TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

Maybe Mars was called Ragi-ragi? That is what the signs in Aa1-3--4 may be telling us:


Aa1-3	Aa1-4
e tagata noho ana - i te ragi	te tagata - hakamaroa ana i te ragi

Metoro did not, I think, give any sign of recognizing Mars in Aa1-3--4. Instead he pointed out the rasing of the sky: te tagata hakamaroa ana i te ragi (the man makes-stand up the pillars for the sky).

Maro

Maro: A sort of small banner or pennant of bird feathers tied to a stick. Maroa: 1. To stand up, to stand. 2. Fathom (measure). See kumi. Vanaga.

Maro: 1. June. 2. Dish-cloth T P Mgv.: maro, a small girdle or breech clout. Ta.: maro, girdle. Maroa: 1. A fathom; maroa hahaga, to measure. Mq.: maó, a fathom. 2. Upright, stand up, get up, stop, halt. Mq.: maó, to get up, to stand up. Churchill.

Ana

1. Cave. 2. If. 3. Verbal prefix: he-ra'e ana-unu au i te raau, first I drank the medicine. Vanaga.

1. Cave, grotto, hole in the rock. 2. In order that, if. 3. Particle (na 5); garo atu ana, formerly; mee koe ana te ariki, the Lord be with thee. Churchill.

Splendor; a name applied in the Society Islands to ten conspicious stars which served as pillars of the sky. Ana appears to be related to the Tuamotuan ngana-ia, 'the heavens'. Henry translates ana as aster, star. The Tahitian conception of the sky as resting on ten star pillars is unique and is doubtless connected with their cosmos of ten heavens. The Hawaiians placed a pillar (kukulu) at the four corners of the earth after Egyptian fashion; while the Maori and Moriori considered a single great central pillar as sufficient to hold up the heavens. It may be recalled that the Moriori Sky-propper built up a single pillar by placing ten posts one on top of the other. Makemson.

As to the expression (at Aa1-3) e tagata noho ana - i te ragi we could guess that noho here means 'to dwell', i.e. 'a man is in the sky' (where e is the weak demonstrative'):

Noho

1. To sit, to stay, to remain, to live (somewhere), to wait; ka-noho, you stay! (i.e. 'good-bye', said by the person leaving). 2. Figuratively: he noho te eve, to be calm, at peace; he noho te mana'u, to concentrate on something, to fix one's attention on; ku-noho á te mana'u o te tagata ki ruga ki te aga, the man thinks constantly of his work. Vanaga.

Seat, bench, dwelling, marriage, position, posture, situation, session, sojourn; to sit, to dwell, to reside, to rest, to halt, to inhabit; noho hahatu, to sit cross-legged; noho hakahaga, apathy; noho heenua, countryman; noho kaiga, native; noho kenu, married; noho ke noho ke, to change place; noho muri, to stay behind; noho noa, invariable; noho opata, to stand on a cliff; noho pagaha, badly placed; noho pepe, table; noho tahaga, bachelor, unmarried; noho vie, married, noho no, apathy, stay-at-home, colonist, idler, inhabitant, inactive, immobile, settler, lazy, loiterer. Hakanoho, to abolish, to rent, to lease, to enslave, to dissuade, to exclude, to exempt, to install, to substitute, hostage. Hakanohohia, stopped. Nohoga, seat. Nohoturi, to kneel, genuflexion. Nohovaega, to preside. Churchill.

Ê, yes. E ... é disjunct vocative marker. E vovo é! Girl! E te matu'a é! Father! (Vanaga)

1. By. 2. And. 3. Oh! 4. Yes. 5. Verb sign. 6. Negative verb sign; e maaa, inexperienced; ina e, negative sign; ina e rakerakega, innocent; ina e ko mou, incessant; e ko, not, except. 7. Wave. 8. Weak demonstrative, functioning as article. (Churchill)

The meaning of ana in this case I do not understand. It is not a verbal prefix. The expression i te ragi suggests a movement towards or a location in the sky:

I, î, ii

I. 1. Preposition denoting the accusative: o te hanau eepe i-hoa i te pureva mai Poike ki tai, the hanau eepe threw the stones of Poike into the sea. Te rua muraki era i a Hotu Matu'a. the grave where they buried Hotu Matu'a. 2. Preposition: for, because of, by action of, for reason of..., ku-rari-á te henua i te ûa the ground is soaked by the rain; i te matu'a-ana te hakaúru i te kai mo taana poki huru hare, the mother herself carries (lit.: by the mother herself the taking...) the food for her son secluded in the house. 3. Preposition: in, on, at (space): i te kaiga nei, on this island. 4. Preposition: in, on (time): i mu'a, before; i agataiahi, yesterday; i agapó, tonight; i te poá, in the morning. 5. Preposition: in the power of: i a îa te ao, the command was in his power. 6. Adverb of place: here. i au nei, I am here (also: i au i , here I am, here). Vanaga.

Î. Full; ku-î-á te kete i te kumara, the bag is full of sweet potatoes. 2. To abound, to be plentiful; ki î te îka i uta, as there are lots of fish on the beach. 3. To start crying (of a baby): i-ûi-era te ma-tu'a ku-î-á te poki mo tagi, he-ma'u kihaho, when a mother saw that her baby was starting to cry she would take it outside. Vanaga.

Toward; i muri oo na, to accompany. Churchill.

Ii, to deteriorate, to go bad. Churchill.

Raising up the sky by means of pillars (ana) probably is a reading intended by the creator of the text. Two glyphs intensifies the meaning - it is quick and forceful.

... Haumea is Mother Earth (Papa), but she is also La'ila'i, i.e. Ragiragi, 'sky-sky' (?). Earth and sky are close. Here both are women. In old Egypt the sky was Nut, also a woman.

A few hours after having written this I discovered that in Churchill 2 there was a description of the meaning of the word la'ila'i:

... [Efaté:] langilangi, to be proud, uplifted. Samoa: fa'alangilangi, to be angry because of disrespect. Tonga: langilangi, powerful, great, applied to chiefs; fakalangilangi, to honour, to dignify, to treat with great respect. Hawaii: lanilani, to be proud, to show haughtiness. Uvea: fakalai, to compliment, to adulate. Viti: langilangi, proud ...

'Uplifted', and therefore powerful, to treat with great respect, applied to chiefs. The chiefs are half-way up to the sky, I think.

But shouldn't ana have the same meaning at Aa1-3 and Aa1-4? Yes, I believe so. The conclusion then becomes that I cannot translate ana at Aa1-4 as 'pillars'.

Yesterday evening I decided to label GD71 as gagana,

without being sure of what that word means.

Gágá

Exhausted, strengthless, to faint. Vanaga.

To faint, to fall in a swoon, death struggle. Gagata, crowd, multitude, people, population. Churchill.

Mgv.: A bird. Mq.: kaka, id. Churchill.

Pau.: Gagahere, herbs, grass. Ta.: aaihere, herbs, bush. Ma.: ngahere, forest. Pau.: Gagaoa, confused noise. Ta.: aaoaoa, noise of a rising assembly. Churchill.

My guess, though, is that gagana = gágá + (a)na, and that ana should mean something like 'he', i.e. gagana = exhausted, he (is). To be 'exhausted' could be a euphemism for being in a 'death struggle'.

Therefore:

Aa1-3		e tagata noho ana - i te ragi	'a man in the sky' (where e is the weak demonstrative' and ana a pronoun )
Aa1-4		te tagata - hakamaroa ana i te ragi	'the man makes-stand-up the pillars for the sky)

(By coincidence (?) Metoro's intepretation of Ab7-1 happens to be ki na gagata, where gagata is plural of tagata.)

Let us now return to GD14. We have identified a structure involving GD14 glyphs:

			...		...	...		...
Ab6-91	Ab6-92	Ab7-1		Ab7-33			Ab8-52		Ab8-84
henua ora rua		32		52		52		32
		84				84

... Ab7-1 has 3 triangular sectors and 1 more extraordinary, divided in two parts located at the beginning and at the end. The pattern we recognize is 3 + 1 ...

Maybe Ab7-1 depicts the year. 3 + 1 would then, probably, mean 3 regular quarters + 1 odd quarter (when sun is absent). In the beginning and at the end of the year sun is absent. 3 regular quarters could be the 3 'wives' of the sun.

Given that the year has 364 nights, a quarter has 91 nights. 2 quarters makes 182 nights or half a year. A rhomb could then stand for such a half-year.

But we mostly find 3 rhombs in a vertical row, which then would mean 3 half-years, i.e. 3 * 182 = 546 nights. What is the meaning of that? I have a faint recollection that the Chinese counted with 1½ year periods. 3 wives of the sun maybe explains why we find a triplet of half-years?

182 = 13 * 14, i.e. 546 = 13 * 42. Is this fact the reason why we find 42 so often?

546 = 6 * 7 * 13. 26 = 6 + 7 + 13. The possibilities are many.

If b7 + b8 (equally long with 84 glyphs in each line) means two half-years, we would expect b8 to be the 2nd half-year and we would expect line b8 to be divided in half (because the last quarter would be the 'odd' quarter with a 'dead' sun). Indeed we find such a halfway mark at Ab8-43:


Ab8-31	Ab8-32	Ab8-33	Ab8-34

Ab8-35	Ab8-36	Ab8-37	Ab8-38

Ab8-39	Ab8-40	Ab8-41	Ab8-42


Ab8-43	Ab8-44	Ab8-45	Ab8-46

Ab8-47	Ab8-48	Ab8-49	Ab8-50

Ab8-51	Ab8-52	Ab8-53	Ab8-54

Given that 104 glyphs (from Ab7-1 up to and including Ab8-52) should be separated from the rest of the glyphs of Tahua, we find that the rest is 1334 - 104 = 1230. Is there any meaning connected with that number?

We could guess for instance that what is meant is 1, 2, 3 ... - a sign of progression.

Another guess would be 12 * 30 = 360, possibly a sign that while 1230 glyphs are inside the regular calendar those 104 are outside. Maybe 104 = 8 * 13 means the 104 periods of the moon during a 364 night cycle?

Could the 8 'cup'-legs in Ab8-52 refer to the 8 periods in a moon month?

1230 = 30 * 41, is that meaningful? Should we instead 'translate' 1230 = 5 * 246 (suggesting 5, 24 and 6)?

The possibilities are many and we ought to see many explanations, not just one.

Let us try another approach. Ab6-91--92 seems to introduce lines b7-b8. At the border between the lines of Tahua we may find marks. We should list the 16 borders in a table to see if we can find out more: