TRANSLATIONS
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5.
Before writing was invented everything had to be commited
to memory. Strings of words are more easy to remember than isolated
ones. Therefore, I think, the Polynesians were fond of
lists.
Lists of e.g. birds could be used to memorize other things,
such as the order and events connected with the different months. We
should not underestimate the potentiality of
such a method:
"The ollave in ancient Ireland had to be master of
one hundred and fifty Oghams, or verbal ciphers, which allowed him
to converse with his fellow-poets over the heads of unlearned
bystanders; to be able to repeat at a moment's notice any one of
three hundred and fifty long traditional histories and romances,
together with the incidental poems they contained, with appropriate
harp accompaniment; to have memorized an immense number of other
poems of different sorts; to be learned in philosophy; to be a
doctor of civil law; to understand the history of modern, middle and
ancient Irish with the derivations and changes of meaning of every
word; to be skilled in music, augury, divination, medicine,
mathematics, geography, universal history, astronomy, rhetoric and
foreign languages; and to be able to extemporize poetry in fifty or
more complicated metres.
That anyone at all should have been able to qualify
as an ollave is surprising; yet families of ollaves tended to
intermarry; and among the Maoris of New Zealand where a curiously
similar system prevailed, the capacity of the ollave to memorize,
comprehend, elucidate and extemporate staggered Governer Grey and
other early British observers." (The White Goddess)
Manuscript E ought to reflect some of the ollave 'cosmos'. Even more
so should the rongorongo texts be of this nature, a great web
of interconnected names and ideas. My glyph dictionary is meant to
be of help in reading the rongorongo texts, and I therefore
must try
to include everything which possibly could be of use for
interpreting the signs on the tablets.
Certainly knowledge about numbers is necessary. The ordinal numbers
constitute a prime
example of a fundamental list.10 and 20 are essential:
10 |
1. Hagauru,
agahuru.
Mq.: Onohuú, okohuú.
Ta.: Ahuru. 2.
Ma.: Tekau |
20 |
Mgv.: Takau. Ta.:
Toau. Mq.: Tekau. To.: Tekau. |
Tekau is not teka. Kau (to move
one's feet, 'swimming') comes later than the 'dart'. In the tropics
counting
continues with the toes beyond 10. Maori tekau for 10
presumably indicates this. Maybe tekau arrives at
makohe:
10 |
makohe |
frigate |
9 |
kukuru toua |
white pigeon? |
8 |
ka
araara |
sooty tern |
7 |
te verovero |
sooty tern |
Already
number 9 signifies the 'death' of Spring Sun. Teka means an 'arrow' and
support for this reading is given by vero (in verovero).
The 'death' of Spring Sun must be accomplished
by a flying weapon, of course. Balder, too, in the far north and on
the other side of the earth was killed by an arrow. At
such a high latitude the important shining one in the sky was
Moon and he was male (whereas Sun was a she). Balder - the white
one - surely must have been a personification of Moon.
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From the last pages of Hamlet's Mill:
"... the strange hologram of archaic cosmology must
have existed as a conceived plan, achieved at least in certain
minds, even as late as the Sumerian period when writing was still a
jealously guarded monopoly of the scribal class. Such a mind may
have belonged to a keeper of records, but not of the living world,
still less of the living thought.
Most of the plan was
never recorded. Bits of it reach us in unusual, hesitant form,
barely indicated, as in the wisdom and sketches of Griaule's
teacher, Ogotemmeli, the blind centenarian sage. In the magic
drawings of Lascaux, or in American Indian tales, one perceives a
mysterious understanding between men and other living creatures
which bespeaks of relationships beyond our imagination, infinitely
remote from our analytical capacity.
'From now on', said
Father Sun, grieving over Phaeton, his fallen child, 'you shall be
Mink'. What meaning can this have for us? For such an understanding
between men and men, and other living creatures too, we would need
the kind of help King Arthur had at hand: 'Gwryr Interpreter of
Tongues, it is meet that thou escort us on this quest. All tongues
hast thou, and then canst speak all languages of men, with some of
the birds and beasts.'
This ability was also
attributed to Merlin and Gwyon, those masters of cosmological wisdom
whose names resound through the legends of the Middle Ages. In
general, all fabulous communication was conceived as having such a
range, not merely the Aesopian fable with is flat, all-too-wordly
wisdom.
Much of this book has
been peopled with the inhabitants of a Star Menagerie of profoundly
meaningful animal characters. The forms of animal life have varied
from the Fishes who turned into hairy Twins to the remarkable
succession of doglike creatures occurring around the world from
Ireland to Yucatán. All of these animals have been of great
significance, and each was invested with key functions in
cosmological myth.
It would be possible,
for example, to prepare a most informative edition of the Romance
of Reynard Fox illustrated entirely with reproductions from
Egyptian and Mesopotamian ritual documents. For it is likely that
these documents represent the last form of international initiatic
language, intended to be misunderstood alike by suspicious
authorities and the ignorant crowd.
In any case, the
language forms an excellent defense against the kind of misuse which
Plato speaks about with surprising earnestness in Phaedrus
(274D-275B). At the point in question, Thot/Hermes is feeling very
proud of himself for having invented letters, and he claims that the
alphabet will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memory.
Plato has the god Thamus, 'king of all Egypt', speak to him:
'Most ingenious Thoth',
said the god and king Thamus, 'one man has the ability to beget
arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to
their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of
letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power
the opposite of that which they really possess.
For this invention will
produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it,
because they will not practise their memory. Their trust in writing,
produced by external characters which are no part of themselves,
will discourage the use of their own memory within them.
You have invented an
elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils
the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many
things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many
things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get
along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.'
Now that Plato's
apprehensions have become fact, there is nothing left of the ancient
knowledge except the relics, fragments and allusions that have
survived the steep attrition of the ages ..." |
Makohe can be
read as ma-kohe, and it is interesting to find the
example vave kai kohe in Churchill - in high summer the
'sky people' must be so high up as to be practically
'inacessible':
Kohe
A plant (genus Filicinea) that
grows on the coast. Vanaga.
Vave kai kohe, inaccessible.
Churchill.
*Kofe is the name for bamboo on
most Polynesian islands, but today on Easter Island
kohe is the name of a fern that grows near the
beach. Barthel 2. |
Vave
means a billowing wave, such as warn us about a reef below the
surface. To approach would surely mean the end of the canoe or
raft - it would be 'eaten' (kai), a fate not far from
that awaiting Spring Sun at midsummer.
The
'bamboo' could be an alias for the 'Tree'. Perhaps the Easter
Islanders saw the 'bamboo' as a fitting image for the force
steadily
pushing the sky roof during spring. One pice after
another was added to the stem, but at Hatinga Te Kohe the great 'Tree' broke.
It is
noteworthy that the ancient Irish system of writing was based on
the names of different trees. Possibly the constellation kiore -
henua, used is serial in a few rongorongo texts, illustrate the
sections of the 'bambo' gradually added, as for example in
Mamari:
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Ca1-18 |
Ca1-25 |
Ca2-23 |
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Ca3-1 |
Ca3-4 |
Ca3-8 |
Ca3-13 |
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Ca3-16 |
Ca3-20 |
*Ca14-17 |
Cb2-7 |
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Cb2-16 |
Cb2-22 |
Cb3-2 |
Cb3-6 |
Cb3-12 |
Cb3-15 |
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Cb3-20 |
Cb4-2 |
Cb4-7 |
Cb4-12 |
Cb4-16 |
Cb14-11 |
Makohe could, maybe, alternatively be read as
mako-he (or as ma-ko-he), where he might serve
as a sign identifying the time when Sun no longer is present
(cfr Tama
he ika kino he ihu roroa).
It is furthermore possible that ke in kena
connects the booby with the redtailed tavake:
kukuru toua |
white pigeon |
makohe |
frigate |
kena |
booby |
tavake |
redtailed tropic bird |
ascending |
|
descending |
ka
araara |
sooty tern |
ruru |
black petrel |
te verovero |
taiko |
kava eoeo |
sooty tern |
kumara |
white tern |
pi riuriu |
kiakia |
manu tara erua |
2 sooty terns |
tavi |
small lead-coloured tern |
tuao |
dark brown tern |
tuvi |
gray tern |
Tava in
tavake also seems to allude to
tuvi and tavi.
In the beginning there is a single bird and then comes a pair. Tavake
in the corner of the 'dolmen' seems to announce the beginning of
fall, and the pair of small greyish terns could be meant to indicate the end of
fall.
Kukuru toua marks the
corner where spring turns into summer and tavake
the corner where summer turns into autumn. I guess the
corners should be inhabited by Moon (always changing) rather than by Sun
(never changing). On
Tahiti a pigeon was called rupe,
a name containing the Moon vowel u.
At toki we saw how a multiple
occurrence of u probably
indicates a solstice:
...Pewa-o-Tautoru,
Bird-snare-of-Tautoru; the constellation Orion in New
Zealand. The Belt and Sword form the perch, te mutu
or te teke, while Rigel is the blossom cluster,
Puanga, used to entice the unsuspecting bird ...
Belt and Sword will form the T.
Te mutu is the 'perch' and so is
te teke. The last night of the month was Mutu
(according to Métraux), and teke presumably corresponds to the last day of Spring Sun. Te-ka
has lost its 'fire' and then becomes te-ke. Next stage
comes with adding u to indicate the time
of Moon: tekau.
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B |
Beth
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Birch |
L |
Luis |
Rowan |
N |
Nion |
Ash |
F |
Fearn |
Alder |
S |
Saille |
Willow |
H |
Uath |
Hawthorn |
D |
Duir |
Oak |
T |
Tinne |
Holly |
C |
Coll |
Hazel |
M |
Muin |
Vine |
G |
Gort |
Ivy |
P |
Pethboc |
Dwarf Elder |
R |
Ruis |
Elder |
A |
Ailm |
Silver Fir |
O |
Onn |
Furze |
U |
Ur |
Heather |
E |
Eadha |
White Poplar |
I |
Idho |
Yew |
"... The names of the letters in the modern
Irish alphabet are also those of trees, and most of them
correspond with O'Flaherty's list, though T has become gorse; O,
broom; and A, elm. I noticed almost at
once that the consonants of this alphabet form a calendar of
seasonal tree-magic, and that all the trees figure prominently
in European folklore ..." (The White Goddess) |
Vero was first mentioned
at henua ora in this dictionary, where it was suggested the
rongorongo creators could have used the vero glyph
type to indicate the 'death' of a season. The 'spear' should 'kill'
it:
Vero
To throw, to hurl (a lance, a spear).
This word was also used with the particle kua
preposed: koía kua vero i te matá, he is the
one who threw the obsidian [weapon]. Verovero,
to throw, to hurl repeatedly, quickly (iterative of
vero). Vanaga.
1. Arrow, dart, harpoon, lance,
spear, nail, to lacerate, to transpierce (veo).
P Mgv.: vero, to dart, to throw a lance, the
tail; verovero, ray, beam, tentacle. Mq.:
veó, dart, lance, harpoon, tail, horn. Ta.:
vero, dart, lance. 2. To turn over face down. 3.
Ta.: verovero, to twinkle like the stars.
Ha.: welowelo, the light of a firebrand
thrown into the air. 4. Mq.: veo, tenth month
of the lunar year. Ha.: welo, a month (about
April). Churchill.
Sa.: velo, to cast a spear
or dart, to spear. To.: velo, to dart. Fu.:
velo, velosi, to lance. Uvea: velo,
to cast; impulse, incitement. Niuē:
velo, to
throw a spear or dart. Ma.: wero,
to stab, to pierce, to spear. Ta.: vero,
to dart or throw a spear. Mg.: vero,
to pierce, to lance. Mgv.: vero,
to lance, to throw a spear. Mq.: veo,
to lance, to throw a spear. Churchill 2. |
At vaero (the tail) I commented upon its
similarity with vero and referred to Hawaii:
...
A vestige of the
practice of putting the king to death at the end of a year's
reign appears to have survived in the festival called
Macahity, which used to be celebrated in Hawaii during the
last month of the year. About a hundred years ago a Russian
voyager described the custom as follows: 'The taboo Macahity
is not unlike to our festival of Christmas. It continues a whole
month, during which the people amuse themselves with dances,
plays, and sham-fights of every kind. The king must open this
festival wherever he is.
On this occasion his
majesty dresses himself in his richest cloak and helmet, and is
paddled in a canoe along the shore, followed sometimes by many
of his subjects. He embarks early, and must finish his excursion
at sunrise. The strongest and most expert of the warriors is
chosen to receive him on his landing. The warrior watches the
canoe along the beach; and as soon as the king lands, and has
thrown off his cloak, he darts his spear at him, from a distance
of about thirty paces, and the king must either catch the spear
in his hand, or suffer from it: there is no jesting in the
business ...
On Marquesas the 10th month was veo, while
vaero was spelled veó:
Vaero
Chicken's long tail feather; lobster's
antenna (vaero ura). Vanaga.
Tail of a kite, tail of a bird (uero).
T Pau.: tuavaero, rump; kaero, tail. Mgv.:
vero, tail. Mq.: veó, id. Ta.: aero,
id. Churchill. |
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