The excursion pages of marama begin with:

There are 192 glyphs in K, according to my reconstruction. A few of the glyphs are completely or partly destroyed, but there is no doubt about theIr number or of their distribution. The text is quite possible to read. In 1 of the 192 positions there never was any glyph. This is somewhat similar to how in G the text is 471 + 1 = 472 glyphs long, while there are no more than 471 glyphs on the tablet. In G the missing glyph must be added by reading Gb8-30 twice, not only as the last glyph on side b but also as a first glyph before reading side a. In K the missing glyph is absent in another way, but its position must be counted to reach the intended number 192. Its absence is a sign which must be read, and indeed it is crucial to observe in order to fully understand the main structure and the ideas behind the K text. Only if you know the frame of reference is it possible to understand a text, and the absent glyph is here an essential part of the frame of reference. Let us therefore begin by presenting the vacant position in its immediate surroundings: ... Kb4-17 Kb4-18 Kb4-19 *Kb5-1 *Kb5-2 *Kb5-3 The difference in number of glyphs compared with G is 472 - 192 = 280, which is no coincidence - both texts are firmly defined and there is no possibility to take away or add a single glyph. 280 (= 10 * 28) is a consequence ot the two structures and not the result of any intention from either of two creators (if they are different).

The excursion begins where sun leaves the mainland, at the spirit-leaping place in southwest. The text of K is structured with this event at the end of glyph line b4. Then comes the channel between the mainland and the three islets. I write as if I knew with certainty, but that is a way to make things clear. Unless they are clear they cannot be questioned.

Kb4-19 has been defined earlier in the glyph dictionary, it is the only upside-down henua ora sign we have among all the glyphs, and it has a key role for understanding henua ora. The head-less spirit will return, be incarnated, in the future. The 'navel string' between the fist and the inverted henua ora is a band, not a string. Strings are for women (as in kaikai), a band (like the tropical band) is for the sun. The two feathers at left on the fist should represent a.m. (so to say) and p.m.

Kb5-2 is a little henua, not the mainland. Possibly it alludes to Nga Kope Ririva (the three islets) as the birthplace of the new year. Time arrives from the west (represented by the appearance of the moon). If we wish to read the K text in time order, we should begin at the end of side b and read backwards. Time grows from the three islets outside Rano Kau towards the east.

The text of K is flowing from the east to the west, it is primarily a description of the journey of sun on land, a spatial journey.

In G the corresponding text flows from the beginning of side a towards its end, and we have (tentatively) identified Nga Kope Ririva to be at 3 * 59 = 177:

 

Ga7-5	Ga7-6	Ga7-7	Ga7-8 (117)	Ga7-9	Ga7-10

The three youths 'standing in the water' (tutuu vai) possibly are alluded to in Ga7-6, where the legs of ariki are drawn 'interminate'. The arms are higher up and quite real. The two feathers at left are like those in Kb4-19.

The feathery henua ora in Ga7-7 should correspond to the inverted henua ora in Kb4-19. Feathers all around should mean 'sky', I guess. The recycling station here is in the sky.

Ga7-10 is the last kiore+henua glyph, number 31. The parallel kiore+henua Kb4-14 (also the last of its kind, but number 29) has ordinal number 167.

I have just started to read Worthen:

"In 1930 ... Dumézil's work veered into a new and totally unpredictable direction. Observing that the four basic social classes of the early Persian Avesta are parallel in function (if not in etymology) to the Hindu castes - a conclusion seconded by the learned Iranist Emile Benveniste - Dumézil made the intuitive leap that the Indo-European culture must have had a tripartite social structure. The fourth and lowest class was created later to contain a foreign substratum of conquered 'producers' ..."

The method of creating a separate new 'class' to incorporate foreign elements into the social structure was used also by the Incas, I recollect. The problem is similar to extending the map (net) of the growing face to the decaying back side of the year.

... Indeed, as Frobenius formulates the attitude: 'The power exercised by the living individual for good, the dead exercises for evil, so that the better he was, the worse will he become; and the mightier he was in life, the greater must be the restraining weight of bonds and stones upon his corpse. In short: the better and stronger the living, the more dangerous his ghost.' Frobenius gives a considerable series of examples from Africa and antiquity of corpses bound in ropes, bandages, or nets to keep the ghosts inside, buried under heaps of stones to keep them down, or simply tossed to the wolves and hyenas, with the hope that they will be consumed that very night ... 

... For the planting folk of the fertile steppes and tropical jungles, on the other hand, death is a natural phase of life, comparable to the moment of the planting of the seed, for rebirth. As an example of the attitude, we may take the composite picture presented by Frobenius of the sort of burial and reliquary rites that he observed everywhere among the horticulturists of South and East Africa:

When an old kinsman of the sib dies, a cry of joy immediately fills the air. A banquet is arranged, during which the men and women discuss the qualities of the deceased, tell stories of his life, and speak with sorrow of the ills of old age to which he was subject in his last years. Somewhere in the neighorhood - preferably in a shady grove - a hollow has been dug in the earth, covered with a stone. It now is opened and there within lie the bones of earlier times. These are pushed aside to make room for the new arrival. The corpse is carefully bedded in a particular posture, facing a certain way, and left to itself then for a certain season, with the grave again closed.

But when time enough has passed for the flesh to have decayed, the old men of the sib open the chamber again, climb down, take up the skull, and carry it to the surface and into the farmstead, where it is cleaned, painted red and, after being hospitably served with grain and beer, placed in a special place along with the crania of other relatives. From now on no spring will pass when the dead will not participate in the offerings of the planting time; no fall when he will not partake of the offerings of thanks brought in at harvest: and in fact, always before the planting commences and before the wealth of the harvest is enjoyed by the living.

Moreover, the silent old fellow participates in everything that happens in the farmstead. If a leopard kills a woman, a farmboy is bitten by a snake, a plague strikes, or the blessing of rain is withheld, the relic is always brought into connection with the matter in some way. Should there be a fire, it is the first thing saved; when the puberty rites of the youngsters are to commence, it is the first to enjoy the festival beer and porridge. If a young woman marries into the sib, the oldest member conducts her to the urn or shelf where the earthly remains of the past are preserved and bids her take from the head of an ancestor a few kernels of holy grain to eat. And this, indeed, is a highly significant custom; for when this young, new vessel of the spirit of the sib becomes pregnant, the old people of the community watch to see what similarities will exist between the newly growing and the faded life ... '

Frobenius terms the attitude of the first order 'magical', and the latter 'mystical', observing that whereas the plane of reference of the first is physical, the ghost being coceived as physical, the second renders a profound sense of a communion of death and life in the entity of the sib. And anyone trying to express in words the sense or feeling of this mystic communion would soon learn that words are not enough: the best is silence, or the silent rite.

Not all the rites conceived in this spirit of the mystic community are as gentle, however, as those just described. Many are appalling ... But through all there is rendered, whether gently or brutally, an awesome sense of this dual image, variously turned, of death in life and life in death: as in the form of the Basumbwa Chief Death, one of whose sides was beautiful, but the other rotten, with maggots dropping to the ground; or in the Hawaiian tree with the deceptive branches at the casting-off place to the other world, one side of which looked fresh and green but the other dry and brittle ...