Andean Mountain Shrines
Traditional belief systems that still persist in a number of remote Andean villages link mountains, ancestor worship, ritual pilgrimage, and the sea as the ultimate source of water and fertility. The landscape is “animated” in the sense that unusual or prominent features are perceived to have a supernatural aspect. Local communities often regard themselves as the descendents of mountain deities; consequently mountain peaks—and especially volcanoes—occupy a prominent place in their cosmic beliefs and communal rituals. Mountains and mountain gods are seen as the controllers of rain, and their summits sometimes remain an important focus of ceremonial activity today. These metaphysical convictions do have a foundation in the physical world, in that prominent mountains have a strong effect on local meteorological phenomena.
These modern mythologies represent the remnants of belief systems stretching back at least as far as Inca times. Numerous shrines, both Incaic and more modern, have been discovered on hills and mountain peaks in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Sea shells and river stones were commonly offered to deities for water, but more macabre offerings have also been uncovered: human (including child) sacrifices. We know from the accounts of Spanish chroniclers that elaborate pilgrimages were involved in reaching these sacred places. But the intensity of conviction that motivated the expeditions still defies the imagination. Offerings have been found on mountain peaks as high as 6,000 meters (20,000 feet).
There is every reason to believe that some of the mountain pilgrimages were tied to specific calendrical rituals and that they were astronomically timed. Broadly similar sets of beliefs and practices in central Mexico provide more concrete evidence of calendrical and astronomical associations. However, the specific associations that regulated the Andean rituals remain largely unknown.
See also:
Pilgrimage. Cacaxtla.
References and further reading
Constanza Ceruti, Marнa. Cumbres Sagradas del Noroeste Argentino.
Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1999. [In Spanish.]
D’Altroy, Terence. The Incas, 169–171. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
Reinhard, Johan. The Nazca Lines: A New Perspective on their Origin and
Meaning (4th ed.). Lima: Editorial Los Pinos, 1988.
———. “Sacred Mountains, Human Sacrifices, and Pilgrimages among the
Inca.” In John B. Carlson, ed., Pilgrimage and the Ritual Landscape in
Pre-Columbian America. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, in press.
Reinhard, Johan, and Marнa Constanza Ceruti. Investigaciones Arqueolуgi
cas en el Volcбn Llullaillaco. Salta, Argentina: Ediciones Universidad
Catolica de Salta, 2000. [In Spanish.]
Saunders, Nicholas, ed. Ancient America: Contributions to New World Archaeology, 145–172. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1992.
Angkor
The ancient Khmer civilization flowered in southeastern Asia for over five centuries. A number of interacting and competing kingdoms had existed in the area since the early centuries C.E., and both the Buddhist and Hindu religions had been widely adopted. But in C.E. 802, several of these kingdoms joined together to form a powerful state. The capital, Angkor, situated in modern Cambodia, became the center of an empire that, at its height, stretched over 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from what is now Burma in the west across Thailand and Laos to central Vietnam in the east, and a similar distance north to south, from the Khorat plateau in northern Thailand both to the tip of southern Vietnam and down the long isthmus toward the Malay peninsula. After the early fourteenth century, the Khmer empire went into decline and Angkor collapsed. However, a new capital emerged downstream. Khmer culture endured and in many respects thrived until the arrival of the Europeans and the establishment of the French Protectorate in the mid-nineteenth century.
The word Angkor means “Holy City” in Sanskrit. The arrangement of magnificent buildings and reservoirs (barays) that survives to this day resulted from construction projects initiated by a succession of rulers, and includes both Buddhist and Hindu temples, according to the religious persuasion of the king in question. At its heart is Angkor Thom, a huge square compound—some 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) on a side—containing a royal palace surrounded by numerous public buildings, platforms, and courts, and including two temple-pyramids, the Baphuon and the Bayon. Angkor Thom is flanked both to the east and west by enormous rectangular reservoirs, each over 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) long and 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) wide. To the south is a small hill, Phnom Bakheng (Mighty Mount Ancestor), with a temple on its summit. Beyond that to the south is the most magnificent temple complex of alclass="underline" Angkor Wat, arguably the largest and most impressive religious structure ever built. Although it has been a Buddhist temple (wat) for many centuries, it was originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. Scattered in its vicinity, but mostly found close to the western and southern sides of the East Baray, are a number of additional temple enclosures, including three that functioned as Buddhist monasteries.
Although it is Angkor Wat’s artistic and architectural splendor that so impresses the modern visitor, many of the temples built there also expressed vital principles of cosmic harmony. Some of these expressions are obvious: the large numbers of towers pointing at heaven; the cardinal orientation of the temple precincts and barays; and the westward orientation of Angkor Wat, generally supposed to express a link between death and the setting sun, but possibly symbolizing the direction associated with Vishnu. The central tower of the Bayon—at the center of Angkor Thom, which is itself at the center of Angkor—represented Mount Meru, the dwelling place of the gods, placed at the center of a symbolic model of the cosmos. Other principles and relationships may have been expressed more subtly, encoded numerically and geometrically in a variety of ways. Thus the Bakheng temple, with seven levels to represent the layers of heaven, takes the form of a stepped pyramid supporting 108 towers, symmetrically arranged. The visitor mounting the central staircase on any side, however, can only see thirty-three of the towers—the number of principal gods in the Hindu pantheon. The design of Angkor Wat incorporated alignments upon solstitial and equinoctial sunrise, and it has even been suggested that the dimensions of the central structure encoded, in Khmer units of measurement, the number of days in the year. Although many of the specific suggestions are unproven and controversial, they remain plausible, given the ways in which cosmological principles are known to have been encapsulated in Hindu temples throughout history and still are today.