Hourglass Configurations Lévi Strauss

University of Toronto Press
Chapter Title: Hourglass Configurations

Chapter Author(s): Claude Lvi-Strauss
Book Title: The Double Twist
Book Subtitle: From Ethnography to Morphodynamics
Book Editor(s): PIERRE MARANDA
Published by: University of Toronto Press. (2001)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442681125.6
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PART ONE:
Ethnography and the Canonical Formula
The four first chapters, empirically oriented, apply the CF to field data,
mostly Melanesian. Levi-Strauss's chapter conjugates cross-culturally
vernacular architectures - among others, Fijian - to mythologies.
Racine discusses an application of the CF to Papuan ritual and also to
Chipayan (Bolivia) religious architecture, while Schwimmer tests the
usefulness of the CF to describe historical change against his Papuan
field data. Maranda uses the CF to contrast another basic culture
change, the passage from pagan to Christian ontologies of the Lau
people of Malaita, Solomon Islands, Melanesia.
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1 Hourglass Configurations
Claude Levi-Strauss
(Translated from the French original by Robbyn Seller, Anthropology,
McGill University, Montreal)
It was in 1977, in Japan, facing the Ise Shrine, that the reflections I am
sharing here took shape in a somewhat disorderly fashion. I was
struck, as would be most people, by the roof frames, of which the principal rafters cross in an X and jut out past the ridge (see figure 1). The
Izumo Shrines, also of archaic style, have a similar appearance, but due
to crossbeams which are not part of the structure but are affixed to
the roof as a decoration.
This is reminiscent, of course, of islands in the South Seas where the
roofs of certain houses resemble those of Ise: a further indication of the
links that existed between Japan and that area of the world, already
manifest when one compares their myths.1 However, to apprehend
what this kind of structure could signify to the Japanese themselves,
we must let their ancient texts speak. According to the Kojiki, a ritual
formula accompanied the construction of a palace or a shrine: 'Root the
posts of your palace firmly in the bed-rock below and raise high
the crossbeams unto the upper world.'2 In this manner, the shape of
the roof frame, which one might say recalls that of an hourglass,
reproduces the form of the universe. The part below the roof ridge
corresponds to the earthly world, the part above it to the heavenly
world, which rises up to the 'plain of the highest heaven' inhabited
by the gods.
This representation of the cosmos comes to us, by way of China,
from India. It may have originated in Mesopotamia, but this will not be
my concern; rather, I will consider its extension in the opposite direction. Paul Mus has often evoked, in its Indian form, the axial Mountain
that carries the lower stories of the divine worlds, while more immateThis content downloaded from 144.82.108.120 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 20:12:57 UTC
16 Claude Levi-Strauss
Figure 1 Ise Sanctuary (after Aston 1896: vol. 1,133).
rial worlds float above its peak.3 'The first feature to be considered' of
this axial Mountain, centre of the world, Meru or Sumeru in Sanskrit,
writes Rolph Stein, 'is the mountain's shape [...] it is a pointed cone
emerging from the sea and carrying on its summit another, inverted
cone that represents the abode of the [...] Gods [...] The whole thing
resembles an hourglass. Wide above and below, it is narrow in the middle'4 (see figure 2).
A feature of religious architecture thus refers to a cosmology. These
hourglass forms, in their application to architecture or to movable
objects imbued with symbolic meaning, are also found in the New
World that Orientalists have left out of their investigations.
Before coming to America it is appropriate to make a stop in eastern
Siberia, en route to the Bering Strait. In his investigation of the relationship between architecture and religious thought, Stein has mentioned
the Koryak, who reside in wooden houses, roughly hexagonal in
shape, with roofs in the form of a funnel or an inverted umbrella (see
figure 3). Like other commentators, he has reiterated Jochelson's utilitarian explanation, in which this unusual structure functions to protect
the entrance hole in the roof from snow, or to break the force of the
Hourglass Configurations 17
Figure 2 Mount Sumeru as a seat (after Stein 1987: 232).
wind during a blizzard so as to prevent snow from covering the

house.5 Stein remarks in a note, however, that this inverted umbrellashaped roof evokes the form of K'un-Lun (the Chinese name for the
cosmic mountain) and that of Mount Sumeru.6
Whatever the practical utility of such an appendage, one must not
exclude the possibility that it may also be imbued with symbolic meaning. This appears even more credible because other parts of the house
or furnishings, such as a notched central post used as a ladder, the
hearth, a fire-drill, and so on all have symbolic value, and because, for
the entire region of the Far East, the house and each of its parts have
symbolic significance, as Stein has admirably shown.
Crossing over to America, one would be tempted to connect the Koryak house with, on the one hand, the Far Eastern hourglass forms of
Figure 3 Koryak house (after Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988:201). Arctic Studies
Center, Smithsonian Institution. Reproduced by permission.
which Mount Sumeru is the prototype and, on the other, with temples
of the Kogi, who live in the Santa Marta sierra in Colombia.
According to G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, who devoted years of study to
the Kogi, their culture is unique among Amerindian cultures. Their
religious buildings bear witness to this singularity. Seven or eight
metres in height, of conical form crudely rounded out at the base, the
thatched frame extends upward at the roof ridge into a boat-shaped
construction from which a trellis made of poles tied together spreads
outward, resembling an inverted umbrella (see figure 4)7
However, we will not belabour the comparison with hourglass
forms from the Far East. While the Kogi distinguish nine cosmic layers,
they conceive of them as contained within two hives joined together at
the base. Each hive comprises four stories, and ours is situated at their
junction. Erected on the ground that is the abode of humans, the temple represents therefore the hive that contains the upper stories. The
other, inverted, is located symbolically below it. The Kogi cosmos is
shaped like an egg rather than an hourglass. I shall return to this point.
Reichel-Dolmatoff makes a sexual interpretation of the boat-like
structure that crowns the temple. It would symbolize the vagina of the
goddess-mother, of which the temple would then be the womb. It is
worth noting, however, that the hourglass form, image of the cosmos,
reappears for the Kogi in the symbolism of the narrow-waisted gourd
(in a figure 8, Reichel-Dolmatoff says), a Kogi accessory used to carry
the lime added to coca leaves before chewing them. According to our
author, this gourd represents both the cosmos and the womb, while the
spatula used to take the lime symbolizes the phallus.
Figure 4 Kogi temple (after Reichel-Dolmatoff 1990: plate VII). Reproduced

by permission of Brill NV.
In the context of China, Stein has also brought the cosmic symbolism
of the narrow-waisted gourd to our attention, emphasizing an analogy
of form with Mount K'un-Lun, 'that is, a mountain or a composite
structure built of two superposed cones that recall the two spheres of
the gourd/ The resemblance with the Kogi increases due to the fact
that, according to Stein, 'a closed world in the shape of a gourd is a site
dominated by the presence of a female principle/ In China and Vietnam Holy Mothers preside over sites in the shape of a calabash.8
The hourglass form reappears in another kind of domestic object
among the Desana, natives of the Amazon region of Colombia, to
whom Reichel-Dolmatoff has also devoted considerable attention.
They see, in an ingeniously twisted construction of sticks or slats used
to support clay receptacles, a cosmic model of the upper and lower
worlds, with ours represented by the narrow part. Viewed from above,
the object has the appearance of a hollow vortex (see figure 5). This
motif evokes the idea of transformation, which indigenous thought
associates with whirlpools, birth, rebirth, and, more generally, with
female fertility.9 The same author also describes crude stands of clay,
placed in the hearth, that have roughly the form of an hourglass ('reloj
de arena/ wrongly translated into French as 'clepsydre'). These stands
unite the two cosmic levels. Moreover, they symbolize the sexual
organs (see figure 6).10
Reichel-Dolmatoff's Desana informant was an extremely peculiar
character, distanced from his birth environment and exposed throughout his existence to very diverse influences. It is therefore desirable
that these interpretations of the hourglass form, akin to Far Eastern
concepts, be corroborated by other sources. They are, in fact, for the
Tanimuka, neighbours of the Desana. M. von Hildebrand (then close to
Reichel-Dolmatoff, but whose observations are of independent value)
noted and sketched a wicker object called a hanea, in the shape of
inverted cones that would symbolize a whirlpool because of the twist
imprinted in it (see figure 7). The Tanimuka, we are told, confer much
importance to rapids and whirlpools, where, according to them,
humans and animals originated; it is, therefore, the site of the transition from one world to the other, and in this sense resembles a vagina.
The shaman performs before the hanea to expel sickness and to facilitate childbirth. For the latter, he dilates in his mind the narrow area of
the hanea, of which the upper part corresponds to the uterus. The spiral
aspect of the hanea is said to evoke changes of state.11
In America, the form and symbolism of the hanea are therefore not
simply the same as those attributed to Mount Sumeru by China and
Hourglass Configurations
21
Figure 5 Stand made of basketry, Desana Indians (after Reichel-Dolmatoff

1987: plate XXXV). Reproduced by permission of Brill NV.
Figure 6 Stands made of basketry and clay of the Uaupes region (after Briizzi
Alves da Silva 1962:182).
India. Here and there, the idea of a vortex is also present. Indeed in Far
Eastern conceptions the Sumeru can be viewed from two apparently
incompatible perspectives. Ropes in the form of snakes, coiled around
its middle, serve to rotate the mountain on its axis. On the one hand, 'it
is unchangeable and firm, immovable ... yet on the other hand, the
very motifs of a wheel and an upright axis and the mythical theme of
churning suggest a turning movement/ Some Japanese sculpture
depicts Mount Sumeru as a dragon coiled in a spiral around a vertical
sword, and 'thus are combined immovability and spiral movement.'12
One of the mnemotechnic signs used by the Cuna of Panama has the
shape of an hourglass. Carlo Severi notes to this effect that 'not only
the Cuna, but also numerous Amerindian populations (the Aruac of
Santa Marta, the Tanimuka and the Tatuyo, to cite but a few tribes from
the Columbian region) attribute the meaning of "birth and transformation" to this sign, undoubtedly an indication of a "passage" from one
state to another within the universe.'13 (He thus makes his own the
hypothesis I suggested to him, based on Tanimuka and Desana material, in the hope that he could verify it with his Cuna informants.) For
want of a native gloss, and as conceivable as the interpretation appears
in the context, it is nevertheless advisable to be prudent. In America
and elsewhere in the world, the hourglass figure can take on other
Figure 7 Hanea (after von Hildebrand 1979:132a, fig. 13).
meanings: a human being schematized as a torso, a figure of a bird, its

wings and tail spread out, and so forth.
It is worth noting that the Desana extend the same sexual and cosmic symbolism to the frame of their large collective dwellings that they
bestow upon their wicker stands for vases and hearth pottery. Stein
notes that in China 'images of K'un-Lun are taken primarily from
imperial palaces, but [...] they also go back to vessels or various kinds
of hearths.'14 In the Desana house, a pole called a gumu, in spite of its
horizontal position, is perceived as a ladder that cuts through all the

layers of the cosmos. At the same time, it represents a phallic tube that
unites the back of the house, chthonic and female, with the front, solar
and male.15 Many examples from India and China portray this conversion of the vertical axis to a horizontal axis and the reverse. Likewise,
we can understand the connections between 'Visnu's three strides' and
those of Buddha; or, yet again, the nine stories of the K'un-Lun, which
are sometimes interpreted as the meanderings of a path.16
In Indonesia, the Atoni of Timor bestow symbolic meaning upon the
tiny vertical space between two horizontal ridge-poles, located one
beneath the other. The name of the upper pole calls forth the notion of
solar heat; the name of the other, that of heat from the fire. On the vertical axis, the upper pole therefore protects the inhabitants from the sun
just as, on the horizontal axis, the door on the eastern side prevents the
sun from entering the house. This double encoding, horizontal and
vertical, applies to the house as a whole and to each of its parts. All
that is situated completely or relatively towards the outside or the top
of the house is imbued with the male principle. All that is completely
or relatively located towards the interior or the bottom is imbued with
the female principle.17
Perhaps one could explain in this way the unusual form of Fijian
temple roofs as they were described in the nineteenth century. The
ends of the ridge-pole project for a yard or more beyond the thatch,
having the extremities blackened, and increasing with a funnel-shape,
and decorated with large white shells' (see figure 8).18 One would
willingly recognize in this, converted to a horizontal position, the
hourglass form of Mount Sumeru. A century later Quain observed a
purely decorative structure that all the houses, according to him, must
include to be considered finished, that is, long poles made of black,
porous sago palm that extend past the roof covering at each end of the
ridge. Quain adds: 'Europeans have frequently speculated as to [this
structure's] esoteric significance; no one has ever discovered its
"meaning."'19 Here, then, are two apparently dissimilar types of roof
extension, between which one might query if there is not a relation of
some sort, and whether it would not be appropriate to place them
among the others I have considered.
Hourglass forms, already noted and abundantly documented in the
Far East, also exist in America, and apart from a few shifts in the cosmic levels they are supposed to represent, their symbolism is the same
Figure 8 Fijian temples (after Williams 1970:158,188).
25
everywhere. Everywhere as well, right down to the details, these

symbols have developed along the same lines. How does one explain
these often striking resemblances? Do they hark back to an old common palaeolithic substratum of Asiatic populations, some of which
migrated to America? Are they the fruit of more recent trans-Pacific
contacts between the Old and the New Worlds? Or should we search
no further than the irrepressible tendency of the human mind to pour
the profusion of its available vacant significations into all the forms it
perceives or conceives, by reason of the permanent gap between its
impatience to understand everything and its limited knowledge? If the
forms under consideration are simple, even rudimentary, they would
have every chance of being widely shared, and would lend themselves
admirably to symbolize correspondences or oppositions between
equally simple conceivable contents. These contents, consequently,
would hold every chance of being shared among a good number of
cultures or civilizations. If so, the alleged depth psychology would be
in fact the most superficial: a shallow psychology, one might say, that
offers no real substance for reflection.
Our present knowledge of America's past does not allow us to
choose between these hypotheses. I will leave them in abeyance to go
on to another problem in this particular case: that of the relation
between symbolic forms and the materials available to represent them
figuratively.
One can construct hourglass forms with many materials without
encountering any difficulty: wood, fibres, or clay. We have come across
examples using these materials in the frames of buildings and in
wicker and clay objects. By contrast, it would be extremely difficult if
not impossible to construct hourglass forms in stone.20 Monument
architecture achieves only a partial representation of Mount Sumeru; it
reduces it to the temple-mountain, leaving out its inverted heavenly
counterpart. What may be 'said' in wood or in wicker cannot be 'said'
in stone. The synthetic, global representation of Mount Sumeru as an
hourglass figure21 would necessitate a radical structural transformation if it were to be constructed in masonry.
Indeed, that is what the builders of Barabudur, a Buddhist monument in Java that dates back to the twelfth century, succeeded in doing.
Heine-Geldern had noted already in 1930 that although the shape of
this building is obviously that of a mountain, it is not conceived as a
symbol of Meru, but rather as a representation of the upper heavens.22
Paul Mus has carried the analysis further and shown that in fact both
Figure 9 Cosmological scheme of the Barabudur (after Mus 1990:112).
mountain and heavens are represented by Barabudur. To apprehend

the monument in all its complexity, he explains, one must imagine that
Meru proper, buried at the base of the Javanese stupa, is topped by the
four stories of the heavenly mountain encased in a spherical cap (see
figure 9).
The schematic image of the whole, writes Mus, is therefore that of a
dome, the image of heaven that ideally conceals in its interior a pyramidal mountain, Meru.23 What, then, is the relation between this image
and that of the hourglass which, as we have seen, is also fit to represent
the two ontologies, earthly and heavenly, of the cosmic mountain?
To switch from one image to the other, it is sufficient but necessary to
transform the two distinct elements in (B), identical in shape (they are
two pyramids) but different in their position in space (upright or
inverted), into (A), two identically positioned elements (both are
upright) but which differ in shape (a pyramid and a dome). These two
propositions are not homogeneous, however, because they strike an

equivalence between meanings - which alter with a change in position - and shapes - which change with the opposite result, that is,
keeping the meaning constant. One proposition emphasizes form and
the other function. Together, therefore, they constitute a complex proposition, reducible to the formula applied elsewhere by me to mythical
transformations, that have the same type of structure:
'earth *heaven ^earth ^pyramid'1

(pyramid)
(dome)
(dome)
(heaven)
In the above formula, it should be noted that f

and f^aven * symbolic space because, in this case, there is interference
of the architectural and the cosmological planes. One must remember
that the dimension to which the formula refers is the 'here-below' of
the mason in the one case, and the 'heaven-above' of the theologian in
the other.
We will recall that, unlike the Hindus and the Chinese, the Desana
do not represent their cosmos as pyramids joined at the summit, but as
hives joined at the base (see above, p. 6):
Viewed in relation to Barabudur, the Desana vision of the cosmos is

the symmetrical and inverse transformation of the hourglass configuration. To travel, so to speak, from Sumeru to Barabadur, the heavenly
pyramid must be tipped over and transformed into a dome while the
earthly pyramid stands unchanged. To go from the Desana to Barabudur, the chthonic dome must be tipped up and transformed into a pyr-
amid, the heavenly dome remaining unchanged. The three states,

therefore, belong to the same set.
On the other hand, one cannot overemphasize the fact that the transformation of the figure of domes opposed at the base (of the Kogi type)
into that of triangles opposed at the vertex (of the Sumeru type), and
vice versa, is not amenable to a representation by my canonical formula. This is a trivial example of a four-term analogical relation, to
which certain commentators believed the canonical formula was
reducible.
The geometric representation is of interest, in part, because it allows
us to recognize and dispel this confusion by a simple examination of
those figures.
What can we retain from the preceding considerations? Two points,
it seems to me, that, although without apparent relation, are mutually
supportive. In the first place, a mode of representing the cosmos for
India and the Far East, well known and long studied, also exists in
America with similarities down to the details. Second, the canonical
formula that I have proposed to illustrate mythical transformations can
be applied to other fields, notably to architecture. R. Bucaille and
F. Chergui have already done so in regard to dovecotes in Limagne;24
however, in the present case, it is remarkable that the double transformation illustrated by the formula is initiated by technical constraints.
The passage from one material to another thus plays the same role as
do changes of a linguistic or cultural nature in other contexts: it always
involves the crossing of a threshold.
Finally, and most significantly, the fact that the architecture reflected
upon here is a religious architecture particularly favours the application of this formula, as the forms considered are imbued with symbolic
meaning. A conscious link exists between two fields that intersect. In
this way one can simultaneously apprehend the formula as a conceptual relation and see it, here and there in the world, stamped in a geometry that human endeavour has envisioned.
Notes
1 C. Levi-Strauss, 'La place de la culture japonaise dans le monde/ Revue
d'esthetique 18 (1990): 12-14.
2 Kojiki trans, with intro and notes by D.L. Philippi (Tokyo: University of
Tokyo Press, 1968), chap. 24 (14), 27 (3), 39 (18); see also Nihongi, trans.
3
4
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
W.G. Aston, 2 vols. (London: Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan

Society, 1896), 1:132-3.
P. Mus, La lumiere sur les six voies, Travaux et Memoires de 1'Institut d'Ethnologie, vol. 35) (Paris, 1939), 42,54,172-4,284f.
R.A. Stein, Le monde en petit (Paris: Flammarion, 1987), 232 (English trans.,
P. Brooks, The World in Miniature [Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1990], 246).
Ibid., 163f. (Eng. trans., 169); W.W. Fitzhugh and A. Crowell, Crossroads of
Continents: Culture of Siberia and Alaska (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), 33,200,201.
Stein, Le monde en petit, 318 n.93 (Eng. trans., 323 n.60).
G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Templos Kogi Introduccion al simbolismo y a la
astronomia del espacio sagrado,' Revista Colombiana de Antropologia 19
(1975); The Great Mother and the Kogi Universe: A Concise Overview,'
Journal of Latin American Lore 13 (1) (1987); The Sacred Mountain of Colombia's
Kogi Indians, Iconography of Religion, IX/2, State University Groningen
(Leiden: Brill, 1990).
Stein, Le monde en petit 77, 70,83ff. (Eng. trans. 70,62,77).
G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Shamanism and Art of the Eastern Tukanoan Indians,
Iconography of Religion, IX/I, State University Groningen (Leiden: Brill,
1987), plate XXXV.
G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Desana (Bogota: Universidad de los Andes, 1968), 81
(French trans., Desana [Paris: Gallimard, 1973], 137); Shamanism and Art, 16.
Same objects illustrated in A. Briizzi Alves de Silva, A Civilizagao Indigena do
Uaupes (Sao Paulo, 1962), 182.
M. von Hildebrand, 'Cosmologie et mythologie Tanimuka,' doctoral thesis,
Universite de Paris VII, 1979, figure 13 and pp. 131^4.
Stein, Le monde en petit, 232,235-6,238-41 (Eng. trans., 253,258).
C. Severi, La memoria rituale (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1993), 149 n.15,155;
R. Seller's English trans.
14 Stein, Le monde en petit, 220.

15 G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Amazonian Cosmos (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1971); Desana (French trans.), 135.
16 P. Mus, Barabudur, reprint of Ecole franchise d'Extreme-Orient edition,
Hanoi, 1935 (Paris: Arma Artis, 1990), 535; Stein, Le monde en petit, 216,218,
229; G. Dumezil, Mythe et epopee I (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 235-6; Le roman
desjumeaux (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 318-23.
17 C.E. Cunningham, 'Order in the Atoni House,' Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en
Volkenkunde 120 (1964).
31
18 T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), 73,
158,188 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1859, p. 65).
19 B. Quain, Fijian Village (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 169.
20 The same problem arises for the vortex figure. The Chinese used to build
rotating wood pagodas and libraries. In masonry or other inexpedient
material, how would one go about it? Based on information provided by a
19th-century traveller, Stein reproduced a reduced model of Mount Sumeru
from the 12th century, made of cast iron and in two parts, one of which
could pivot on the other, but weighing nonetheless 300 kg, too heavy to be
moved by the arm of a man.
Another solution is to have the faithful walk around the monument
rather than watching it turn: the idea of movement is saved. Movement has
also been suggested by displacing the angles of the building by 45 degrees
in relation to the cardinal points, or by multiplying the number of intermediate figures to create in sculpture, according to the expression of Paul Mus,
a sort of 'solid cinema' (Stein, Le monde en petit, 245-7; Mus, 'Une Cinema
solide/ Arts asiatiques 10 [1964], fasc. 1,21-34; Annuaire du College de France,
1964: 336-7,1967: 288).
21 Lowie, who was interested in hourglass forms in another context, concluded, so he says, that in order to understand a decorative art, one must
grasp each figure as a whole without trying to reduce it to a combination of
simple geometric abstractions such as rectangles or triangles. His critique is
covertly directed at Kroeber, who reduces the hourglass figure to two triangles opposed at the summit, while he himself treats triangles as derived
forms that he calls half-hourglasses (R.H. Lowie, 'Crow Indian Art,' Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 21 (4) [1992]: 279).
It seems that the most structuralist may not always be the one we think!
22 P. Mus, Barabudur,55, 111.
23 Ibid., 107,117, and passim.
24 R. Bucaille and F. Chergui, in R. Bucaille et al., Pigeons de Limagne,
(Clermont-Ferrand: Universite populaire, 1987), 61-83.
References
Briizzi Alves de Silva, A. 1962. A Civilizafao Indigena do Uaupes. Sao Paulo.
Bucaille, R. 1987. Pigeons de Limagne. Clermont-Ferrand: Universite populaire.
Cunningham, C.E. 1964. 'Order in the Atoni House.' Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde 120.
Dumezil, G. 1968. Le roman desjumeaux. Paris: Gallimard.
- 1995. Mythe et epopee I. Paris: Gallimard.
Fitzhugh, W.W., and A. Crowell. 1988. Crossroads of Continents: Culture of Siberia
and Alaska. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Kojiki. 1968. Translated with an introduction and notes by Donald L. Philippi.
Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Levi-Strauss, C. 1990. 'La place de la culture japonaise dans le monde.' Revue
d'esthetique 18.
Lowie, R.H. 1992. 'Crow Indian Art.' Anthropological Papers of the American
Museum of Natural History 21, pt 4.
Mus, P. 1939. La Lumiere sur les six voies. Travaux et Memoires de ITnstitut
d'Ethnologie, vol. 35. Paris.
- 1964. 'Une Cinema solide.' Arts asiatiques 10.
- 1990. Barabudur. Reprint of Ecole franchise d'Extreme-Orient edition. Paris:
Arma Artis.
Nihongi. 1896. Translated by W.G. Aston. 2 vols. London: Transactions and
Proceedings of the Japan Society.
Quain, B. 1948. Fijian Village. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1968. Desana. Bogota: Universidad de los Andes.
- 1971. Amazonian Cosmos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- 1975. Templos Kogi Introduccion al simbolismo y a la astronomia del
espacio sagrado.' Revista Colombiana de Antropologia 19.
- 1987. 'The Great Mother and the Kogi Universe: A Concise Overview.'
Journal of Latin American Lore 13 (1).
- 1987. Shamanism and Art of the Eastern Tukanoan Indians. Iconography of
Religion, IX/1, State University Groningen. Leiden: Brill.
- 1990. The Sacred Mountain of Colombia's Kogi Indians. Iconography of Religion,
IX/2, State University Groningen. Leiden: Brill.
Severi, C. 1993. La memoria rituale. Firenze: La Nuova Italia (Robbyn Seller's
English translation).
Stein, R.A. 1987. Le monde en petit. Paris: Flammarion (English translation, Phyllis Brooks, The World in Miniature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
von Hildebrand, M. 1979. 'Cosmologie et mythologie Tanimuka.' Doctoral
thesis, Universite de Paris VII.
Williams, T. 1970. Fiji and the Fijians. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

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Hourglass Configurations Lévi Strauss

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University of Toronto Press

Chapter Title: Hourglass Configurations

Ethnography and the Canonical Formula

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Figure 1 Ise Sanctuary (after Aston 1896: vol. 1,133).

Figure 2 Mount Sumeru as a seat (after Stein 1987: 232).

wind during a blizzard so as to prevent snow from covering the

Figure 4 Kogi temple (after Reichel-Dolmatoff 1990: plate VII). Reproduced

Figure 5 Stand made of basketry, Desana Indians (after Reichel-Dolmatoff

Figure 7 Hanea (after von Hildebrand 1979:132a, fig. 13).

meanings: a human being schematized as a torso, a figure of a bird, its

horizontal position, is perceived as a ladder that cuts through all the

Figure 8 Fijian temples (after Williams 1970:158,188).

everywhere. Everywhere as well, right down to the details, these

Figure 9 Cosmological scheme of the Barabudur (after Mus 1990:112).

mountain and heavens are represented by Barabudur. To apprehend

propositions are not homogeneous, however, because they strike an

'earth *heaven ^earth ^pyramid'1

In the above formula, it should be noted that f

Viewed in relation to Barabudur, the Desana vision of the cosmos is

amid, the heavenly dome remaining unchanged. The three states,

W.G. Aston, 2 vols. (London: Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan

14 Stein, Le monde en petit, 220.

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