2. The remaining periods in line a6, beyond number 26, should be of a different kind:
They have 9 glyphs, the last of them with the same type of henua design as in the 26th period:
Perhaps period number 26 should be regarded as the first of 4 beyond number 25. It is tempting to try to correlate the last 4 periods in line a6 with the last 4 nights in the Hawaiian Moon calendar:
I have here renumbered the 26th night Kane to be number 27 (etc), leaving number 26 vacant - similar to when the kuhane of Hau Maka named the whole island Te Pito O Te Kainga. '... the lack of a name for the island as a whole 'was quite in accord with the islander's habits of mind to speckle his home with names changing every few feet and to leave the major divisions nameless' ... When Kepelino (cfr Makemson, The Morning Star Rises) described the nights of the Moon he without any comment skipped the 26th night and explicitly said the night of Kane was the 27th. The extraordinary powerful hook of the beak in Ga6-19 is a sign, and in the morning of the world '... as the old man continued to lie by his fire, the Raven flew over the sea. The clouds broke. He flew upward, drove his beak into the sky and scrambled over the rim to the upper world ...' Period number 27 should belong to Moon, but hau tea - indicating the light from Moon - has no 'eyes', only feather signs. The following Ga6-22 is an example of my glyph type rau hei, and another such comes at number 166 (100 less than 266):
Rau hei is an interesting type of glyph. It probably depicts a person hanging with head down like a 'fish' (ika).
"Across the bows connecting each double canoe was a floor, covering the chambers containing idols, drums, trumpet shells, and other treasures for the gods and people of Ra'itea; and upon the floor were placed in a row sacrifices from abroad, which consisted of human victims brought for that purpose and just slain, and great fishes newly caught from fishing grounds of the neighboring islands. They were placed upon the floor, parallel with the canoe, alternatively a man and a cavalli fish, a man and a shark, a man and a turtle, and finally a man closed in the line. Behind this grim spectacle stood two or three priests in sacerdotal attire, which consisted of a plain loin girdle, a shoulder cape reaching down to the waist and tipped with fringe, wide or narrow according to their grades, and a circular cap fitting closely to the head - all made of finely braided purau bark bleached white. Seated at the paddles were the navigators and warrior chiefs in gay girdles and capes of tapa and helmets of various shapes, and wise men in plain girdles, capes, and turbans of brown or white tapa. As this terribly earnest procession arrived, the canoes were quietly drawn up along the shore, and the guests were met at the receiving marae by an imposing procession of the dignitaries and warriors of the land grandly attired, and also unarmed, headed by the king, the two primates, Paoa-uri and Paoa-tea, and the priests of the realm, who greeted them in low, solemn tones. Then everybody alike set to work silently disposing of the sacrifices just arrived, combined with others of the same mixed kind prepared by the inhabitants of the land. They strung them through the heads with sennit, and act called tu'i-aha, and then suspended them upon the boughs of the trees of the seaside and inwards, the fish diversifying the ghastly spectacle of the human bodies, a decoration called ra'a nu'u a 'Oro-mata-'oa (sacredness of the host of Warrior-of-long-face)." (Teuira Henry, Ancient Tahiti.) |
