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Maori Religion and Mythology Part 1

[argument and introduction]

page 9

Maori religious beliefs, &c., little known. Work of earlier writers. Barbaric man is naturally religious. Myth and religion. Ritual formulae. Magic. Ramifications of Maori religious beliefs. Difficulty of obtaining an insight into religious beliefs of barbaric man. Max Muller's dictum. Definition of religion. Remarks of Lubbock, of Marett, of Jevons, of Lang, Bancroft, Arago, Quatrefages, Carpenter, Baring Gould, Speck, Grant Allen, Tylor, Wohlers, Clodd, and others. Evidence concerning religions of lower races. Are there peoples devoid of religion? Religions of lower races despised. Tylor sees the light. Lord Avebury's sweeping statements. Tylor takes an opposite view. Origin of religion. Public opinion a powerful force. Morality and religion. Reason and religion. Fear did not produce the concept of Io. One religion built upon another. Religions change. How a religion may decline. Survivals of paganism in Christianity. "It is wicked to point at the sun." Signs of decay in civilization. Far-reaching powers of religion, and of superstition. Stages of religious development. Maori religion in an interesting stage. The study of causality led to the discovery of God.

The subject of the religion of the Maori folk of New Zealand prior to the arrival of Europeans is one of which little is known, owing to the fact that no monograph on the subject has been published. Brief notices, and chapters, that have appeared in various works on the Maori are quite inadequate, and do not present to the reader a complete account of Maori beliefs and practices, or even include any clear description of the various grades of supernatural beings, and the different phases of culture noticeable in the Maori commune.

In the Rev. R. Taylor's work Te Ika a Maui, of 713 pages (2nd ed., 1870), we find a chapter of nine pages headed "Religion," and fully half of these pages consists of extraneous matter and general remarks. The balance consists of remarks on native myths, some casual data concerning omens, shamanistic rites, and the lower class of gods. Buller's Forty Years in New Zealand has a four-and-a-half-page chapter on the subject, which commences by stating that the Maori had no religion, then gives a few notes on native gods and priests. Yate gives some sporadic descriptions of certain Maori beliefs and institutions, such as tapu; while Polack makes some desultory and often unreliable remarks on similar matters. The earlier writers on the Maori, and most of the later ones, have certainly not understood the subject of his religion, or possessed any insight into his peculiar page 10mentality and spiritual conceptions. Shortland broke out the trail leading to better work, and, so far as he went, gave us a good foundation to work on. Tregear's Maori Race has a chapter of forty-seven pages on religion and cosmogony, which presents in abbreviated form much of the data previously collected, with remarks on the Maori concept of a Supreme Being, as also the cosmogonic myths and mythopoetic narrations. The third volume of the Memoirs of the Polynesian Society contains the only detailed account of native belief in a Supreme Being; and the Journal of that society will prove to be the richest mine for students of the future who wish to study Maori ethnography. It seems desirable that some connected account of Maori religion should be put on record, inasmuch as it was blended with myth and magic to a remarkable extent, and also affected social usages in a peculiar manner.

It is quite clear that many inferior peoples are much more religious, as we term it, than is civilized man. The former have a greater fear of supernatural powers, and their very ignorance of natural laws, and superstitions concerning natural phenomena, &c., force them to rely on their gods—that is to say, on religion—to a much greater extent than does civilized man. Our knowledge, incomplete as it is, of natural laws and phenomena, of mechanics and other matters, tends to render us more independent of religion, and to destroy faith in old superstitions. In the case of many such inferior peoples we must admit that they feel the need of religion more than we do. The state in which we ourselves are now living, in which many persons pay no attention whatever to religion, would have been quite impossible among the Maori folk.

To draw a dividing-line between myth and religion in any account of Maori life is utterly impossible, so intermingled are the two. Moreover, there exists a difficulty in regard to the definition of certain native beliefs. Though the Maori had evolved or retained a belief in a Supreme Being, doubtless many would style that being a myth because he bears a different name to that employed in Christian belief. The ritual pertaining to native gods would not be described as "prayers" by us, because, in most cases, no supplication appears therein, no benefit or boon is directly asked for, and no act of mercy craved; they resemble the incantatory formulae employed by early denizens of Egypt. Though lacking any form of regular or public worship, yet the Maori believed in supernatural powers, whose aid he invoked in his peculiar way, without making any direct appeal. He believed in the survival of the soul of man after the death of its physical basis, and in the continued existence of this ghost in the page 11spirit-world; hence we must admit that he possessed a religion, or at least religious beliefs.

Albeit the higher form of Maori religion, the cult of Io, seems to have been free of magic arts, yet its lower forms dealt largely with such shamanistic activities. The lower orders of the priesthood practised the arts of black magic, as well as such white magic as influencing the elements, of which latter art our praying for rain is a survival. Other survivals of bygone savagery still noted among us are seen in amazing cures of "incurable" diseases, and marvellous restorations to health of certain true believers vouchsafed the glorious privilege of gazing upon the bones or toe-nails of some unwashed eccentric of former days.

The principles and precepts of Maori religion impinged upon social and industrial life in many ways. They practically usurped the place of civil law, and entered in some way into every industry in the Maori commune. Agriculture and war, fishing and fowling, house-building, canoe-making and weaving, fire-kindling and navigation, into all these and other activities some phase or tenets of religion entered.

The subject of the religion of uncultured folk is not an easy one to handle, and correct information in regard to it is by no means easily obtained. So far as their technology is concerned no great difficulty is experienced in acquiring a correct knowledge of the same, except in regard to any religious ritual that might pertain to it, as in the case of agriculture, for example. In the collection of myths and folk-tales the inquirer again treads a fairly smooth road, though in the higher-class myths it may be extremely difficult to acquire the sacerdotal or inner meanings thereof as retained by the initiated. But when your field-working ethnographer essays to peer into the religion of these barbaric folk, he follows a hard path and needs a divine patience. Here he encounters prejudice, conservatism, suspicion, and resentment. No traveller, or he of short sojourns, may delve into the esoteric knowledge, the inner strata of the mentality of barbaric man; his tools will be blunted, delve he never so bravely; his vision will fail to pierce the barriers erected by a vigilant and distrustful people. Neolithic man ever closely guards his true religion, his venerated ritual, his inner mentality, from the inquisitive gaze and analytical probing of inquiring outsiders. In order to open the pages of the inner life and thought of such folk it is highly necessary to gain their confidence. A long residence in their midst, a good knowledge of their language, suppression of one's own opinions and beliefs, a quiet and non-critical bearing, a heartfelt sympathy with the feelings and prejudices of the people—these are all necessary to the in page 12quirer. Such a person will, after long years of probation and close scrutiny by conservative record-keepers, be admitted to the confidence of some old adept or warlock, and then his opportunity has come at last. With serious mien he listens to puerile tales and wild myths, with reverent demeanour to ritual formulae and miraculous occurrences. He enters into the mental plane of his teachers; he looks upon the old Earth Mother with new understanding and kindly greeting; he feels within him the various spiritual potentiae of man, where formerly a lone spirit held sway; he watches his own soul fare out upon the gleaming path of Tane, across the restless breast of the Ocean Maid, and follow the setting sun down the long descent to the spirit-world, where the erst Dawn Maid welcomes it and protects it from dread Whiro.

Apart from the intensely conservative attitude of folk in the lower stages of human culture, there is ever a keen dread of ridicule. Such a people as the Maori feels ridicule much more keenly than anger, and this feeling leads to concealment, and, necessarily to, very erroneous statements concerning the religion of such folk.

In his work on Anthropological Religion Max Muller makes some sagacious remarks on the collection of anthropological evidence: "That no one in future is to be quoted as an authority on savage races who has not been an eye-witness, and has proved himself free from the prejudices of race and religion. But even to have been an eye-witness does not suffice." (This latter remark he illustrates by means of reference to a certain massacre mentioned in the 32nd chapter of Exodus.) He continues: "It was therefore necessary to lay down a second principle—namely, that no one is in future to be quoted as an authority on the customs, traditions, and, more particularly, on the religious ideas of uncivilized races who has not acquired an acquaintance with their language sufficient to enable him to converse with them freely on these difficult subjects. No true scholar requires any proof in support of these two demands." These remarks are undoubtedly sound, though unfortunately we do not live up to them.