answered, "Ŏ?"[1] He said, "Come forth from my eye. Go down and tread on the thing I have made. Where are the ends of it?" Na Arean the Younger looked, and said, "It has no ends." His father said again, "Where is the middle of it"; he answered, "I know not." So Na Arean the elder plucked a hollow tooth from his jaw and thrust it into the thing he had made, saying, "This is the navel!" Through the hollow tooth, Na Arean the Younger descended and found a Darkness and a Cleaving-together of the elements, which he proceeded to straighten out in the usual manner. When heaven stood on high, it was found that the light of the upper regions streamed through the hollow tooth of Na Arean the elder: thus, the sun came into being.
In this version, the memory of an original darkness survives only in the phrase, "Darkness and Cleaving-together"— nothing more. It is a mere name, no longer a fact; it plays no part in the working out of the drama of creation, because it is nullified, as it were, from the outset by the passage of light through Na Arean's tooth. Its decline of importance is accompanied and, I think, explained by a far clearer presentation than is usual in Gilbertese myth of the idea of an absolute god. That is to say, in the clash of cosmogonies evidenced in the record before us, the evolutionary hypothesis has paid for the fuller expression of the creative theme by the loss of one of its most salient characteristics. Darkness is conquered by light; for I would point out that the Maiana myth clearly supports the idea that the pristine creative being is a light god. Such was the brightness of space wherein he dwelt that its passage through a hole in heaven brought the sun into existence.
I now turn to creation-myths of a converse tendency, wherein the evolutionary idea of the universe preponderates
- ↑ "Ŏ?" is the usual Gilbertese answer to a call.
