Glossary: Conjunctions and Astrology

In Moorish Spain universities arose in cities like Toledo, dominated by Moor and Jewish scholars, with great emphasis on the fields of astronomy and astrology.

By the 12th century, European Christians also attended these centers of learning and began translating Arabic works, including some of the lost Greek works preserved only in Arabic. Gerard of Cremona translated Ptolemy's Almagest in Toledo, which was the world's foremost translation center of Arabic works into Latin.

So it should come as no surprise that Wolfram von Eschenbach claimed that the bard Kyot had translated Arabic texts that he obtained from the "heathen" known as Flegatanis.

The heathen Flegetanis could tell us how all stars set and rise again...With his own eyes, the heathen Flegetanis saw and told of hidden secrets, that he was shy to speak of, in the constellations. He declared the Grail, whose name he read in the stars..."

-- Parzival

In Parzival itself, Cundrie the prophetess from near the Ganges recites the names of the stars in Latino-Arabic revealing that such knowledge as found in Toledo was possessed by von Eschenbach himself.

Conjunctions of stars and planets signaled the advent of new cycles and holy messengers according to the Muslim astrologer Albumasar. First translated by Joannis Hispalensis (John of Seville) in the mid-12th century, his works al-Madkhal al-kabir (Introductorium maius) and Dalalat al-ashkhas al-ulwiyya (De magnis coniunctionibus et annorunt revolutionibus) had great influence on Western thinking.

In particular, Albumasar introduced the idea that the great religions or philosophies were all revealed after special conjunctions of Jupiter with one of the six planets. He also created an Islamicized version of the 'three Hermes' legend found in the Greco-Egyptian Hermetic tradition.

According to Albumasar, various incarnations of Hermes visit the earth to introduce new religions or philosophies. In the west, the first Hermes was Idris known in the Old Testament as Enoch. The second was Budhasaf of Babylon and the third Aris (Horus) of Egypt. Interestingly all these prophets were said, by either Albumasar or his followers, to have originated in, or to have learned their arts in the Indies (al-Hind) or China.

An eastern connection is not surprising when you consider that Albumasar hailed from Balkh in Afghanistan and was probably familiar with medieval Zoroastrian millennarianism.

Roger Bacon and Pierre d'Ailly, following Albumasar, propounded that five prophets corresponding to five of the six planets had already appeared on earth during conjunctions with Jupiter. Each had introduced a major world religious or philosophical system.

The last (false) prophet in their view, the Antichrist, would come with the grand conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon.

Indian tradition also links the last age with a conjunct Jupiter-Moon but in reference to the savior king Kalki rather than the Antichrist.

At this time the Lord will incarnate in a brahmin family in the village known as Sambhala, and will be known as Kalki. With unrivalled majesty he will soar across the sky, destroying millions of brigands in ruler's disguise. Then will the Satyayuga [Age of Truth] commence -- an age of righteousness and holiness. Satyayuga will begin when the Sun, Moon and Jupiter rise together in the same house with Pushya asterism in the ascendant.

-- Bhagavata Purana 12:2

Albumasar popularized as well the concept that regular conjunctions of the two slowest-moving planets -- Saturn and Jupiter -- heralded grand world events, both good and bad. Beginning in about the 14th century, these Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions were of great interest to Europeans particularly in light of the frequent plagues that ravaged the continent. People from royalty to the peasantry payed close attention to publications of conjunction-linked prophecies by astrologers like Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino and Roger Bacon.

By far the most famous of these prophets was Michel de Nostradamus of Provence, France. In his writings, he may have referred to the last prophetic conjunction of Jupiter with the Moon when he mentions "the sixth bright celestial splendor" (C1:Q80).

Frequently Nostradamus tells of a king or other significant person of the East quite reminiscent of the Zoroastrian prophecies of the savior king from Kangdez. And he mentions a king linked with line of Hermes:

Long awaited he will never return
In Europe, he will appear in Asia:
One of the league issued from the great Hermes,
And he will grow over all the Kings of the East.

-- Les centuries C10:Q75

Given the state of affairs in European astrology at the time, this could certainly be a reference to the Hermes of the sixth Jupiter conjunction described by Bacon and d'Ailly.

Astrological conjunctions throughout the world

Astrological conjunctions also appear at the beginning of new epochs in India, China, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica.

In India, China and Mesopotamia, all planets are said to have been aligned in the same location at the start of the great age. The sexagenary cycles of China and India appear to originate from the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction cycle. As discussed earlier in the blog, such cycles may also have influenced the Mayan calendar.

The conjunction of the Sun with the Moon, Venus, the Pleiades, Orion and Sirius is widely observed in many cultures. The ancient Polynesians saw conjunctions as signs and omens, and the navigator Hawai`iloa was advised to sail toward an auspicious conjunction involving Jupiter during his discovery voyage to Hawai`i.

Many Austronesian peoples looked for auspicious times for battles and other events in the conjunction of the Moon with certain fixed stars or planets.

According to Chinese accounts like the P'ing-chou k'o-t'an, the inhabitants of Sanfotsi were expert astronomers, and especially skilled in the prediction of eclipses.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

McCluskey, Stephen C. Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 4, Spagyric..., Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 412.

Selin, Helaine and Sun Xiaochun. Astronomy Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Astronomy, Springer, 2000.

Glossary: Elixir

The elixir that promotes health, rejuvenates, prolongs life or even grants immortality is included among the forms of what Stephen Oppenheimer calls "edible immortality."

On Penglai, the Chinese isle of immortals, everything from the water to the plants and fruits promote longevity and well-being. In the Churning of the Milky Ocean myth as related in the Mahabharata the ashes and runoff created by the fiery holocaust on Mt. Mandara produces, among other things, a jar of the elixir of immortality.

Apparently the light-colored ash flowing into the sea turns the ocean into a milky or white color. In the Milky Ocean, therefore, there is a Svetadvipa or "White Island" where everything is white. Also on Penglai it is sometimes said that all the plants and animals are white. This may refer symbolically to the milk-colored volcanic substances that are said to have the "power of the Elixir" and which blanket the entire region after an eruption.

In the Zoroastrian literature, the White Haoma of the Varkash (Vourukasha) Sea is also said to be prepared as the ambrosia of the immortals.

Both the Indian and Persian literature link the Soma and Haoma respectively with the ocean. The Khorda Avesta (5:8) calls the Vourukasha, the "deep sea of salt waters." Tides and ocean currents are also apparently mentioned as having action upon this ocean:

Ahura Mazda answered It is even so as thou hast said, O righteous Zarathustra! I, Ahura Mazda, send the waters from the sea Vouru-kasha down with the wind and with the clouds.

I, Ahura Mazda, make them stream down to the corpses; I, Ahura Mazda, make them stream down to the Dakhmas; I, Ahura Mazda, make them stream down to the unclean remains; I, Ahura Mazda, make them stream down to the bones; then I, Ahura Mazda, make them flow back unseen; I, Ahura Mazda, make them flow back to the sea Pûitika.

'The waters stand there boiling, boiling up in the heart of, the sea Pûitika, and, when cleansed there, they run back again from the sea Pûitika to the sea Vouru-kasha, towards the well-watered tree, whereon grow the seeds of my plants of every kind [by hundreds, by thousands, by hundreds of thousands].

-- Vendidad 2:17-19

During the medieval period, Albumasar apparently develops these old Iranian concepts into a theory of tides in his work Great Introduction to Astrology. Albumasar's theory was adopted by Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, William of Auvergne, Albert the Great and others. The influence of the Moon on tides and the ocean is interesting in connection with the elixir as "Soma" is also a Sanskrit name for the Moon.

Oppenheimer has shown in Eden in the East how the waxing and waning of the Moon was seen in very ancient times as a sign of the immortality of the lunar deity. He feels that myths connected with the Moon and immortality were diffused by Austro-Asiatic peoples.

Iranian cosmology places the cosmic mountain at the farthest shore of the Varkash Sea to the East. From this mountain flow all the world's water after purifying the "underworld."

Waters from rivers and streams flow first into the sea where they apparenly eventually make their way east to west following the prevailing winds over the ocean. At the Western horizon they fall into "hell" where they wash away all impurities. From hell they make their way back into the cosmic mountain where initially they appear like "quicksilver" (Rivayats 1:91), and then flow into the Varkash Sea. From there, they again travel from East to West. It is this motion that causes the ebb and flow of the tide according to early tradition.

In the Varkash Sea is the White Haoma tree and also the Tree of Many Seeds. The trees are protected by a great fish known as the Kar and the Simurgh bird, which is portrayed usually with a dog or human head. The White Haoma is explicitely tied to the "Water of Life."


The Simurgh Bird that protects the Tree of Many Seeds

The Soma of Indic tradition also appears not to have been so much a single plant as the life-force of plants in the waters: "...in appearance like the sun, he [Soma] runs through the lakes, the seven streams and heaven" (Rgveda 9:52:2).

Production of both Soma and Haoma may be seen as partly a ritual reenactment of the great cataclysmic event that produced the original pot of elixir. The Soma pounded from medicinal herbs was mixed or "clothed" in milk possibly to resemble the ash-colored ocean of milk.

Even in the Rgvedic production of Soma, there appears to be an allusion to the primordial event -- a pit known as uparava, one arm-length in depth is dug in the earth to mix the juice pounded with sacred stones from the Soma herbs. The pit is reminiscent of the underworld association of the "waters of life" in mythologies from Sumer to Hawai`i.

Iranian myth mentions a three-legged "ass," apparently a whale since it is said to be the source of ambergris (Bundahishn 11:12), that purifies the fluids of the earth that return to the Varkash Sea.

Also in the midst of the sea is the great bull Sarsaok with flames shooting up out of its back. In some sources, it is said that this bull is slain in the last days and its marrow used to make the White Haoma of immortality. It is from the flames of this bull's back that the sacred Zoroastrian temple fires were brought.

Obviously, the flaming Sarsaok bull can be equated with the White Haoma tree and again with the cosmic/volcanic mountain. Also the three-legged ass or whale may also refer to the purifying fire's shooting up from the bull's back and protecting the elixir.

The word for ass is kar, and the great fish that guards the Tree of Many Seeds is known as the Kar Mahi or "ass-like fish." Thus the Kar and Kar Mahi may be the same -- a large fish or whale that resembles a three-legged ass.

Guarding of the sacred trees may refer to their fiery nature, as the Kar is also the purifier of the waters. In a similar sense, the Hebrew Bible speaks of the flaming sword that guarded the way of Eden.

Haoma's whiteness again bespeaks of the whitish ash of the volcanic eruption. In the Ayurvedic tradition of India, the incineration of plants and metals into bhasma or ash plays an important role in the making of medicines. We can look at the metals here as standing also for the great quantities of earth incinerated during the eruption. Bhasma smeared on the body of the god Siva or on the bodies of ascetics symbolizes purity through the fire of austerity, and the immortality thus gained.


Ascetics known as Nagasadhus, smeared with ash, gather for a dip in the Ganges River during the Kumbhamela pilgrimage. According to legend, some of the elixir produced during the churning of the milk ocean dropped here from the pot of Dhanvantari. (Source: http://spirit-of-india.com/SpiritualJourneys/index.html)

In the latter practice of alchemy, the ingredients of plants, metals, water and fire used to produce the elixir attempt to recreate some of the chemistry caused by the natural cataclysmic event.

Al-Balkhi and his followers placed the palace of the immortals, Kangdez, and the Varkash Sea in the same location as the Indian Yamakoti.

Quests for the Elixir

Both the Muslim and Greek geographers compressed the known world from East to West to fit into their worldviews. Ptolemy in his Geography, sought to extend the distance from the Happy Isles to Cattigara to 180 degrees.

Quite interestingly, in most of the known distances in Geography, such as those between Rome and Alexandria, between the latter and Babylon, etc., the real degree of longitude was about 3/4 of Ptolemy's longitude degree. If Ptolemy simply wanted to create fictional lands, he could have easily represented a fully-inhabited globe. However, mariners of his day would have ridiculed such a representation since they had no knowledge of any ability to circumnavigate the earth.

For Ptolemy then only half of the globe was inhabitable and he sought to fit the known world into that 180 degrees.

The Hindu astronomers appeared to have shrunk the real degree of longtitude to one-half in order to represent the known world as extending around the globe. Thus, the distance from Lanka to Romaka is given as 90 degrees when it is just slightly over 45 degrees. If we look at the real distance of the Hindu quadrants, they would represent nearly the division of the world into eight rather than four parts.

Kangdez's location was very much similar to that of the medieval Christian Garden of Eden. From this location was said to come eastern spices like aloeswood, cinnamon, cassia and ginger in both Christian and Muslim tradition. Indeed such association for these spices hails back to the Book of Enoch and the Old Testament where the mount of God appears as topped with fire and smoke.

This mountain, the omphalos, was the fountain also of the underground "waters of life" -- the Sumerian Abzu.

Many Austronesian myths locate the "water of life" in paradise, which often is also the land of the ancestors, the land of the dead. The Samoans knew of Bulotu, a blessed land whose lord has a home made of the bones of dead chiefs. Spirits come here to bathe in the water of life and regain strength. The Fijians know of the same place called Burotu or Murotu where a speaking tree is found near the waters of life.

A "river of living water" found in the mythology of San Cristoval refreshes the souls of the dead and grants immortality to the devout. In the Philippines, many indigenous peoples take ritual baths in rivers and streams to rejuvenate the body, using bundles of sacred herbs, leaves or grasses dipped in the water to baptize each other.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Glossary: Yamakoti

The ancient Indian astronomers placed the location of Yamakoti in the East precisely one quarter of the world's circumference from Lanka/Ujjain, the Indian meridian.

The 11th century Muslim geographer/astronomer al-Biruni makes the following statements about Yamakoti:

Yamakoti is, according to Yakub and al-Fazari, the country where is the city Tara within the sea. I have not found the slightest trace of this name in Indian literature. As koti means castle and Yama is the angel of death, the word reminds me of Kangdez, which according to the Persians had been built by Kai Kaus or Jam in the most remote East, behind the sea...Abu Mashar al-Balkhi based his geographical canon on Kangdez as 0 degrees longitude.

The city of Tara is also called Nara in other literature such as the Hudud al-Alam. It could refer to the Tantric goddess Tara, whose name means "star" and who is, among other things, the goddess of the sea and seafarers.

Tara's connection with mariners is particularly strong in her association with the sea goddess Ratu Kidul of Java, and Kuanyin, the Chinese goddess of mariners.

We have mentioned Kangdez before in reference to Zoroastrian prophecies of the King of the East. It was considered the center of the world and the hiding place of the savior kings. Similar concepts were adopted into Shi'ite Islam.

The geographers who used Kangdez as the prime meridian belonged to what is known as the al-Balkhi school, after Abu Mashar al-Balkhi, known in Latin as Albumasar. During the Middle Ages, Albumasar was the most renowned of Muslim astronomer/astrologers in Europe. His theories of historical cycles linked with the planets influenced many European astrologers including Nostradamus whose key work "Revolutions" was based on such concepts.

While other Muslim geographers used Ptolemy's meridan of the "Happy Isles" off West Africa, or the Indian meridian of Ujjain, the al-Balkhi school placed the meridian in the far East. His followers saw Kangdez as one and the same as the Indian Yamakoti. In addition to Kangdez, the city Tara/Nara was placed in Yamakoti at the equator.

In al-Qanun al-Masudi, al-Biruni writes that Tara was 90 degrees east of Lanka/Ujjain basically agreeing with the Indian texts about the position of Yamakoti. Again Yamakoti was the same distance from Lanka/Ujjain as the latter was from Romaka.

The city of Romaka has been variously identified as Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome. Biruni equates it with the city or capital of Rum i.e., Constantinople which is practically at the same meridian as Alexandria. It should be said however that al-Biruni did not accept the equation of Lanka's longitude with that of Ujjain. He thought instead that it referred to the isle of Langabalus, the island of cloves (lavang), which may refer to the Nicobar/Andaman chain.

If we accept the Ujjain meridian, the longitude for Yamakoti would be at around 120-122 degrees East longitude.

Not much was written about Yamakoti other than it possessing walls and ramparts of gold, but Kangdez is another matter. The immortals lived here and a great fortress was hidden here within a mountain. It is associated with the Varkash Sea, in the deepest part of which is produced the Haoma (Soma), the elixir.

This reminds us of the Churning of the Milky Ocean tale in the Mahabharata where the burnt runoff of flaming Mount Mandara flows into the sea:

The friction of the trees started fire after fire, covering the mountain with flames like a black monsoon cloud with lightening streaks...many juices of herbs and manifold resins of the trees flowed into the water of the ocean. And with the milk of these juices that had the power of the Elixir, and with the exudation of the molten gold, the God attained immortality. The water of the ocean now turned into milk, and from this milk butter floated up, mingled with the finest of essences.

The general location of the prime meridian of Kang-dez and Yamakoti would agree with Chinese myths of the three isles of the blest including Penglai, shaped like cauldrons in a manner that reminds us of the Hermetic Krater. They were located somewhere in the "Eastern Sea" but in a location where the Sun rose at the horizon i.e, in the equatorial parts. The Formosan speakers of Taiwan have legends of a homeland to the south or southeast of Taiwan also associated with the Sun (or the multiple superfluous Suns).

Even though the Indians used Lanka as their own meridian, they usually named Yamakoti first when listing the four quadrants of the globe.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

King, David A. World-Maps for Finding the Direction and Distance to Mecca: Innovation and Tradition in Islamic..., Brill Academic Publishers, 1999.

Minorsky, V. Hudud al-`Alam. the Regions of the World: A Persian Geography 372 A.H.--982 A.D., London: C.E. Bosworth, 1970.

Sachau, Edward C. Alberuni's India Vol I: An Account of the Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Geography, Chronolog..., Routledge, 2001.

Glossary: Exploration, Ancient Sea

Early proponents of diffusionism have suggested the existence of ancient sun-worshipping argonauts who explored the equatorial regions. W.J. Perry in his book The children of the sun; a study in the early history of civilization, for example, proposed that such intrepid explorers left megaliths at each new location they discovered.

More recently, the late Thor Heyerdahl suggested that these navigators followed the Sun on its westward journey near the equator. Seeing the Sun vanish in the western horizon at evening and then reappear in the East at morning, they could rest assured they would eventually return home. Some have suggested that ancient tales of visiting and returning from the Underworld were in reality coded references to early circumnavigation of the globe.

Indeed, the knowledge of a round globe and the assurance that by traveling continuously in any direction, one would eventually return to known territory was essential in generating the "Age of Exploration."

There are however recorded seafaring traditions some preserved to this day that give us glimpses of how ancient explorers could venture over open sea for hundreds or thousands of miles without needing to circle the globe.

Navigators of the Pacific used cognitive maps for regions that were known to them. Most important of the memorized locations was what Harold Gatty called the "home center." When Tupaia constructed his map for Captain James Cook, he was able to point "to the part of heaven, where each isle was situated" according to Forster, an obvious reference to zenith stars.

However, a zenith star at any particular moment in the diurnal day can also indicate the longitude of a destination. For example, at the start of the solar year, indicated for example by the heliacal rising or setting of a fixed star, the celestial bodies at sunset will be positioned over specific geographical locations in both latitude and longitude.


At a certain time, the zenith star can indicate both the latitude and longitude of a place. As an example, the bearing of this star on the horizon can be estimated by the distance, parallel to the horizon, of the zenith star from the local meridian. The same distance is then used from the corresponding point of the compass.


This relationship will not last long due to the constant spinning of the earth on its axis. However, that location at that particular point in time, what we know as azimuth and elevation, can continue to be associated with the star and the geographical location. The azimuth and elevation at that moment can be a reference to the star and thus we will call it an "etak star" from the Micronesian system of navigational references.

At the same time during the succeeding heliacal rising or setting, the star will again be at about the same azimuth and elevation. The existing slight error is not cumulative and tends to cancel out, so this is a reliable way of correlating geography with the fixed stars both in terms of latitude and longitude.

As long as the observer is in the same geographical location the etak star for any other location will always be the same.


As the zenith star moves into a new position due to the diurnal spinning of the globe, the reference azimuth and elevation, or etak star, marks the place in the sky corresponding to the destination. While the observer remains in the same location, the etak star for the destination will always remain the same.

If the observer, however, moves toward or away from the etak star, the location of the latter will change. Moving toward the etak star, the position in the sky moves closer to the zenith, while moving away drives the etak star closer to the horizon.
Upon reaching the destination, the etak star should be directly overhead in the zenith.


The etak star moves closer toward the zenith as the ship moves closer to the destination.


For navigators trained from childhood to memorize the relative positions of the stars, keeping track of an etak star should not present a difficult task. Even amateur stargazers can rather quickly orient themselves using the polar stars, their general knowledge of the rising/setting points of constellations, the seasonal rising/setting point of the Sun, etc.

When traveling to a destination, the navigator must only be able to reposition the etak star proportionally to the distance traveled. This is what is done using the Micronesian etak system. Depending on the winds and currents, an etak represents a division of the total distance per a unit of time, usually a solar day.

The etak distance is thus relative and in certain conditions the distance covered in a day might be more than 100 miles while in another it is less than 20 miles. By maintaining orientation, the navigator perceives not only the distance covered but the relative change in position in all directions.

There exists some documented evidence of the use of zenith stars for the purpose of obtaining bearings by both the Tongans and Tikopians. Unfortunately few details are given. Even more mysterious are fuzzy references suggesting such usage in traditions concering the Hawai'i-Tahiti voyages. There are many other notices of vague, uncertain usage of zenith or other high stars in the Pacific (Lewis, p. 289ff).

Steering toward an etak star or the related bearing on the horizon is not the same as steering toward the corresponding zenith star. As J.P. Frankel notes, the longitude indicated by zenith stars changes by about one degree every four minutes. However, the etak star bearing changes only according to the change of position of the observer. At most this will usually be no more than a few degrees in an entire day.

And since any error in judgement will be random and thus non-cumulative, they tend to cancel out with each position-fixing. That would mean that longer journeys with more readings would tend to be more accurate in terms of position-fixing than short ones!

Exploring unknown territory

When the navigator ventures into new regions, they could use the home center system to always find their way back to known territory without necessarily needing to circumnavigate the globe.

Even in areas with strong prevailing winds, there are always seasonal wind shifts and current patterns that allow explorers to confidently undertake circular journeys using the etak stars of unknown regions as their guide. The journey of the Hokule`a, a recreation of the ancient Polynesian journeys from Tahiti to Hawai`i and back, demonstrates this clearly.

Some general knowledge about ocean currents could also have helped equatorial ocean exploration. For example, currents traveling just below the equator tend to move in the opposite direction as those just above the equator.

By sailing or even paddling against the wind in periods of light winds, one can explore the nature of currents in unknown regions knowing the breeze will be at your back during the return journey.

Micronesian seafarers of the Caroline Islands were able to chart confusing currents stretching some 1,900 miles east-to-west and 840 miles north-to-south, from Kapingamarangi to the Marianas.

Ancient bearing star

He defined the days of the year by constellations,
He founded the Nebiru station to determine the stars' limits,
That none may go too far or too short,
The stations of Enlil and Ea, he placed by his own,
Having opened the gates on both sides,
And strengthened the locks on the right and left,
In the center he placed the zenith.

These passages are from the Mesopotamian tale of Marduk's slaying of the dragon Tiamat, and his creation of the heavens from the dragon's body.

We have already suggested in the blog that Nebiru may have been both a bearing and zenith star, the "star of the crossing" to the Underworld gateway. The station of Nebiru may have been the etak star of Spica used to set the heavenly bands by which the Mesopotamians divided the equatorial "way of Anu." The gates mentioned above are those through which the Sun rises at twin-peaked Mt. Mashu in the East.

During the latter half of the fourth millennium, at the heliacal setting of Sirius, the star Spica would serve as an excellent zenith and etak star for the dual peaks of Pinatubo and Arayat.

Spica was associated much later in Greco-Roman times with Isis Pelagia, the patroness of mariners. In such a sense, what star would be more suited as a patron goddess for seafarers than the etak star of one's home port?

When the Roman empire adopted Christianity, Isis Pelagia apparently became Maria Pelagia, or the medieval Maris Stella or Stella Maris "Star of the Sea."

Late European representations of the Virgin Mary often show her holding a sheaf (spica) of wheat in her hand similar to the image for the constellation Virgo, or decorated with sheaves. Some paintings show a single star on her robe, which has been interpreted by some as representing Spica (alpha Virginis).

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Romancing the Goddess: Three Middle English Romances about Women, University of Illinois Press, 1998, p. 195.

Finney, Ben. Voyage of Rediscovery, University of California Press, 1994.

Lewis, David. We, the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, University of Hawai`i Press, 1994.

Dog Star (Glossary)

The dog star has through the ages been associated with Sirius and/or less frequently the planet Venus.

The name of Sirius probably is derived from the Egyptian word seir meaning "prince," and related also to Hebrew sar. Another possibility is that the word comes from the Greek form for Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld.

The star is the brightest in the heavens and was called Kasista "Leader" by the ancient Akkadians. The Persians knew it likewise as Tistar "Chieftain" or Zeeb "Leader."

It was pictured in cultures throughout the world as a dog or wolf situated in the southern sky and associated with the hot or "dog days" of summer.

Sirius is also often connected with the image of a hunter. Among the Sumerians, Ninurta, the hunter, and husband of the dog goddess Bau (Gula), was linked with Sirius, while his wife had Venus associations. Later, when Inanna absorbs Bau's attributes she is likewise viewed as a huntress with links both to Venus and Sirius.

In Greek myth, Sirius formed the head of the hunter Orion's dog, the constellation Canis Major. According to Monier-Williams, the dog star was known among Hindus as Lubdhaka and Mrgavyadha both meaning "hunter" and referring to the god Siva or Rudra.

Another association of Sirius connects the star with the Milky Way, known often as the "Way of Souls" or the "Way of the Dog/Wolf." In this sense, Sirius is viewed as one or more dogs or wolves guarding the path taken by departed souls.

In ancient Egypt, the heliacal rising of Sirius was central to the yearly calendar. Sirius and Orion are personified respectively by the deities Sopdet and Sah, who are in turn manifestations of Isis and Osiris. Sopdet and Sah beget Sopdu, who is the manifestation of Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, and the patron deity of Egyptian royalty. Sopdet is sometimes portrayed as a large dog, or as riding side-saddle on a dog (during the Roman period).

When the Sun and Moon conjoined at the start of the Egyptian New Year a festival known as the "sacred marriage" was celebrated. This may relate to the Pyramid Texts which state that Pharaoh unites with Isis in a form of hieros gamos bringing forth Horus-Sopdu. In another passage, the royal-divine union is said to beget the Morning Star, and thus may connect Venus with Horus.

Among the Sumerians, the sacred marriage took place between the priest-king and Inanna, the latter probably represented by the Lukur priestess, who was in turn linked with the daughters of dog-headed Bau. Inanna again has as her planet Venus and Sirius as one of her fixed stars. The king during this ritual stands for Dumuzi, the husband of Inanna, and every year near the rising of Sirius in the summer, the Kelabim or dog priests of Dumuzi (Tammuz) held rites for the god.

Adonis had similar rites, and Carl Kerenyi believes that the orgia festivals celebrated in honor of Dionysos were also linked with the Sirius cycle.

Further to the east we find numerous myths of the marriage of a dog to a goddess or queen in the totemic histories of numerous peoples. Especially in Central Asia, South China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific the concept of part-dog or wolf ancestry is prevalent. From Assam in the West to Mongolia in the North and Java in the South, eastward to New Guinea and other Pacific isles in Oceania and northward again to the Ryukus and Bering Sea, the sacred dog-human marriage motif is found.

David Gordon White in Myths of the Dog-Man discusses the motif found among the Chinese, Hmong-Mien and Southeast Asian peoples of a heavenly dog who comes to earth following catastrophic floods bringing the gift of rice agriculture. These resemble closely the Kapampangan tales of Tala who rescues the flooded inhabitants of Central Luzon by teaching them riziculture. White mentions a "tradition, dating from the Shang dynasty, that connects a dog with the ancient rice god Shang-ti, and a Ch'in and Han period sacrifice called the lei (a term for which the Chinese characters are "dog," "rice," and "head") that involved the offerings of dog's flesh and rice, by which a dismembered Shang-ti was ritually reintegrated and resurrected."

Shang-ti becomes associated with T'ien (Heaven) during the Zhou (Chou) dynasty and the Shih-chi states that the god in the form of the "Ti-Dog" was the ancestor of the Hou Chih and T'ai peoples.

Although Sirius (known as the Heavenly Wolf in China) is not mentioned in these legends, the idea of a heavenly dog coming after the summer floods indeed could represent a link with the dog Star. The heliacal rising of Sirius during the summer heralds the flooding season in the monsoon climate region. The descent of Sirius or Venus from Heaven in the form of a dog bringing agriculture and uniting in divine marriage all fit in the Sirius myth pattern. The flooding of the Nile after the rising of Sirius was essential to good harvests in ancient Egypt.

The image of Phan Hu descending from Heaven and swimming across the flooded earth with a rice plant in his mouth, to later marry the Chinese emperor's daughter and father the Yao people is an ideal form of the Eastern myth.

While various explanations have been given for the canine attributes bestowed to the star Sirius, the link with a culture-bearing ancestor is the one proposed here. In this sense, the heliacal rising of Sirius would herald the advent of the canine hero linked in this case with the cataclysmic eruption of the cosmic mountain.

In ancient symbology, this involved the Sun and Moon, not simply conjunct as in the Egyptian New Year festival, but in solar eclipse represented by the Crescent Sun. Venus in inferior conjunction or transit is represented as a star in the center or next to the Crescent Sun. These celestial bodies should be placed above or emerging from a mountain, hill, mound, stupa, triangle, pyramid, person's head or some other symbol of the cosmic axis.

In some cases, one can also see to the left of these symbols another star or stellar symbol that should be taken as representing Sirius. Left in this case means to the south as ideally the celestial configuration should be in the West, the direction of Pinatubo.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Kerenyi, Carl. Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, Princeton University Press, 1996.

McGahey, Robert. The Orphic Moment: Shaman to Poet-Thinker in Plato, Nietzsche, and Mallarme, SUNY Press, 1994.

Sasaki, Chris. Constellations: Stars & Stories, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2003, p. 32ff.

Shaw, Ian. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, 2002.

White, David Gordon. Myths of the Dog-Man, University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Glossary: Sacred King

James George Frazer popularized the idea of the sacred king in his seminal work The Golden Bough.

Frazer formed different categories of sacred kings such as magician or shaman-kings, priest-kings, divine kings, etc. and even suggested an evolutionary process of development from one type to another.

Others have attempted to divide sacred kings into major categories based on various defining characteristics. The most important of these are: The sacred king as an incarnate god or divine being; the king as an icon of gods or divinity; the sacred king as the agent or representative of God or other divine beings; the king as a sacred sacrifice; the sacred king as herald of a new age or cycle, the messianic or world-conquering king, and the king simply as the holder of supernatural powers especially control over the weather and agriculture. In many cases these types may be combined in actual instances of sacred kingship.

There is much to be said about the intimate connections between sacred kingship and the aspects of the agricultural calendar -- the interaction between Heaven (and the celestial clock) and Earth.

In almost every example of sacred kingship, among the king's primary roles include participation in some form of agricultural or fertility ritual linked with the local calendar, usually the celestial calendar that marks the growing seasons.

Linkage with sky time would naturally bring an association of the king with cycles and ages of greater duration than the solar year. These cycles like the agricultural season involved waxing/growing and waning/dying phases.

The expression of the Chinese philosopher Mengzi (Mencius) that 'every 500 years a sage appears," ("wubainian you shengren zhi xing") was modifed by Hu Shi to wubainian bi you wangzhe xing "every five centuries a king appears." This sage or king was a type of savior whose appearance may have been linked with a particular conjunction of planets (according to David Pankenier).

With the beginning and end of each age, and particularly the so-called "golden age," the birth or ascension of the sacred king is often associated with special supernatural signs. In Buddhist lore, the Cakkavatti (Sanskrit Cakravartin) combines various aspects of the sacred kingship.

When a Cakkavatti comes to fore, a magical "discus" or "wheel" known as the Cakkaratana suddenly appears in the sky. The Cakkaratana takes the king throughout the world forcing the four quarters of the earth to submit to the world conqueror.

A total of seven treasures including the Cakkaratana appear at the advent of the Cakkavatti. These match closely with some of the fourteen treasures that appear in the classical Churning of the Milky Ocean story:

Cakkavatti's treasures	Treasures during Churning of Milk Ocean
The elephant Hatthiratana	The elephant Airavata
The horse Assaratana	The horse Uchaihsravas
The Veluriya gem	The Kustubha gem
The Royal Wife	Lakhsmi, the wife of Visnu
The Advisor	Dhanvantra, the Divine Physician
The Treasurer	Parijata, wish-fulfilling tree?

We may view the treasures yielded by the cataclysmic churning event as signs of the advent of a new golden age following a period of great destruction. Very similar treasures accompany the new Cakkavatti, also heralded by supernatural signs, who undertakes a dharmic world conquest i.e., he establishes a right path of living and social order.

Also among the treasures from the Milky Ocean are the newly-born Sun and Moon. This links up with worldwide myths of multiple Suns (and Moons) connected with the ages of the Earth.

These Suns usually rise from the cosmic mountain at the advent of each age. Ho Ting-jui researched this myth extensively and found a surprising diversity of the motif among the Austronesian speakers of Taiwan. He found 33 variants from eight out of 12 Formosan ethnic groups. Ho classifies the multiple Sun myths into three types and associates them them with other myths involving the origin of the Moon, the origin of rituals, the origin of beads, the golden age and the raising of the sky to its present level.

In some cases, these ages are related to the different stages of heaven as among the Yami of Taiwan. Near Pinatubo, the Kapampangans use the term banua "sky, heaven" to refer to an era or age, or to (celestial) time itself.

Not surprisingly the coming of the sacred king of the golden age is also tied to the rising of celestial bodies. Venus as the bright morning star is particularly identified with the new era sacred king in sources as diverse as the New Testament and the myths of Mesoamerica. The rising, setting and rising again of the linked star or planet is often related to rebirth of the sacred king.

In areas were rebirth did not form part of the sacred doctrine, this concept often mutated into the idea of the "sleeping king" or the "once and future king" as found in medieval Europe. In these myths, the king does not die but only sleeps in some hidden cave or castle until the time that he awakes to usher in a new dawn.

Each new era is also correlated with the advent of summer and the helical rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. That this event is also timed in numerous myths with destructive floods gives an indication of monsoon climate origin, were the flooding season occurs in summer. This is also indicated by numerous forms of this myth that mention the Sun at the local zenith when shadows disappear, something that can only happen in the tropical latitudes.

At the dawn of the age the Sun and Moon must explosively break a hole through the top of cosmic mountain through which they will traverse the lower, middle and upper worlds. The sacred king of the era is often described as the custodian of this mountain. From here comes the mandate of Heaven and Earth. And here also the site of what is so often described as the divine war or the 'war in heaven.'

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Cakkavatti Sihanada Suttanta.

Del Re, Arundel. Creation myths of the Formosan Natives, Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, n.d.

Jensen, Lionel M. Manufacturing Confucianism, Duke University Press, 1998, p. 371.

Metevelis, Peter J. Myth in History: Volume 2 of Mythological Essay, iUniverse, 2002 (discussion of Ho Ting-jui's Ph.D. thesis).

__. "The Dog Star and the Multiple Suns motif: an Asian contribution to European mythology," Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 64; 2005, p. 133.

Pankenier, David W. "The Cosmo-political Background of Heaven's Mandate," Early China 20 (1995): 121-176.

Article: More on the single origin of agriculture

I'm forwarding this message posted by Torsten Pedersen on the Cybalist discussion group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist). I suspect Torsten is discussing a single origin of "Old World" agriculture here following Carl Sauer.

From: "tgpedersen"
Date: Wed Jan 4, 2006 3:08 am
Subject: More on the single origin of agriculture


I apologize for the long quotes. There was no way I could cut
further in them.

From
Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench, Alicia Sanchez-Mazas (eds.)
'The peopling of East Asia'

George van Driem
Tibeto-Burman vs. Indo-Chinese: implications for population
geneticists, archaeologists and prehistorians


"
Three arguments support the identification of Sìchua:n as the Tibeto-
Burman homeland.
The first is the centre of gravity argument based on the present and
historically attested geographical distribution of TB language
communities. Sichuan encompasses the area where the upper courses of
the Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong and Yangtze run parallel to each
other within a corridor just 500 km in breadth.
The second argument is that archaeologists identify the Indian
Eastern Neolithic, associated with the indigenous TB populations of
northeastern India and the Indo-Burmese borderlands, as a Neolithic
cultural complex which originated in Sichuan and spread into Assam
and the surrounding hill tracts of Arunachal Pradesh, the Meghalaya,
Tripura, the Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Chittagong before the
third millennium BC (Dani 1960; Sharma 1967, 1981, 1989; Thapar
1985; Wheeler 1959).
Archaeologists have estimated the Indian Eastern Neolithic to date
from between 10,000 and 5,000 BC (Sharma 1989; Thapar 1985). If
these estimates are taken at face value, it would mean that
northeastern India had shouldered adzes at least three millennia
before they appeared in Southeast Asia.
Whilst some archaeologists may give younger estimates for the Indian
Eastern Neolithic, a solid stratigraphy and calibrated radiocarbon
dates are still unavailable for this major South Asian cultural
assemblage.
The Indian Eastern Neolithic appears intrusively in the northeast of
the Subcontinent and represents a tradition wholly distinct from the
other Neolithic assemblages attested in India.
Assuming that the Indian Eastern Neolithic was borne to the
Subcontinent by ancient Tibeto-Burmans, then if the younger
estimates for this cultural assemblage can be substantiated by solid
dating, the linguistic fracturing of subgroups would have to have
occurred earlier in Sichuan before the migrations, as I had
suggested previously (1998, 2001).
The third argument for a TB homeland in Sichuan is that
archaeologists have argued that southwestern China would be a
potentially promising place to look for the precursors of the
Neolithic civilisations which later took root in the Yellow River
Valley (Chang 1965, 1977, 1986, 1992; Cheng 1957).
The Dàdìwa:n culture in Ga:nsù and Shanxi:, and the contiguous and
contemporaneous Peílígang-Císha:n assemblage along the middle course
of the Yellow River share common patterns of habitation and burial,
and employed common technologies, such as hand-formed tripod pottery
with short firing times, highly worked chipped stone tools and non-
perforated semi-polished stone axes.
The Dàdìwa:n and Péilígang-Císha:n assemblages, despite several
points of divergence, were closely related cultural complexes, and
the people behind these civilisations shared the same preference for
settlements on plains along the river or on high terraces at
confluences.
"

Me: Note 'settlements on plains along the river'

"
Whereas the Sichuan Neolithic represented the continuation of local
Mesolithic cultural traditions, the first Neolithic agriculturalists
of the Dàdìwa:n and Péilígang-Císha:n cultures may tentatively
be identified with innovators who migrated from Sichuan to the
fertile loess plains of the Yellow River basin. The technological
gap between the earlier local microlithic cultures and the highly
advanced Neolithic civilisations which subsequently come into flower
in the Yellow River basin remains striking. Yet a weakness in this
third argument lies in the archaeological state of the art.
Just as it is difficult to argue for a possible precursor in Sichuan
in face of a lack of compelling archaeological evidence, neither can
the inadequate state of the art in Neolithic archaeology in
southwestern China serve as an argument for the absence of such a
precursor. Moreover, agricultural dispersals and linguistic
intrusions may be distinct issues altogether.
The concentration within a contiguous geographical region of all
major high-order TB subgroups other than Tujia: and Sinitic
constitutes a linguistic argument for an early TB linguistic
intrusion into the area that today is northern China.
If the Dàdìwa:n culture in Ga:nsù and Shanxi:, and the contiguous
Péilígang-Císha:n assemblage along the middle course of the Yellow
River are indeed primary Neolithic civilisations, then the eccentric
location of Sinitic and Tujia: may even trace the route of the early
migration out of the TB homeland to the affluent and more
technologically advanced agricultural societies
in the Yellow River basin. In other words, since the linguistic
evidence puts the TB heartland in southwestern China
and northeastern India, an archaeological precursor in Sichuan for
the Dàdìwa:n and Péilígang-Císha:n cultures would fit the hypothesis
that the displacement of Sinitic to northern China was the result of
an early TB archaeological dispersal.
The absence of any such precursor in Sichuan would fit a theory of
early migration from the northern end of the ancient TB dialect
continuum to the affluent areas of pre-TB agricultural civilisations
along the Yellow River. I collectively refer to the ancient TB
populations, who either bore with them from Sichuan to the
loess plateau the technologies of polished stone tools and cord-
marked pottery or were enticed to the loess plateau by the affluence
of the technologically more advanced agricultural civilisations
there, as 'Northern Tibeto-Burmans'. I identify these Northern
Tibeto-Burmans as the likely linguistic ancestors of the Sino-Bodic
groups. Subsequent technological developments were both innovated
and introduced comparatively rapidly in the North, whereas
relatively egalitarian small-scale agricultural societies persisted
in southwestern China until the Bronze Age. This hypothesis places
the split between Northern and Southern TB in the seventh millennium
BC, just before the dawn of the Dàdìwa:n and Péilígang-Císha:n
civilisations. I identify the spread of Bodic groups from Ga:nsù
with the dispersal of the Majia:yáo and Yangsháo Neolithic cultures
and the cultivars broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) and
foxtail millet (Setaria italica), first domesticated on the North
China Plain, into the Himalayan region in the third millennium BC.
Sino-Bodic would have split up into Sinitic and Bodic before this
date.

An alternative proposal to a TB homeland in Sichuan would be to
identify the earliest
Neolithic cultures along the Yellow River basin and on the North
China Plain with the TB homeland.
However, if the TB homeland were to have lain in the Yellow River
basin,
then we would be hard pressed to find a plausible archaeological
correlate for the spread of
Brahmaputran language communities, which once extended beyond Assam
and the Meghalaya and
formerly covered much of the area that is now Bangladesh and West
Bengal.
Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that the early Neolithic
civilisation on the Yellow River is
distinct from the cultural assemblages of the middle Yangtze basin,
the succeeding stages of which
ultimately spread as far afield as Oceania in the course of
millennia.
Both the Yellow River and the middle Yangtze civilisations represent
ancient agricultural
societies as old as those of the Fertile Crescent.
"

So it's Tibeto-Butman (in Sichuan) > Sinitic.
Here comes the next step

"
An intriguing theory involving a remote linguistic relationship with
TB is the Sino-Austronesian theory proposed by Laurent Sagart (1994,
2001 and this volume) connecting TB with AN. Because Sagart
initially recognised possible Sino-Austronesian correspondences
in Chinese material more than in TB, he was originally inclined to
identify the Sino-Austronesian unity with the Lóngsha:n cultural
horizon. However, there is an alternative way of viewing the Sino-
Austronesian evidence and the archaeological record.
The Lóngsha:n coastal interaction ensued upon a northward expansion
of PAN or Austro-Tai culture from its ancient homeland in southern
and southeastern China, and this northward expansion of early
Austronesians would have brought them into contact with early
Northern Tibeto-Burmans. The ensuing contact situations between AN
and the Sino-Bodic branch of TB could have involved the ancient
exchange of vocabulary between the two language families.
The way to test this would be to determine whether items shared by
AN and TB are indeed limited to the Sino-Bodic branch of TB,
including rice terms such as
Malay beras and Tibetan hbras,
a correspondence already pointed out by Hendrik Kern in 1889.
"

There was that *(H-)bh/p-/r/l- word again!
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Op.html
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Opr.html
(in case somewhere someone hadn't heard about them ;-)





"
The Lóngsha:n interaction sphere is an obvious candidate in terms of
time and place for early contacts between ancient Austronesians and
ancient Tibeto-Burmans, particularly the Dàwènkou Neolithic of
Shandong with its well-established ties both with the other coastal
cultures of the Lóngsha:n interaction sphere as well as with the
ancient Northern TB Yangsháo Neolithic civilisation.
"

In other words Tibeto-Burman (in Sichuan) > Sino-Bodic (in Northern
China) > (loans?) Austronesian.

I've wondered a long time what the r-suffix of my *(H-)bh/p- and
*(H-)bh/p-r/l- was about. Voilà Sagart to the rescue:

Laurent Sagart:
Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian

"
-ar- distributed action; distributed object
This infix was inserted between the root initial and the first vowel
of a stem. Attached to verbs of action it indicated that the action
was distributed in time (occurring over several discrete occasions),
or in space (involving several agcnts/patients/locations);
attached to nouns it indicated a referent distributed in space,
that is having double or multiple structure.
The reflex of this infix in the AN languages is -ar-, marking verbs
of distributed action and nouns of distributed object, including
names of paired or multiple body parts.
"
Aha. 'having double or multiple structure', 'names of paired or
multiple body parts'

"
Infixation is often, but not always, in the first of two
reduplicated syllables:

Paiwan k-ar-akim 'to search everywhere' (kim 'search')
k-ar-apkap-an 'sole of foot'
Puyuma D-ar-ukap 'palm of hand'
Bunun d-al-apa 'sole of foot'
(PAN *dapa 'palm of hand')
Amis p-ar-okpok 'to gallop'
t-ar-odo' 'fingers, toes'
k-ar-ot 'harrow'
Tagalog d-al-akdak 'sowing of rice seeds or seedlings
for transplanting'
(dakdak 'driving in of sharp end
of stakes into soil')
k-al-aykay 'rake'
Malay ketap 'to bite teeth':
k-er-etap 'to bite teeth repeatedly'

Other AN languages show an infix -aR- with similar functions (not
illustrated here).
According to the sound correspondences presented above, both -r-
and -R- correspond to OC -r-.
Although no living TB language has -r- infixation as a living
process, paired nouns and verbs with what appears to be an infix -r-
show up here and there, with similar semantics as in Chinese:

Burm. pok 'a drop (of liquid)':
prok 'speckled, spotted'
pwak 'to boil up and break, as
boiling liquid':
prwak 'ibid.'
khwe2 'curve, coil' :
khrwe2- 'to surround, attend'
Kachin hpun 'of pimples, to appear on the body' :
hprun 'pimples, on the body;
to appear on the body, of pimples'
Chepang -r- pop, prop 'the lungs'
brok 'be partly white, grey, streaked'
(of hair); compare
TB bok 'white'.

I first identified the Chinese -r- distributed action/object infix
from minimal pairs in Old Chinese (Sagart 1993).
Later on, I described some infixed pairs in modern dialects
where the infix showed up as the regular modern reflex -1-,
preceded either with a schwa or with a full or partial copy of the
syllable's rime (Sagart 1994, 2001).
Here are some examples of infixed nouns and verbs from Yimeng,
a Jin dialect of Inner Mongolia, where the infixed string is -&?1-
(Li 1991):

p-&?l-ai3 'to swing, oscillate'
p-&?l-&n1 'to run on all sides'
xu-&?l-a4 'to scribble'
t-&?l-&u1 'cluster(s) of fruit hanging from branches'
khu-&?l-u3 'wheel(s) of a car'
"

But there's my r-suffix! Check
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Opr.html
for senses like 'speckled, spotted', 'to boil up and break, as
boiling liquid', 'pimples', 'partly white, grey, streaked', and even
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/bHA.html (light),
with
TB bok 'white'.


Now, since all those cognates of *(H-)bh/p-r/l- in IE and
AfroAsiatic that designate a cultivar (eg. Latin far) do _not_ mean
rice, it might be wiser to identify the path of those words as going
directly westwards from the millet-growers of Sichuan, instead of
taking the detour over Austronesian, as I've done earlier.

End of story. Now that was that problem solved.

But isn't it tempting to analyse out *beR- in (eg.) Proto-
Austronesian *beRek "pig" and *beRas "rice", as standing for
something agriculture-related, whatever that is (river?)?


Torsten

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Glossary: Turtle

Archaeological findings suggest the turtle was important to the material and religious culture in Asia and the Pacific from very early times.

The Hoabinhian people included the turtle in their diet. Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in China and Thailand provide evidence of the importance of tortoise shell in the making of cultural implements.

At locations like Khok Phanom Di in Thailand, turtle shell breastplates and other ornaments finely carved from turtle carapaces adorned burials.

At Jiahu and in the Dawenkou culture of China, turtle shells figured prominently in burials. The shells were usually found near the waist area in Dawenkou burials. They appeared to be used mostly as rattles with the plastron and carapace tied together and pebbles placed inside.

Tortoise shell was used during the Shang dynasty for purposes of divination. The species identified for use as "oracle bones" is Testudo emys found only in Southeast Asia.

The species found most often in earlier burials was Chinemys reevesii, a type today associated with South China, although probably due to the warm Kuroshio Current it can also be found as far north as the islands of Kyushu and Honshu in Japan. Li Liu states in The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States that:

No remains of Chinemys reevesii have ever been reported from the northwestern part of China including the Wei River valley, except for the Kangjia specimens. These phenonmena suggest that the climatic conditions of ancient northwestern China may not have provided a suitable semi-tropical or tropical climate...and it is likely that the turtle shells from Kangjia were obtained, directly or indirectly, from southern or southeastern regions where the animal lived.

The turtle sacrifice was important in many Austronesian lands including Bali, where it survives to this day, Micronesia and Polynesia. Turtles in many Polynesian cultures were associated with the chiefly class.

In Fiji, indigenous chants are used to call turtles. Women sing the turtles to the surface in this ritual which celebrates a tale in which a princess and her daughter change into turtles to escape kidnappers. Here and elsewhere the turtle frequently figures as an ancestral spirit of totem in Austronesian cultures.

Often the turtle is also seen as a fertility symbol and in the Bisayan islands of the Philippines and other regions, turtle eggs are still eaten as aphrodisiacs and fertility boosters.

Chinese legends of blessed islands floating on the backs of giant turtles may be linked with the massive sea turtles of the Pacific. In Bali and various parts of Polynesia and Oceania, the concept of islands floating on the backs of turtles is also present. The idea of mobile "swimming" islands is widespread in this region and may hearken back to the rapidly-rising sea levels of the Sundaland flood periods.

In Bali, the Bedawang Nala "Big Turtle" statue is found at shrines symbolizing a cosmic turtle that supports the earth.


The Bedawang Nala supporting two large snakes on its back that act as pillars of the earth, and also the Black Stone, the lid to the Underworld, as found at Padmasana shrines in Bali.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Higham, Charles. The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia: From 10,000 B.C. to the Fall of Angkor, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Liu, Li. The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Peregrine, Peter N. and Melvin Ember (eds). Encyclopedia of Prehistory: Published in Conjunction with the Human Relations Area Files, Springer, 2001.

Glossary: Mountain of Fire

The symbol of the Mountain of Fire is connected through the ages, and in many cultures, with immortality and "Paradise."

In ancient China, the oldest form of this myth is likely found in the battle between two gods, usually the fire and water gods, that causes the great mountain, the earth's pillar, to collapse. The goddess Nu Gua, of the Dong Yi peoples in Shandong, sacrifices a turtle and uses the legs of the sacrifice to prop up the sky.

Mount Penglai, one of the three blessed islands, was the oldest version of the cosmic mountain -- the home of the immortals, destination of the dead and source of the fruits of immortality.

Penglai was vaguely located in the seas east of Shandong. Nusantao traders and migrants working their way up the Chinese coast may have brought stories of their own sacred volcano that gave rise to the myth in Shandong.

For practical purposes, Mount Penglai was localized to Mount Tai, or Taishan, in Shandong Province. It was on Taishan that 72 emperors performed the Feng sacrifice proclaiming the success of the empire to Heaven. By the first century CE, the Chinese also began to believe that the dead went to Taishan as well as Penglai.

However, the lure of Penglai never totally faded. The 4th century BCE kings Wei, Xuan of Qi and Zhao of Yan all sent failed expeditions to find Penglai and the two other blessed isles of the East. The First Qin Emperor sent a mission in 219 BCE and Han Wudi in 130 BCE but again without success. The legend goes that the three islands drifted about on the backs of giant turtles and eluded the explorers. The turtle under Mt. Penglai reminds us both of Nu Gua's sacrifice and of the turtle used to support Mt. Mandara in the Indian Churning of the Milky Ocean tale.

Starting around the middle of the second century BCE, immortality becomes more associated with the Kunlun range in eastern Turkestan and the "Queen Mother of the West." Here also was shifted the "Mountain of Fire" originally associated with Nu Gua. In a sense, the Queen Mother of the West becomes the new Nu Gua and her yang counterpart the King Father of the East would represent Fu Hsi, the husband of Nu Gua (and founder of the Dong Yi lineage). To attain immortality at Mt. Kunlun, one must invariably cross the supreme obstacle of the Mountain of Fire.

The Book of Enoch also describes a Mountain of Fire during the patriarch's angelic journeys through the world.

"And from there I went to another place on earth and he showed me a mountain of fire that burned day and night."

-- I Enoch 24:1

On the mountain was the throne of God and the Tree of Life. In another passage the "Garden of Righteousness" and the Tree of Knowledge are mentioned. The descriptions place the mountain both in the east and the south far beyond the lands of cinnamon and aloeswood.

"The fruit [of the Tree of Life] shall be given to the elect for life, towards the north it will be transplanted to the holy place, to the temple of the Lord [in Jerusalem], the eternal King."

-- I Enoch 25:5

"And thence I went over the summits of all these mountains, far towards the east of the earth, and passed above the Erythraean sea and went far from it, and passed over the angel Zotiel. And I came to the Garden of Righteousness."

-- I Enoch 32:2

In Ezekiel 28, the fiery holy mountain of God is also equated with the Garden of Eden. It was here that the two trees -- of life and knowledge -- were located (Genesis 2).

In the Book of Jubilees, which like the Book of Enoch was eventually banned by the western church it states:

"And he knew that the Garden of Eden is the holy of holies, and the dwelling of the Lord, and Mount Sinai the centre of the desert, and Mount Zion -the centre of the navel of the earth: these three were created as holy places facing each other."

-- Book of Jubilees 19-20

"And he knew that a blessed portion and a blessing had come to Shem and his sons unto the generations for ever -the whole land of Eden and the whole land of the Red Sea, and the whole land of the east and India, and on the Red Sea and the mountains thereof, and all the land of Bashan, and all the land of Lebanon and the islands of Kaftur, and all the mountains of Sanir and 'Amana, and the mountains of Asshur in the north, and all the land of Elam, Asshur, and Babel, and Susan and Ma'edai, and all the mountains of Ararat, and all the region beyond the sea, which is beyond the mountains of Asshur towards the north, a blessed and spacious land, and all that is in it is very good. And for Ham came forth the second portion, beyond the Gihon towards the south to the right of the Garden, and it extends towards the south and it extends to all the mountains of fire..."

-- Book of Jubilees 21-22

Shem's territory, according to this source, started in the extreme East in the Garden of Eden and then extends westward through all the lands of the "Red Sea" (Indian Ocean) and the lands of the East and India, and then through the Persian Gulf to Lebanon and Ararat and east again to include Mesopotamia.

Curiously both the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees formed an important core of the literature of the Essene sect of Qumram. Among Christians, Enoch in particular is directly quoted in the canonical Epistle of Jude, and many verses from the New Testament appear to owe their origin to this work.

However, in the second century CE, the rabbis began attacking the Book of Enoch, and it was banned among Christians along with the Book of Jubilees by the Council of Laodicea in the fourth century. Only the Ethiopian Orthodox Church accepted these works as part of their official canon.

The geography of Enoch and Jubilees and their location of Eden in the extreme East still managed to survive into medieval times as shown by early maps of this period.


The Kalacakra Mandala is a model of the universe or the cosmic mountain. The outermost circle is, in fact, known as me-ri "the mountain of fire."

When Muslim traders began coming into the Southeast Asian region they noticed an active volcano near the kingdom of Zabag.

"...near Zabag is a mountain called the Mountain of Fire, which cannot be approached. Smoke escapes by day and fire by night and from its foot comes a spring of cold, fresh water and a spring of hot water.

-- Akbar al-Sin (9th century)

The geographer al-Masudi, referring to the islands of Zabag, repeats the description of a mountain giving off smoke by day and fire by night. This resembles the story in Exodus describing a pillar of cloud or smoke by day, and a pillar of fire by night. Such phenomenon is a common feature of many volcanoes that give off large amounts of water vapor, which is visible in the day but masks the fiery aspects of the volcanic plume. At night, the vapor becomes invisible and the plume appears fiery instead.

Idrisi in the 12th century mentions a "Hill of Fire" near or in Mayt (Chinese Mait "Mindoro").

Along the way in India, the Muslim travelers may have heard the myth of the great Mt. Mandara taken to churn the far eastern Ocean of Milk on the back of a great cosmic turtle. The mountain became enveloped in flames due to friction caused by the churning and one of the many by-products of this event was the elixir of immortality.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Allan, Sarah. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China, SUNY Press, 1991.

Beer, Robert. The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs, Chicago: Serindia Publications, Inc, 2004.

Eberhard, Wolfram. A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols, London: Routledge, 1988.

Ling, Shun-Sheng. Turtle sacrifice in China and Oceania, Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Monograph No. 20 (in Chinese), 1972.

Luttikhuizen, Gerald P. Paradise Interpreted: Representations of Biblical Paradise in Judaism and Christianity Brill Academic Publishers, 1999.

Strassberg, Richard E. A Chinese Bestiary, University of California Press, 2002.

Glossary: Secret Societies

A secret society may be described as a society known or thought to exist that strives to conceal its membership, meetings, laws, organization, rituals, etc.

Secret societies often involve members taking oaths to preserve the secrecy of the group, and different levels of membership which, in turn, conceal higher knowledge of the society from lower level members.

At the extreme end, secret societies attempt to conceal, or at least mask, their very existence and as a rule do not publish, even secretly, any documents for fear of them passing into the wrong hands. At the other end, semi-secret groups openly seek members and have practices that are, in fact, easy to ascertain even without joining the group.

Such organizations can be formed for any purpose. The most well-known may be those created along religious or spiritual lines. However, other societies have been linked with everything from organized crime to national revolutions.

Crime organizations like the Yakuza of Japan and the Tongs of China enforce secrecy on pain of bodily injury or death. For this reason, these groups are often successful in concealing important details about their activities and structure despite significant resources focused against them. Almost all secret societies will expel and ostracize members who do not adequately keep their oaths of secrecy.

Among spiritual and healing groups such as the West African society doctors, one's spirito-magical powers depend on keeping certain key knowledge concealed from non-initiates.

According to the Greeks, the Ancient Egyptians had secret societies, and the philosopher Pythagoras was said to have modeled his own fellowship on what he had learned while in Egypt. The Greeks also referred to roving "Chaldeans" and "Magi" who were skilled at the magical and secret arts.

The Chaldeans were originally an ethnic group from the marshes of southern Iraq known in ancient times as the "Sea-Lands." Some believe the Chaldeans were descendents of the ancient Sumerians. When they conquered Babylon in the seventh century BCE they had brought with them Sumerian knowledge and words that had been "lost" for more than 2,000 years. They still used many terms which had long been replaced in known texts with Akkadian or other words. It may be that the Chaldeans had preserved both orally and secretly the older knowledge.

In modern European history, secret societies are nearly all linked with Freemasonry. The Illuminati, Carbonari and the Reading Societies are examples of organizations started by Masons.

The Freemasons themselves have often been linked mysteriously with the Knights Templar, and through the latter, with old "heretical" sects like the Cathars. The suspected involvement of the Freemasons in the overthrow of the French throne is often linked directly with the destruction fo the Knights Templar by the French monarchy.

Although most rule out the idea that the French Revolution was a Freemason plot, no one denies their influence particularly in the area of propaganda. Nearly every Freemason in France joined the revolution, and every revolutionary municipality had a Freemason lodge.

Interestingly enough, the youth organization of Freemasonry is known as the Order of Demolay, after Jacques, although the group professes no links with the old Templars.

The Catholic Church has taken a strong stand against the Masons. Popes Clement XII, Benedict XIV, Pius VIII and Pius IX have all condemned the Freemasons and any similar or linked organizations. Joining the Freemasons is prohibited according to the Encyclical of Leo XIII. Cardinal Ratzinger before his recent elevation to the Papal office reaffirmed the church's traditional position against masonry.

Secret societies played an important part in the revolutions of Third World countries against Western colonialism.

In the Philippines, a strange coalition of indigeneous and foreign secret societies cooperated in the struggle for independence. The elite intelligensia became freemasons while studying in Europe, and imported the practice to the Philippines where it was eventually illegalized.

At the peasant level, many similar organizations formed, the most prominent of which was the Katipunan. Organized with a mixture of Masonic and indigenous socio-religious concepts, the Katipunan started and led the Revolution against Spain until betrayed by their elite allies. Like the Lusung lords centurie ealier, the leaders of the group had sought help from Japan.

Later when the Philippines came under American domination, various secret societies sprung up usually rallied around a charismatic religious leader. These resembled in some ways the messianic Ratu Adil cults that arose during Indonesia's liberation struggle.

In Japan, descendents of the Samurai warrior class formed the Black Ocean and later the Black Dragon Society to protect the emperor and traditional Japanese culture. The Black Dragon Society was always at odds with the secular government and suffered numerous crackdowns before the start of World War II. These societies saw Western influence and expansionism as the main culprit eroding traditional Japan and continually aimed at curbing this influence.

When the Black Dragon Society condemned Japan's ally Italy for invading Ethiopia, the government nearly crushed the organization.

However, the group was able to influence movements in the U.S. in various ways. One secret organization known as the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World had established close links with Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and seems to have had real links with the society.

After World War II, secret societies often played the key role in revolutionary independence movements throughout the world. Even into the present-day, the Falun Gong plays a similar role in China.

With the breakdown of colonialism, new indigenous religious movements have used the secret society model to spawn a wave of "cults" that continue to change the spiritual landscape of the developing world.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies, New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 1961, 1989.

Fanning, William H.W. The Catholic Encyclopedia s.v. "Secret Societies," Robert Appleton Company, 1912.

Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, University of California Press, 2004.

Glossary: Tupaia's Map

The map of the Tahitian navigator Tupaia is important because it documents the existence of what has been called a "dynamic cognitive map."

Such cognitive techniques were easily translated into modern cartography as shown by the existing Tupaia chart that was constructed according to Cook by Tupaia with his "own hands."


Tupaia's Map, click here for larger version.

The chart covers more than 40 degrees of longitude and 20 degrees of latitude. Tupaia himself was said to have sailed on a journey that took him across 20 degrees of longitude. And on the trip to Batavia in Java, he never failed in pointing properly in the direction of his home island. The distance from Fiji to Tahiti both shown on his chart is more than 2,500 miles.

According to Forster, Tupaia also knew the relative size and shapes of the islands:

"...when on board the Endearvour, gave an account of his navigations and mentioned the names of more than eighty isles which he knew, together with the size and situation, the greater part of which he had visited, and having soon perceived the meaning and use of charts, he gave directions for making one according to his account, and always pointed to the part of the heavens, where each isle was situated, mentioning at the same time that it was either larger or smaller than Taheitee, and likewise whether is was high or low, whether it was peopled or not, adding now and then some curious accounts relative to some of them."

Tupaia's ability to quickly pick up the meaning of charts and to associate them with his correlation of stellar and terrestrial cognitive maps helps substantiate one of the key proposals made in this blog.

Micronesians also possessed traditions of cognitive wave charts that have persisted into modern times. These examples demonstrate the ability of storing "maps" of a type in one's memory. I would suggest these were once common throughout the Austronesian-speaking area and helped in the establishment of long-range sea trading empires.

Another example of cognitive mapping is recorded in Beechey's voyage to the Bering Strait and the information provided to him by Eskimo informants. Beechey writes of the Kotzebue Eskimos:

"...they drew the coastal line with a stick and measure it according to day voyages. After this they erected the mountain chains with sand and stones and they represented the islands with attention to their size and form with heaps of gravel...then they showed the villages and fishing stations by means of a number of sticks which were placed in the ground, so that an imitation of the reality appeared."

Here we have the first example of what might be termed a relief map.

It appears that traditional navigators had little trouble quickly understanding modern cartographic principles and could apply their skills to map-making if they so desired.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Gatty, Harold. Finding Your Way Without Map Or Compass, Dover, 199, pp. 48-50.

Tumbull, David. Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers: Makers of Knowledge and Space, London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 134-137.

See also Suarez, "Early Mapping of the Pacific" pp. 148-9.

Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia

A press relase of an article suggesting an early diffusion of the bottle gourd from Asia to America is posted below.

The full text article can be found free at:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0509279102v1.pdf

It has a map showing the distribution in the Americas. From this map it is evident that the further north it occurs is Cloudsplitter Cave in Kentucky.

It also appears from the dates to have been introduced first in Mexico
and then brought north:

Guila Naquitz, Mexico -- 9920 BP
Querada Jaguay, Peru -- 8415 BP
Windover, Florida -- 8105 BP
Mammoth Cave, Kentucky -- 2750 BP
Cloudsplitter Cave, Kentucky -- 2735 BP

One then has to question how a pan-tropical plant like the bottle gourd would have been diffused across the Bering Sea. A more southern disperal is a better argument.

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Public release date: 13-Dec-2005

Contact: Steve Bradt

steve_bradt@harvard.edu

617-496-8070

Harvard University

Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia

Plants widely used as containers arrived, already domesticated, some 10,000 years ago

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 13, 2005 -- Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new genetic comparison of modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere. The finding solves a longstanding archaeological enigma by explaining how a domesticated variant of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places as far removed as modern-day Florida, Kentucky, Mexico and Peru.

The work, by a team of anthropologists and biologists from Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Massey University in New Zealand and the University of Maine, appears this week on the web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Integrating genetics and archaeology, the researchers assembled a collection of ancient remnants of bottle gourds from across the Americas. They then identified key genetic markers from the DNA of both the ancient gourds and their modern counterparts in Asia and Africa before comparing the plants' genetic make-up to determine the origins of the New World gourds.

"For 150 years, the dominant theory has been that bottle gourds, which are quite buoyant and have no known wild progenitors in the Americas, floated across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa and were picked up and used as containers by people here," says Noreen Tuross, the Landon T. Clay Professor of Scientific Archaeology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Much to our surprise, we found that in every case the gourds found in the Americas were a genetic match with modern gourds found in Asia, not Africa. This suggests quite strongly that the gourds that were used as containers in the Americas for thousands of years before the advent of pottery were brought over from Asia."

The researchers say it's possible the domesticated gourds -- differentiated from wild bottle gourds by a much thicker rind -- were conveyed to North America by people who arrived from Asia in boats or who walked across an ancient land bridge between the continents, or that the gourds floated across the Bering Strait after being transported by humans from their native Africa to far northeastern Asia.

"This finding paints a new picture of the founding of the Americas," says co-author Bruce Smith of the Smithsonian Institution. "These people did not arrive here empty-handed; they brought a domesticated plant and dogs with them. They arrived with important tools necessary to survive and thrive on a new continent, including some knowledge of and experience with plant domestication."

Thought to have originated in Africa, bottle gourds (Lagenaria sicereria) have been grown worldwide for thousands of years. The gourds have little food value but their strong, hard-shelled fruits were long prized as containers, musical instruments and fishing floats. This lightweight "container crop" would have been particularly useful to human societies before the advent of pottery and settled village life, and was apparently domesticated thousands of years before any plant was domesticated for food purposes.

Radiocarbon dating indicates that bottle gourds were present in the Americas by 10,000 years ago and widespread by 8,000 years ago. Some of the specimens studied by the team were not only the oldest bottle gourds ever found but also quite possibly the oldest plant DNA ever analyzed. The newest of their archaeological samples, a specimen found in Kentucky, was just 1,000 years old -- suggesting the gourds were used in the New World as containers for at least 9,000 years.

###

Tuross and Smith's co-authors on the PNAS paper are David L. Erickson of the National Museum of Natural History, Andrew C. Clarke of Massey University and Daniel H. Sandweiss of the University of Maine. Their work was supported by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of Natural History and by Harvard's Department of Anthropology and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Public release date: 13-Dec-2005

---
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
http://sambali.blogspot.com/

Article: Social hierarchy in Pampanga

The following reconstruction of social hierarchy in Pampanga based on Bergano and various other sources should be helpful in understanding the political situation in pre-contact Lusung.

Pagbansag

The Pagbansag were hereditary titles, the "pag-" prefix indicating those titles that are passively obtained i.e. by birth. Many of the pagbansag are related to the clan or village that first settled an area or mountain. Pagbansag connected with the land cannot be given away or taken away in native thought as they belong to the ancestors. This caused quite a bit of friction over the concept of land "ownership" during colonial times.

Pagbansagan -- The highest title in the land meaning "the one who bestows hereditary titles (pagbansag)". In the common practice, the Pagbansangan is the lawgiver and the supreme judge in matters of law. Also, in most cases the person is also an heriditary priest or shaman and grants priesthoods to others. The Pagbansagan of Pinatubo would grant titles for the sulip (banua) of Pinatubo, or those districts (danay) primarly fed by the rivers and streams of that volcano. When a tipon is called between these districts the Pagbansagan naturally officiates and carries "veto" power. In a national crisis, the Pagbansagan appoints commanders and deputies, while the danay provide their own troops and supplies.

Calili -- Hereditary priest/priestess.

Ari -- This title means literally "king" or "queen." An Ari is an hereditary ruler as the word Ariyan means "of royal blood, prince, princess." The Ari generally rule over geographical districts. The Pagbansagan is the Ari of the sulip/banua. None of the Ari, including the Pagbansagan, had autocratic power but ruled through a combination of political, legal and spiritual portfolios. When clans were able to attain rulership over lands outside the traditional danay, the clan leaders known as Dapu or Nunu became rulers in a thalassocracy.

Dapu -- Also known as Nunu or "grandparents" these were the leaders of clans who could hold power across danay or establish their own kingdoms in other lands. These titles were hereditary but also had elective qualities and did not involve the Pagbansagan. The Dapu or Nunu of major clans were very powerful. The genealogy of the clan could also be called nunu. It was generally traced back to the Talampacan or great-great-grandparents and reckoned bilaterally. However, clans could unite through blood pacts usually involving a marriage, or the ritual drinking by the Dapu of a bit of each other's blood mixed with native wine (alac or sasa).

Dayang -- A "Lady" or "Dona." May be related to the word daya "blood" indicating bilineal or matrilineal inheritance of certain titles.

Laquin -- A "great man," probably a contraction of lalaqui-an. These titles often connoted some kind of spiritual lordship over some element, activity, object, etc.

Gat -- Possibly a foreign title as Bergano lists neither gat or pamagat. Also, some of the words compounded with "Gat-" look foreign i.e., maitam in Gatmaitam may come from the Moro languages in the South. These surnames may represent the ancient marriages with nobility from Brunei and Sulu. Gat has a connotation similar to "Don" in Spanish.

Basal -- A governor, apparently related to the blacksmith caste.

Punsalang -- A captain, probably hereditary, related to the old noble clan of Pinatubo and Apung Mallari.

Hereditary offices. These were all honorable positions although some may be difficult to understand as such today. For example the pagbansag Manalang means "the one who propagates the Talang tree," which alone does not sound very noble until one understands that the Talang was very sacred in this region.

Bansag

These were appointed offices. Some like the title of Ucum could also be granted as hereditary titles.

Alili -- Appointed priest/priestess.

Ucum -- Also probably Nucum. A judge, a "mayor" of a large population center or ucuman.

Bansagan -- General or Captain-General.

Bansag -- Captain or Maestro-de-Campo.

Guinu -- A chief or lord. The equivalent of "datu" in other areas. Usually the ruler of at least a barangay. The Guinu were established mostly by merit although a good genealogy was always helpful.

Datu -- The title of Datu also existed in some areas. Originally this meant the captain of a ship known as a barangay, and also the settlement of the same name. As with the Guinu, the power of the Datu could vary widely. One barangay might be dozens of times larger than another. Some datus might command a "fleet" of barangays. The position of Datu was generally earned.

Una -- A captain, especially of a land force.

Biuisan -- Anyone who receives taxes or tribute (buis) for any reason. Some of the pagbansag were also Biuisan.

Other appointed offices similar to those of the pagbansag in most cases, but not hereditary.

Glossary: Sapa

Words related to sapa and saba occur widely throughout insular Southeast Asia as placenames were they are derived from a root having meanings such as "estuary, river-mouth, creek, brook, canal, place where fish enter."

The words sapa and saba may be the origin of the Arabic Zabag. Michael Jan de Goeje and Gabriel Ferrand, followed by Paul Wheatley, Roger Blench, Waruno Mahdi and others, believe that Zabag was derived from an earlier Sabag.

Sabag, in turn, was an Arabization of the word Savaka the Tamil name for the people of Zabag. The suffix "-ka" here would be a common one in Sanskrit and Prakrit used to describe a people from a certain locality, thus Yona-ka means "people or person from Yona (Greece)."

Savaka would then mean "people from Sapa/Saba" or "the people who dwell in estuaries or at river-mouths."

De Goeje and Ferrand suggested that a group mentioned in early Islamic texts known as the Sayabidja or Sayabiga, were pre-Islamic settlers in the Sind and Persian Gulf from Zabag. Sayabiga was stated to be the plural form of Saibagi which in one text is said to be pronounced sometimes as Sabag.

The Sayabiga were described as leaders of "marines" in warships, soldiers, prison and treasury guards and mercenaries. They were noted as faithful to those they served.

Apparently they had come from southern India and settled in the Sind where they became closely associated with another group known as the Zutt or Zott. Others were found at various locations along the Persian Gulf coast during the time of Caliph Abu Bakr.

Eventually the Zutt and Sayabiga, both apparently known as buffalo herders, are found at various locations serving mostly in military or police capacity including Bahrain and Basra. Both groups were devout Shi'as.

Sayabiga and the Assassins

Earlier in this blog, it was noted that Nusantao influence in Europe during medieval times may have flowed significantly through the Templars. The Templar connection in the Middle East might have been through the group famously known as the Assassins, a "fanatical" Shi'ite sect holed up in the mountains of Syria.

The Caliph Muawiya settled groups of Zutt and Sayabiga in Antioch after he had deposed the Shah of Iran. These folk acted mainly as buffalo herders and were again forced to move when the Greeks conquered the area.

Some were said to have ended up in Syria. The Zutt of Syria became the Dom Gypsies.

The possible link between the Zutt and Sayabiga with the Assassins has been suggested by Ivanow who noticed the infusion of "Tantric" elements into certain sects of Islam:

"We find numerous parallels in such widely differing ethnic, linguistic and social groups as the sects of Ali-Ilahi of Kurdistan, Nusayris of Syria, and Tantric cults, more particularly those of the worshippers of Shakti in India, in addition to avowedly mobile and wandering darwish organizations. It looks as if there is, after all, a mysterious connection between all these. The Tantric cults are believed to be the remnants of the ancient, pre-Aryan religion of India, gradually submerged, modified and partly re-modeled by orthodox Hinduism, the religion of the invaders."

Ivanow suggested that this influence might be connected with the migrations from the Sind discussed above although he mentions only the Zutt. "Persian darwishes show remarkably strong ties with similar organisations in India, chiefly in Sind, and it is quite possible that certain ideas could have been imported through such channels. It appears, however, that such importations would have been made at an early date."

When the Assassin holdouts in Syria were destroyed by the Mongols, the vast majority of the group went to India where they placed themselves eventually in the service of the Aga Khan.

If some Sayabiga found their way into the Assassin group it could easily explain the Templar link with Zabag. Although admittedly there is no way to know whether these Shi'ite Sayabiga maintained any ties or loyalty to their old homeland.

However, such a relationship would not be any stranger than that which existed between the Templars and the Assassins. The former were consistently accused of conspiring with the latter even though both groups represented what are generally considered as the most fanatic defenders of their respective religions.

Even the Templar founder Hugh de Payens was accused of responsibility in forging the pact between Baldwin II of Jerusalem and the Assassins. When Christian fortunes waned in the Holy Land many in Europe cast a suspicious eye on the Templars.

The historian M. Von Hammer has even suggested that the Templars modeled themselves after the Assassin order. He cites similar organization, dress, and practices. Godfrey Higgins later noted that both groups had certain gnostic and tantric beliefs in common. Both seemed to have deistic and pantheistic leanings.

The two groups had similar colors which had great significance to the heraldry-conscious medieval Europeans. They both wore white garments, the Assassins with a red girdle and the Templars with a red cross. Both orders were divided into three classes: the Assassins into the Fedavee, Dais and Refeek, and the Templars into the knights, chaplains and servers. The Templar master and priors would conform to the Assassin sheik and Dais al-Kebir.

Most controversial was the so-called "tribute" payed by the Assassins to the Templars. Although the latter claimed to have forced the hand of the Assassins in this matter, the question of the payment never failed to raise suspicion.

Whatever the ultimate reason for the destruction of the Templars in France, no doubt their curious relationship with the Assassins had helped in the final decision against them.

If we take it then that the Sayabiga and Zutt were among the members of the Assassins and responsible for Tantric elements in their doctrine, the passing of Nusantao knowledge would have survived mainly in Portugul. It was here that the Templar order was able to persist through nothing more than a subtle name change.

Like the heathen Flegtanis of Toledo who acted as informant of Kyot and, through the latter, Wolfram von Eschenbach, the Sayabiga acted as informants of the Templars.

The Templars of Portugal, or Knights of Christ as they became known after the holocaust in France, constituted the driving force behind the country's advances in maritime navigation.

The Sayabiga hypothesis thus lies on the similarity of the name with Savaka and Zabag, their marine and mercenary nature which closely resembles the behavior of the Luções centuries later in Southeast Asia, their settlements along coastal areas, and their Tantric linkages (Suvarnadvipa/Zabag). The relationship between the Sayabiga and the Assassins and the latter's links with the Templars are fuzzy but this explanation would solve the riddle of Templar and Assassin tantric/Indic influence.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Barber, Malcolm. The Trial of the Templars, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

William and Robert Chambers, "Secret societies of the Middle Ages," Chambers Papers for the People, Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers, 1850.

de Goeje, Michael Jan. Memoires d'histoire et de geographie orientales, No. 3, Leiden, 1903.

Ferrand, Gabriel. E.J. Brill's First Encyclopedia of Islam s.v. "Sayabidja" (p. 200-1), The Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1927, 1993.

Ivanow, W. "Satpanth," Collectanea Vol. 1. 1948, Published for the Ismaili Society by E. I. BRILL, Onde Rijn, 33a, Leiden, Holland.

Wasserman, James. The Templars and the Assassins, Muze Inc., 2005.

For Sayabiga, see also: Wheatley, Paul The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh Through the Tenth Centuries, The University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 44; Blench, Robert and Matthew Spriggs. Archaeology and Language III: Artefacts, Language and Texts, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 271.