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TRANSLATIONS
Next two excursion pages:
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The parallel
structures (in C and K) continue, because the total number of glyphs in K is
192, equal to the ordinal number at full moon in the Mamari
moon calendar:
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The Mamari
moon calendar has numerical clues which connects waxing moon to
waning sun.
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22 |
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Ca6-27 |
Ca6-28 |
Ca7-1 |
Ca7-24 |
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167 |
168 |
169 |
192 |
At left in the
strange composition of Ca7-1 a sun symbol is at bottom
(past) and at the top (present) is a rhomb which presumably
refers to the moon. At bottom (past) in Ca7-24 a broken
'staff' illustrates that the rule of waxing moon now has
broken.
The top
(present) shows a person sitting down and eating (kai):
The hand gesture
should be interpreted as 'growing' (only by eating can you
grow). But waning moon is shrinking, not growing. Neither
has sun reached a point in his development which we
immediately can associate with growth - beyond Nga Kope
Ririva (177) there is only sea towards the horizon in
the west.
But - indeed -
the crucial point of growth is its very beginning. The
little person is inside the full moon perimeter, which
means he is in the 'womb'. A new year is beginning at
conception, not at birth. Evidence supporting this reading
of Ca7-24 comes from Nuahine ká
umu a ragi kotikoti.
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The relationship between 22 and 24
comes to mind again - the short distance between Ca7-1 and Ca7-24 is 22 and
the long distance 24. Here 24 must be the sign intended. But presumably
Ca6-28 should be read together with Ca7-1 (which ought to be a definition of
what kind of season the great moa is announcing). And my arguments
above says the bottom part menas 'past', i.e. also 22 should be an
intended sign.
And we remember
'two and twenty good four-wheeled wains' which possibly in the original
language also could be read two ways:
... He bore a grievous weight of dry wood,
which he cast down with a din inside the cave, so that in fear all fled to
hide. Lifting a huge doorstone, such as two and twenty good four-wheeled
wains could not have raised from the ground, he set this against the mouth
of the cave, sat down, milked his ewes and goats, and beneath each placed
her young, after which he kindled a fire and spied his guests.
Two were eaten that night for
dinner, two the next morning for breakfast, and two the following night ...
Odysseus and his men were 'inside', they
had come to the point where they were imprisoned in the ground - the huge
doorstone could no be raised from the ground. Thrice two men were eaten.
Polyphemos was a kind of nuahine.
The vertical axis in Ca7-24 used
for illustrating past and present (or rather future) is in contrast to the
normal left - right horizontal order for showing past and future. The idea
may be to illustrate the abrupt downfall from the top to the bottom.
The hyperlink leads to this page:
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The 'old woman' (nuahine)
who 'lights a fire' (ká) in her 'oven' (umu) is
sitting at full moon, personifying the moon:
"[Englert 1948, 165:] '... se
selia nombrar Ko te Nuahine káumu à rangi kote kote que
significa: La vieja que enciende el curanto en el cielo kotekote.
Puedo haber sido una personificación de la luna porque las viejos
decían, comentando este nombre, que no es una montaña que seve en la
luna, sino una mujer anciana que está suntada [sentada?] al lado un
gran curanto umu pae (de piedras en circulo)." (Barthel)
The divided (kotikoti)
sky (ragi) means the point where one season is finished and
another is beginning. We can compare with the kuhane station
Hatinga Te Kohe (the broken 'bamboo' staff) at the end of the
solar year (12 * 29.5 = 354), as illustrated in Ab1-37
A new season must
begin where the old one ends, therefore hanau (birth)
is the main sign in the middle between 'death' (ihe tau)
and 'birth' (reversed ihe tau).
While reading Tahua Metoro
probably saw the old woman who 'lights a new fire' at noon,
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Aa1-24 |
Aa1-25 |
Aa1-26 |
Aa1-27 |
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ko te nuahine
- i mamau i te ahi |
e uhi tapamea |
ko te ahi -
hakaturou |
ki te henua |
The glyph number
is 1-24, which can be read as 'growing sun (1) has reached his end
(24)'. In Ca7-24 this mode of language says 'growing moon (2) has
reached her end (24)'.
In Aa1-24 the 'old
woman' is standing tall, but the eating gesture is there. To eat (kai)
has a secondary meaning of becoming pregnant - which everybody will
notice when the lady is growing thicker. Metoro explained:
i mamau i te ahi - she holds (ma'u) the 'fire' (ahi). The new fire is the day of tomorrow
(which will be born at
midnight).
At right (future)
in the glyph a kind of 'navel string' connects to the middle of a
picture of a sun (the sun of tomorrow). It comes from the elbow of
the old woman. The joints are symbols of flexibility, movement, and change.
Genesis has ultimately the same root as knee.
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And from kotikoti we arrive
at:
I prefer kotikoti
before Englert's kotekote:
| Koti
Kotikoti. To cut with scissors (since this is an old word and
scissors do not seem to have existed, it must mean something of the
kind). Vanaga.
Kotikoti. To tear; kokoti, to cut,
to chop, to hew, to cleave, to assassinate, to amputate, to scar, to
notch, to carve, to use a knife, to cut off, to lop, to gash, to mow, to
saw; kokotiga kore, indivisible; kokotihaga, cutting, gash
furrow. P Pau.: koti, to chop.Mgv.: kotikoti, to cut, to
cut into bands or slices; kokoti, to cut, to saw; akakotikoti,
a ray, a streak, a stripe, to make bars. Mq.: koti, oti,
to cut, to divide. Ta.: oóti, to cut, to carve; otióti, to
cut fine. Churchill. Pau.: Koti, to gush,
to spout. Ta.: oti, to rebound, to fall back. Kotika,
cape, headland. Ta.: otiá, boundary, limit. Churchill. |
The midsummer (or
noon) sun is loosing his 'head', it is 'lopped off' to stop him from
growing more - he is threatening the whole world by his fire. This
will kill him, but his 'head' is 'planted' - used for engendering
next sun.
In the evening sun
goes down in the west, as if plucked by the grasping hand (manik) which the Maya
indians used in their sign for west (Chikin):
Close to the
equator sun disappears rather quickly at the western horizon, a fact
which probably influenced the concept of midsummer (and noon) sun
abruptly being 'finished'. The season of the sun cannot go on for
more than half the diurnal cycle (or the cycle of the year).
Englert's
kotekote maybe alludes to ko teko, 'the giant' - meaning
the standing tall sun.
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Teko Giant (noun). Vanaga.
Pau.: Tekoteko, vain, proud, conceited. Ta.:
teóteó, haughty. Ha.: keo, proud. Churchill. |
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I have here explained 7-24 in
Ca7-24 in a new way:
... The glyph number
is 1-24, which can be read as 'growing sun (1) has reached his end
(24)'. In Ca7-24 this mode of language says 'growing moon (2) has
reached her end (24)' ...
This new way of explaining does
not in any way diminish the (possible) relevance of the earlier explanation:
... 7 * 24 (as in
Ca7-24) = 168, which is a natural choice for a full moon glyph because
moa is the last glyph in line a6. It has ordinal number 168 - and 168 +
24 = 192. Glyph number 192 refers back to glyph number 168 ...
Polynesians cannot stand, it
seems, superficial simple language.
Earlier we have met a Maori
tekoteko figure:
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... The
knee caps are marked with two similar but different oval shapes
(like eyes):
The right knee (left from us
seen) has 6 oval small parts inside the oval, the left knee has
4 wedgeshaped small parts inside the oval. I guess this means 6
canoes inside the right oval and 4 canoes inside the left oval.
The 'nighttime' canoes are seen from the side, while the
'daytime' canoes perhaps are seen from below ... |
And, we have also noted earlier
(for instance):
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...
Hotu
said to his assistants Teke and Oti, 'Go and take
banana shoots, taro seedlings, sections of sugarcane to be
planted, yam roots, sweet potatoes with leaves (? rau kumara),
hauhau trees, paper mulberry trees, sandalwood trees,
ferns (riku), rushes, yellow roots, tavari plants,
moss (para), and ngaoho plants. Take all of these
things ...
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Teke
Occiput. Teketeke, short (not tall); also:
teke. Vanaga.
Teke ki nei,
as far as, until (? tehe 1).
Teketeke,
crest, ridge. Churchill |
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Oti
To come to and end; to suffice, to be enough:
ku-oti-á, it is finished; ina kai oti mo
kai, there is not enough to eat; he-oti
á, there isn't anymore left, it's the last
one; it's enough with that. Vanaga.
Ta.: 1. Oti, presage of death. Sa.:
oti, to die. 2. To cut. Mq.: koti,
oti, id. Sa.: 'oti, id. Ma.: koti,
id. Churchill. |
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... The two supporters of Hotu
Matu'a, Teke and Oti, are like the two end rafters at the
gable of the house. According to Churchill it is not unusual with metathesis in
the Polynesian vocabulary. I guess it is the Polynesian mentality which is the
reason, their chiefs excelled in language juggling.
'Words were like food for the Maori - riddles, word puzzles and proverbs were
continously used and new ones invented daily, for as the saying states, Ko te
kai a te rangatira, he kōrero ('oratory is the sustenance of chiefs').'
(Starzecka)
Here we have two words (teke
and oti) with a similar meaning (of 'end'). From oti we easily
proceed to kotikoti, cut off, (i.e. that oti once was - presumably
- koti).
If we then juggle kotikoti
around we arrive at tikotiko, which sounds suspiciously close to
tekoteko. Are there any words in the Rapanui language supporting the
existence of tikotiko or tekoteko?
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Teko
Giant (noun). Vanaga. |
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Tiko
Menstruation, period. Vanaga.
Menstruation.
P Pau.: titiko, to
evacuate the bowels. Mgv.: tiko, menstruation, defecation. Mq.:
tiko, to carry away, excrement. Ta.: titio, to void
excrement. Rapanui and Mangareva alone employ this of the catamenia.
That which is discharged is but an accident of the word, the sense lies
in the act of evacuation from the body. Churchill. |
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Interesting is how a little
change in vowel makes the giant (teko) into a short guy (teke).
Teko is, I guess, at the front, and teke at the back.
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