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Rano Kau
My argument can begin
with the intensified version of kau, viz. kaukau:
| Kaukau
1. Horizontal poles of a frame
(of a hare paega, or a paina
statue): he-hakatu'u te tama o te paina,
he-kaukau, they erect the vertical poles of
the paina then they lay upon them the
horizontal ones. 2. Group of people: e-tahi
tuitui reipá i Te Pei, ekó rava'a e-varu kaukau;
i-garo ai i Hiva, i te kaiga, a necklace of
mother-of-pearl is on te Pei, few will
find it (lit: eight groups of people); it has
remained in Hiva, in our homeland. 3. To
go through, to pass through in unison;
he-hogi-mai te űka i te e'eo o te pua kaukau-á i
roto ite hare, the girl smelt the fragrance
of the pua wafting inside the house. 4.
Newborn baby's first hand and feet movements (kaukau
or kau). The five stages of a
baby's development are: kaukau, puepe,
tahuri, totoro, mahaga. Puepue = said
of a newborn baby when, a few weeks old, it
begins to distinguish people and objects:
ku-puepue-á te poki. Tahuri = of a
new-born baby, to move from side to side:
ku-tahuri-á te poki. Totoro = to
crawl; ki totoro te poki, when the baby
crawls. Mahaga = baby when able to stand
by itself. Vanaga. |
The sun
is changing, is being newborn, at a solstice. The first
stage of a newborn baby is kaukau. He has gone
through (kaukau) an initiation rite. People have
assembled for the occasion and 'a necklace of
mother-of-pearl' is on Te Pei. But few ('8 groups
of people') will find it:
e-tahi
tuitui reipá i Te Pei, ekó rava'a e-varu kaukau; garo ai
i Hiva, i te kaiga
8 is a
zero-number, the cycle of counting has reached to the
beginning again. Sun is reborn as a child, he has found
his 'mother-of-pearl'.
Sun has
stopped his climbing, he has reached climax. Summer
solstice is flat and horizontal. Kaukau are the
horizontal poles of a frame:
he-hakatu'u te tama o te paina, he-kaukau
'they
erect the vertical poles of the paina then they
lay upon them the horizontal ones'.
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PAINA
"Although the Easter
Islanders still cautiously kept all their
small stone and wood carvings in hiding,
they did reveal their own artistic talent
and activity by carrying forth colossal
paina figures in the presence of the
Spaniards [1770]. These were skilfully made
light-weight dolls of superhuman size,
fashioned from painted bark-cloth stuffed
with branches, grass, and reeds.
They were carried in
processions and erected at the side of old
image platforms, as if they represented some
substitute for the giant stone men of the
Middle Period that this historic or Late
Period population was unable to carve or
erect.
Agüera (Ibid., p.
95) gave the following account of the
paina figures, after a description of
the ancient stone statues of which an
unspecified number were still standing on
ahu:
'They have another effigy
or idol clothed and portable which is about
four yards in length: it is properly
speaking the figure of a Judas, stuffed with
straw or dried grass. It has arms and legs,
and the head has coarsely figured eyes,
nostrils, and mouth: it is adorned with a
black fringe of hair made of rushes, which
hangs half-way down the back. On certain
days they carry this idol to the place where
they gather together, and judging by the
demonstrations some of them made, we
understood it to be the one dedicated to
enjoyment..." (Heyerdahl 3)
"Der Cultus bestand in
Anrufung der Götter, deren Willen der
Priester erklärte, in Opfern an
Lebensmitteln, auch an Menschen, und in der
Feier gewisser, zu bestimmten Zeiten
wiederkehrender Feste (rakauti), von
denen das erste im Früjahr 2 Monate dauerte,
das zweite im Sommer mit der Errichtung
einer Pyramide aus Zweigen (paina)
endete, das dritte in den Winter fiel; bei
allen fanden Tänze, Gesänge, Spiele aller
Art statt." (Churchill: From 'Die Inseln des
stillen Oceans' by Carl E. Meinicke; zweiter
Theil, 1876, p. 228.) |
We
ourselves gather and dance ('zu bestimmten Zeiten')
- around the Christmans Tree at the darkest of times
and around the Maypole when the sky roof is high.
The
simple word kau:
| Kau
1. To move one's feet
(walking or swimming); ana oho koe,
ana kau i te va'e, ka rava a me'e mo
kai, if you go and move your feet,
you'll get something to eat; kakau
(or also kaukau), move
yourself swimming. 2. To spread (of
plants): ku-kau-áte kumara, the
sweet potatoes have spread, have grown a
lot. 3. To swarm, to mill around (of
people): ku-kau-á te gagata i mu'a i
tou hare, there's a crowd of people
milling about in front of your house. 4.
To flood (of water after the rain):
ku-kau-á te vai haho, the water has
flooded out (of a container such as a
taheta). 5. To increase, to
multiply: ku-kau-á te moa, the
chickens have multiplied. 6. Wide,
large: Rano Kau, 'Wide Crater'
(name of the volcano in the southwest
corner of the island). 7. Expression of
admiration: kau-ké-ké! how big!
hare kau-kéké! what a big house!
tagata hakari kau-kéké! what a
stout man! Vanaga.
To bathe, to swim;
hakakau, to make to swim. P Pau.,
Mgv., Mq.: kau, to swim. Ta.:
áu, id. Kauhaga, swimming.
Churchill.
The stem kau does not appear
independently in any language of
Polynesian proper. For tree and for
timber we have the
composite
lakau in various stages of
transformation. But kau will also
be found
as an initial component of various tree
names. It is in Viti that we first find
it in free existence. In Melanesia this
form is rare. It occurs as kau in
Efaté, Sesake, Epi, Nguna, and perhaps
may be preserved in Aneityum; as gau
in Marina; as au in Motu and
somewhere in the Solomon islands. The
triplicity of the Efaté forms [kasu,
kas, kau] suggests a
possible transition. Kasu and
kas are easy to be correlated,
kasu and kau less easy. They
might be linked by the assumption of a
parent form kahu, from which each
might derive. This would appear in
modern Samoan as kau; but I have
found it the rule that even the mildest
aspirate in Proto-Samoan becoming
extinct in modern Samoan is yet retained
as aspiration in Nuclear Polynesia and
as th in Viti, none of which
mutations is found on this record.
Churchill 2. |
To
move seems to be a basic meaning. Of course, at
solstice sun must be induced to move, and a crowd of
people milling around should be the proper magic
means by which to induce the great mill of the sky
roof to move again. It is not the sun which has
stopped, it is the sky roof which has stuck.
The
cosmic tree (rakau), stretching between the
poles, has stopped revolving.
Movement is necessary for life. There will be no
growth if nothing moves.
Rakau
was according to Englert the name of the 13th night
(immediately before full moon, Omotohi).
According to Métraux it was the name of the 17th
night and he had Omotohi as number 18. The
culmination is reached at 14 or 18 depending on
whether you look at it from the female (14) or male
(18) perspective.
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