17
Figure 8. Pakchapakcha composed of a hand holding a quero,
Chimu Inka, ca. 1500, excavated at Macchu Picchu, Ht. 3.1.
Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History 16962.
much as the coursing of water through the Andes and the
Milky Way (Skar 1987). The relationship as described by
Cieza de León is represented in two pakchapakchas. The
first is a ceramic pakchapakcha from Machu Picchu (fig.
8). It is shaped in the form of a human hand holding a
drinking cup. This pakchapakcha is almost a synecdochic
illustration of the first part of Cieza’s description of the
Andean male. The second pakchapakcha is a silver bowl,
perhaps colonial, that was stolen from Cuzco’s
archaeological museum and recovered only after it was
badly damaged (fig. 9a and b). On the lip of the bowl is
perched a small urpu, an aryballoid-shaped vessel used
in Inka rituals for transporting and distributing aqha (corn
beer). A tube connects this urpu to a man who stands at
the center of the bowl [cocha], so that when liquid was
poured into the urpu, it passed out of and into this small
figure. He stands with both hands holding his penis as he
appears in the act of urinating into a jar that forms the
earth’s opening. The penis is hollow and open so that the
liquid would actually pass through it. Such a depiction
represents the process so graphically described by Cieza
de León and Estete, by which the cultural substance,
chicha, is transformed back into its natural state thereby
completing the cycle and ensuring sufficient rain for the
next harvest. Within the bowl are several sculpted
animals, a male and female llama. They seem by their
gender to suggest increase as is understood by the
constellation seen by the Andeans in the Milky Way
(Urton 1981:100, 187, 200, 207–208). Around the
18 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

Figure 9a. Silver Pakchapakcha, ca. 1500–1550. Museo del Inka, Cuzco.

Figure 9b. Silver Pakchapakcha, detail of side, ca. 1500–1550. Museo del Inka,
Cuzco.

exterior wall is another Andean male with a lampa or
hand hoe, who may be either planting or harvesting
crops. This small silver bowl, probably colonial-era,
seems to express visually the complexity of liquid,
flowing substances, the human body, and the cosmic
flow of kamay though the world. Another ceramic
pakchapakcha manifests the distaff side of ispana/kamay
and their life-giving energies of flowing transformation. It
is a coastal ceramic figurine that depicts a mother breast
feeding her child (fig. 10). She is seated cross-legged and

Figure 10. Pakchapakcha of a nursing mother with urpu on
her back, coastal Inka, ca. 1500. Ceramic. Photograph by Tom
Cummins.
has an urpu on her back. She adjusts the rope that goes
around her shoulders and the urpu as she holds the child
in the other. Liquid is poured into the urpu and it courses
through her body, nurturing the child at her breast
before exiting through a tube positioned between her
crossed feet.
So if we return to Rios Profundos, the walls of Cuzco,
and the slopes of Machu Picchu and were to hear the cry
puk’ tik’ yawar rumi, “boiling stone of blood,” can we not
now glimpse stone turning into liquid? Did the Inka not
understand how it could be done with walls, liquids,
bodies, and kinesis? Did they not have the capacity to it
with an aesthetic that was more than utilitarian or cold?
Add “do” here?
Cummins and Mannheim: Editorial 19
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