Cahuillaca

Cahuillaca is a beautiful maiden of the mythic age, courted in vain by many huacas, who conceives a son after unknowingly eating a lucuma fruit into which Cuniraya Huiracocha has placed his seed. When the child is a year old she summons the gods to a gathering to reveal the father; the boy crawls to the ragged beggar Cuniraya, but, disdaining his poor appearance, she snatches up her child and flees toward the ocean. Cuniraya pursues her in his true splendor, calling out, but she never looks back. Reaching the coast near Pachacamac, she and her son plunge into the sea and are turned to stone, becoming the twin rocks still pointed out offshore. Her flight frames the questioning of the animals through which Cuniraya blesses and curses the beasts of the world.

Domains

• maidenhood and weaving

Powers

• flee into the sea and become stone

Relations

• lover: Cuniraya HuiracochaHuarochirí Manuscript, ch. 2 (Salomon-Urioste ed., 1991) (primary)

Sources

• Cahuillaca is the beautiful maiden deceived and impregnated by Cuniraya, who flees to the sea and turns to stone off the coast of Pachacamac.: Huarochirí Manuscript, ch. 2 (Salomon-Urioste ed., 1991) (primary); José María Arguedas (trans.), Dioses y hombres de Huarochirí (Lima: Museo Nacional de Historia/IEP, 1966), cap. 2 (secondary)