They are not less authentic, having
been collected and translated in the first generation after the
conquest. One to Viracocha Pachacamac, was as follows:--
"O Pachacamac, thou who hast existed from the beginning and shalt exist
unto the end, powerful and pitiful; who createdst man by saying, let man
be; who defendest us from evil and preservest our life and health; art
thou in the sky or in the earth, in the clouds or in the depths? Hear
the voice of him who implores thee, and grant him his petitions. Give
us life everlasting, preserve us, and accept this our sacrifice."[299-1]
In the voluminous specimens of Aztec prayers preserved by Sahagun, moral
improvement, the "spiritual gift," is very rarely if at all the object
desired. Health, harvests, propitious rains, release from pain,
preservation from dangers, illness, and defeat, these are the almost
unvarying themes. But here and there we catch a glimpse of something
better, some dim sense of the divine beauty of suffering, some feeble
glimmering of the grand truth so nobly expressed by the poet:--
aus des Busens Tiefe stroemt Gedeihn
Der festen Duldung und entschlossner That.
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