纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 065泰诺仪式用椅（4）

This is a seat for a leader, for the chief of a village or a region. Taino leaders were both male and female, and the duho embodied¹ their social, political and religious power, and it was crucial to the functioning of their society. We know that in at least one instance a leader was buried sitting on his duho. Here's Jos? Oliver, an archaeologist who's been doing new work on the Taino, and has studied how duhos would have been used:

"The use of the duho... you have to think of it not as a piece of furniture, but rather as a symbolic² location of where the chief would stand. This particular object is too small for actually a human being sitting on it. Therefore just the fact that you're sitting, or crouching³, on top of it, already - like the thrones of the monarchies⁴ - distinguishes this individual from everybody else. What is interesting is, all the wooden seats that we know of in the Caribbean, including this one, tend to be male, or they are marked with the male gender⁵. And like in this case, they sometimes show the male genitalia under the seat. And that's because this seat is actually an anthropomorphic personage. Think of it as a human being on four legs, and what you sit [on] is on the back of this personage. And that's why the genitalia are on there, and you sit on top, almost like if you were sitting over a donkey or a horse, and so on. So the chief is mounting this object, which happens to also be a sentient⁶ being. In other words they thought of these things as having 'cemi', that is, a soul."

都何作为领袖的宝座，为村庄或地区首领所有。泰诺的首领没有性别限制，而都何则彰显他们在社会、政治及宗教等方方面面的影响力，对他们的呼风唤雨至为重要。我们发现了至少一个首领坐在都何上下葬的例子。致力于发掘泰诺文化的若泽奥利弗博士解释了都何是如何被利用的：

都何并不是普通家具，而是首领地位的象征。这件物品实在太小，正常人很难坐在上面。有意思的是，我们在加勒比海地区发现的所有木制长凳，包括本文的这条，都是男性的，或是刻画了男性象征物，有时甚至在凳子下方雕刻出男性生殖器官。这种凳子其实是一个拟人化的角色。想象它是一个四肢着地的人，而你正坐在它的背上，就像骑驴或骑马一样。首领就这样骑坐在这件也有感知的物品上。他们认为这样的东西拥有“cemi”,即灵魂。

 

1 embodied   

v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含

参考例句：

• a politician who embodied the hopes of black youth 代表黑人青年希望的政治家
• The heroic deeds of him embodied the glorious tradition of the troops. 他的英雄事迹体现了军队的光荣传统。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 symbolic   

adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的

参考例句：

• It is symbolic of the fighting spirit of modern womanhood.它象征着现代妇女的战斗精神。
• The Christian ceremony of baptism is a symbolic act.基督教的洗礼仪式是一种象征性的做法。

3 crouching   

v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• a hulking figure crouching in the darkness 黑暗中蹲伏着的一个庞大身影
• A young man was crouching by the table, busily searching for something. 一个年轻人正蹲在桌边翻看什么。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译

4 monarchies   

n. 君主政体, 君主国, 君主政治

参考例句：

• It cleared away a number of monarchies. 它清除了好几个君主政体。
• Nowadays, there are few monarchies left in the world. 现在世界上君主制的国家已经很少了。

5 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

6 sentient   

adj.有知觉的，知悉的；adv.有感觉能力地

参考例句：

• The living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage.生还者认识到，他们不过是上帝的舞台上有知觉的木偶而已。
• It teaches us to love all sentient beings equally.它教导我们应该平等爱护一切众生。