Pariacaca
Also known as: Paria Caca
Mythological Narrative
The snow-mountain god of the Huarochirí Manuscript, born from five eggs on Mount Condorcoto, who drowns a village that refused him drink, brings irrigation water to the fields of Cupara, and drives the fire-eating Huallallo Carhuincho out of the highlands.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## Born from five eggs
The Quechua Huarochirí Manuscript (c. 1598-1608) makes Pariacaca the central huaca of the Checa and other peoples of Huarochirí province, in the mountains east of Lima. He appears on the mountain Condorcoto as five eggs; the eggs hatch as five falcons that become five persons, and the manuscript itself debates whether these were five brothers or Pariacaca and his children (ch. 16). His son Huatyacuri, a poor man who eats only half-cooked potatoes, prepares his coming by humbling a rich lord who claimed to be a god.
## Storm, flood, and water
Pariacaca's power is the power of water: rain, hail, flood, and irrigation. When the people of a village feasting below Huarochirí ignore him, disguised as a poor stranger, except for one woman who offers him maize beer, he warns her to flee and destroys the village with a storm five days later. When the young woman Choque Suso weeps over her dry maize, he opens the channels that still water the fields of Cupara. And he drives out Huallallo Carhuincho, the earlier god of a hot lowland world, in a contest of water against fire.
## A mountain and a cult
Pariacaca is also the glaciated peak of that name on the border of Lima and Junín regions, crossed by an Inca road from Jauja to the coast. The manuscript describes the annual gatherings in which his worshippers climbed toward him, and the priests and offerings of his cult, in the chapters the compiler titled on how he 'began to ordain his own cult' (ch. 9).
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Pariacaca.
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