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3.
The fight in
spring
between winter and summer exemplifies the struggle between the two
basic forces in nature. Early man seems to have manipulated the time
for this great battle, changed it to an earlier date. A new year
will not begin around spring equinox but at winter solstice.
The god of summer has no power at winter solstice. Therefore man can
overcome him and become king at that time. This could explain why Lono
(Rogo) appears at winter solstice although he is a god of
vegetation. He is quickly dispatched of and the man king can regain
his power.
Like Maui the man king has made the sun slow down - by a
decree to begin
counting the days of the year already from winter solstice it will take
more days before darkness once again will fall. Sun will be old and
feeble and no match for winter.
"... It is more important to
notice that power is not represented here as an intrinsic social
condition. It is usurpation, in the double sense of a forceful
seizure of sovereignity and a sovereign denial of the prevailing
moral order. Rather than a normal succession, usurpation itself
is the principle of legitimacy. Hocart shows that the coronation
rituals of the king or paramount chief celebrate a victory over his
predecessor ...
There follows the scene of ritual
chaos ... when the world dissolves or is in significant respects
inverted, until the new king returns to reinstate the tabus, i.e.,
the social order. Such mythical exploits and social disruptions are
common to the beginnings of dynasties and to successive investitures
of divine kings.
We can summarily interpret the
significance something like this: to be able to put the society in
order, the king must first reproduce an original disorder. Having
committed the monstrous acts against society, proving he is stronger
than it, the ruler proceeds to bring system out of chaos.
Recapitulating the initial constitution of social life, the
accession of the king is thus a recreation of the universe. The king
makes his advent as a god. The symbolism of the installation rituals
is cosmological ...
The rationalization of power is
not at issue so much as the representation of a general scheme of
social life: a total 'structure of reproduction', including the
complementary and antithetical relations between king and people,
god and man, male and female, foreign and native, war and peace,
heavens and earth."
(Islands
of History)
However, the experts added, in that case sun has to leave already at midsummer - he has to move
quickly right through the 'back side' to the other pole, were he
will be
expected to arrive at winter solstice. In myth the strange defeat of
Tuna by Maui going right through him could allude to
this idea. Changing the year is no simple feat.
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