Early South American folklore accredits the appearance of coca to different deities.
One of the earliest known legends on the origin of coca was recorded by investigators of the Viceroy Toledo in 1571 in their Informacion of Inca history:
“In answering questions about the shrub, the aged Indians invariably told the same story. From what they had heard, the Indians recalled, before coca was a shrub it was a beautiful woman. Discovered to be an adulteress, she was executed, cut in half, and buried as a seed would be planted. From part of her severed body, a shrub, which became known as ‘macoca’ and ‘coca-mana,’ began to grow and blossom. Only men were permitted to pick its leaves, placing them in their pouches. It was soon learned that the pouches could be opened to take coca only after copulation, which was to be performed in the memory of the beautiful but dismembered adulteress”(Phillips, 5).
Freud cited a legend of the Aymaran tribe in which Khuno, the god of snow and storm, angrily burned the land of all vegetation but the coca plant. The Indians ate the leaves to relieve their hunger, and found that it also helped them endure the cold.
Two other legends come from the Inca period attributing divine origin to the plant. According to one legend, the plant was a gift from the sun god Inti who instructed the moon mother Moma Quilla to plant the coca in the moist valleys of the Andes. It was to only be used by the Incas, as they were the descendants of the gods, to give them endurance to perform their earthly functions.
The other and more famous legend involves Manco Capac, the son of god and his sister-wife Mama Oello the founders of the Inca empire. Legend says that they brought the culture of agriculture and they made the coca plant a present to the Incans for their hard labor. It was considered a divine plant which satiates the hungry, strengthens the weak, and causes those who chew it to forget their misfortunes.
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