Kashiri, the moon, is among the most beloved figures of Matsigenka myth. In ancestral times he came to earth as a handsome young man in search of a wife and found a girl shut away in the seclusion hut of her first menstruation, eating earth to still her hunger. He offered her manioc, which secretly satisfied her, and when she left seclusion to marry him he taught the Matsigenka to plant, harvest, and ferment the tuber into masato beer; for this gift manioc is still eaten in his honour. From their union were born several luminous sons, the eldest of whom became the sun, and in fuller versions also the underworld sun, the firmament that lights the stars, and the planet Venus. A darker strand of the tradition tells that the girl died in pregnancy and the enraged Matsigenka forced Kashiri to eat her body; he lifted the living child from her womb, consumed the rest, and returned to the sky, where his shadowed markings are the portions he left uneaten. In this aspect the moon is the receiver of the dead. Sources differ over which telling is primary, the manioc-bringer and the devourer of the dead standing as two faces of one being.