Taci Mama

Authors: Lyu Haocheng

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Star chart of Taci Mama, drawn by Fu Yuguang

Taci Mama

Asterism Info
Native	ᡨᠠᠴᡳ ᠮᠠᠮᠠ
Romanisation	Taci Mama
IPA	/tʰä.t͡ɕʰi mämä/
Translation	Name of the Timekeeping Goddess.
Position (2000)
Right ascension	2.293208333 to 28.60329167
Declination	56.54194444 to 63.67480556
Area	0 sq. deg.
Stars
Bright stars	5
Bayer/Flamsteed stars	5
Stars brighter than 3.00m	4
Brightest star	α Cas (2.24m)
Taxonomy
category of asterism	constellation
IAU- constellations	Cas

Taci Mama (Manchu: ᡨᠠᠴᡳ ᠮᠠᠮᠠ, "the Taci Goddess"), a Manchu shamanic constellation identified with the five bright stars of the W-shaped Cassiopeia. In Manchu tradition she is a timekeeping and directional goddess, worshiped as an attendant of the sky goddess Abka Hehe.

In the Manchu epic Umesiben Mama, she appears as the skyborne elder sister Taci Buli, while her younger sister Taci Uli descends to earth as the culture heroine Umesiben Mama.

Concordance, Etymology, History

The reason Taci Mama came to govern timekeeping lies in the astronomy of Cassiopeia itself. At the high northern latitudes of the Manchu homeland the constellation is circumpolar: its distinctive chain of five bright stars lies close to the North Celestial Pole and rotates around it throughout the night and across the seasons. Because it never sets and its orientation — the angle of the W — changes predictably with the hour and the season, Cassiopeia functions as a natural celestial clock and compass. The folk description that Taci Mama "folds a dipper once per day" is a direct observation of this daily circumpolar revolution.

Name and etymology

The name Taci Mama consists of Taci and Mama. Mama is a Manchu honorific for a goddess or grandmother-level deity.

The Manchu root and meaning of Taci are not securely established. The known related lexemes all point to "learning" or "custom" rather than to timekeeping: the verb tacimbi (ᡨᠠᠴᡳᠮᠪᡳ) means "to learn, to study", and the noun tacin (ᡨᠠᠴᡳᠨ) means "custom, habit, usage". Neither bears on the name of a timekeeping star goddess, and the etymology of Taci as a star name therefore remains an open question. The variant Tacin Mama used in some Western scholarship is a misreading: tacin means "custom" and is unrelated to this proper name.

Myth and ritual

Folk layer

Taci Mama is described as a cluster of five bright stars shaped like a hunchback, and is therefore popularly called the Hunchback Star; because she also resembles a bending snake she is also called the Snake Star. She rises after sunset, travels lying flat, and at dawn stands aslant in the northwestern sky having "folded a dipper", and is thereby also called the Dipper-basket Star. She is an important timekeeping and directional star of the ancients and an important goddess at the side of Abka Hehe; when the sun and moon rest, it is she who keeps time.

In the creation myth, Abka Hehe made one of the nine Cloud-Mother goddesses become an eternal timekeeping star; the Cloud-Mother goddess turned into the great and dutiful Taci Mama star deity under the star-spreading bureau of Elden Hehe, keeping time for all the gods day and night. The demon Yeruri could never catch her or recognise her, and therefore could never tell time or direction.

According to a Xu-clan shamanic oracle, the clan's ancestors once met an avalanche in the mountains and were guided out by the light of the Taci Mama goddess above their heads; a few survived, ate elm bark in an elm grove, and grew into a great clan. Later generations venerate this goddess of grace and also sacrifice to the elm spirit as Hailan Eyun.

A star hymn addresses her:

O Taci stars, in the north of the sky, the stars that keep time, turning somersaults, turning somersaults.

In the shamanic wild sacrifice a Taci Mama idol was worshipped — hunchback-shaped and always laid on its side, so that the goddess's face could not be seen; the side-laid posture mirrors the creation-layer injunction that she "walk always on one's side" so that Yeruri cannot recognise her.

Epic layer (Umesiben Mama)

Beside the star-great-goddess Elden Hehe there were two important attendant goddesses — the elder Taci Buli (塔其布离) and the younger Taci Uli (塔其乌离) — star deities born when Abka Hehe split in her struggle with Yeruri and given to Elden Hehe to help govern the sky-dome, patrolling from east to west on schedule. Taci Buli and Taci Uli are sister deities. After Abka Hehe's earnest persuasion, Elden Hehe let Taci Uli part from her sister Taci Buli: one remained in the clear sky of the heavens, one went into the vast sea, sharing the flow of time. Taci Uli thenceforth attended the East Sea goddess Dergi Omo Mama. ("East Sea" referring to the Sea of Japan)

A schematic map showing the five voyages of Umesiben Mama to the east, with no details of the fourth voyage mentioned in the original book. (Haocheng Lyu verifies and draws based on the original legend)

Dergi Omo Mama sent Taci Uli down to the world, borne away by a golden eagle and an oriole; Taci Uli first fell to the earth as a dumb girl and was born into the Ubusun tribe of the East Sea, growing up to become the culture heroine Umesiben Mama. On earth, Umesiben reformed the calendar of the East Sea tribes — "the East Sea had no years or months from of old" — teaching phenological timekeeping and creating a "flower-bird-fish chronology", a 75-year grand cycle that unified the hitherto year-less tribal calendars. Star-timekeeping remained the commonest method and used the Taci Buli stars as its reference: for the Ubusun people's ritual verification of a chief, "at the first night, the Taci Buli stars deity rose to the middle of the sky".

Umesiben united the East Sea tribes into a league, traditionally reckoned as "seven hundred gašan" — a figurative number for the many villages under her sway rather than a precise count. She undertook five sea voyages in search of the sun. The voyages carried her to Olhon Island (modern Hokkaido), to Kuye Island (modern Sakhalin), and to Kanja (the Kamchatka Peninsula). On the final voyage she reached the far north, near the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Strait — evoked in the epic by the image "The sun rises, and a white bear on the ice clad in a red shirt." — and there she fell ill and died at sea.

Before her death, Umesiben saw the northern-sky Taci Buli stars transform into a goddess who came over, took her hand and said: "Little sister, we have come to fetch you; it is time you went home, went home!" Dergi Omo Mama welcomed back Umesiben, and the epic states that the Taci Buli stars is the very countenance of the sister-goddess Taci Mama, who comes out every night to point out direction and time for the world.

In the introductory song of Umesiben Mama, she is praised as follows:

Manchu	English
De u le le, Je u le le,	(Interjection; carries no actual meaning.)
De u liyei li, Je liyei!	(Interjection; carries no actual meaning.)
Bana i šun omolo,	Offspring of the sun upon the earth,
Bana i šun omolo,	Offspring of the sun upon the earth,
Eldengge, eldengge,	O radiant, O radiant,
Enduri Gasha eldembi,	The divine bird brings forth radiance,
Enduri Gasha eldembi,	The divine bird brings forth radiance,
Sain erden,	Fair morning,
Erden bana,	morning earth—
Umesiben Mama buli.	All is bestowed by Umesiben Mama.

Identification of stars

Taci Mama recorded by Fu Yuguang

Taci Mama was recorded by Fu Yuguang during his fieldwork. The shamanic tradition has its own star charts, but since photography was not permitted, Fu Yuguang had to hand-copy the star charts of all constellations. Based on his field findings, he identified Taci Mama with the constellation Cassiopeia.

The five bright stars corresponding to the fivefold "hunchback / dipper-basket" form are the principal members of Cassiopeia (α, β, γ, δ, ε Cas).

Maps (Gallery)

• Taci Mama
• 
  Star chart of Taci Mama, drawn by Fu Yuguang
• 
  Taci Mama in Stellarium
• 
  The superposition of traditional star chart and actual stars

IAU Working Group on Star Names

In 202x, the name of the historical constellation "xxx" was suggested to be used for one of the stars in this constellation. ...

Decision: ...

References

References (Chinese)