Coniraya

Also Known As: also Coniraya Viracocha, Cuniraya Huiracocha, Cuni Raya Vira Cocha; modern Quechua Kuniraya Wiraqucha
Region/Culture: South America
Mythos: Incan Mythology, Andes Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He shapes land and water with a spoken word or a thrown reed flower, changes his shape at will, and hands out the permanent natures of animals as rewards and punishments.
Role in Mythos: He is the trickster-creator of the Huarochirí highlands, a wandering huaca in beggar’s rags who orders the world while everyone around him assumes he is nobody.
Relation to Humans: He gives the communities their terraces, their irrigation channels and the fish in their sea, and he does it without being asked or thanked. He also uses human shape as a disguise and treats the beings he meets, divine and otherwise, as things to be outwitted.

The terraces went in without a hand touching them. A man in a torn cape walked the slope above Anchicocha and simply spoke, and the hillside stepped itself into level ground, the stone courses settling as though they had sat there since the mountains cooled. He carried a reed flower, a stalk of pupuna. When he wanted water he threw it like a spear, and a channel opened from the spring and ran downhill, cold and quick over new stone. The other huacas of the valley stood around in their good clothes and had nothing to say.

They had been laughing at him a moment earlier. That was the arrangement he preferred. Coniraya walked the Huarochirí country dressed in rags so worn that people took him for a beggar and told him so, and he let them, because the humiliation only landed once he had built something in front of them that none of them could have built. Everything known about him comes from a single book, the Huarochirí Manuscript, written in Quechua around 1608 by Quechua speakers describing their own gods, and preserved by accident: the priest Francisco de Ávila collected it in order to destroy the religion it recorded. It survived him. It is the only prehispanic Andean religious tradition set down in an Andean language, and Coniraya is on its first page.

The name is two names welded together. Cuniraya appears to have been a local coastal huaca, one whose independent record is now almost nothing, and Viracocha was the Inca creator, known everywhere and worshipped selectively. Gerald Taylor and others read the compound as syncretism, the Inca creator’s title laid over an older regional figure as Inca influence spread up the valleys. Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino has argued that Cuniraya belongs etymologically with Contiti, another epithet attached to the same creator. The Huarochirí account itself goes further and quietly makes him the father of Pariacaca, which is one way of saying that whoever runs your valley, the stranger in rags outranks him.

What he wanted, in the story everyone remembers, was a woman who would not look at him.

Cahuillaca was a huaca too, and a virgin, and every god in the region had asked. She had turned down all of them. One afternoon she sat weaving beneath a lúcuma tree, and Coniraya, who was nearby and had no intention of asking, turned himself into a bird, flew into the crown, put his seed into a ripe fruit and let it drop near her hand. She ate it. She was delighted with it. A year later she was nursing a son and had no idea where he had come from.

So she called an assembly. Every huaca and huillca came to Anchicocha in his finest clothing, each of them privately certain, and she set the child down and told them the boy would climb his own father. The child crawled through the whole seated company and past every one of them, and pulled himself up the legs of the ragged man sitting off to one side, the one nobody had bothered to question. Cahuillaca looked at what she had given birth to a child by, picked the boy up, and ran for the sea.

Coniraya put on gold. He went after her calling out that she should look, that he was beautiful now, and he straightened up and the land went bright around him. She did not turn her head once. She reached the water off Pachacamac and turned to stone, she and the boy both, and the two rocks standing offshore there are still pointed out.

He kept walking, and everything he met on the road he asked, and everything he met he judged. The condor said she was close ahead, and was given long life, the right to eat every dead thing in the mountains, and death for whoever killed it. The skunk said he would never catch her, and was sent to walk only at night, stinking, avoided. The puma answered well and was promised the llamas of men and a festival in its honour if a man ever killed it. The fox answered badly and was told it would be hated, hunted, and thrown away without even its skin taken. The falcon was blessed with luck and hummingbirds and mourners. The parrot was cursed to shriek, and to be heard coming from a long way off, and to be hunted for the noise. An entire working ecology of the Andes handed out along one coastal road by a god in a foul mood.

At Pachacamac he found the two daughters of Urpayhuachac under the guard of a great serpent, their mother away visiting the woman in the sea. He forced himself on the elder. The younger became a dove and got out through the air, which is why the mother is called the one who gives birth to doves. Then he found her fishpond. In those days the sea held no fish at all, and every fish in the world was in that one small pond in her house, and he tipped the whole thing into the ocean out of spite. They multiplied. That is the reason the sea is full.

Urpayhuachac came after him when her daughters told her, and since she could not catch him she offered to pick the lice out of his hair, meaning to hold him still and drop a boulder on him. He let her start. Then he said he needed to relieve himself, stood up, and kept going.

His powers all run the same direction. He makes by speaking and by throwing, he changes shape to whatever the moment needs, a bird, a beggar, a man in gold, and his curses and blessings stick permanently to whole species rather than to individuals. What he cannot do is be seen. The disguise that makes him untouchable is the same disguise that loses him Cahuillaca, and no amount of gold puts that right afterwards, because she has already decided not to look. He can outrun a goddess with a rock but he cannot make anyone want him.

The manuscript gives him one last appearance, just before the Spanish. He walked into Cusco and told Huayna Capac to come with him to Titicaca. Shamans were sent down to the lower world and came back with a small sealed box; one of them opened it early and found a tiny woman inside with hair like worked gold, and she vanished on the spot. When the box was finally opened in front of the Inca the whole place filled with light, and Huayna Capac announced he was staying, and sent a substitute back to Cusco in his place. Coniraya drew a line on the ground, said that from here neither of them would see the other again, and went down into the earth on his own side of it. What followed was the succession war, and then the men who called themselves Viracochas coming up from the coast.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Coniraya in Incan mythology?

Coniraya, also written Cuniraya Huiracocha, is an Andean creator and trickster god recorded in the Huarochirí Manuscript, a Quechua text of about 1608. He travels disguised as a ragged beggar while building agricultural terraces and irrigation canals with a word, and he is credited with setting the natures of the region’s animals. His name combines a local coastal huaca, Cuniraya, with the Inca creator Viracocha.

Is Coniraya the same god as Viracocha?

Not straightforwardly. Coniraya carries Viracocha’s name as part of a compound, and scholars such as Gerald Taylor read the figure as a syncretism between an older local coastal huaca and the Inca creator deity, produced as Inca influence spread through the Huarochirí valleys. The Huarochirí Manuscript treats him as a creator, but his character in the stories is a coastal trickster rather than the abstract, invisible Viracocha of Inca state cult.

What is the myth of Coniraya and Cavillaca?

Coniraya desired the huaca Cavillaca, who refused every god who approached her. He turned into a bird, placed his seed inside a ripe lúcuma fruit and dropped it beside her; she ate it and bore a son. When the child crawled to the ragged beggar at an assembly of gods, Cavillaca was so appalled that she fled to the sea near Pachacamac and turned to stone with the boy, and the two rocks are still shown offshore.

Why did Coniraya bless and curse the animals?

While chasing Cavillaca he questioned every animal he passed about which way she had gone. Those that encouraged him were rewarded and those that discouraged him were punished, and the judgments became the permanent nature of each species. The condor, puma and falcon were blessed with long life, prey and honour, while the skunk, fox and parrot were condemned to stink, to be hated, and to shriek.

How did fish come to be in the sea?

According to the Huarochirí Manuscript, the sea originally held no fish at all. Every fish in existence was kept by the goddess Urpayhuachac in a small pond inside her house at Pachacamac, and Coniraya, angry with her, emptied the pond into the ocean. The fish multiplied there, which is why the sea is full of them.