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TRANSLATIONS
In H the text jumps over the 3rd period (according to A and P) and we now arrive at the '4th' period. What happens in the 3rd period and why is not that period included in the calendar of H? To remind ourselves, the 3rd period is described in A and P like this:
Dawn is breaking the shadows, that we could read. As to the question why this not is described in the same way in H, we have first to read what H tells us here in the '4th' period before, hopefully, we can arrive at an answer. In Ha5-56 the sun is still a juvenile:
If we compare these three 'ages' of the sun, we can notice that at noon ('5th' period) the three-fingered hand is no longer so pronounced. That sign we can recognize from Tahua:
But is that not an illusion, an effect of greater distance? It was the mouth that seemed smaller, not the hand. And the whole head was different, more ovoid than in the 2nd and 4th periods. We can guess that the ovoid shape signifies the same thing as the 'nut' in the middle of the noon sun - i.e. the afternoon sun should start from the beginning. In the same vein the head of little sun in the 2nd period of H is more ovoid than in the '4th' and '5th' periods. Morning sun also starts from the beginning. This little sun has a mouth like a bay (haga) - possibly harmonizing with the form of the head, whereas the heads in the '4th' and '5th' periods have straight cheeks. What does that mean? "Before the events that are related in this story, Maui possessed the power of changing his own shape, but commanded no enchantment over other things or over nature. After he had obtained the jawbone of Muri ranga whenua he was able to perform great deeds for the benefit of man. HOW MAUI OBTAINED THE SACRED JAWBONE Soon after he had found where his parents lived Maui carried off and slew his first victim. She was the daughter of Maru te whare aitu, and when he had dealt with her in a brutal fashion he dealt with her father also. By means of enchantments he caused this old man's crops to wither, and they were all destroyed. He then decided to make another visit to his parents, and this time he remained for a while in the country of the manapau trees. One day he noticed that some people were in the habit of carrying to a certain place some kono, or small baskets of food, for some old person. 'Who is that food for?' he asked them, and one of the people who were going with it answered: 'It is for your ancestress Muri ranga whenua.' 'Where does she live?' he asked, and they answered, 'Over there.' 'All right,' he said, 'That will do now. Leave the kono here. I will take them to her myself.' From that time on Maui himself carried the daily presents of food that were meant for that old woman. But he never gave them to her, he merely went towards the place where she lived and hid the food in the bushes, and this he did for many days. At length the old chieftainess realised that there was some mischief going on, and the next time Maui came by she put her nose in the air and sniffed. She sniffed and sniffed, feeling sure that there was food not far away. By now she was greatly exasperated by her many days of hunger, and her stomach began to swell out, ready to eat up Maui as soon as he came within reach. Leaning on her stick the old woman turned towards the south, and sniffed the air, but no scent of food or man could she detect. She turned her nose round slowly to the east, and then to the north, sniffing carefully at every angle. Still no scent of food or man could she detect, and she would have devoured either, instantly. She almost thought she must have been mistaken, but then she turned to the west for one more try. From the west, the scent of a man came plainly to her nose, and she cried: 'I know from the smell in this breeze that someone is close to me.' As she began to feel about her with her stick Maui murmured something, and she knew at once that he was a descendant of hers. Her stomach, which had been distended to a great size, began to shrink again. This was fortunate for Maui. If his scent had not been carried to that old woman's nose by the westerly breeze, she would certainly have eaten him up. When her stomach had resumed its normal size the old woman asked him, 'Are you Maui?' and he answered in a respectful voice: 'Even so.' The she drew near and peered at him with her eyes that were nearly blind. 'Why did you cheat your old ancestress like that?' she said. 'Why have you been hiding my dinner, so that I have had nothing to eat these many days?' And she pointed with a crooked finger to her toothless and empty mouth. 'Ei?' she asked, and poked young Maui with her finger. In a voice that showed he was not in the least afraid of her, Maui answered: 'I was anxious that your jawbone, which has magic properties, should be given to me.' 'Take it,' said that old woman. 'It has been kept for you till now.'
So saying she took her jawbone - for she was dead all down one side from being starved - and handed it to Maui. He carried to the stream to wash off the blood and the bits of rotten flesh, and the blood went into the kokopu, giving that fish its reddish colour. After this he returned with the jawbone to the place where his brothers lived. Soon afterwards Maui took a wife, and this led to the first of the exploits that he performed with the help of the jawbone of his ancestress. His wife went one day to wash herself in a still stream, and while she was in the water Tuna roa, the ancestor of eels, came slithering around her and made himself objectionable. That is, he touched her most improperly. When she went home she said to Maui: 'There is a man in that pool with very smooth skin.' Maui at once felt jealous and decided to kill Tuna. He dug a trench beside the pool, and laid down nine logs as skids, so that Tuna might slide over them as when a canoe is launched. Then he told his wife to sit near the trench while he put up a screen to hide himself. Soon Tuna was seen swimming towards her, and as he slithered over the skids Maui ran out and slew him with the enchanted weapon. One end of Tuna went into the sea and became the ngoiro, or conger eel. The other end of Tuna became the fresh-water eel and is still called tuna. A part of him became the kareaou, or supple-jack, whose smooth black canes, like eels among the river-weed, entangle the forest undergrowth today. And the blood of Tuna was absorbed by the rimu, the totara, and other trees, giving their wood its reddish colour. After this exploit Maui lived quietly with his wife, and children were born to them." (Maori Myths) From the west he came to his old ancestress, the direction of maturity. In his juvenile stage Maui could change his own shape, then he matured and became able to change the situation of man - with the help of the jawbone. "She took her jawbone - for she was dead all down one side from being starved - and handed it to Maui." This reminds us about the situation of the Waning Moon, starving and getting thinner all the time. Then, at last, being saved by his sister Sun. There are also similarities with that old lady in the moon, te Nuahine ká umu a ragi kotekote, e.g. in cutting things to pieces (koti koti). In the middle of what I believe is a kind of moon calendar in Keiti, Metoro recognized a man (tagata) with an adze (toki) cutting (koti) henua to pieces:
Is it a coincidence that toki inverted becomes koti? Ea2-15 serves as some kind of introduction I believe, because a little later we can imagine Tuna being chopped to pieces:
And then we have Samson who used the jawbone of an ass to make battle: "15. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. 16. And Samson said, with the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. 17. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathle´hi. 18. And he was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? 19. But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof En-hak´ko-re, which is in Le´hi unto this day. 20. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years." (Judges XV according to Hamlet's Mill) Note that 20 is the number of the line telling about twenty years. We have the water revivifying Samson, we have the pool where Tuna roa lived, and we have also this evidence:
We should not imagine some sort of cause and effect coming from the Book of Judges and resulting in the story of Maui and the sacred jawbone. Instead the Chinese point of view is more relevant: "... the characteristic Chinese conception of causality in the world of Nature was something like that which the comparative physiologist has to form when he studies the nerve-set of coelenterates, or what has been called the 'endocrine orchestra' of mammals. In these phenomena it is not very easy to find out which element is taking the lead at any given time. The image of an orchestra evokes that of a conductor, but we still have no idea what the 'conductor' of the synergistic operations of the endocrine glands in the higher vertebrates may be. Moreover, it is now becoming probable that the higher nervous centres of mammals and man himself constitutes a kind of reticular continuum or 'nerve-net' much more flexible in nature than the traditional conceptions of telephone wires and exchanges visualized ..." (Needham II) We have just began to scratch on the surface of the jawbone, the eel etc. But let me finish for now by pointing out that the Mayan numbers above 12 (and also number 10) have their jawbones without flesh (picture from Coe), i.e. they are 'dead' - growing no more, no longer changing their 'shapes' (they are 'academic' numbers, not quite down to earth):
Now we are prepared to have a look at Ha5-57. This glyph has similarities with Pa5-44 (whereas the text in Tahua as usual has no glyphs between the sun and tapa mea):
There is a henua at right and something 'snaky' at left. But two clear differences are seen: 1) no hole in the 'snake' at left 2) a 'head' also at bottom in the left glyph. The fact that the Tahua text has no glyphs between sun and tapa mea (except in the 9th period where sun 'dies') implies that probably we should read the glyphs in between them (in H and P) together:
The right glyph describes the rays of the sun and the left glyph would then from symmetry reasons describe the opposite pole, i.e. yin. Trying to translate Pa5-44 we arrived at "disorder being quenched under the straight and beautifully proportioned rectangular form of henua". The unruly form at left being straightened out into a nice henua at right should also be read here in H. That is the similarity. Youngsters have to be born anew before they can take part in the society of grown-ups. First they therefore have to 'die' at 'noon'. As this is the '4th' period it is time to start talking about that. "When a Central Australian Aranda youngster is between ten and twelve years old ... he and the other members of this age group are taken by the men of the village and tossed several times into the air, while the women, dancing around the company, wave their arms and shout. Each boy then is painted on his chest and back with simple designs by a man related to the social group from which his wife must come, and as they paint the patterns the men sing: 'May he reach to the stomach of the sky, may he grow up to the stomach of the sky, may he go right into the stomach of the sky.' The boy is told that he now has upon him the mark of the particular mythological ancestor of whom he is the living counterpart; for it is thought that the children born to women are the reappearances of beings who lived in the mythological age, in the so-called 'dream time', or altjeringa. The boys are told that from now on they will not play or camp with the women and girls, but with the men; they will not go with women to grub for roots and to hunt such small game as rats and lizards, but will join the men and hunt the kangaroo. In this simple rite it is apparent that the image of birth has been transferred from the mother to the sky and that the concept of the ego has been expanded, simultaneously, beyond the biography of the physical individual. A woman gave birth to the boy's temporal body, but the men will now bring him to spiritual birth." (Campbell) For once I think that Campbell might have made a mistake: It should not be the stomach of the sky, it should be the belly of the sky (as when the Marquesans called noon for 'belly of the sun'). A belly is something inflated (like in bellows, bulge etc), whereas stomach is the place where things going into the mouth ends (stóma = mouth). It may well be that the 'eel' is the still unitiated youngster: "The system of sentiments of the local group ... has been constellated not primarily, or even secondarily, to gratify the crude wishes of the growing adolescent for sensual pleasures and manly power, but rather in the general interest of a group having certain specific local problems and limitations. The crude energies of the young human animal are to be cowed, broken, recoordinated to a larger format, and thus at once domesticated and amplified." (Campbell) The glyphs (Ha5-57 and Pa5-44) do not, however, show this picture (more than as an allusion). Instead we should read them according to the main theme: the sun's daily course. I suggest that the difference at bottom between these two glyphs is that in Pa5-44 we see the horizon as the 'tail of the snake', whereas in Ha5-57 we see the 'nut' (hua) from which the 'snake' grows. The difference between P and H in the first period is consequently continued in this period:
'Head' and 'tail' of the 'eel' in H probably illustrate the beginning and end of the sun's course, though not from morning to evening but from morning to noon. Although there is a peculiar type of glyph (e.g. Pa-3-3) which - 'on the other hand' - has sun in 'morning' and 'evening':
The morning 'nut' in Ha5-57 is irregular with an upwards oriented wedge-shaped notch at bottom. Presumably this is to remind us about the first glyph in the day calendar, where the 'nut' probably reflects both the square earth and the circular sky:
Tane pressing upon the sky with his feet is generated from the skull of his ancestor (as when the Hawaiian boy Mokuola was nourished from the fruits - hua - of his father's skull), and the 'eel' must have such a skull at bottom:
(Picture from Van Tilburg. Note the picture incised on top, similar to a type of glyph which Metoro usually translated as henua.) Ha5-58 we have already started to discuss in the 2nd period:
Sun (a fire) must be closer in the middle of the day because we can feel that with our senses. We 'civilized people' explain this as due to the comparison with the more oblique rays in the morning and the evening, when the rays are not falling so concentrated on earth. And we add that the haze of the air blocks the morning and evening rays more than those at noon because the column of air for the rays to move through is longer. We cannot explain the interpretation that the sky is closer at noon that when close to the horizon. Because sun is so very far away, astronomically far away. Had it been close the argument would have been valid. If the sky had a belly that would of course be an explanation too. Space-time is bent around the sun, that we know. The old Babylonians had this picture:
There is no belly in the sky here, which presumably explains why Campbell chose the word 'stomach' instead of 'belly'. And then we might draw the further conclusion that the Marquesans too did not mean the belly of the sun in terms of the sun being closer because of a bulging fat belly hanging low over us, they presumably just indicated the sun's position midpoint = where the navel is. In Ha5-59 tapa mea has 4 marks pointing upwards and the shape is still like that of a canoe.
4 was to remind us about the four 'sides' (seasons) of the 'earth', morning, afternoon, night before midnight and night after midnight. That these four marks are leaning upwards is to indicate that we still have not reached noon, remember that such marks illustrate sun-rays. After noon these marks will lean downwards, as will be seen later on. At this point we should consider a Chinese picture of the world (from Needham II):
Here we see yang (black) and yin (white) mixing together in different patterns and proportions. Initially (bottom) everything is clear: half black at left and half white at right. One step upwards, however, the black has been able to generate also white and white has been able to generate black. White is black inside and black is white inside (as e.g. when men transform into women when growing old and vice versa). This table from the Book of Changes explains how nature behaves. We can divide 24 hours into 4 parts with 6 hours in each part. But then we discover that e.g. the time from morning to noon must have a beginning and an end which are different from each other (illustrated in Ha5-57 with 'nut' and 'head of snake'). The end of anything is similar to the ends of all other things. The beginning of anything is similar to the beginnings of everything else. There are births and there are corpses. If you divide a piece of magnetic material into two each piece will still have one north and one south pole.
Why is there no 3rd period in H? Are we able to answer that question now? The 3rd period is (according to both A and P) relating how light is eliminating the darkness as a result of sun rising in the east. The 4th period tells about how sun is 'growing up' until noon and then will be 'all right'. The 3rd period is looking backwards and the 4th period is looking forwards. That's just how a 'calendar' should be constructed. The signs of the old period are slowly evaporating and as soon as that is finished the coming period will loom at the horizon (at least in our minds). This reasoning makes it even more strange that there is no 3rd period in H. Possibly we therefore need to wait until the whole day calendar of H has been analysed. |
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