|
The old ancestress in the myth about the sacred
jawbone seems to be the Moon. Her stomach began to swell
out just like the Moon in the night of hua.
Then after a maximum it began to shrink again. It was said that in the Moon there was an old lady sitting at the side of a big umu pae kindling el curanto. Perhaps that lady was Muri ranga whenua. And perhaps that lady can be seen sitting in the fullmoon glyph in Mamari. One more piece of evidence is delivered by Metoro, who introduces the tuna vai into the action:
The tuna roa is slithering like a canoe on nine logs (= the nine parts of the moon calendar) on his way to be cut into pieces by Maui. Possibly this slaughter is illustrated in these glyphs:
But there could be other variants of the tuna vai myth which would fit in better.
|
|||||||||||||||||
