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Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture

In Maori Mythology the Paradise of the Northern — Immigrants is often Confused with that of the — South Asiatic Immigrants

In Maori Mythology the Paradise of the Northern
Immigrants is often Confused with that of the
South Asiatic Immigrants

(30) Amongst the Western and Southern Polynesians there is more ambiguity about the location of their Valhalla. They are quite as decided as to the utter extinction of the common souls. But the final dwelling-place of the warrior and chiefly souls is shifting and vague. In Tonga it is Bulotu, a large island a long way off to the north-west, full of all delightful plants and flowers. In New Zealand, as well as in some of the tropical islands, Hades is below the sea, sometimes in the sky, and sometimes in a distant and mystic island. And some references seem to identify Hawaiki or the birthland with Po or the under-world.

(31) There is, in fact, here a confusion of the two birthlands of the race, the North and the South Asiatic. Hawaiki is the land in the West whence the last migration came, and whither the spirits of the heroic and aristocratic naturally return at death; but the pre-Polynesian migration from the North had likewise as a migrating people their birthland paradise; and this was properly in the north, with its long winters and deep, long winter nights. Hence their paradise is Po, the Darkness, the Night. Thus the subterranean place of soul-extinction of the South Asiatics is the paradise of the North Pacific immigrants, and the two contradictory views get inextricably intermingled, so that occasionally Hawaiki or the birthland paradise of the last immigrants is placed in Po, under the earth, and sometimes under the seathis last the sure sign of maritime migration.

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(32) And there were gods, too, that are acknowledged by the Maoris to have belonged to their predecessors. There was Oho, spoken of in the Urewera country as belonging to the tangata whenua or aboriginals; and there were rainbow gods, the Haere, that were not worshipped by the Maoris, they having Kahukura and Uenuku as the deities of the rainbow. Then there are gods that are worshipped by certain tribes in New Zealand, and unacknowledged by others. There is Maru, the war-god of the South Island, but unrecognised in the North Island, except at Wanganui. And the Ureweras, who have probably more of the original blood in their veins than any other tribe, have also many divinities that are not known in other parts, such as Marere-o-tonga, the peacemaker; his twin, Takatakaputea, mentioned by Shortland; their lizard deities, Rehu-a-tainui and Tamarau, and many more. These Ureweras point out in the porch of their great carved house an image of a deified ancestor, with a lizard issuing from the mouth, and say that he was fond of eating lizards, whereas in most parts of New Zealand the natives shrink from lizards.

(33) There is, in fact, as manifest a stratification in the mythology and the religious ideas of the Maoris as in their customs and language. And some of the strata are easily identifiable with South Asiatic mythology, whilst others are manifestly of the same origin as the North Ayran.