TRANSLATIONS

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We are at sea level when we visit Pu Mahore, and we follow the kuhane. She did not go to the rim of Rano Kau, to the spirit leaping place, from which place the spirit of Hotu Matua left the island. It would have been wrong to visit Orongo for the kuhane, because it is a place for observing the birth and death of the sun. Her mission was instead to identify the residence for the ruling king, a female beach with nice sand (meaning 'multitude' of offspring).

Yet, one may wonder, if not the 'spirit' of the place crept in the back door by means of the name maho-re. How interesting it must have been, trying to find words which fitted both ways.

Our main business is not the list of kuhane stations, but how to interpret rongorongo texts. To 'read' on side a of G is like trying to read the rongorongo glyphs upside down every other text line. It takes practice.

I suppose the business of finding good glyphs up to Hanga Te Pau must have been difficult, they must fit both ways, both for reading with the moon and with the sun. Beyond Hanga Te Pau it should have been easier, because (presumably) only the moon journey had to be described (and on side b it was not necessary to move backwards from the end of the text to the beginning).

Let us list side b again:

 

Te Pei Te Pou
Gb1-7 (236) Gb2-10 (265) Gb2-11 (266)
Hua Reva Akahanga
Gb3-5 (295) Gb4-4 (324) Gb4-5 (325)
Hatinga Te Kohe Roto Iri Are
Gb5-1 (354) Gb6-1 (383) Gb6-2 (384)
Tama One Tea
Gb7-3 (413) Gb8-1 (442) Gb8-2 (443)
Hanga Takaure
Ga1-1 (472)

Here I have redmarked also Hua Reva - we know (as far as that can be possible for the moment) the glyph probably describes Hua Reva.

And I have blackmarked Te Pei and Hanga Takaure, because that is the fitting colour. Both Apollo (sun) and Diana (moon) had the black veil of Latona as their mother. The beginning is black, and the black cloth recovers her progeny when they fall on their faces.

I have repeatedly promised to return to Te Pei. Now it is time.

"In three instances, the first member of the pair indicates a relationship with animals (I E, rat; II E, shark; II G flies), which leads us to expect a similar relationship for I G.

 I insert his table again, marking the animals with red (sun) and black (absence of light):

 

  I II III
A 1. Nga Kope Ririva 9. Hua Reva 17. Pua Katiki
B 2. Te Pu Mahore 10. Akahanga 18. Maunga Teatea
C 3. Te Poko Uri 11. Hatinga Te Kohe 19. Mahatua
D 4. Te Manavai 12. Roto Iri Are 20. Taharoa
E 5. Te Kioe Uri 13. Tama 21. Hanga Hoonu
F 6. Te Piringa Aniva 14. One Tea 22. Rangi Meamea
G 7. Te Pei 15. Hanga Takaure 23. Peke Tau O Hiti
H 8. Te Pou 16. Poike 24. Maunga Hau Epa

Accordingly, Te Pei should probably read Te Pe'i (unfortunately, Ms. E does not indicate glottal stops). The pe'i is a large, tasty fish (Caranx cheilio, Fuentes 1960:290), caught in the deep waters of the fishing grounds (hakanononga).

In one recitation, the pe'i is likened to the 'great fish' (ika nui) and compared to the very popular tunafish (kahi) (Barthel 1960:848). This favorite food from the ocean is depicted in numerous petroglyphs.

The relationship inherent in the local names reveal the following scheme:

 

I E = rat, tasty nourishment, lives in the ground II E = shark, inedible, on ocean surface
I G = pe'i, tasty food, lives in the depth of the ocean II G = flies, inedible, appear on the surface of the land

I do not agree on the dimension 'tasty' - 'inedible', it carries no weight in my mind. But the vertical dimension is surely important. Down means dark and up means light. Therefore Te Pei must be te pe'i, a sign of darkness.

On the other hand, tama primarily means child, not shark, as we have noted in the text of G. Moving inland from the sea a shark is a good vehicle for the sun child and from that he will arrive at the moon beach One Tea., prior to moving further up (= east to Hanga Takaure, and then also vertically upwards to Poike). But the shark (mago) glyph type has a special function and meaning, therefore a tama glyph is quite in order at the Tama station, I think. I.e. we should disregard the inedible shark at Tama - the station has nothing to do with sharks according to G. Only the contrast between I E and I G remains valid. If one wished to contrast II E with II G it must be in the dimension of life (real children contra flies = spirits for the future children).

And it would indeed be surprising if there were good similarities between an item in one of the columns (I-III) and the other two items in the same line. The three sections which together have 24 stations, are not equal in length (measured by number of stations).

At last I have arrived to my important point regarding Te Pei - it is a fish like the tuna, and although Metoro never said pei he sometimes said kahi (maybe alluding to Te Pei). I decided to insert an item for the kahi glyph type in the glyph dictionary:

 

kahi

From the word kahi (as Metoro used it) I have tried to find a common denominator for the glyphs at which he used that word, but as usual it was not easy.

The present subject in the glyph dictionary is poporo, also with dark associations, like Te Pei, and I had to - here in the translations part - prepare the road so to say. It is now time to close the cycle. But first we have to read the page from the link 'the creation chant' (in the first page of poporo):

 

"Such oral literature as survived the calamitous destruction of the Easter Island culture in the nineteenth century was nearly all 'local history', concerned with Hotu matua's migration, the origin of the island's tribes, etc.

One fragment of ancient mythology which did come through was this creation chant, which I have adapted from Métraux's reconstruction of the garbled version given by Paymaster Thomson of the U.S.S. Mohican, who obtained it from Ure vaeiko in 1866.

It proves its own antiquity: neither coconuts nor eels were known on Easter Island (which has no streams of any kind) and the word for coconut, 'niu', was used for the fruit of the miro tree. Yet the eighth line of the chant preserves a memory of both, in an allusion to the extremely ancient myth about the eel and the coconut ...

Tiki and his wife the Woman of Earth are also mentioned toward the end, and the cryptic last three lines again refer to eels, according to Métraux.

A chant of almost indentical pattern is recorded by Buck from Mangareva. Both doubtless had a common source in the Marquesas, whence the Easter Islanders evidently migrated in about the fourth century (Métraux, 99: 320-332).

God-of-angry-look by lying with Roundness made the poporo berry,

Himahima marao by lying with Lichen-in-the-soil made the lichen,

Parent-mother by lying with Pipiri hai tau made wood,

Ti by lying with Tattooing made the ti plant,

Elevation by doing it with Height made the inland grass.

Sharpness by lying with Adze produced obsidian,

Twining by lying with Beautiful-face-with-penetrating-tongue produced the morning-glory,

Parent-god by lying with Angry Eel produced the coconut,

Grove by doing it with Trunk produced the ashwood.

Veke by lying with Water-beetle made the dragonfly,

Stinging-fly by doing it with Swarm-of-flies produced the fly,

Branch by lying with Fork-of-tree made Beetle-that-lives-in-rotten-wood,

Lizard-woman by lying with Whiteness made the gannet.

Hard-soil by lying with Covering-below made the sugar cane,

Bitterness by doing it with Bad-taste produced the kape,

Tail by lying with Hina oio produced the crayfish,

Killing by doing it with Stingray made the shark.

Tiki-the-chief by lying with Heap-of-Earth made Hina kauhara;

Kuhikia by lying with Wetness made the bulrush;

Kuhikia by lying with Pigeon made the seagull;

Small-thing by doing it with Imperceptible-thing made the fine-dust-in-the-air:

It runs red, the blood of the kovare.

Abundant the kovare, rough the eels.

The rain falls in long drops."

(Legends of the South Seas)

This creation chant could have clues for us, I think. Furthermore, the Santiago Staff has a structure (X - Y - Z) similar to a creation chant.