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TRANSLATIONS
A third reason for documenting how Heyerdahl has 'proven' that a late wave of immigrants into Polynesia originated with Kwakiutl indians from Haika Strait is to contrast this with the view expressed in The Raw and the Cooked: '... But the suggested explanation comes up against another, and much more serious, difficulty. In order to associate Orion with the origin of terrestrial water, the distant ancestors of the Sherente would have had to do more than merely reverse the meteorological symbolism of the constellation: they would have had to have known that the earth was round ...' That is not a 'serious difficulty'. Already the ancient Egyptians knew that the earth was round and also its dimensions (cfr the measurements of Cheop's pyramid). By the image of the scarab (sun) rolling his ball of dirt (earth) in front of him, they also told that it was the earth which was moving, not the sky. Surprisingly I find a similar view expressed in Wikipedia: "... The race of beetles has no female, but all the males eject their sperm into a round pellet of material which they roll up by pushing it from the opposite side, just as the sun seems to turn the heavens in the direction opposite to its own course, which is from west to east ..." How could the sun push the sky around when he is inside the sky dome? The Polynesians had forefathers who had arrived from the Northwest Coast of America to Hawaii, and some of them were later moving on to e.g. New Zealand, navigating by the stars. Of course they must have known that it was their own movement (and not the movement of the sky) which was responsible for the changes to be seen up above. Such important fundamental facts would certainly spread to other peoples, also those far away from the sea. So the Sherente knew. The stars and constellations were like the sand and the stones, not changing. The names for and ideas about stars and constellations must therefore also remain unchanged. Names once were important, calling what they expressed. So back to the South American sky:
The Raw and the Cooked: "... From left to right: Hercules ('the pacu fish') and Boötes ('the piranha fish') enclosing Corona Australis ('the armadillo'); at the bottom on the left, Scorpio ('the big snake'), followed on the right by Corvus ('the flying heron'); then Leo ('the crab', then Gemini, Canis Major with Columba below, and moving up along the length of the Milky Way again, Orion and Eridanus ('the dance axe'). For the Indians this group (minus Eridanus) consists of the five otters busy stealing the fish placed on a barbecue (Columba), by a fisherman armed with a net (stretched between Rigel, Betelgeuse, and three stars of the constellation Orion). Above and to the right, the Hyades and Pleiades ('the small boys', 'the swarm of wasps'); on the extreme right, Cetus ('the jaguar'). The Milky Way is indicated by stippling; the section in the center and on the right is that to which the myths refer." Remarkable it is that the area 'to which the myths refer' is the 'spring' time/space, from 'dawn' to 'noon'. We should recall that in Q the text stops with noon:
The important story described in Q evolves from nightfall to noon. The 4th quarter ('p.m.') is unimportant, while - it seems - the 3rd quarter ('a.m.') is of prime interest:
Presumably the man-jaguar (sun) in this picture (Wikipedia) exhibits the cycle of the sun. If so, then the white part probably corresponds to the time when sun is absent and the white moon rules. The sector coloured red and yellow would be 'a.m.' and the small dark sector 'p.m.', the importance / nonimportance being expressed by the degrees occupied by the respective sectors. We began this long voyage from the idea of autumn equinox being expressed by GD26 (tara hoi, the point of reversal):
The origin of the journey was a similarity observed between a text in Tahua and one in Mamari:
GD11 (manu rere) appears thrice in the week of H:
We need to have some idea of why. If GD26 (tara hoi) really is equivalent to 'autumn equinox', then the fact that GD11 appears immediately before both in Tahua and Mamari seems to express a close connection in time-space. In Sunday GD11 appears immediately before GD54 (moe), and the 'sleeping' bird of course must be in a later phase than the upright fully awake GD26 bird. In Thursday and Saturday GD11 is located in the last place. GD11 is a 'flying bird' (manu rere) and like a god he is moving up high. After having chewed on Thursday for a long time now, we can imagine that GD11 is the spirit of the dead old king moving to the stars. Alternatively we here see GD11 as a symbol for the revitalized king. He looks splendid. In Saturday the two glyphs preceeding GD11 maybe are to be read as rei-ga (the spirit leaping place):
In Sunday, then, the sleeping old bird (GD54) would tell about how sun during the night is inactive. On the 7th day God rested. Before GD11 we may have the pupa of the dung beetle. Wikipedia: "... It may not have gone unnoticed that the pupa [of the scarab], whose wings and legs are encased at this stage of development, is very mummy-like. It has even been pointed out that the egg-bearing ball of dung is created in an underground chamber which is reached by a vertical shaft and horizontal passage curiously reminiscent of Old Kingdom mastaba tombs ..." We also remember: Larva ... A. † spectre, ghost ... B. insect in the grub state ... L., 'disembodied spirit', ghost', 'mask' ... sense B is due to Linnæus, and is an application of the sense 'mask', the notion being that the perfect insect or imago is not recognizable in the larva (Ray, 1691, had spoken of 'the same Insect under a different Larva or habit' ... (English Etymology) |
