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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The night is the time of complete darkness and rest, and therefore the frequently mentioned expression, ‘sleeping-time’, corresponds to night. Seldom is the whole time during which the sun remains below the horizon to be understood by it. On the Society Islands there were two expressions for day according to its extension from morning to evening twilight or from sunrise to sunset[161]. The Hawaiian judge, Fornander, follows this mode of speech when he distinguishes five periods of night, (1) about sunset, (2) between sunset and midnight, (3) midnight, (4) between midnight and sunrise, and (5) sunrise[162]. For the times between sunset and night-fall and between night and sunrise there is a rich terminology which has already been illustrated. During the night itself time-indications are for obvious reasons scanty. Often the only point distinguished is midnight, e. g. by the Kiowa[163], the Masai[164], the Shilluk[165]; ‘the silence of the land’ among the Babwende[166], ‘the back of night’ among the Hottentots[167], ‘the time of sleep’ among the Hawaiians[168]. Hence arises of itself a threefold division in which the periods of night before and after midnight are distinguished, as e. g. by the Hawaiians[169]. The usual method is to start from the day, i. e. the limit of the day, and then to proceed on both sides in the direction of midnight, as in the late evening of the Hottentots, which extends till long after sunset[170], and the ‘not yet early’ and the tara (beginning at dusk and extending till the time of rest) among the Masai[171], etc. The Tahitians are credited with six divisions of the day and as many of the night, this more accurate division of night being of course determined by the stars[172]; the only expressions reported however are those for midnight and the time from midnight to daybreak[173]. On the Marquesas Islands the first night-watch was ‘the hour of ghosts’; the advanced night was termed ‘black night’, and midnight ‘great sleep’; the last watch of night was ‘the coming of day’[174]. The Wadschagga have three night watches:—the awakening in the evening, that in the middle (midnight), and that in the morning twilight[175]. The Javanese have night, midnight, and waning of night[176]. Where the cock is kept, its crow serves as a sign that the night is drawing to an end, as for instance among the Swahili[177], and in the Dutch Indies[178]; the Yoruba distinguish other cock-crowings, such as ‘the cock opening the way’, i. e. the first cock-crowing, ‘the time of the cock-crowing immediately before sunset’[179]. Quite exceptional however is the device ascribed to the inhabitants of the New Hebrides. In order to denote the hours of the night they make a gesture in the direction of the spot where the sun would be at the corresponding hour of day[180].