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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In Burmah there are three seasons, though certainly they are regulated by the months: the cold season, the hot season, and the rainy season[302]. The Polynesians usually have two long seasons, but three are not unheard of. A native of the island of Molokai, in the Sandwich group, states that there the year was divided into three seasons:—maka-lii, kau, and hoo-ilo. Maka-lii was so called because the sun was then less visible, being obscured by clouds, and the days were shortened. Kau was so termed because tapa could then safely be spread out to dry. Hoo-ilo meant ‘changeable’[303]. The two main seasons are called kau and hoo-ilo. It is to be observed however that in a notice from Hawaii they are called hoo-ilo and maka-lii[304]. This shews that the number is not fixed. On the Society Islands besides the two seasons regulated by the Pleiades there were also three seasons: (1) tetau, autumn or season of plenty, the harvest of bread-fruit, commencing with December and continuing until faahu, which corresponded to January and a part of February, the time of the most frequent rains, comprising three months; (2) te tau miti rahi, the season of high sea, November to January; (3) te tau poai, the longest season, winter, the season of drought and scarcity of food, which usually extended from July to October[305]. It will however be seen that these seasons do not fill up the year, and that the second partly covers the first. Their names are taken from different phenomena of Nature. The New Zealanders distinguish four seasons:—spring, te aro aro, mahaua, te toru, ‘the time of growth’, both toru and aro aro signify ‘the shooting or springing forth of plants’, mahaua is the season of warmth; summer, raumati, waru, rehua,—raumati means ‘dead leaves’, and the summer is so called because all the trees with one exception are evergreen and shed their leaves in summer; autumn, ngahura matiti; winter, hotoke, puanga, the season when the earth is damp and gives forth her worms, which were formerly highly prized as food[306]. The seasons are regulated by the stars, puanga is the great winter star, rehu the great summer star.