View source for Kamodokoya

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Kamodokoya is an Arawakan constellation name from Lokono. This constellation is referring to the spirit of the green anaconda.

== Etymology and History ==

=== Spelling Variants ===

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=== Origin of Constellation ===
The constellation Kamodokoya, ‘Spirit of the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus)', also called Waroboshi remains poorly described.<ref>Goeje, Claudius Henricus de. 1943. Philosophy, Initiation and Myths of the Indians of Guiana and Adjacent Countries. Archives Internationales d’ethnographie. 44.</ref> Older sources suggest it is Perseus, Pleiades, Scorpio, or Ophiuchus, but the exact stars remain unidentified.<ref name=":0">Roth, Walter Edmund. 1915. An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians. Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology 30. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.</ref><ref>Goeje, Claudius Henricus de. 1942. “De Inwijding Tot Medicijnman Bij de Arawakken (Guyana) in Tekst En Mythe.” Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië 101: 211–76.</ref><ref>Schumann, Christian Ludwig. 1882. “Arawakish-Deutsches Wörterbuch.” In Grammaires Et Vocabulaires Roucouyenne, Arrouague, Piapoco Et D’autres Langues De La Région Des Guyanes, Par J. Crevaux, P . Sagot, L. Adam..., edited by Jules Nicolas Crevaux, Paul Antoine Sagot, and Lucien Adam, 7–165. Paris: Maisonneuve.</ref> 

== Mythology / Religion ==
Several myths explain its origin. According to Walter Roth, a man killed his wife, roasted her, and fed her liver to her mother because she called him a worthless hunter.<ref name=":0" /> In revenge, she asked Kamodo to kill him, but the man escaped the snake who ate his younger brother instead. The constellation Kamodokoya has Yôkoro wiwa, the brother, inside, and is close to Yorhada ‘Grill’, on which the wife was roasted. 

Notably, Theodor Schultz list the constellation Waroboshi yorhadale 'The grill of the green anaconda' which could be the same as the constellation Yorhada.<ref>Arawak manuscripts, American Philosophical Society, manuscript number:[ Mss.498.3.Sch8. ](<nowiki>https://search.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.498.3.Sch8-ead.xml)Page</nowiki> 562 in the original manuscript, which corresponds to page 576 in the digitalized document. The image was reduced in size, cropped, and reproduced here with the kind permission of the American Philosophical Society.</ref> 

Cornelius van Coll speaks of twins, one of whom had a wife, and warned that their star brings death.<ref>Coll, Cornelius van. 1903. “Gegevens over Land En Volk van Suriname I - Suriname’s Oorspronkelijke Bevolking.” Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia 55 (1): 453–529.</ref> Indeed, even his wife died, roasted on the fire. The Lokono had the snake kill the man, and ascend to the sky as Kamodokoya. 

Finally, Claudius de Goeje relates a myth of a woman who felt a desire for men, and put a katuburi flower in her vagina, and became pregnant. Her child was partly a snake, and people wanted to kill it, so it ascended to the sky.<ref>Rybka, Konrad (online). Lokono sky culture in Stellarium, <nowiki>https://github.com/stellarium/stellarium</nowiki> , printed in Hoffmann and Wolfschmidt (eds., 2022), Astronomy in Culture --Cultures of Astronomy. Astronomie in der Kultur--Kulturen der Astronomie.: Featuring the Proceedings of the Splinter Meeting at the Annual Conference of the Astronomische Gesselschafb Sept. 14-16, 2021, tredition, Ahrensburg (Germany): 706-726.</ref>

== Weblinks ==

* {{NAMESPACE}}

== References ==

* [[References]] (general)

[[Category:Asterism]] [[Category:Constellation]] [[Category:American]] [[Category:South American]] [[Category:Lokono]]