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TRANSLATIONS
The first pages of kai:
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A few preliminary
remarks and imaginations:
1.
The intake of nutrition is necessary for
growth, be it
a delicious meal prepared in the earth oven or the fertilizing dung
spread out on the fields.
In the calendar of daylight the morning sun is growing in
strength up to noon, and the kai hand gesture is therefore
used:
|
a.m. |
noon |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Ha5-52 |
Ha5-56 |
Ha6-1 |
Ha6-2 |
The nutrition sun is taking in may be far from obvious, but not
so for the ancient mind:
"... The life-force of
the earth is water. God moulded the earth with water. Blood too he
made out of water. Even in a stone there is this force, for there is
moisture in everything. But if Nummo is water, it also produces
copper. When the sky is overcast, the sun's rays may be seen
materializing on the misty horizon. These rays, excreted by the
spirits, are of copper and are light. They are water too, because
they uphold the earth's moisture as it rises. The Pair excrete
light, because they are also light ...
'The sun's rays,' he
went on, 'are fire and the Nummo's excrement. It is the rays which
give the sun its strength. It is the Nummo who gives life to this
star, for the sun is in some sort a star.' It was difficult to get
him to explain what he meant by this obscure statement. The Nazarene
made more than one fruitless effort to understand this part of the
cosmogony; he could not discover any chink or crack through which to
apprehend its meaning.
He was moreover
confronted with identifications which no European, that is, no
average rational European, could admit. He felt himself humiliated,
though not disagreeably so, at finding that his informant regarded
fire and water as complementary, and not as opposites. The rays of
light and heat draw the water up, and also cause it to descend again
in the form of rain. That is all to the good. The movement created
by this coming and going is a good thing. By means of the rays the
Nummo draws out, and gives back the life-force. This movement indeed
makes life.
The old man realized
that he was now at a critical point. If the Nazarene did not
understand this business of coming and going, he would not
understand anything else. He wanted to say that what made life was
not so much force as the movement of forces. He reverted to the idea
of a universal shuttle service. 'The rays drink up the little waters
of the earth, the shallow pools, making them rise, and then descend
again in rain.' Then, leaving aside the question of water, he summed
up his argument: 'To draw up and then return what one had drawn -
that is the life of the world' ..."
(Ogotemmêli)
This central thermodynamical law of life (light and water in
cooperation) explains why the kai person has his feet
designed like his hands - to indentify his locus of output. There
must be an output in order to balance the input. 3 fingers identify
the daylight, and there must be 3 toes for its outlet.
In the calendar of the daylight, though, the output of the sun comes
during p.m. in form of another type of hand gesture:
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Ha6-12 |
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2.
The primary meaning obviously is a man sitting and
eating, kai.
Though kai may mean other things too, for instance an eclipse
of the moon (by cause of it being 'eaten'). However, in the glyph for full moon in the
Mamari
month calendar (Ca7-24)
the figure sitting eating in the upper part of the
oval certainly does not mean eclipse. On the contrary, the moon is
here seen in full. Instead, possibly, we should think kai =
feast.
Though there is also a meaning of
negation in
kai and by a salto mortale we will then arrive at the opposite
of eating and feast. Eating somebody (preferably an enemy) is indeed the total
annihilation of him, a time for feast. Breaking his bones to get at
the marrow too:
"If the moral attitudes of
primitive man are hard for the Western mind to grasp and translate
into familiar terms, there can hardly be one more so than the Maori
notion of cooked food as the lowest thing, the furthest opposite to
the sacred, in fact filthy.
For us to divest our minds of
Christian notions of good and evil and substitute the concept of
simple payment, harm for harm (or 'revenge', as we commonly call it
with a misleading moral overtone), is simple enough - perhaps
because every schoolchild has at some time known the latter in his
horrid heart. Even the Maori custom of weeping over friends when
they arrive instead of when they depart has a certain logic that is
not beyond our comprehension.
But to enter, against all
conditioning, into the minds of a people for whom cooked food and
the act of eating could carry the overtones of meaning that we in
our greater wisdom attach to their physical opposites and to sex, is
a good deal harder. One has somehow to throw the mind into a state
of being that is radically unlike ours. Yet if the trick can be
done, a light comes on." (Maori
Myths)
A negation at full moon is expressed in the name of the full moon
night, Omotohi. It means that the period of 'sucking' (omo)
is over (tohi). The moon child has grown enough, now she must
be weaned. Next step is waning. The cycle must move on. |
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3.
A third possibility is to read a sense of
seating, i.e.
the time when a coming season is making itself felt; like a baby
soon to be born is felt in the body of his mother.
"The Maya New Year started with
1 Pop, the next day being 2 Pop,
etc. The final day of the month, however, carried not the
coefficient 20, but a sign indicating the 'seating' of the month to
follow, in line with the Maya philosophy that the influence of any
particular span of time is felt before it actually begins and
persists somewhat beyond its apparent termination." (The Maya)
The fully grown season, we know, is expressed by the figure of a
standing man (tagata), and at the other extreme we can see a
man at his lowest position, presumably illustrating the time of
birth (hanau). In between there ought to be a man sitting
down:
|
birth |
growth |
full |
 |
 |
 |
|
hanau |
kai |
tagata |
At noon sun stands at his highest position, at dawn he is rising
from the sea in the east. In between his stature must be in between.
Likewise moon is rising from the horizon (in the west), moving
higher for each night, until she is reaching full moon. Movement
is the signature of life, and the energy needed comes by way of
eating. At the end, e.g. a solstice, movement stops - the eating has
stopped. At winter solstice a new baby sun will be born, hanau,
and his mother will stop growing. |
The sudden stop in Q at noon agrees with my
description:
The cycle ends at noon. I ought to add this
fact in the page above:
... Movement is the signature of life, and the
energy needed comes by way of eating. At the end, e.g. a solstice, movement
stops - the eating has stopped. At winter solstice a new baby sun will be
born, hanau, and his mother will stop growing.
5 * 52 = 260 = 10 *
26. The cycle is finished at noon, presumably alluding to
summer solstice. |
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What happens with a cycle after it has stopped?
A cycle cannot stop, it goes on. The a.m. cycle ends at noon,
but why couldn't it continue with its next turn, beginning at early morning
next day?
We perceive a gap from noon to early morning next day. This
gap is filled by other cycles, first the p.m. cycle and then by the
double-cycle of night (before and after midnight).
When the rays of spring sun end at midsummer it is because
they are needed on the other side of the equator. The cycle of spring sun
does not stop, it just moves to another place. Instead of the spring sun
cycle another cycle enters our stage, the Maya saw it as the season of rain:
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