Volume II Part 5 (1/2)

Though all these mythical beings are in a sense departmental G.o.ds, they yield in renown to a later child of their race, Maui, the great culture-hero, who is an advanced form of the culture-heroes, mainly theriomorphic, of the lower races.*

Maui, like many heroes of myth, was a youngest son. He was prematurely born (a similar story comes in the Brahmanic legend of the Adityas); his mother wrapped him up in her long hair and threw him out to sea. A kinsman rescued him, and he grew up to be much the most important member of his family, like Qat in his larger circle of brethren. Maui it was who snared the sun, beat him,** and taught him to run his appointed course, instead of careering at will and at any pace he chose about the heavens.

* Te-Heu-Heu, a powerful chief, described to Mr. Taylor the departmental character of his G.o.ds. ”Is there one maker of things among Europeans? Is not one a carpenter, another a blacksmith, another a s.h.i.+pbuilder? So it was in the beginning. One made this, another that. Tane made trees, Ru mountains, Tangaroa fish, and so forth.” Taylor, New Zealand, p. 108, note.

** The sun, when beaten, cried out and revealed his great name, exactly as Indra did in his terror and flight after slaying the serpent. Taylor, op. cit., p. 131.

He was the culture-hero who invented barbs for spears and hooks; he turned his brother into the first dog, whence dogs are sacred, he fished New Zealand out of the sea; he stole fire for men. How Maui performed this feat, and how he ”brought death into the world and all our woe,” are topics that belong to the myths of _Death_ and of the _Fire-Stealer_.* Maui could not only change men into animals, but could himself a.s.sume animal shapes at will.

Such is a brief account of the ancient traditions of mythical Maori G.o.ds and of the culture-hero. In practice, the conception of _Atua_ (or a kind of extra-natural power or powers) possesses much influence in New Zealand. All manner of spirits in all manner of forms are _Atuas_. ”A great chief was regarded as a malignant G.o.d in life, and a still worse one after death.”** Again, ”after Maui came a host of G.o.ds, each with his history and wonderful deeds.... These were ancestors who became deified by their respective tribes,”***--a statement which must be regarded as theoretical.

* See La Mythologie, A. L., Paris, 1886.

** Taylor, op. cit., pp. 134, 136.

***Op. cit., p. 136.

It is odd enough, if true, that Maru should be the war-G.o.d of the southern island, and that the planet Mars is called after him Maru.

”There were also G.o.ds in human forms, and others with those of reptiles.... At one period there seems to have been a mixed offspring from the same parents. Thus while Tawaki was of the human form, his brethren were _taniwa_ and sharks; there were likewise mixed marriages among them.” These legends are the natural result of that lack of distinction between man and the other things in the world which, as we demonstrated, prevails in early thought. It appears that the great mythical G.o.ds of the Maoris have not much concern with their morality.

The myths are ”but a magnified history of their chiefs, their wars, murders and l.u.s.ts, with the addition of some supernatural powers”--such as the chiefs are very apt to claim.* In the opinion of a competent observer, the G.o.ds, or Atua, who are feared in daily life, are ”spirits of the dead,” and _their_ attention is chiefly confined to the conduct of their living descendants and clansmen. They inspire courage, the leading virtue. When converted, the natives are said not to expel, but merely to subordinate their Atua, ”believing Christ to be a more powerful Atua”.**

* Op. cit., p. 137.

** Shortland, Trad, and Superst. of New Zealanders, 1856, pp. 83-85.

The Maoris are perhaps the least elevated race in which a well-developed polytheism has obscured almost wholly that belief in a moral Maker which we find among the lowest savages who have but a rudimentary polytheism.

When we advance to ancient civilised peoples, like the Greeks, we shall find the archaic Theism obscured, or obliterated, in a similar way.

In the beliefs of Samoa (formerly called the Navigators' Islands, and discovered by a Dutch expedition in 1722) may be observed a most interesting moment in the development of religion and myth. In many regions it has been shown that animals are wors.h.i.+pped as totems, and that the G.o.ds are invested with the shape of animals. In the temples of higher civilisations will be found divine images still retaining in human form certain animal attributes, and a minor wors.h.i.+p of various beasts will be shown to have grouped itself in Greece round the altars of Zeus, or Apollo, or Demeter. Now in Samoa we may perhaps trace the actual process of the ”transition,” as Mr. Tylor says, ”from the spirit inhabiting an individual body to the deity presiding over all individuals of a kind”. In other words, whereas in Australia or America each totem-kindred reveres each animal supposed to be of its own lineage--the ”Cranes” revering all cranes, the ”Kangaroos” all kangaroos--in Samoa the various clans exhibit the same faith, but combine it with the belief that one spiritual deity reveals itself in each separate animal, as in a kind of avatar. For example, the several Australian totem-kindreds do not conceive that Pund-jel incarnates himself in the emu for one stock, in the crow for another, in the c.o.c.katoo for a third, and they do not by these, but by other means, attain a religious unity, transcending the diversity caused by the totemic inst.i.tutions. In Samoa this kind of spiritual unity is actually reached by various stocks.

The Samoans were originally spoken of by travellers as the ”G.o.dless Samoans,” an example of a common error. Probably there is no people whose practices and opinions, if duly investigated, do not attest their faith in something of the nature of G.o.ds. Certainly the Samoans, far from being ”G.o.dless,” rather deserve the reproach of being ”in all things too superst.i.tious”. ”The G.o.ds were supposed to appear in some _visible incarnation_, and the particular thing in which his G.o.d was in the habit of appearing was to the Samoanan object of veneration.”*

* Turner's Samoa, p. 17.

Here we find that the religious sentiment has already become more or less self-conscious, and has begun to reason on its own practices. In pure totemism it is their kindred animal that men revere. The Samoans explain their wors.h.i.+p of animals, not on the ground of kins.h.i.+p and common blood or ”one flesh” (as in Australia), but by the comparatively advanced hypothesis that a spiritual power is _in_ the animal. ”One, for instance, saw his G.o.d in the eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard,”

and so on, even to sh.e.l.l-fish. The creed so far is exactly what Garcila.s.so de la Vega found among the remote and ruder neighbours of the Incas, and attributed to the pre-Inca populations. ”A man,” as in Egypt, and in totemic countries generally, ”would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the G.o.d of another man”, but the incarnation of his own G.o.d he would consider it death to injure or eat.

The G.o.d was supposed to avenge the insult by taking up his abode in that person's body, and causing to generate there the very thing which he had eaten until it produced death. The G.o.d used to be heard within the man, saying, ”I am killing this man; he ate my incarnation”. This cla.s.s of tutelary deities they called _aitu fale_, or ”G.o.ds of the house,” G.o.ds of the stock or kindred. In totemistic countries the totem is respected _per se_, in Samoa the animal is wors.h.i.+pful because a G.o.d abides within him. This appears to be a theory by which the reflective Samoans have explained to themselves what was once pure totemism.

Not only the household, but the village has its animal G.o.ds or G.o.d incarnate in an animal As some Arab tribes piously bury dead gazelles, as Athenians piously buried wolves, and Egyptians cats, so in Samoa ”if a man found a dead owl by the roadside, and if that happened to be the incarnation of his village G.o.d, he would sit down and weep over it, and beat his forehead with a stone till the blood came. This was supposed to be pleasing to the deity. Then the bird would be wrapped up and buried with care and ceremony, as if it were a human body. This, however, was not the death of the G.o.d.” Like the solemnly sacrificed buzzard in California, like the bull in the Attic _Dupolia_, ”he was supposed to be yet alive and incarnate in all the owls in existence”.*

In addition to these minor and local divinities, the Samoans have G.o.ds of sky, earth, disease and other natural departments.** Of their origin we only know that they fell from heaven, and all were incarnated or embodied in birds, beasts, plants, stones and fishes. But they can change shapes, and appear in the moon when she is not visible, or in any other guise they choose. If in Samoa the sky-G.o.d was once on the usual level of sky-G.o.ds elsewhere, he seems now to be degenerate.

* (------------------) Porph., De Abst.t ii. 29; Samoa, p.

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** I am careful not to call Samoan sacred animals ”Totems.”

to which Mr. Tylor justly objects, but I think the Samoan belief has Totemistic origins.