TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

The link 'vai names' leads to a series of pages, the first of which is presented below together with its linked underpages:

Manuscript E, pages 38-42 (according to Barthel 2):

38)
1	ko apina iti.ko rapa kura.he oho mai he
2	*tuu ki hanga o uo.he nape i te ingoa.ko hanga o uo*
	*a vave renga.*
	*he nape he oho a Makoi.i te ingoa.ka vari ro.*
	*a aruua.aro i apina nui i hakatuu ai*
	*te maea.etahi no raa.i nape i oho ai.*
3	*hanga roa a tuki tukau*
4	*Okahu a uka ui hetuu.*
5	*ra tahai a uo.*
6	*ahu akapu a mata kurakura.*
7	*kihikihi rau mea a rapa rau renga*
8	*renga a tini a toto renga*
9	*vai a mei u(h)i kapokapo.*
10	*rua a ngau a nua ngirongiro.*
11	*roro hau a mana ai rea.*
12	*vai poko aa raa mata turu*
13	*ko te hereke a kino ariki*

The reason for the long text at number 2 was, I guess, that the last item on the page should have number 13.

Number 17 would be out of the question, because this number stands at the beginning of next sequence in a rongorongo text. 16 would not fit if Sun was the subject, but 13 (1 less than 14) would. 13 * 14 = 182 and 300 - 182 = 118 = 2 * 59.

Sun (Raa) is mentioned in the 6th line (the last of the 5 lines in item 2) - etahi no raa, 'first of sun' - but without a capital letter. Maybe it means Sun was no god nor person in the minds of the old men who together created Manuscript E. Or maybe etahi no raa simply means 'the first day'.

He is mentioned also in the 12th item (where his 'eye' seems to descend, raa mata turu - inundated (a'a) by the 'breakers' (poko) of sweet water (vai). The 12th item is in line 16 and 16 * 29½ = 472 = 182 + 290.

Barthel appears to be unaware of such arguments and ideas as I have used here. The last item (ko te hereke a kino ariki) should belong beyond the time when sun 'disappears behind the rain clouds' or 'goes down into the deep sea' of midsummer. Kino means 'bad' and kino ariki possibly means 'a bad time for the sun king (without a capital letter)'.

Hereke could be here-ke, i.e. another type of (ke) snare (here). But according to Barthel hereke means a 'festering wound, cracked skin'. A cracked skin would fit, because we have found the time of high summer to be 'extra-calendarical', for instance the 'quarter' from Ga7-13 up to and including Gb2-16:

	180			88
Gb8-30 (1)		Ga7-12	Ga7-13		Gb2-16 (272)
182			90

	198
Gb2-17		Gb8-30 (472)
200

Presumably the authors of Manuscript E intended the reader to compare the text of the enumerated list with the patautau beginning on page 43:

"While the 'first list of place names' is supposed to have been handed down explicitly in writing (ta ki runga ki te kaka), the 'second list of place names' was passed on with the aid of a mnemonic device in the form of recitations (patautau) accompanied by the string-figures (kaikai)." (Barthel 2)

Sometimes I regret that I have no access to the original Manuscript E, and this is one of those times. The ortography of the manuscript is peculiar, for example in not using capital letters at the beginning of a sentence. Barthel has reproduced only page 5:

Sentences end with a full stop (.) and then there is a vacant space before next sentence, as we can see for instance in the 1st line:

I te tau ia Ataranga. hetuku te tagata i te vaka

A capital letter is here used not only for the important person Ataranga but also at the very beginning of the page.

According to his 'improved' text (Barthel 2 pp. 305-306) this line becomes:

I te tau i a Ataranga.he tuku te tagata i te vaka

Breaking ia into two pieces seems to be a bit of pedantery which hardly is necessary, the meaning should be understood anyhow. The risk of destroying a pun or some other intended effect should not be underestimated.

Even more so should he have avoided molesting hetuku into he tuku. I cannot see any translation of this part of Manuscript E in Barthel 2, but tuku can mean 'to slacken, let go' etc which is something quite different from hetu'u (star, planet) - as e.g. in Tehetu'upu (February).

Ataranga belongs at the end of last year, I think, and so did February according to old custom. At new year a canoe (vaka) is launched, and inside should be at least the captain himself, possibly indicated only by tagata. He should be sitting with his soles flat on the deck (tukuturi), and he is the 'star' (hetu'u) - Sun - of the new year. Such are the imaginations emerging in my mind, and I remember from Maya Cosmos (cfr at hakaturou):

Tuku also means 'to go back to the boat' (and other interesting possibilities for word play).

The truth is that we cannot rely on Barthel 2 as regards what Manuscript E really says. When reading sign language nothing must be changed, or the meaning will be destroyed. Already to alphabetize sign language is to decrease meaning.

It must also be noted how Barthel quite unnecessary has eliminated space between full stop signs and the next word (at the beginning of next sentence):

Manuscript E	Barthel 2
... Ataranga. hetuku ...	... Ataranga.he tuku ...

This has been done with full consequence throughout his reproduction of the Rapanui text, giving an impression that the author of the Manuscript did not know the basic rules of writing. Darwinism has tampered with the mind of Barthel, I guess. The ancients (or those who belong to generations preceding us) were not stupid. On the contrary, they were sharper, more thoughtful people.

As to the full stop signs, leaving no room prior to next word in the 'improved' version, there is a mystery. By contracting the text in the way Barthel has done at full stops the attention of the reader of course will be driven towards these curious full stops. My own reaction - before I had discovered that he had changed in the original text - was that these full stops must have some corresponding sign in the rongorongo texts, for instance in the form of 'lines of measurement':

I even tried to count the full stops to look for structure. And there is structure:

p. 38	p. 39	p. 40	p. 41	p. 42
4	9	0	2	1
6	0	4	0	0
0	0	0	2	0
3	4	0	0	1
0	0	1	4	2
0	1	0	0
3	-	2	0
0	-	-	1
0	14	7	9
16

18 text lines in the 2nd list of place names have no full stop and these I have denoted with black zeroes, black because I guess they are 'indistinct' (in the 'mist') - like the 3 'overcrossed' items which I have denoted with black dash signs.

The blue numbers in my table above indicate how many full stops there are in each of the text lines. For instance are there 16 full stops on page 38, distributed as follows:

38)
1	ko apina iti.ko rapa kura.he oho mai he	2	4
2	*tuu ki hanga o uo.he nape i te ingoa.ko hanga o uo*	2	4
	*a vave renga.*	1	6
	*he nape he oho a Makoi.i te ingoa.ka vari ro.*	2
	*a aruua.aro i apina nui i hakatuu ai*	1
	*te maea.etahi no raa.i nape i oho ai.*	2
3	*hanga roa a tuki tukau*	1
4	*Okahu a uka ui hetuu.*	1	3
5	*ra tahai a uo.*	1
6	*ahu akapu a mata kurakura.*	1
7	*kihikihi rau mea a rapa rau renga*
8	*renga a tini a toto renga*
9	*vai a mei u(h)i kapokapo.*	1	3
10	*rua a ngau a nua ngirongiro.*	1
11	*roro hau a mana ai rea.*	1
12	*vai poko aa raa mata turu*
13	*ko te hereke a kino ariki*

16 + 14 = 30, and 7 + 9 (both odd numbers) = 16, which accumulates to 46. Together with the 2 full stops in the exceptional page 42 it becomes 48 = 2 * 24 = 4 * 12 = 6 * 8 = 3 * 16.

But this my discovery of structure is not reliable because unfortunately I cannot rely on the text in Barthel 2.

With Darwinism I mean what in Hamlet's Mill is eloquently described (pp. 68-74) thus (and I will only quote brief segments):

"Our period may some day be called the Darwinian period, just as we talk of the Newtonian period of two centuries ago. The simple idea of evolution, which it is no longer thought necessary to examine, spreads like a tent over all those ages that lead from primitivism into civilization. Gradually, we are told, step by step, men produced the arts and crafts, this and that, until they emerged into the light of history.

Those soporific words 'gradulally' and 'step by step', repeated incessantly, are aimed at covering an ignorance which is both vast and surprising. One should like to inquire; which steps? But then one is lulled, overwhelmed and stupified by the gradualness of it all, which is at best a platitude, only good for pacifying the mind, since no one is willing to imagine that civilization appeared in a thunderclap ...

Human history taken as a whole ... even raciation itself, is only an evolutionary episode. In that whole, Cro-Magnon man is the last link. All of prehistory is a last-minute flickering ...

Those key words (gradualness and evolution) come from the earth sciences in the first place, where they had a precise meaning. Crystallization and upthrust, erosion and geosynclinals are the result of forces acting constantly in accordance with physical laws. They provided the backdrop for Dawin's great scenario.

When it comes to the evolution of life, the terms become less precise in meaning, though still acceptable. Genetics and natural selection stand for natural law, and events are determined by the rolling of the dice over long ages. But we cannot say much about the why and the how of this instead of that specific form, about where species, types, cultures branched off. Animal evolution remains an overall historical hypothesis supported by sufficient data - and by the lack of any alternative. In detail, it raises an appalling number of questions to which we have no answer. Our ignorance remains vast, but it is not surpising ...

For if we stopped to think, we would agree that as far as human 'fate' is concerned organic evolution ceased before the time when history, or even prehistory, began. We are on another time scale ...

In later centuries historians may declare all of us insane, because this incredible blunder was not detected at once and was not refuted with adequate determination. Mistaking cultural history for a process of gradual evolution, we have deprived ourselves of every reasonable insight into the nature of culture. It goes without saying that the still more modern habit of replacing 'culture' by 'society' has blocked the last narrow path to understanding history ..."

I accuse Barthel of this 'insanity'. Look how he describes the people who created Manuscript E:

"The author of Ms. E made an attempt to number the place names from 1 to 60, but he made several mistakes: he corrected names in a continuous numbering, skipped over some numbers, and listed others twice. It is obvious that he was attempting to construct a list of sixty names to guarantee that those numbers considered important by the Easter Islanders - three, six, ten, and thirty (Barthel 1962a) - were accomodated ..." (Barthel 2, p. 75)

A Mongolian herdsman on his horse was asked if it was not very monotonous to sit there day after day doing nothing more than watching over his herd. The surprising answer was the he enjoyed it because he had time to think and he thought a lot.

I imagine the 'old ones' (korohua) on Easter Island also had a lot of free time:

"Pua Ara Hoa was the central figure among the korohua, a group of old Easter Islanders, who during the second decade of this century were the last living eyewitnesses of the pre-missionary era and who spent their time discussing among themselves the indigenous traditions, which had fallen into disregard among the younger Easter Islanders ...

The korohua were not all lepers; sometimes healthy old men voluntarily moved to the leper station because they felt out of place in Hangaroa, where people no longer showed any interest in things of the past (TP:7). This exodus led to the unequal distribution of knowledge about the pre-missionary era among the Easter Islanders." (Barthel 2, pp. 297-298)

43)

he uru a Ira.i te kaikai.he hakahiti i te kai(-)

kai.kia Makoi.he ki a Ira.kia Makoi ka

hoa mai koe i te patautau o te kaikai nei.erua

moai a tuu hokorua ko apina iti ko rapa kura.

ko hanga o uo.a vave renga.he hoa mai a Makoi.i te

patautau.ko hangaroa a tuki tukau.okahu a uka

ui hetu.ra tahai a uo.ahu akapu a mata kura(-)

kura.kihikihi rau mea.a rapa rau renga

tini a toto renga.vai a mei a uhi kapokapo.rua

ngau a nua ngirongiro.roro hau a mana ai rea

vai poko a raa mata turu.ko te hereke a kino a(-)

riki.hatu ngoio a taotao ika.ara koreu a pari

maehaeha.hanga kuokuo a vave renga. opata

roa a mana aia.vai tara kai u(a) a ngao roaroa

a ngao tokotokoa.hia uka a hakairiiri a haka(-)

turuturu.hanga ohiro a pakipaki renga.

For easier comparison with page 38:

38)		43)
1	ko apina iti.ko rapa kura.he oho mai he	*ko apina iti ko rapa kura.*
2	*tuu ki hanga o uo.he nape i te ingoa.ko hanga o uo*	*ko hanga o uo.*
	*a vave renga.*	*a vave renga.*
	*he nape he oho a Makoi.i te ingoa.ka vari ro.*	*he hoa mai a Makoi.i te patautau.*
	*a aruua.aro i apina nui i hakatuu ai*
	*te maea.etahi no raa.i nape i oho ai.*
3	*hanga roa a tuki tukau*	*ko hangaroa a tuki tukau.*
4	*Okahu a uka ui hetuu.*	*okahu a uka ui hetu.*
5	*ra tahai a uo.*	*ra tahai a uo.*
6	*ahu akapu a mata kurakura.*	*ahu akapu a mata kura(-)kura.*
7	*kihikihi rau mea a rapa rau renga*	*kihikihi rau mea.a rapa rau renga*
8	*renga a tini a toto renga*	*tini a toto renga.*
9	*vai a mei u(h)i kapokapo.*	*vai a mei a uhi kapokapo.*
10	*rua a ngau a nua ngirongiro.*	*rua ngau a nua ngirongiro.*
11	*roro hau a mana ai rea.*	*roro hau a mana ai rea*
12	*vai poko aa raa mata turu*	*vai poko a raa mata turu.*
13	*ko te hereke a kino ariki*	*ko te hereke a kino a(-)riki.*

In the kaikai version there are 12 stations (ignoring the blackmarked text) - if we count by the full stops, otherwise 14.

In the written version there are 13 stations - if we read together ko hanga o uo.vave renga. Counting the full stops for these 13 stations we find 8. Renga in vave renga may be a sign, because it recurs conspiciously in item 8.

Okahu is written okahu in the kaikai version.