Volume II Part 4 (2/2)

* Iliad, ii. 315-318.

Much on the same footing of civilisation as the Melanesians were the natives of Tonga in the first decade of this century. The Tongan religious beliefs were nearly akin to the ideas of the Samoans and of the Solomon Islanders. In place of Vuis they spoke of Hotooas (Atuas), and like the Vuis, those spiritual beings have either been purely spiritual from the beginning or have been incarnate in humanity and are now ghosts, but ghosts enjoying many of the privileges of G.o.ds. All men, however, have not souls capable of a separate existence, only the _Egi_ or n.o.bles, possess a spiritual part, which goes to Bolotoo, the land of G.o.ds and ghosts, after death, and enjoys ”power similar to that of the original G.o.ds, but less”.

It is open to philosophers of Mr. Herbert Spencer's school to argue that the ”original G.o.ds” were once ghosts like the others, but this was not the opinion of the Tongans. They have a supreme Creator, who alone receives no sacrifice.* Both sorts of G.o.ds appear occasionally to mankind--the primitive deities particularly affect the forms of ”lizards, porpoises and a species of water-snake, hence those animals are much respected”.**

* Mariner, ii. 205.

** Mariner's Tonga Islands, Edin., 1827, ii 99-101.

Whether each stock of Tongans had its own animal incarnation of its special G.o.d does not appear from Mariner's narrative. The G.o.ds took human morality under their special protection, punis.h.i.+ng the evil and rewarding the good, in this life only, not in the land of the dead.

When the comfortable doctrine of eternal punishment was expounded to the Tongans by Mariner, the poor heathen merely remarked that it ”was very bad indeed for the Papalangies” or foreigners. Their untutored minds, in their pagan darkness, had dreamed of no such thing. The Tongans themselves are descended from some G.o.ds who set forth on a voyage of discovery out of Bolotoo. Landing on Tonga, these adventurers were much pleased with the island, and determined to stay there; but in a few days certain of them died. They had left the deathless coasts for a world where death is native, and, as they had eaten of the food of the new realm, they would never escape the condition of mortality. This has been remarked as a widespread belief. Persephone became enthralled to Hades after tasting the mystic pomegranate of the underworld.

In Samoa Siati may not eat of the G.o.d's meat, nor Wainamoinen in Pohjola, nor Thomas the Rhymer in Fairyland. The exploring G.o.ds from Bolotoo were in the same way condemned to become mortal and people the world with mortal beings, and all about them should be _mea mama_, subject to decay and death.* It is remarkable, if correctly reported, that the secondary G.o.ds, or ghosts of n.o.bles, cannot reappear as lizards, porpoises and water-snakes; this is the privilege of the original G.o.ds only, and may be an a.s.sumption by them of a conceivably totemistic aspect. The nearest approach to the idea of a permanent supreme deity is contained in the name of Tali y Toobo--”wait there, Toobo”--a name which conveys the notion perhaps of permanence or eternity. ”He is a great chief from the top of the sky to the bottom of the earth.”**

* Mariner, ii. 115.

** Ibid., ii. 205.

He is invoked both in war and peace, not locally, but ”for the general good of the natives”. He is the patron, not of any special stock or family, but of the house in which the royal power is lodged for the time. Alone of G.o.ds he is unpropitiated by food or libation, indicating that he is not evolved out of a hungry ghost. Another G.o.d, Toobo Toty or Toobo the Mariner, may be a kind of Poseidon. He preserves canoes from perils at sea. On the death of the daughter of Finow, the king in Mariner's time, that monarch was so indignant that he threatened to kill the priest of Toobo Toty. As the G.o.d is believed to inspire the priest, this was certainly a feasible way of getting at the G.o.d. But Toobo Toty was beforehand with Finow, who died himself before he could carry the war into Bolotoo.* This Finow was a sceptic; he allowed that there were G.o.ds, because he himself had occasionally been inspired by them; ”but what the priests tell us about their power over mankind I believe to be all false”. Thus early did the conflict of Church and State declare itself in Tonga. Human sacrifices were a result of priestcraft in Tonga, as in Greece. Even the man set to kill a child of Toobo Toa's was moved by pity, and exclaimed _O iaooe chi vale!_ (”poor little innocent!”) The priest demanded this sacrifice to allay the wrath of the G.o.ds for the slaying of a man in consecrated ground.** Such are the religious ideas of Tonga; of their mythology but little has reached us, and that is under suspicion of being coloured by acquaintance with the stories of missionaries.

* Mariner, i. 307, it 107.

** Compare the ayos of the Alcmaenidae.

The Maoris, when first discovered by Europeans, were in a comparatively advanced stage of barbarism. Their society had definite ranks, from that of the Rangatira, the chief with a long pedigree, to the slave. Their religious hymns, of great antiquity, have been collected and translated by Grey, Taylor, Bastian and others. The mere possession of such hymns, accurately preserved for an unknown number of years by oral tradition, proves that the mythical notions of the Maoris have pa.s.sed through the minds of professed bards and early physical speculators. The verses, as Bastian has observed (_Die Heilige Sage der Polynesier_), display a close parallel to the roughest part of the early Greek cosmogonies, as expounded by Hesiod. Yet in the Maori hymns there are metaphysical ideas and processes which remind one more of Herac.l.i.tus than of Hesiod, and perhaps more of Hegel than of either. Whether we are to regard the abstract conceptions or the rude personal myths of G.o.ds such as A, the Beyond All, as representing the earlier development of Maori thought, whether one or the other element is borrowed, not original, are questions which theorists of different schools will settle in their own way to their own satisfaction. Some hymns represent the beginning of things from a condition of thought, and Socrates might have said of the Maori poets as he did of Anaxagoras, that compared with other early thinkers, they are ”like sober men among drunkards”. Thus one hymn of the origins runs thus:--

From the conception the increase, From the increase the swelling, From the swelling the thought, From the thought the remembrance, From the remembrance the desire.

The word became fruitful, It dwelt with the feeble glimmering, It brought forth Night.

From the nothing the begetting, It produced the atmosphere which is above us.

The atmosphere above dwelt with the glowing sky, Forthwith was produced the sun.

Then the moon sprang forth.

They were thrown up above as the chief eyes of heaven, Then the heavens became light.

The sky which floats above dwelt with Hawaiki,*

And produced (certain islands).

* The islands of Hawaiki, being then the only land known, is put for Papa, the earth.

Then follow genealogies of G.o.ds, down to the chief in whose family this hymn was traditional.*

* Taylor, New Zealand, pp. 110-112.

Other hymns of the same character, full of such metaphysical and abstract conceptions as ”the proceeding from the nothing,” are quoted at great length.

These extracts are obviously speculative rather than in any sense mythological The element of myth just shows itself when we are told that the sky dwelt with the earth and produced certain islands. But myth of a familiar character is very fully represented among the Maoris. Their mythical G.o.ds, though ”mixed up with the spirits of ancestors,” are great natural powers, first Heaven and Earth, Rangi and Papa, the parents of all. These are conceived as having originally been united in such a close embrace, the Heaven lying on the Earth, that between their frames all was darkness, and in darkness the younger G.o.ds, Atua, O-te-po, their children, were obliged to dwell. These children or younger G.o.ds (answering to the Cronidae) were the G.o.d of war (Tumatauenga), the forest-G.o.d (Tane Mahuta), in shape a tree, the wind-G.o.d (Tawhiri Matea), the G.o.ds of cultivated and natural fruits, the G.o.d of ocean (Tangaroa). These G.o.ds were unable to endure the dungeon and the darkness of their condition, so they consulted together and said: ”Let us seek means whereby to destroy Heaven and Earth, or to separate them from each other”. The counsel of Tane Mahuta prevailed: ”Let one go upwards and become a stranger to us; let the other remain below and be a parent to us”. Finally, Tane Mahuta rent asunder Heaven and Earth, pus.h.i.+ng Heaven up where he has ever since remained. The wind-G.o.d followed his father, abode with him in the open s.p.a.ces of the sky, and thence makes war on the trees of the forest-G.o.d, his enemy.

Tangaroa went, like Poseidon, to the great deep, and his children, the reptiles and fishes, clove part to the waters, part to the dry land. The war-G.o.d, Tu, was more of a human being than the other G.o.ds, though his ”brethren” are plants, fish and reptiles. Still, Tu is not precisely the first man of New Zealand.

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