Thus, in May 5 Menkar broke 'the surface of the water' and the head of Cetus emerged north of the equator in the sky. Manzil day 354 (= 12 * 29½) probably indicated winter was over, and 3h had been reached. At the same time and south of the equator, on Easter Island, Menkar could be observed close to the full moon and it would be a sign of autumn when the head of Cetus dove below the equator into the 'Winter Sea' north of the sky equator. Probably this time of the year also meant the 'Twins' (gemini) were returning:
I imagine the idea of the Gemini pair at spring equinox standing on the sand bank on the other side of the Milky River could have been so clear and meaningful that it could remain in memory throughout the millenia although the asterism glided forward in the year. However, my suggestion is rather fanciful because Gregorian day 193 (when in rongorongo time Casor rose heliacally) implies an origin ca (193 - 80) * 71 = 8000 years ago. The manzil Alrescha refers to the star Alrisha (α Piscium), the knot at the hairy mane of Cetus (according to Hevelius). A hairknot was also where Maui originated: ... But little Maui stood up for himself. 'Well then, I'd better go, I suppose', he said. 'Since you say so, I must be someone else's child. But I did think I was yours, because I know I was born at the edge of the sea, and you cut off a tuft of your hair and wrapped me in it and threw me in the waves. After that the seaweed took care of me and I drifted about in the sea, wrapped in long tangles of kelp, until a breeze blew me on shore again, and some jelly-fish rolled themself around me to protect me on the sandy beach. Clouds of flies settled on me and I might have been eaten up by the maggots; flocks of seabirds came, and I might have been pecked to pieces. But then my great-ancestor Tama nui ki te rangi arrived. He saw the clouds of flies and all the birds, and he came and pulled away the jelly-fish, and there was I, a human being! Well, he picked me up and washed me and took me home, and hung me in the rafters in the warmth of the fire, and he saved my life. And I grew, and eventually I heard about the dancing you have here in this house, and that is what brought me here tonight.' 'Hair feathers', whatever they might mean, are indicated where Alrischa rose heliacally, close to 2h:
Tama-iti is a word easily connected with Tama-nui: ... And so they waited there in the darkness at the place where the sun rises. At length the day dawned, a chilly grey at first, then flaming red. And the sun came up from his pit, suspecting nothing. His fire spread over the mountains, and the sea was all glittering. He was there, the great sun himself, to be seen by the brothers more closely than any man had ever seen him. He rose out of the pit until his head was through the noose, and then his shoulders. Then Maui shouted, and the ropes were pulled, the noose ran taut. The huge and flaming creature struggled and threshed, and leapt this way and that, and the noose jerked up and down and back and forth; but the more the captive struggled, the more tightly it held. Then out rushed Maui with his enchanted weapon, and beat the sun about the head, and beat his face most cruelly. The sun screamed out, and groaned and shrieked, and Maui struck him savage blows, until the sun was begging him for mercy. The brothers held the ropes tight, as they had been told, and held on for a long time yet. Then at last when Maui gave the signal they let him go, and the ropes came loose, and the sun crept slowly and feebly on his course that day, and has done ever since. Hence the days are longer than they formerly were. It was during this struggle with the sun that his second name was learned by man. At the height of his agony the sun cried out: 'Why am I treated by you in this way? Do you know what it is you are doing. O you men? Why do you wish to kill Tama nui te ra?' This was his name, meaning Great Son of the Day, which was never known before ... Tama nui te ra did not really have twins (erua tamaiti), because one of the children was not his but a mortal (Castor): "The divine first appears abstractly, as generative-spirit-in-itself. Only after seven epochs of the po, the long night of the world's self-generation, are the gods as such born - as siblings to mankind. God and man appear together, and in fraternal strife over the means of their reproduction: their own older sister. Begun in the eighth epoch of creation, this struggle makes the transition to the succeeding ages of the ao, the 'day' or world known to man. Indeed the struggle is presented as the condition of the possibility of human life in a world in which the life-giving powers are divine. The end of the eighth chant [of the Hawaiian creation chants in Kumulipo] thus celebrates a victory: 'Man spread about now, man was here now; / It was day [ao].' And this victory gained over the god is again analogous to the triumph achieved annually over Lono at the New Year, which effects the seasonal transition, as Hawaiians note, from the time of long nights (po) to the time of long days (ao). The older sister of god and man, La'ila'i, is the firstborn to all the eras of previous creation. By Hawaiian theory, as firstborn La'ila'i is the legitimate heir to creation; while as woman she is uniquely able to transform divine into human life. [Ragiragi is the negation of sky, ragi, thus La'ila'i should be Earth.] The issue in her brothers' struggle to possess her is accordingly cosmological in scope and political in form. Described in certain genealogies as twins, the first two brothers are named simply in the chant as 'Ki'i, a man' and 'Kane, a god'. But since Ki'i means 'image' and Kane means 'man', everything has already been said: the statuses of god and man are reversed by La'ila'i's actions. She 'sits sideways', meaning she takes a second husband, Ki'i, and her children by the man Ki'i are born before her children by the god Kane ... In the succeeding generations, the victory of the human line is secured by the repeated marriages of the sons of men to the daughters of gods, to the extent that the descent of the divine Kane is totally absorbed by the heirs of Ki'i." (Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History.) The words of Metoro at Ca2-21:
Perhaps we should translate e tino noho toona as 'and his body rested there', possibly referring to the peninsular beach of Eridanus upon which Cetus rested his front paws:
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