MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 October 1940, Page 8

MAORI MEMORIES

SKY AND EARTH PARTED. (Recorded by J.H.S., ot Palmerston North, for the "Times-Age.”) The universal Maori belief was that Rangi (the sky) and Papa (the earth) separated through a quarrel (Pakanga), the cause of which is lost in antiquity. Rangi asked that their Spirits (Wairua) should return to the sky after the death of all mortals; but Papa (Mother Earth) refused, saying that as they rebelled against their principal parent, the Mother, they were not yet prepared for the immortal life enjoyed by their parents, so they must enter the Earthly Paradise (Te Reinga), near Cape Van Diemen. The name Rangi is derived from Ra the sun; Papa from pape the blue clay

of the river banks. The entrance to Te Reinga was gained by the aid of long twisted roots from a great Pohutu Kawa tree on the cliff side. Maori faith in this simple theory received a shock when this entrance (puaha) lost its hand rope (taura) in a great storm about 45 years ago. In Maori accounts of this legendary land of the spirits (Wairua), there are clearly defined parallels of the ancient story of Charon's boat on the River Styx. When the spirit of Pare met the spirit of Hutu in Te Reinga they earnestly desired to return to their bodily forms. Seated on the tall branch of a supple tree, tlley asked their companion spirits to bend the tree tops to the ground and suddenly release them. Thus were they thrust up a$ by a catapult to the land of their birth, and their bodies were restored (whaka hoki). Life being a “spark from the sun" (Ra, Ora, Kora) those spirits who were struck by the sparks of a spirit fire (Ahi Wairua) might return to life on earth.