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TRANSLATIONS
We move on to
manu kake:
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A few preliminary
remarks and imaginations:
1.
This glyph type appears to be the third stage in what
could be a gradual evolution:
From manu rere we deduce a power - a light, a god - in the
sky, from moe the announcement of a new such power on its way
and making itself noticed already by changing the illumination of
the sky.
Reversing moe - in order to get the left part of manu kake
- should mean saying goodbye to a power leaving the sky, its light
waning already.
The conclusion is that manu kake could represent
the change
from one sky light into another.
One such instance, we have seen, is the assymmetric manu kake
in Ga3-1 which possibly illustrates the situation at the beginning of
the season for raising the 'sky roof'. At right (forward in time)
the wing and beak are longer than at left (past time).
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2.
The first link in this short chain of reasoning, manu
rere, is rather weak. By cause of its location at the very
beginning of this glyph catalogue not much could be said at that
point regarding its meaning. Indeed, the only secure foothold for a
discussion still is the calendar for the week. Its appearance in
Sunday immediately before moe indicates manu rere
could be a bird flying at zenith:
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Hb9-17 |
Hb9-18 |
Hb9-19 |
Hb9-20 |
Hb9-21 |
Furthermore, planets cannot be seen during the night, and when sun
is thought of as a planet it implies sun during the night. I.e. when
he can be seen only by the inner eye.
So if manu rere stands at zenith, it is the zenith of the
night. If we change our frame of reference from space to time,
manu rere should stand at midnight. Moe, which comes
later, is not the time of sleep but of waking up, when there is a
faint light of dawn in the east (to the right in the text).
These considerations makes it plausible that
also
manu kake should be thought of as primarily related to
the night sky.
The ruling powers in the sky were planets and stars and they
should be observed during the night.
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3.
The form of manu kake suggests
the sky dome,
dawn (right), evening (left) and midnight (in the middle). To hold
the sky dome up there ought to be a central (zenith) pillar of some
kind, and it is evidently the body of manu rere:
But other variants do exist, especially noteworthy is a rising fish (ika):
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Eb5-29 |
Eb5-30 |
These are the first two glyphs of 26 in the last period
among 24 (in the Keiti calendar where every period - except
this one ends with kiore - henua). Possibly the pair represents the two halves of the sky,
with the high half (cap) at left and the low (cup) at right.
Ordinal number 29 suggests dark (alluding to the 29th dark night of
the moon), while 5 * 30 = 150 suggests light (alluding to the middle of a
300 day long summer).
In autumn the souls of the dead rise up into the sky like birds. Rising
'fishes' are to be looked for in the east. In both cases it could be said
that they are climbing (kake).
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