noun
definition
A shrub, Catha edulis, whose leaves are used as a mild stimulant when chewed or brewed as tea; also a drug produced from this plant.
Examples of qat in a Sentence
Banks Islands are chiefly ancestor-worshippers, but they also believe in, and occasionally pray to, a being named I Qat, one of the prehuman race endowed with supernatural powers who here, as elsewhere, do duty as gods.
The myths of Qat's adventures, however, are very crude, though not so wild as some of the Scandinavian myths about Odin and Loki, while they are less immoral than the adventures of Indra and Zeus.
Qat was born in the isle of Vanua Levu; his mother was either a stone at the time of his birth, or was turned into a stone afterwards, like Niobe.
Qat had eleven brothers, not much more reputable than the Osbaldistones in Rob Roy.
The creative achievements of Qat must be treated of in the next section.
Here it may be mentioned that, like the hero in the Breton mdrehen, Qat " brought the dawn " by introducing birds whose notes proclaimed the coming of morning.
Before Qat's time there had been no night, but he purchased a sufficient allowance of darkness from I Qong, that is, night considered as a person in accordance with the law of savage thought already explained.
Qat produced dawn, for the first time, by cutting the darkness with a knife of red obsidian.
On one occasion an evil power (Vui) slew all Qat's brothers, and hid them in a food-chest.
Every night (as in the common European story about bridge-building and church-building) the work was all undone by Marawa, whom Qat found means to conciliate.
Qat's great enemy, Qasavara, was dashed against the hard sky, and was turned into stone, like the foes of Perseus.
Qat, like so many other " culture-heroes," disappeared mysteriously, and white men arriving in the island have been mistaken for Qat.
In the New Hebrides, Tagar takes the role of Qat, and Suqe of the bad principle, Loki, Ahriman, Tangaro Loloqong, the Australian Crow and so forth.
Maui in some respects answers to the chief of the Adityas in Vedic mythology; in others he answers to Qat, Quawteaht, and other savage divine personages.
As Qat brought the hitherto unknown night, so Maui settled the sun and moon in their proper courses.
This being is rather a culture-hero, a member of a non-natural race of men like Qat or Manabozho, than a god.
In Saudi Arabia chewing qat is punishable by death, yet right next door in Yemen it is simply not an issue.
If we are to regard the Egyptian myths about the gods in animal shape, and about the non-natural superhuman heroes, and their wars and loves, as esoteric allegories devised by civilized priests, perhaps we should also explain Pund-jel, Qat, Quawteaht, the Mantis god, the Spider creator, the Coyote and Raven gods as priestly inventions, put forth in a civilized age, and retained by Australians, Bushmen, Hottentots, Ahts, Thlinkeets, Papuans, who preserve no other vestiges of high civilization.
Thus Qat, Quahteaht, Pundjel, Maui, Ioskeha, Cagn, Wainamoinen and an endless array of others represent the ideal and heroic first teachers of Melanesians, Ahts, Australians, Maoris, Algonkins, Bushmen and Finns.
Twelve technologies, developed and adapted by qat farmers from local experimentation, are identified and analyzed.
His pastime was to make wrong all that Qat made right, and he is sometimes the Ahriman to Qat's Ormuzd.
As in the common " swallowing-myths " which we have met among bushmen and Australians, and will find among the Greeks, Qat restored his brethren to life.
Qat is always accompanied by a powerful supernatural spider named Marawa.