Sweet water (vai) comes from a bottle gourd (hipu) it seems to state. Two glyph types are united in a single glyph. Also this hipu is reversed and the meaning of the reversed hipu is beginning to make sense - instead of referring to the gourd at its early stage, when green and growing, the reversal tells of a later stage, when the calabash no longer is growing, when it has dried and can be used as a water carrier. Indeed the reversal can be stated to be a sign of negation - it is not a young 'green' one (hua) but its opposite, an old and hardened one.

If we compare with the myth about Ulu and Mokuola the reversed hipu sign should be a 'parallel' to old Ulu, not to young Mokuola. Ulu gave his life in order for his son to live, as if his life were sweet water and his son was on the verge of dying from thirst. It was not thirst, it was lack of the proper food, but there is a similarity in the structural situation. The son will live through the death of his father.