Thus they
journeyed westward, imparting knowledge and doing good works, until they
reached the western ocean, the great Pacific, whose waves seem to stretch
westward into infinity. There, "having accomplished all they had to do in
this world, they ascended into Heaven," once more to form part of the
Infinite Being; for the venerable authority whom I am following is careful
to add, most explicitly, that "these Indians believed for a certainty that
neither the Creator nor his sons were born of woman, but that they all
were unchangeable and eternal."[1]
[Footnote 1: Christoval de Molina, _Fables and Rites of the Incas_, p. 6.]
Still more human does Viracocha become in the myth where he appears under
the surnames _Tunapa_ and _Taripaca_. The latter I have already explained
to mean He who Judges, and the former is a synonym of Tocapu, as it is
from the verb _ttaniy_ or _ttanini_, and means He who Finishes completes
or perfects, although, like several other of his names, the significance
of this one has up to the present remained unexplained and lost. The myth
has been preserved to us by a native Indian writer, Joan de Santa Cruz
Pachacuti, who wrote it out somewhere about the year 1600.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Relacion de Antiguedades deste Reyno del Piru_, por Don Joan
de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, passim.
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