Page:Native Religions of Mexico and Peru.djvu/181

164 is nothingness. And that is why Buddhism has never existed in its pure form as a popular religion. For in religion, and at every stage of religion, mind seeks mind. Without that, religion is nothing. Note, too, the observant Inca's remark, that if the Sun were alive he must be dreadfully tired. You may find the same idea in more than one European mythology, in which the Sun appears as an unhappy culprit condemned to a toilsome service for some previous fault; or, again, an iron constitution is given him, to explain why he is not worn out by his ceaseless journeying.

Now Tupac Yupanqui would not be the only Inca who cherished a certain scepticism concerning his ancestor the Sun. Herrera tells us that the Inca Viracocha denied that the Sun was God; and according to a story preserved by Garcilasso, the Inca Huayna Capac, the conqueror of Quito, who died shortly after Pizarro's first disembarkment, must have been quite as much of a rationalist. One day,