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Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture

Hence the Prose Legends of Polynesia are Full of — Variations and Contradictions

Hence the Prose Legends of Polynesia are Full of
Variations and Contradictions

(5) In White's "Ancient History of the Maori" we can see this prose literature in process of formation. Every tribe has its own version of the legends of the gods and the heroes, as seen in the first two volumes. We might have expected a people so strict in their attention to accuracy of genealogy and incantation to cling rigidly to the one form of the story of their gods. But here we have tribe after tribe giving its own version, in which, indeed, we can recognise the nucleus common to all; but there is often little else common; every detail varies with the tribe; one will give it badly, another with a labyrinth of romance. The stories of Whiro and Tinirau, or Maui and Tan-whaki, and even of Rangi and Papa, Tane and Tu vary page 219in a bewildering way. The Higher Criticism would make but short work of them. How the high priests of the Maori could have kept their faith in them undisturbed, in presence of the manifest inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities, it is difficult to understand; for they had many of them the keenest of philosophical, if not sceptical, intellects, as we saw in the chapter on Polynesian theology and mythology.

(6) Sir George Grey, in his "Polynesian Mythology," leaves a different impression on the mind. For he has smoothed out the inconsistencies and rejected the disagreements and variations, in order that the stories might have their full effect as romances of the primitive mind. He is a harmoniser of the legends rather than a reporter. And the result is very satisfactory to the seeker of fairy stories and romances, and anything but satisfactory to the student of ethnology or folklore, or even the history of the Polynesian mind. Had the author of "Polynesian Mythology" fulfilled the title of his book, and sought farther afield than New Zealand, his task would have been tenfold more difficult to harmonise the sacred stories of the various branches of the Polynesian race. Their language and customs make one clear, broad impression of a racial unity. The legends, especially the divine legends, diverge in the most astonishing manner, not merely in the details, but in the prime essentials. The names of the gods and the demigods are common to some extent; but their places in the pantheons of the various groups, nay, of the various islands or each group, and the functions and honours of the divinities, differs as widely as in those of the different branches of the Aryan-speaking races. The general moulds of the divine stories, and characters, and manners, are not unlike, guided as they are, first by the psychological unity of mankind, but still more by the racial unity. But the names attached to them, names that are often manifestly the same in origin, are assigned to them as if drawn in a sweepstake. Every group page 220nay, every islet, has taken its own path in recreating its pantheon.