The idea of looking back
becomes peculiar when
considering the flow of
the glyphs. They follow
time which is flowing
ahead, and then, by
looking back among the
glyphs it must mean to
look into the past, not
looking ahead to see
e.g. who
will be inaugurated as
the next king. But
probably this is no
problem because the son
and future king would
already have been born and
could be observed.
The 'Aldebaran bird'
possibly is the opposite
of manu rere and the
special wing tips must
have some meaning. Metoro said manu
instead of manu rere:
4. Rohini |
|
|
12 |
Sheratan
13 |
14 |
28 (148) |
May
29 |
30 |
|
|
|
Cb2-18 |
Cb2-19 |
Cb2-20 |
manu |
toga |
ka tuu
te toga o te
manu |
Aldebaran (68.2),
Theemin (68.5) |
no stars listed |
28 (332) |
29 |
30 |
13 (196) |
Az Zubana 1 |
2 |
ζ Herculis
(252.1), η Herculis (252.5) |
no star listed |
Wei, η Arae
(254.3) |
Tuu 1. To
stand erect. 2. Mast, pillar, post. Van
Tilburg.
1. To stand erect,
mast, pillar, post; tuu noa,
perpendicular; tanu ki te tuu, to
set a post; hakatu tuu, to step a
mast; tuu hakamate tagata,
gallows; hakatuu, to erect, to
establish, to inactivate, to form,
immobile, to set up, to raise. P Mgv.,
Mq., Ta.: tu, to stand up. 2. To
exist, to be. Mgv.: tu, life,
being, existence. 3. To accost, to hail;
tuu mai te vaka, to hail the
canoe. Mgv.: tu, a cry, a shout.
4. To rejoin; tuua to be
reunited. 5. Hakatuu, example,
mode, fashion, model, method, measure,
to number. PS Sa.: tu, custom,
habit. Fu.: tuu, to follow the
example of. 6. Hakatuu, to
disapprove; hakatuu riri, to
conciliate, to appease wrath. 7.
Hakatuu, to presage, prognostic,
test. 8. Hakatuu, to taste. 9.
Hakatuu, to mark, index, emblem,
seal, sign, symbol, trace, vestige, aim;
hakatuu ta, signature; akatuu,
symptom; hakatuua, spot, mark;
hakatuhaga, mark; hakatuutuu,
demarcation. Churchill.
1. To arrive:
tu'u-mai. 2. Upright pole; to stand
upright (also: tutu'u). 3. To
guess correctly, to work out (the
meaning of a word) correctly:
ku-tu'u-á koe ki te vânaga, you have
guessed correctly [the meaning of] the
word. 4. To hit the mark, to connect (a
blow). 5. Ku-tu'u pehé, is
considered as... ; te poki to'o i te
me'e hakarere i roto i te hare,
ku-tu'u-á pehé poki ra'ura'u, a
child who takes things that have been
left in the house is considered as a
petty thief. Tu'u aro, northwest
and west side of the island. Tu'u
haígoígo, back tattoo. Tu'u
haviki, easily angered person.Tu'u-toga,
eel-fishing using a line weighted with
stones and a hook with bait, so that the
line reaches vertically straight to the
bottom of the sea. Tu'utu'u, to
hit the mark time and again. Tu'utu'u
îka, fish fin (except the tail fin,
called hiku). Vanaga.
... To the Polynesian
and to the Melanesian has come no
concept of bare existence; he sees no
need to say of himself 'I am', always 'I
am doing', 'I am suffering'. It is hard
for the stranger of alien culture to
relinquish his nude idea of existence
and to adopt the island idea; it is far
more difficult to acquire the feeling of
the language and to accomplish elegance
in the diction under these unfamiliar
conditions. Take for an illustrative
example these two sentences from the
Viti: Sa tiko na tamata e kila:
there are (sit) men who know. Sa tu
mai vale na yau: the goods are
(stand) in the house. The use of tu
for tiko and of tiko for
tu would not produce
incomprehensibility, but it would entail
a loss of finish in diction, it would
stamp the speaker as vulgar, as a white
man ... Savage life is far too complex;
it is only in rich civilization that we
can rise to the simplicity of elemental
concepts ... Churchill 2. |
His
ka tuu te toga o te manu is not easy to translate, but the
expression ka tuu ('stands') we can recognize:
... Rangitokona, prop up the
heaven! // Rangitokona, prop up the
morning! // The pillar stands in the empty
space.
The thought [memea]
stands
in the earth-world - // Thought
stands also in
the sky.
The kahi
stands in the
earth-world - // Kahi
stands also in the
sky.
The pillar stands, the pillar -
// It ever stands, the pillar of the sky
...
The 'dead old bird' (manu)
type of glyph has occurred earlier for
instance:
Albatain
1 (28) |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
June 13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 (168) |
|
|
|
|
|
Ca4-8 |
Ca4-9 |
Ca4-10 |
Ca4-11 |
Ca4-12 |
manu |
te
rau hei |
te
hokohuki |
te
moko |
te
hokohuki |
Lesath (264.7), Shaula
(265.3) |
Sargas (266.3) |
|
Girtab (267.6) |
Apollyon
(268.9) |
Hatysa
(83.5), φ² Orionis (83.6), Alnilam (83.7) |
Alnitak,
(84.7) |
|
Saiph
(86.5) |
Betelgeuze (88.3 |
Alhena 11 (77) |
12 |
13 |
Murzim 1 |
August 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 (216) |
|
|
|
|
Ca5-28 |
Ca5-29 |
Ca5-30 |
Ca5-31 (136) |
e manu |
te kahi |
te henua |
haro rima i ruga |
no
star listed |
ζ
Hydrae (134.1) |
Acubens, Talitha Borealis (135.0) |
ρ
Ursa Majoris (135.6), ν Cancri (136.0), Talitha
Australis (136.1) |
Ca4-11
and Ca5-31 exhibit 'lifeless' figures with no mata. There
is a rau hei in Ca4-9.
In Ca5-29 (as in May 29) the is a
kahi. The distance from Ca5-29 to Cb2-19 is 19 +
24 + 392 - 134 = 301 (including February 29).
However, later in the text Metoro changed
his description from manu to manu rere:
Auva 2 |
3 (160) |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
October 22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 (300) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ca8-16 |
Ca8-17 (216) |
Ca8-18 |
Ca8-19 |
Ca8-20 |
Ca8-21 |
- |
Orongo Tane |
Mauri-nui |
Mauri-kero |
Omutu |
Tireo |
manu rere |
erima marama |
Asellus Tertius, κ Virginis (214.8), Arcturus (215.4), Asellus Secundus (215.5) |
Syrma, λ Bootis (215.6), ι Lupi (216.3), Khambalia (216.4), υ Virginis (216.5) |
ψ Centauri (216.6) |
Asellus Primus (217.8), τ Lupi (218.1) |
φ Virginis (218.7), σ Lupi (219.1), ρ Bootis (219.5) |
Haris (219.7). σ Bootis (220.2), η Centauri (220.4) |
April 23 |
24 |
25 |
26 (116) |
27 |
28 |
Al Muakhar 5 |
6 |
7 |
8 (345) |
9 |
10 |
no star listed |
Mira (33.7) |
no stars listed |
Ca8-16 is a bird with outspread wing tips but a
powerful beak, a kind of mixted creature:
The
position of manu rere in Ca8-16 is special, not only in
the text structure (where the bird has been squeezed in between
the ordered sequences in the Moon calendar) but also because
time suddenly seems to flow backwards, with Asellus Primus
coming later than Asellus Tertius and Secundus.
October 22 is Gregorian day 295.
The outspread wings could be a sign
which means 'post supporting the roof' (toga).
Such could be at 'corners' in time. Possibly both
Aldebaran (Cb2-18) and Arcturus (Ca8-16) were 'sky
proppers' (toko te ragi).
From Aldebaran (68.2) to Arcturus
(215.4) there are 21 weeks.
1 |
Ana-mua,
entrance pillar |
Antares, α Scorpii |
2 |
Ana-muri,
rear pillar (at the foot of which
was the place for tattooing) |
Aldebaran, α Tauri |
3 |
Ana-roto,
middle pillar |
Spica, α Virginis |
4 |
Ana-tipu,
upper-side-pillar (where the guards
stood) |
Dubhe, α Ursae Majoris |
5 |
Ana-heu-heu-po,
the pillar where debates were held |
Alphard, α Hydrae |
6 |
Ana-tahua-taata-metua-te-tupu-mavae,
a pillar to stand by |
Arcturus, α Bootis |
7 |
Ana-tahua-vahine-o-toa-te-manava,
pillar for elocution |
Procyon, α Canis Minoris |
8 |
Ana-varu,
pillar to sit by |
Betelgeuse, α Orionis |
9 |
Ana-iva,
pillar of exit |
Phakt, α Columbae |
10 |
Ana-nia,
pillar-to-fish-by |
North Star, α Ursae Minoris |
Toko
The
higher-ranked of the two largest
political units on Rapa Nui was
the Ko Tu'u Aro Ko Te Mata Nui.
This literally translates as The
Mast/Pillar/Post [standing] Before the
Greater Tribes.
Toko te rangi,
or Sky Propper, is named by
Métraux in his corrected Miru
genealogy as the
thirteenth king of Easter Island
and as one of the lineages or subgroups
of the Miru. Although we have no
record of the Sky Propper legend on
Rapa Nui, other Polynesian legends
of the Sky Propper are widely known, and
they are formative elements in the basic
cosmogenic theory of Polynesian belief.
Sky (rangi) and
Earth (papa) lay in primal
embrace, and in the cramped, dark space
between them procreated and gave birth
to the gods such as Tane,
Rongo and Tu. Just as
children fought sleep in the stifling
darkness of a hare paenga, the
gods grew restless between their parents
and longed for light and air. The
herculean achievement of forcing Sky to
separate from Earth was variously
performed by Tane in New Zealand
and the Society Islands, by Tonofiti
in the Marquesas and by Ru (Tu)
in Cook Islands. After
the sky was raised high above the earth,
props or poles were erected between them
and light entered, dispelling the
darkness and bringing renewed life.
One detail which is iconographically of
interest is whether the god responsible
for separating Earth and Sky did so by
raising the Sky with his upraised arms
and hands, as in Tahiti and elsewhere,
or with his feet as in New Zealand.
The actual props, pillars
or posts which separated the sky and
earth are called toko in New
Zealand, to'o in the Marquesas
Islands and pou in Tahiti. In
Rapanui tuu and pou are
known, with pou meaning column,
pillar or post of either stone or wood.
Sometimes the word is applied to a
natural rock formation with postlike
qualities which serves as an orientation
point. The star Sirius is called Te
Pou in Rapanui and functions
in the same way.
One monolithic basalt
statue is called Pou Hakanononga,
a somewhat obscure and probably late
name thought to mean that the statue
served to mark an offshore tuna fishing
site. The Rapanui word
tokotoko means pole or staff. Sacred
ceremonial staves, such as the ua
on Rapa Nui, were called toko
in Polynesia.
Based
upon the fact that toko in New
Zealand also means 'rays of light', it
has been suggested that the original
props which separated and held apart Sky
and Earth were conceived of as shafts of
dawn sunlight.
In most Polynesian
languages the human and animate
classifier is toko-, suggesting a
congruence of semantic and symbolic
meaning between anthropomorphic form and
pole or post. Tane as First Man
and the embodiment of sunlight thus
becomes, in the form of a carved human
male figure, the probable inspiration
for the moai as sacred prop
between Sky and Earth.
The moai as Sky
Propper would have elevated Sky and held
it separate from Earth, balancing it
only upon his sacred head. This action
allowed the light to enter the world and
made the land fertile. Increasing the
height of the statues, as the Rapa
Nui clearly did over time, would
symbolically increase the space between
Sky and Earth, ensuring increased
fertility and the greater production of
food. The proliferating image,
consciously or unconsciously, must have
visually (and reassuringly) filled the
dangerously empty horizon between sea
and land, just as the trees they were so
inexorably felling once had. (Van
Tilburg)
Tokotoko,
stick, cane, crutches, axe helve,
roller, pole, staff. P Pau.:
tokotoko,
walking stick. Mgv.:
toko,
a pole, stilts, staff. Mq.:
tokotoko,
toótoó,
stick, cane, staff. Ta.:
too,
id. Churchill. |
|