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4. To continue: 'Was that a bird, that dropped that berry?' one of the party asked. But the father said No, it was only a berry that fell by chance. "The rediscovery of the pieces of the game lying around in the grass, already told in the Völuspa, becomes clearer if one thinks of the Rigveda, where the gods themselves are said to go around like aya, that is, casts of dice. It becomes more understandable still when one considers that the name of the Indian world-ages (Yuga) has been taken from the idiom of dicing. But both data could be dismissed as unrevealing were it forgotten that in several kinds of 'proto-chess' - to use an expression by J. Needham - board games and dicing were combined: the number of eyes thrown by the dice determined the figure which was to be moved. That this very rule was also valid for tafl, the board game mentioned in the Völuspa, has been shown by A. G. van Hamel. Thus, the dice forced the hand of the chess player - a game called 'planetary battles' by the Indians, and in 16th century Europe still termed 'Celestial War, or Astrologer's Game', whereas the Chinese chessboard shows the Milky Way dividing the two camps." (Hamlet's Mill) The 'berry that fell by chance', sounds as if it could be a piece in the game of tafl - such could be round we can see in the picture below which are from the archeological site at Birka in Sweden:
I can see 8 black and 17 light pieces, and in between a piece which probably represents the Sun King himself. 8 + 17 + 1 = 26. So Maui picked some more berries, and this time he threw them down quite hard, and they hit both the father and the mother and actually hurt them a little. Then everyone got up and walked round peering into the branches of the tree. The pigeon cooed, and everyone saw it. Some went away and gathered stones, and all of them, chiefs and common people alike, began throwing stones up into the branches. They threw for a long time without hitting the pigeon once, but then a stone that was thrown by Maui's father struck him. It was Maui, of course, who decided that it should, for unless he had wished it, no stone could have struck him. It caught his left leg, and down he fell, fluttering through the branches to the ground. But when they ran to pick the bird up, it had turned into the shape of a young man. The ordeal had quickly made Maui grow up. It may be a coincidence, but we have seen how the right foot of Orion went behind Lepus while his left foot touched Eridanus, maybe causing his little toe (λ Eridani) to come off.
And by his weight and the force of gravity Maui fell to the ground: ... Royer cut away a portion of Canis Major, and constructed Columba Noachi therewith in 1679. The part thus usurped was called Muliphein, from al-mulipheďn, the two stars sworn by, because they were often mistaken for Soheďl, or Canopus, before which they rise: these two stars are now α and β Columbae. Muliphein is recognized as comprehending the two stars called Had'ár, ground, and al-wezn, weight ... |
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