Where did Abaia go?

John Watkins · 18 Jul 2010, 11:30 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2010 07:30:04 -0400
Subject: (urth) Where did Abaia go?
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W643FBECEB278B9582D72D0CFBE0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W643FBECEB278B9582D72D0CFBE0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <AANLkTimswMTp9rjf_rxUf-W-txt4xq7rh7UmMRnqttNc at mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:02 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> In my last post under Patera Inire (which has a typo- should start- "I
> don't agree")
> I mention an allegorical answer I think best for explaining how an
> ocean-bound
> creature like Abaia could be destroyed by a flood.
>
>
I think there are a couple of textual possibilities, actually.  From
Eschatology and Genesis:

First Demon:  The continents themselves are old as raddled women, long since
stripped of beauty and fertility.  The New Sun comes--

  Autarch:  I know!

  First Demon:  --and he will send them crashing into the sea like foundered
ships.

  Second Demon:  And from the sea lift new--glittering with gold, silver,
iron, and copper.

So Abaia could easy have been crushed by a foundered continent or mountain,
or trapped on a new continent as it rises from the sea and then, assuming he
could survive the upheaval itself, collapsed under his own weight. I think
the latter is more probable, simply because we're told in the text that
Abaia and his kind can't survive outside of water long (perhaps Baldanders
is the reference, I can't recall) and we actually see Juturna dying in this
manner.

> But for those who don't see Judeo-Christianity in this story, I will offer
> a more
> textual explanation. Perhaps Abaia doesn't really live in the ocean. Abaia
> is the
> name for a magical *freshwater* eel in Melanesian mythology. So perhaps
> a flood could kill off Abaia simply via contact with salt water.
>
> Abaia's most likely freshwater home would surely be Lake Diuturna. We have
> the
> similarity of the name to Juturna, the daughter-bride of Abaia. We have
> (perhaps
> aspiring megatherian) Baldanders choosing to live near and eventually under
> the
> waters of this lake. The Lake/Island people have their belief in a fish god
> beneath the waters. But perhaps the best evidence for the presence of Abaia
> is
> the Lake/Shore people's town which is named "Murene". This Latin derived,
> Germanic
> word basically means "moray eel" (which does include freshwater versions).
>
>
> (sorry if this idea had been posted before. If so I hadn't seen it)
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