Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture
Literature comes Long before Writing, and Prose is — the First to be Secularised
Literature comes Long before Writing, and Prose is
the First to be Secularised
(1) So deeply has printing left its impress on the Western mind that it is difficult to think of literature without books. The connection between the two was looser and less essential in ancient times, when writing was the only means of recording, and a manuscript book was a rare possession.
(2) But long before a script or alphabet was thought of, there was a vast and ever-growing literature in the world, not merely in somewhat cultivated races like the Sanskrit-speakers when they reached the Punjaub, but amongst barbarous and even savage tribes. There are a few primitive folks, like the Fuegians in South America, and the Andaman Islanders in the south of Asia, that have no trace of a literature, or that, like the Veddahs of Ceylon, have only one legendthat of their origin. But, as a rule, even savages have some method of expressing their feelings rhythmically, and something about their forefathers that they can hand down from generation to generation. The now extinct Tasmanians, who belonged to the very earliest stage of palaeolithic culture, used to sing extemporaneously the deeds of themselves and their ancestors, indulged in recitative dialogue with pantomime, and had legends of gods and demons and the origin of fire.
(3) But these germs of literature go little beyond the intonation and action of daily intercourse. It is when music and dancing become the handmaids of religion that literature proper emerges. Then is there a diction, or form of speech, evolved that differs essentially from that of everyday life; it is dignified, rhythmic, and often melodious in form, figurative in thought, passionate and often plaintive in emotion, and soon, as belonging to the most conservative of all human phenomena, religion, archaic in language; and even in its highest and latest phases it cannot doff these habits with ease, long after it has been completely secularised.
(4) It is prose that first flings off the trammels of its parentsmusic, dancing, and religion. The teller of legends and stories trusts to the language of the moment when he repeats them to new audiences or new generations; he is most engaged by the incidents and names he has to use; and considerable latitude is allowed him in their embellishment. Involved though these are in the holy past and the worship of ancestors, they admit of comparative freedom in the expression and in the introduction of episodes.