Amaru

In the Huarochirí stories

Amaru is the ordinary Quechua word for a large snake, and in Andean tradition it names a mighty serpent associated with water, the underworld, and violent change. In the Huarochirí Manuscript's account of the war between Pariacaca and Huallallo Carhuincho, Huallallo sends an amaru against the snow-mountain god; Pariacaca strikes it with a golden staff and it freezes into stone. Commentators note that the Huarochirí amaru is described with two heads, and two-headed serpents appear in older Andean art, on Moche and Chimú ceramics among others.

Serpent of power and rebellion

The serpent's name carried authority. A palace of the Inca Huayna Capac in Cusco was called Amarucancha, 'enclosure of the serpent' (its site is now occupied by the Jesuit church of La Compañía), and the last Inca ruler of Vilcabamba, executed in 1572, was Túpac Amaru, 'royal serpent'. In 1780 José Gabriel Condorcanqui took the name Túpac Amaru II when he led the great Andean rebellion against Spanish rule, and the name has remained a symbol of resistance.

Caution

Modern popular writing often presents the amaru as a fixed 'Inca dragon' with standard attributes. The colonial sources show a range of serpent beings rather than a single canonical monster; this entry keeps to the Huarochirí episode and the documented uses of the name.