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 Javanese have a dry and a rainy period which include six of their seasons[248], and so have the Islamite Malays of Sumatra[249]. The Polynesians divide the year throughout into two greater periods. Their seasons were in general two, the rainy season or winter, and the dry season or summer, but varied according to the situation of the particular group of islands north or south of the equator. On the Society Islands they embraced the months of May-November and November-May respectively. On the Sandwich Islands the rainy season, hooilo, lasted from about Nov. 20 to May 20, the dry season, kau, from May 20 to Nov. 20[250]. We shall find later that both seasons were named and regulated according to the visibility or invisibility of the Pleiades. Other writers also give information for Hawaii. When the sun moved towards the north, the days were long, the trees bore fruit, and the heat was prevalent: it was summer; but when the sun moved towards the south, the nights became longer and the trees were without fruit: it was winter[251]. Kau was the season when the sun was directly overhead, when daylight was prolonged, the trade-wind prevailed, days and nights alike were warm, and the vegetation put forth new leaves. Hooilo was the season when the sun declined towards the south, the nights grew longer, days and nights were cool, and the herbage (lit. vines) died away: each had six months. On Kauai Island the seasons were called mahoe-mua and mahoe-hope[252]. In Tahiti the bread-fruit can be gathered for seven months, for the other five there is none: for about two months before and after the southern solstice it is very scarce, but from March to August exceedingly plentiful. This season is called pa-uru (uru = ‘bread-fruit’)[253]. The recurring scarcity of bread-fruit shewed the changes in the course of the year, but the Pleiades afforded a surer limit[254]. In Samoa one authority gives the wet season, ending in April, and the dry season, which comes to an end with the palolo fishing in October[255]; another vaipalolo, the palolo or wet season from October to March, and toe lau, when the regular trade-winds blow, embracing the other months[256]; a third the season of fine weather—in which however much rain falls in some localities—and the stormy season, when it rains heavily[257]. The importance of agriculture is so great that the seasons in following it may sometimes depart from the changes of the climate. The Bontoc Igorot have two seasons which however do not mark the wet and dry periods, as might be expected in a country where these two periods occur: cha-kon is the season of rice or ‘palay’ growth and harvesting, ka-sip the remaining portion of the year[258]. In the New Hebrides the year is divided into two parts, the periods of yam-planting and harvesting[259].