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The Huarochiri Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion Kindle Edition

by Frank Salomon (Author, Editor, Translator), George L. Urioste (Editor, Translator, Contributor) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
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One of the great repositories of a people's world view and religious beliefs, the Huarochirí Manuscript may bear comparison with such civilization-defining works as Gilgamesh, the Popul Vuh, and the Sagas. This translation by Frank Salomon and George L. Urioste marks the first time the Huarochirí Manuscript has been translated into English, making it available to English-speaking students of Andean culture and world mythology and religions.


The Huarochirí Manuscript holds a summation of native Andean religious tradition and an image of the superhuman and human world as imagined around A.D. 1600. The tellers were provincial Indians dwelling on the west Andean slopes near Lima, Peru, aware of the Incas but rooted in peasant, rather than imperial, culture. The manuscript is thought to have been compiled at the behest of Father Francisco de Avila, the notorious "extirpator of idolatries." Yet it expresses Andean religious ideas largely from within Andean categories of thought, making it an unparalleled source for the prehispanic and early colonial myths, ritual practices, and historic self-image of the native Andeans.


Prepared especially for the general reader, this edition of the Huarochirí Manuscript contains an introduction, index, and notes designed to help the novice understand the culture and history of the Huarochirí-area society. For the benefit of specialist readers, the Quechua text is also supplied.

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  1. ISBN-13
    978-0292730533
  2. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  3. Publisher
    University of Texas Press
  4. Publication date
    July 5, 2010
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    45167 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

This work represents the most fulsome and developed narrative available to us of how local people in a provincial setting in the Inca Empire conceived of their society and its past.... This book will stand for some time as the definitive transcription and English translation of a seminal document in Andean cultural history. ― American Anthropologist

Although some Christian influence is discernible, the Huarochirí cycle is as close as we are likely to come to a purely Andean expression of the supernatural.... Urioste's transcription of the Quechua is included, and an Introductory Essay by Frank Salomon is an excellent study aid for both novices and adepts. ― Latin American Indian Literatures Journal

About the Author

Frank Salomon is John V. Murra Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

George L. Urioste is professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00EENOVUO
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Texas Press (July 5, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 5, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 45167 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 582 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 15 ratings

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
15 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2016
Verified Purchase
Great book if you're looking to learn about Peruvian creation stories.
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Joseph H. Woodside
5.0 out of 5 stars Meet the Huacas!
Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2020
At the end of the 16th century, Native people wrote the Manuscript in Quechua under the supervision of the wicked Jesuit priest, Francisco de Avila. The authors conceived it as the autochthonous history of their community in relation to the gods, myths, and rituals. It is a wonderful book, if only for the clear parallels with otherwise cryptic Moche ceramic imagery and sculpture that preceded it by 700 years. In that light, it is a history. Our modern authors, Frank Salomon and George Urioste, provide vital critical context, discussion, and background for understanding the Manuscript, but they might have offered more help in pronouncing the native words and with mapping the territory.

The main subjects are the huacas (“WAA-KAAs”) and their relationships with humanity. The huacas are gods. They have distinctive origins, career paths, and modes of worship. They can be as small as a fly, as big as a mountaintop, as solid as a stone, or as broad as the earth and the sea. They may be male or female or both. One huaca we meet is a volcano-mountain that has multiple male and female instantiations, conceived as brothers and sisters who marry each other. The huacas can grow, change, and become what they want to be. Their emotional temperament is all too human, some amalgam of humility, lust, pride, narcissism, chicanery, kindness, and anger. Among their favorite activities are beer parties that last until dawn with music, dancing, and singing. The huacas demand respect. Their sacrificial meals require certain vegetables, cooked meat, coca, and raw fresh blood. The huacas acquire cultic institutions that enclose them in social forms that enable them to own fields, flocks, houses, and rights to songs and ceremonies. The huacas help those who treat them right and destroy those who oppose them. They exist, instead of live, in the sense that although they cannot die, they may go into stasis, frozen solid as stone.

The huacas were all people once. A trope of “origin myths,” this characteristic offers the exciting possibility that anyone can become a huaca. The Manuscript outlines the processes by which humans, usually of higher social status, become huacas worshipped by successive generations. Their career begins after they die when their relatives and friends transform them to “mummies” in the tomb, as shown in Tom Dillehay’s book, “Life Beyond the Tomb”. Since the dead do what the living decree, the career of the aspiring huaca depends on the devotion and ideological “hutzpah” of their living inheritors. This provides an endless source of new gods, who arise from their graves, a process that continues to this day. Is this why the priests burned the mummies first?

(Footnotes; Glossary; Bibliography; Index; Quechua text)
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jabathehunt
4.0 out of 5 stars perfect
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2007
This book takes the reader back to the beginning of the 17th century and tells the customs and believes of the Yunca people. The unknown editor of the Huarochirí Quechua manuscript was an Andean person, well-versed in scribal writing, and recruited by Father Francisco de Avila to document non-Christian practices. Avila's biographer Antonio Acosta thinks Avila wanted this data in order to blackmail discontented parishioners, who had mounted a lawsuit against him in 1607. The Quechua writer was apparently a convinced Catholic in the mold of the Third Council of Lima, and an enemy of the ancient gods. But he also seems interested in demonstrating that the ancient cults had a coherence comparable, albeit adversely and dangerously, with that of Christianity.
3 people found this helpful
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Eclectic Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars Insights into a crumbling world
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2007
The book is fascinating because not only does it show some revealing aspects of Andean culture at the time, but it also shows the begining of the end of the people of that area. One story in particular narrates the conversion to Christianity by a leader in the community, which, according to the text, facilitates the conversion of the rest of the town. Sadly, the text is tinted by Christian bigotry, but inspite of this the insight to the culture is precious.

I did find the amount of notations a little distracting. On the other hand, these same notations provided a glimpse of the editorial process the document underwent at the hands of the colonizers.
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Top reviews from other countries

R. Sinclair
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2017
Verified Purchase
Excellent.
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