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 * Panaka leads here. For Captain Panaka, a fictional character in Star Wars, see List of Star Wars characters

Among the Inca, a panaca or panaqa (also written as panaka) was the royal lineage or family clan of each Sapa Inca, the monarch or emperor of the Inca Empire. According to the information provided by the Spanish chroniclers, the panacas were formed by all of the descendants of a Sapa Inca together with kinship groups united by matrimonial ties. The panaca excluded the auqui (in Quechua Awki) (crown prince), the Inca's son, who would succeed in the reign because, when he became emperor, would leave his original panaca and form his own one.

The panacas made up the Inca's court and formed the arisocracracy of Cusco. They perfomed also the task of maintaining one or more of the sacred shrines, performing ceremonies in the name of the Inca and maintaining the memory of the deceased Inca and his mallki (mummy), through songs, quipus and paintings that were transmitted from generation to generation. In a culture without (any known) writing it was extremely important to preserve memories and traditions.

Description
During the Inca Empire, most of the land was held by the ayllus (a kinship whose members were related to one another through descent from a real or fictional common ancestor). Most probably the land was owned inalienably by an ayllu and not by individuals, while the decisions on the use of the ayllu lands by its members were made by the community kurakas (chiefs) that managed the property for the general benefit of the community. The panacas, as royal ayllus, followed the same rules: the ruling Inca was the chief of the panaca until it died and someone else became kuraka.

Panacas performed ceremonies in the name of the Inca and took care of his goods and alliances made in life. Each panaca owned holdings across the realm, including Inca royal estates and palaces in the sacred valley and the capital city of Cusco: the city core was composed principally of palatial enclosures known as kanchas some of which were owned by the panacas.

Moreover each panaca had the task of maintaining one or more of the sacred shrines along the ceques which were imaginary paths irradiating form Cusco towards the four Suyus (provinces) of the Tawantinsuyu (Inca empire).

All the members of a panaca made up the Sapa Inca's court which was supported also by their deceased ancestors who acted through their descendants, as if they were still alive. The panacas formed the aristocracy of Cusco which set up factions and alliances and created powerful political parties capable of exerting influence in the decisions of the Sapa Inca and the various episodes of the Inca history. In this sense the panacas, particularly their women, had great influence on the decision of the appointment of successors to the Sapa Inka position.

The panacas of the last Incas were the most important: thanks to the expansion of the empire they were owners of great extensions of land with innumerable laborers and servants (yanakuna) in charge of their care and for maintaining their social status.

Sacred functions
Preserved and honored by the panaca the mummies of the Sapa Inca and his qoya (also spelled colla, royal wife) continued to enjoy all their goods, as in life and constituted a living lineage. In their names the panacas maintained an active interference in the political life of the Empire. The people could admire the mummies of the deceased Incas during the great festivals in Cusco, when they were exposed in the huge square of Haucaypata, which in Inca times was much bigger that the current Plaza de armas because it stretched until current Plaza del Regocijo and was crossed by the Saphy river. During the festivals the mummies were surrounded by their relatives and servants. This traditions implied that a large group of persons living in Cusco based their life on the maintenance of the mummies.

R. Tom Zuidema (late anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) associates the panacas with both the ceque system and the irrigation of Cusco, he also establishes a relationship between the panacas and the Cusco lands through the identification of each panaca with a system of chapas (agricultural spaces) based on a reference by Juan de Betanzos. This distribution was related to the existence of a sort of Andean sacred geography, based on the ceques that were imaginary lines starting from Cuzco and linking together 328 huacas (wakas) into sacred paths. According to Zuidema's assumptions, both the ceques and the shrines were associated with the Cuzco social organization. Each panaca was in charge of one or more ceque and several shrines. Some important ayllus, had ceques in charge too and according to the Peruvian historian María Rostworowski some panacas had only shrines.

List of panacas
According to what the Spanish explorer and writer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa wrote in 1572, eleven panacas existed in Cuzco, five from Hurin (lower) Cusco and six from Hanan (upper) Cusco. Altogether they formed the capaccuna or the relationship among lords which is often considered as the official list of the panacas. In fact capaccuna (in the Spanish spelling) is a plural name: in Quechua qhapaq means the powerful one or the person of royal blood the plural of qhapaq is qhapaqkuna, thus indicating the nobility of Cusco.



The priest and chronicler Cristóbal de Molina, in his manuscript Relación de las fábulas y ritos de los Incas (Account of the fables and rites of the Incas) of 1575 describes the situa (situwa raymi in Quechua), the solemn festival of health and purification that was celebrated by the Incas at the spring equinox, in September. At this festival the nobility of Cusco that gathered in the main square of Cusco was divided into ten panacas only, instead of eleven, each associated with one of four suys (or provinces) of the Inca empire. Molina does not mention the Tumipampa Ayllu, the panaca of Wayna Qhapaq.

Panacas from the Hurin Qusco moiety / neighborhood:
 * Chima Panaca Ayllu (Manku Qhapaqpa panacan), the royal house of Manku Qhapaq, related to Kuntisuyu.
 * Rawra Panaca Ayllu (Sinchi Ruq'ap panacan), the royal house of Sinchi Ruqa, related to related to Kuntisuyu.
 * Hawaynin Panaca Ayllu (Lluq'i Yupankip panacan), the royal house of Lluq'i Yupanki, related to Qullasuyu.
 * Uska Mayta Panaca Ayllu (Mayta Qhapaqpa panacan), the royal house of Mayta Qhapaq, related to Qullasuyu.
 * Apu Mayta Panaca Ayllu (Qhapaq Yupankip panacan), the royal house of Qhapaq Yupanki, related to Qullasuyu.

Panacas from the Hanan Qusco moiety / neighborhood:
 * Wikakiraw Panaca Ayllu (Inka Ruqap panacan), the royal house of Inka Ruqa, related to Chinchaysuyu.
 * Awqaylli Panaca (Yawar Waqaqpa panacan), the royal house of Yawar Waqaq, related to Antisuyu.
 * Suqsu Panaca Ayllu (Wiraqucha Inkap panacan), the royal house of Wiraqucha Inka, related to Antisuyu.
 * Hatun Ayllu / Iñaka Panaca Ayllu (Pachakutiq Yupankip panacan), the royal house of Pachakutiq Yupanki, related to Chinchaysuyu.
 * Tumipampa Ayllu (Wayna Qhapaqpa panacan), the royal house of Wayna Qhapaq, (not mentioned by Molina)
 * Qhapaq Ayllu (Tupaq Yupankip panacan), the royal house of Tupaq Yupanki, related to Chinchaysuyu.

According to Rostworowski in addition to the traditional panacas, the chronicles sporadically mention other panacas that possibly played an important role in earlier times and that were overwhelmed by antagonistic groups with greater power. From Hanan Cusco two panacas were excluded of the official list and from Hurin Cusco three were forgotten.

Moreover the Qhapaq Ayllu and Hatun Ayllu panacas, may have never existed as an established panaca. According to Hernández Astete, hisotrian from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru Qhapaq Ayllu was only the generic name of the highest Inca nobility and this explains why in the colonial chronicles the Inca nobles do not consider themselves as pertaining to any particular panaca but only declare to be part of the Qhapaq Ayllu. This group of nobles was in turn divided into sub-groups made up, in principle, by the sisters of a reigning Inca and their descendants. These would be the various ayllus that historiography has called “panacas” and that were grouped around each one of the mummified deceased Incas, and the noblewomen related to his ancestor and his descendants. Likewise, Hatun Ayllu would correspond to the descendants of the nobles of non-Inca women who, in order to access power in Cusco, established kinship ties with the Incas.

Origin of and discussion about the word panaca
The basic social institution of the Incas was the ayllu, a family clan or kinship that descended from a common (real or mythic) ancestor, united by culture, religion and possession of land, in addition to the agricultural work, livestock and fishing in them.

When the first Spanish chronicler started to describe the Incan society they used expressions new to the Spanish language derived from the Quechua language or better to what they understood of the Quechua language. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in his Historia de los Incas (History of the Incas) provides valuable information about the Cuzco nobility and their division into panacas when he mentions them as kinships of the deceased Sapa Incas. "Manco Capac ordered the following for the preservation of his memory: that this eldest son by his legitimate wife, who was his sister, was to succeed to the state. … all the other children and kins … were to recognize him as their leader. They would take his last name, and he had the duty of helping them and supporting them, and Manco Capac left them estates for this. He called this group, faction, or lineage ‘‘ayllu,’’which is the same as ‘‘lineage.’’ … [H]e made the first ayllu and called it Chima Panaca Ayllu, which means ‘‘lineage that descends from Chima,’’ because the first to whom he entrusted his lineage, or ayllu, was called Chima. And ‘‘panaca’’ means ‘‘to descend.’’" Nevertheless when Sarmiento makes the list of the Cusco nobles he gathered and interviewed as a justification of his statements, he does not divide them into panacas, although he does identify the Cusco nobles as members of ayllus associated with a Sapa Inca.

Other colonial sources do not identify the Incas as divided into anything like panacas. Even Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, who was a direct and proud descendant of the Cusco nobility did not identify himself as a member of any panaca.

Even in the early colonial Quechua - Spanish dictionaries, there is no definition of panaca (in its original spelling) as "lineage" or "kinship group". Domingo de Santo Tomás, author of the first Quechua dictionary and grammar in 1560, identifies both "lineage" and "family" with the Quechua term aillu (ayllu)

Also the Anonymous Vocabulary of 1586 defines lineage as aillu, royal lineage as capac aillu and noble lineage as collana hatun ayllu (literally "noble higher ayllu").

It was Luis E. Valcárcel, a Peruvian historian and anthropologist who in 1925 presented, for the first time, the division of the Inca nobility into panacas basing it on Bartolomé de las Casas's Historia de las Indias (History of the Indies) where the Sapa Inca Pachacutec is mentioned to divide the city of Cusco into two neighborhoods: Hanan (upper) Cusco and Hurin (lower) Cusco. In this reorganization, as supported by Valcárcel, the nobility was subdivided, into ten panacas, five in each neighborhood, that Pachacútec assigned to his predecessors and immediate successor. The information from Valcárcel was gradually incorporated by historiography without any further justification and the groups or ayllus of the Inca nobility were definitely labeled as panacas.

While Valcárcel affirmed that pana-kak could be read as «the one who is sister» without explaining the presence of males within these groups, subsequent scholars  assumed a "matrilineal" identification for the panacas, given the feminine characteristics of the term pana (sister) so that each person (male and female) would belong to their sister's group. In Quechua there are two terms that correspond to the meaning of "sister": pana and ñaña: the man calls his sister a pana, while the woman calls hers a ñaña (as a dual the brother is called wayqe by the other brother and tura by the sister). It is thus possible that one of the differences between ayllus and panacas was that the ayllus were patrilineal while the panacas maintained a matrilineal system.

Rostworowsky points out that among the Inca elite the ayllus corresponded to a hierarchical level lower than that of the panacas and the latter would be directly linked to the descendants of the reigning Incas and would be part of the highest Cuzco nobility but most probably before the 16th century ayllu and panaca were synonyms. The characterization of a panaca as the kinship group of a Sapa Inca, would rather be a post-Conquest construction induced by the early chroniclers reports.

As Hernández Astete puts it, if the word panaca is associated only with noble women with whom they are "panas", since they had a kinship with some of the earlier Incas, then only those men and women who descended from a "pana" constituted the highest rank of Cuzco. nobility. The men of the group, including the Inca, also had children with women who were not part of the highest nobility of Cuzco. Thus, a man could be part of the "royal lineage" –the nobility– only if he was the son of a "pana", thus the "pana" granted noble status to their direct descendants since, as far as it is known, polygamy was a male prerogative. For their part, all the women of the elite, even daughters of noble parents, called themselves "panas" and constituted kinship groups associated with each of the sectors of power in Cuzco. The ayllus formed by these groups of women would be what historians have called "panacas". This interpretation of a panaca as a group of sisters of the Inca may imply the possibility that the panaca existed for a long time and that the ruling Inca was chosen from among them.

A study carried out by Donato Amado, historian from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, refers to documents issued by the Real Audiencia (Royal Court), preserved in the Archivo Regional de Cusco (Cusco regional Archive) which include records of purchase and sale of land, reports of inspections by the Spanish authorities, lawsuits, demarcation and land marking in the 16th and 17th century. They somehow contrast with the information from the Chroniclers of the same period in that the owners of the Hanan lands were male descendants of the Sapa Inca, while owners of the Hurin lands were female descendants. It appears from property litigations and the court rulings settling them, that there is a demarcation between the lands owned by the panacas and the lands owned by the ayllus in the Cusco valley: they are not mixed but clearly divided in two parts: the Hanan (higher) or north part of the lands are property of ayllus while the hurin (lower) or south are property of panacas. Moreover the owner of the Hanan lands were all men, while the owner of the Hurin lands were all women. The latter statement is also supported by a sentence by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega who wrote: «[when] our imperial city began to be populated, it was divided into two halves … The King wanted those he summoned to populate Hanan Cozco, and for this they call it the high one, and those that the Queen summoned [were] to populate Hurin Cozco, and for this reason they called it the low one. This division of the city was not so that such as the one half would gain an advantage over the other half in exemptions and pre-eminences, but that all were equal as brothers, children of a father and a mother». In practice, those who were part of the kinship of a male line lived in the hanan Cusco sector, while the family bond established by the coya, the Inca's wife, lived in the hurin Cusco sector.



Cusco was the center point of the empire (the navel as Inca Garcilaso states. ) and the four suyus –provinces– stemmed from it. As a result the study confirms that male children of the ruling Inca formed Hanan Cusco, whose lands extended over the Chinchaysuyu and Antisuyu parts, mostly north of Cusco) while the daughters together with the qoya (inca main wife) made up the panaca and were from Hurin Cusco, which is why they occupied the sector of Qullasuyu and Kuntisuyu, mostly south of Cusco. For these reasons, according to Amado, the kinships of Hanan Cusco were identified as royal ayllus, while those of Hurin Cusco were called panaca or better panaca ayllu. This supports the assumption that ayllu and panaca were not synonyms.

Finally the Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino who contributed to the investigations on the Quechua languages proposes a new interpretation of the word panaca, suggesting its origin from the Puquina language. He states that research «carried out on the basis of the respective philological examination, shows that the word cannot be affiliated with either Quechua or Aymara, but rather with Puquina, a language in which the verb paña- meant 'to come down, descend'».

On the contrary the philologist and linguist César Itier suggests a new etymology for the word "panaca" basing on some early colonial writings, particularly those by José de Acosta (XVI century Spanish Jesuit missionary and naturalist) and Juan Pérez Bocanegra (author in 1631 of a booklet for the religious teaching to the Inca people). He states that they both of them translate the term panaca as "vicar", "governor", "lieutenant" and "pontiff". Thus meaning that the interpretation given by the early chroniclers was wrong: the word "panaca" did not mean a royal clan (royal ayllu) but was used by the quechua speaking locals to let the chroniclers know that some vicar was in charge of representing the royal clan. According to Itier the royal ayllus were never called panacas.