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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

Chapter I. — How the Maori Preserved his Knowledge of the Past

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Chapter I.

[unclear: How] the Maori Preserved his Knowledge of the Past.

[unclear: To] those who have studied the [unclear: st] of the adoption of a written [unclear: Ian] by a race on its march towards [unclear: hisition]—nothing is more [unclear: noticble] than the singular results of such [unclear: adoption] in connection with the [unclear: tive] powers of the memory. A [unclear: se] living in a state of letterless bar [unclear: sm] not yet relying on a written [unclear: chapter] to preserve the memory of st events and achievements, retains [unclear: d] transmits orally the most lengthy [unclear: ions], poems, and genealogies [unclear: lth] singular facility and precision. [unclear: reserved] in such a manner were the [unclear: ems] of Homer, the Indian Vedas, [unclear: he] kalevala of the Finnish race, that at epic poem of 22,000 verses.

The Maori of New Zealand, not having evolved or borrowed a graphic system, was nevertheless most careful and successful in conserving the ancient lore of his race, their songs, proverbs, folk-lore, legends, mythology and genealogies—having possibly derived this pride in their ancient know ledge and history from some offshoot of that wonderful race who for so many centuries preserved the sacred Vedas by means of oral teaching. Through all the dim traditions of a remote past retained by the Maori in his wanderings across the 'Great Ocean of Kiwa,' in his singular rites and ceremonies, in his wonderful system of mythology, in his high class ancient chants, there can be noted the traces of a superior culture to that which has obtained among the various divisions of the far-spreading Polynesian race within historic times. It is an ethnological axiom that when a race becomes scattered and isolated in small communities, that race must page 2 necessarily become less cohesive in arts and general knowledge, or, in a word, deteriorates in culture. From whatever far-off land the ancient Maori came, whatever old-timed [unclear: dynas] claimed him subject, whether were he allied to the Turanian or Aryan, Acadian or Dravidian races, whether his far away ancestors marched westward with the great ludo-Germanic migration or eastward a Thousand years later into India, withstood Mongolian hordes on northern steppes, or cultivated the Valley of the Wonderful City—whatever source he may have sprung from—the fact shines clear to those who may look upon it, that the Mnori, Mahori or fair Polynesian of to-day, retains in his mythology, Karakia and traditions, plain evidence of having originally known a higher state of general culture, a culture that has gradually fallen from nim during many centuries of wandering over the vast Pacific, of isolation in snail groups, of privations in grainless lands, of sojournings in enervating climates, of countless wars and forced migrations.

Did the Maori ever have any knowledge of written characters? This is an extremely interesting question and one on which different opinions are held. Tylor, one of our leading English anthropologists, has held, with many others, that no race that has acquired a graphic system, whether pictographic, symbolic, or phonetic, ever loses the knowledge of that art, and the researches of paleographists go far to prove the fact.

The western origin of the Maori is now well established, and also that he travelled ever eastward in his wanderings, from the original Hawaiki of bygone ages to those isles which are stamped upon his memory as Waeroti, Waerota, Parima, Paea, Whiti, Tonga, Tawhiti-nui, Tawuiti-roa, Tawhiti-pamamao and Te Hono-i-wairua.

What graphic systems are [unclear: h] in the west and for what period [unclear: b] they been in use among the [unclear: nation] sessing them? The Tagalo, Bisays [unclear: a] Ilocano tribes of the Philippine [unclear: g] have long possessed a semi-[unclear: syi] alphabet, allied to the [unclear: Javacese] several of the Indian types, and which the prototype is the [unclear: alp] of the inscriptions of Asoka, [unclear: gra] of Chandragupta founder of the [unclear: g] Maury a dynasty, which [unclear: inscrip] were incised upon rocks in five [unclear: t] ferent parts of India about the [unclear: v] 250 B.C. The date of the [unclear: adoption] the Philippine tribes of this [unclear: system] unfortunately not known, [unclear: inas] as the fanatic followers of [unclear: leg] destroyed with pious zeal these [unclear: n] interesting written records of the [unclear: c] post of the Malayan race.

Of all the sporadic alphabetic [unclear: c] tems of the Asiatic Archipelage [unclear: f] of the Bugis or Wugis of [unclear: Celebrate] the most eastern, and the [unclear: literate] this people does not date further [unclear: b] than 400 years from the present [unclear: t] Eastward of the Moluccas the [unclear: ep] sion of this great sign of a [unclear: hi] culture was stopped by the [unclear: im] trable wall of Papuan barbarism.

The semi-syllabic alphabetic system of Java and Bali and of the Be of Sumatra, which last people [unclear: eco] the unique position of being the [unclear: s] cannibal race in the world who [unclear: ar] use of a written tongue—are all [unclear: t] rived from an Indian source and [unclear: b] probably been in use, at least in [unclear: h] for at least nine centuries. The [unclear: an] Kawi of Java was closely [unclear: ali] the Deva nagari in which [unclear: cha] the Sanscrit li erature is [unclear: couse] and the use of the Kawi and [unclear: s] obsolete systems in Java is [unclear: los] the mists of antiquity.

These then are the nearest [unclear: sys]* page 3 of that great art that has done more than any other to free the human mind mind from the shackles of barbarism and to promote the advancement of civilisation. With the single exception of the strange symbolic characters of the Be Easter Island tablets, no sign of a Written language is met with in the vast extent of the island system bing between Celebes, in the East [unclear: Indies,] and and America.

If the Maori passed through these [unclear: lettered] peoples on his eastward course, the either forced his way through as a [unclear: barbarian] scorning the advantages of writing, or he has lost the art during his adventurous migrations from isle to [unclear: to] isle on his way to Aotearoa. But [unclear: the] probability is that he passed through the East Indies long before [unclear: the] art of writing was known in those [unclear: les] with the possible exception of java.

Various mnemonic aids to memory were used by the old by the old-time Maori, not ably the 'Rakau Whkaparanga' or genealogical staye; and the original singnatures to the Treaty of Waitangi, together with certain symbolic charac [unclear: hrs] inscribed on some stones recently found at Paten, seem to point to the [unclear: het] that they possessed some method of wording at least proper names by the use of certain symbols orideograms.

But for the question as to whether the Maori ever possessed or came in [unclear: confact] with a system of writen language, the answer may be that stereotyped [unclear: one] of the Mexican peon,—'Quien [unclear: be?']

The preservation of tribal genealogies, traditions and Karakia was treated as a sacred matter by the Maori and many forme and ceremonies were displayed in teaching such things. Only the young men of high rank were initiated into the ancient lore and sacred chants, and the Whare-kura of the Maori was one of the most singular institutions that we have any record of as existing among an unlettered people. It is probably owing to the fact that the Maori took such great pride in the history and achieve' ments of his race, that instruction in such matters was allotted to the Tohunga and came to be looked upon as being sacred. To such an extent did this belief obtain that the mere repeating of a genealogy was reckoned a most potent spell.

Few subjects contain a greater element of interest to the anthropologist than those pertaining to the intellectual state of a barbarous people, a people living in the Stone Age and untouched by foreign culture. The Maori had lived such a life in New Zealand for at least four centuries prior to the arrival of the pakeha, and here, cut off by the broad ocean from the other divisions of his race, he lived and fought and strove, crude-minded, to solve the mysteries of Nature and of human life. Savage, cruel and cannibal as he was, endowed with a mind saturated with superstition, yet the ancient Maori composed some thousands of chants which for beauty of expression can scarcely be surpassed. He evolved or at least preserved a mythology and folk lore that for metaphysical reasoning, mental grasp and general interest can not he excelled by that of any Hellenic or Teutonic race.

The Maori of New Zealand, savage and uncultured as we deem him, had yet advanced many stages on the agelong road that leads to civilisation, and had strove with darkened mind and adverse surroundings for countless centuries to forge his link of that endless chain which we term Human Progress.

* Battak—The 'Padda' of [unclear: Herod] The final 'k' is mute in Malay, [unclear: b] replaced by a soft aspirate.