MAORI MYTHS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 68, 7 April 1937, Page 12

MAORI MYTHS

High Mental Concepiion of Spiritual Things GISBORNE ADDRESS Myths and legends of the Maori race, their bearing upon the philosophy of the Maori and their representation of a remarkably high mental eonception of spiritual things, foraed the eubjeet of an interesting address to the Gisborne Eotary Club by Mr. E. L. Adams, M.A., of the Gisborne /High School staff, It had beeomc popular to acquire a certain knowledge ot Maori myths, said Mr. Adams, the majority of auperficial students regarding them merely in tho same light as "Grimm'x Fairy Tales," and missing the deeper significance of the legends in their religious, explanatory, or historical character. Fortuuately, there had beeu a great deal of interest shown also in true ethnological xesearch, by men who realised the value of traditional tales in assessing the philosophical and psychological naturo of the Maori. In recent years students had owed mueh to the work carried on by tho Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and by individuals such as Dr. Peter Buck, Elsdon Best, James Cowan, and Johannes Anderson, probing into the traditions of the natives and traeiiig the movements of the Polynesian peoples through the Pacific. Battleground of the Rade. * An nnlettered people had to havo some means of communicating its historical traditions from one generation to another, and in the Maori this means was found in the construction of formal xecitatives, which, while they might differ in detail as between one locality and another, still bore substantially the same character though carried through many generations. From a study of these tales, it wa» possible to gain an idea of the background of the race itself, the history of its great men, the system of philosophy evolved under the conditions of life to which the Mdoris were subjected, and the social influenees which had worked upon the race throughout its history, said Mr. Adams. The cultural plane of the Maoris was considered to be very high, he coatinued. Though neolithic in conditions of life in New Zealand, the race had possessed a high mental development far ahead of other neolithic peoples. iand comparable, indeed, with that of many of the advanced peoples of the West. Their conceptions of a religious character showed that in the past there had been a section of the people at least wifch sufficieut leisuxe to contemplate non-material- things, and the existence of a supreme being lo at the head of their religious system showed. their capacity to evolve a purely mental conception. Higher-OIass Worship. Xo was the supreme being to whose worship only the higher classes of Maori were initiated; he stood as one who had been before time started, aucl would remain after time ended. He was in primal essence a beneficient deity, in purest form. The evil nsually associated with an all-ruling power in the Oriental theologies was entirely lacking in the Maori conception of lo, whose power needed no bolsteriug by dart of lightning or other forms of revenue upon those who tranSgressed his laws. The faet that the Maori eOuld arrive at a mental conception so pure placed him on the highest cultural plane, Mr. Atdams considered. The conception could have arised only in a people with the leisure to think, and tha intellectual equipment to pass beyond the material surroundings of thei* lives. 1 For the less exalted classes of Maori { society, indeed, a secondary kind of priesthood, apart from the highest type of tohunga, preached a more commonly understandable religious theory, in which lo stood at the head of a genealogical tree through the descendiug branches of which were introduced the various demigods which oecupied so prominent a place in the mythology • of the people. In this conception, the commoner type of Maori mind was able to feel at home. assigning roles to the sun, the moon and stars, and attributing physical phenomena to the resulti of the demi-gods' actions. Thus it waa held that Tane, descended from the sun and the moon, forced heaven and eartk apart to make the world livable for mankind, and xemained the god of light and life for all. History 's Brief Span. Mr. Adams pointed to the accepteJ deseent of tho discoyorer Toi iroiu Tane, at an interval -of 25 generatioi-s, and added that the Maori mythology separated lo and the present-day people by only about 80 generations — barely a sufficieut time for evolution to hava accomplished even the advancement New Zealand had shown. He referred to the well-known stories of Tane's ereation of wpman, and of Maui's fishing N ew Zealand from the deeps of the Pacific, as having a deeper significance than was aetually attached to them. and to illustrate other poiuts in reference to the legends of the Maori, quoted instances of natural phenomena to which supernatural origin was attributed. . Besidents of "Whataupoko, among Mr Adams ' hearers, were intrigued to hear the historical tale attaching to * the name of Gisborne 's well-known suburb. On one occasion a visiting chief had ' insulted some women of a Poverty Biay tribe, said Mr. Adams, and as a result his own tribe was raided and several heatls takcn by the raiders. These heads were exposed upon a platform to dry, and the place where this operation was carried out received the name "Whataupoko, from the whata — or platform — on which the upoko — or heads— were exposed.