Time and Space: Contemporary Quechua Oral Tradition, Astronomy and the Inca Pilgrimage of the Sun ‘Inti Raymi’

Abstract

This article deals with the connection between contemporary oral narratives in Quechua and the Inca pilgrimage of the sun (Inti Raymi) described in colonial chronicles. It aims to explain the complex astronomical links between an oral tradition and a pilgrimage. The narratives, related to me in the village of Pomacanchi (Cuzco Dept.) during my ethnolinguistic fieldwork, form part of a cycle of myths about Qanchi Machu, the culture hero of the Qanchi. Both Inca pilgrimage accounts and contemporary narratives project onto earth – with astronomical precision – the year-long course of the sun at midday across the sky. Consequently, aspects of the Andean concept of time and space, both in Inca times and nowadays, are being revealed.
I describe the movement of the sun in the language of the nowadays Quechua peasants when they observe the sun, or in the language of the chroniclers who wrote it down in the 16th century, when the sun walked through the sky from one place to another just like the Quechua people do it in our world. Chronicles from the colonial period and oral Quechua tradition are treated here as distinct yet equally valuable sources. Moreover, a link between the written chronicles and the orally transmitted myths is established through an eminently scientifi c medium, namely astronomy. Thus, something that would have been impossible in the case of a restriction to one type of source only – either chronicles or oral narratives – is achieved, namely to demonstrate the complexity of Andean culture, its worldview just as well a its continuity over the centuries (all transformations since the colonial era notwithstanding), thus making way for new insights and building understanding for the ritual activities
back then as well as today.