Abstract
TONGAN ASTRONOMY AND THE CALENDAR.—In one of the Occasional Papers of the Bernice Pallahi Bishop Museum (vol. viii. No. 4, 1922) Mr. E. E. V. Collocott has collected all that can be known of Tongan astronomy. They had the vaguest notions of the heavens and of the relations of the sky to stars, sun, and moon. They treated astronomy as a branch of navigation, but since the use of the mariner's compass, few if any living Tongans are able to point to or name more than a very small proportion of the stars. Practically all the available star lore of the Tongans is included in sailing directions written by the late Tukuaho, who was Premier of Tonga about thirty years ago, and this account, copied by permission of his son Tungi, consort of H.M. the Queen of Tonga, has been followed by Mr. Collocott in compiling this paper.
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Research Items. Nature 112, 177–178 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/112177a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/112177a0