Читать книгу Primitive Time-reckoning. A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples онлайн

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Indications of this nature are convenient only in countries in which the sun is neither too often nor too long hidden by clouds. When the sun is hidden the inhabitants have to manage as best they can. A very interesting statement in this connection is made by a Swahili native. In rainy days his tribe observed the crowing of the cock. At the first cock-crow they knew that it was 5 or 6 a. m.; when the cock failed to crow all sense of a division of time was lost to them[109].

The phenomena of Nature afford little basis for the naming of the times of day, since there is hardly one of them which recurs regularly every day at a definite time, with the exception of cock-crow, which is in great favour as an indication of the time before sunrise. Other exceptional cases are such names as that mentioned for the Society Islands, ‘the stirring of the flies’; one given for the Mahakam Kayan of Borneo, tiling (a cricket which is only to be heard at sunset) duan (to sing)[110]; a couple of expressions of the Wadschagga, ‘the cry of the partridge’ in the evening, ‘the turning of the smoke down the mountain’[111]; and one of the Nandi, ‘the elephants have gone to water’[112]. But a people which devotes itself to cattle-rearing or to agriculture may borrow from its regular daily occupations expressions for the times of day. Thus the Mahakam Kayan, besides the above-mentioned name for late afternoon and the term for noon (beluwa dow, ‘half-day’), have an expression for about 4 p. m.—dow uli, i. e. ‘the time of the home-coming from work in the fields’. The Javanese are strongly influenced by civilisation and have, especially for astrological purposes, a fully developed chronological system; not seldom, however, the times of day are given in relation to the rural labour. So they say ‘when the buffalo is sent to the pastures’, ‘when the buffalo is brought back from the pastures’ or ‘is housed’ etc.; but for the time of the occurrence of any event the position of the sun is usually indicated[113]. The Achenese and the Malays of Sumatra have an expression exactly corresponding to the Greek βουλυτός[114]. The Wadschagga have expressions for the position of the sun, but also others[115], among which may be mentioned ‘the first going of the oxen to the pastures in the morning’. This kind of terminology seems to have been developed into a system among the Banyankole, a cattle-raising tribe of the Uganda Protectorate. The day is divided up in the following way:—6 a. m., milking-time; 9 a. m., katamyabosi, not translated; 12 noon, rest for the cattle; 1 p. m., the time to draw water; 2 p. m., the time for the cattle to drink; 3 p. m., the cattle leave the watering-place to graze; 4 p. m., the sun shews signs of setting; 5 p. m., the cattle return home; 6 p. m., the cattle enter the kraal; 7 p. m., milking-time[116]. This terminology is of especial interest since it remains in various Indo-European languages as a relic of antiquity, and affords a hitherto little observed piece of evidence for the life of antiquity which agrees well with others. Compare Sanskrit sagavás, the time when the cows are herded together; βουλυτός, the time when the oxen were unyoked in the Homeric phrase ἦμος δ’ ἠέλιος μετενίσσετο βουλυτόνδε[117]; and Irish im-buarach, morning, ‘at the yoking of the oxen’. With rest or meal-times are associated Old High German untorn, ‘noon’, the time of the mid-day rest, Sanskrit abhipitvam, ‘evening’, and Lithuanian piëtus, ‘noon’, which goes back to Sanskrit pitus, ‘meal-time’[118].