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ERRATA

PRIMITIVE RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.

ARYANS AND POLYNESIANS.

?????? ????? ???? ?????? ????? ?????.

The religious feeling may be traced to the natural veneration of the child for the parent, joined to an innate belief in the immortality of the soul. What we know of the primitive religion of Aryans and Polynesians points to this source. They both venerated the spirits of deceased ancestors, believing that these spirits took an interest in their living descendants: moreover, they feared them, and were careful to observe the precepts handed down by tradition, as having been delivered by them while alive.

The souls of men deified by death were by the Latins called "Lares" or "M?nes," by the Greeks "Demons" or "Heroes." Their tombs were the temples of these divinities, and bore the inscription "D?s manibus," "????? ????????;" and before the tomb was an altar for sacrifice. The term used by the Greeks and Romans to signify the worship of the dead is significant. The former used the word "??????????," the latter "parentare," showing that the prayers were addressed to forefathers. "I prevail over my enemies," says the Brahmin, "by the incantations which my ancestors and my father have handed down to me."?

? La Cit? Antique par De Coulange.

When we consider the great remoteness of time at which it is possible that a connection between Aryans and Polynesians could have existed, we are carried back to the contemplation of a very primitive condition of the human race. In the Polynesian family we can still discover traces of this primitive condition. We can also observe a similarity between the more antient form of religious belief and mythological tradition of the Aryans and that still existing among Polynesians; for which reason we think it allowable to apply to the interpretation of old Aryan myths the principle we discover to guide us as to the signification of Polynesian Mythology.

It was a favourite opinion with Christian apologists, Eusebius and others, that the Pagan deities represented deified men. Others consider them to signify the powers of external nature personified. For others they are, in many cases, impersonations of human passions and propensities reflected back from the mind of man. A fourth mode of interpretation would treat them as copies distorted and depraved of a primitive system of religion given by God to man.?

? Juventus mundi, p. 203.

This mythology personified and deified the Powers of Nature, and represented them as the ancestors of all mankind; so these personified Powers of Nature were worshipped as deified ancestors. There is no authority for any other supposition. With regard to the two latter theories above referred to it may be remarked that fiction is always liable to be interpreted in a manner conformable to the ideas prevailing at any particular time, so that there would be a natural tendency, in modern times, to apply meanings never originally thought of to the interpretation of mythology. Man in early days, ignorant of the causes of natural phenomena, yet having a mind curious to inquire and trace observed effects to some cause, formulated his conceptions on imaginary grounds, which, although now manifestly false and absurd, yet were probably sufficiently credible in the infancy of knowledge.

? Max M?ller, "Science of Language." Farrar, "Chapters on Language," p. 6.

ARYAN MYTHOLOGY.

Hesiod in his Theogony relates that the first parent of all was Chaos.

From Chaos sprang Gaia , Tartarus, Eros , Erebus, a dark son, Night, a dark daughter, and lastly, Day.

From Gaia alone sprung Ouranos , Hills, Groves, and Thalassa .

From Heaven and Earth sprung Okeanos , Japetus, Kronos , Titans.

Hesiod also relates how Heaven confined his children in the dark caverns of Earth, and how Kronos avenged himself.

In the "Works and Days" Hesiod gives an account of the formation of the first human female out of Earth, from the union of whom, with Epimetheus, son of the Titan Japetus, sprung the human race.

So far Hesiod's account may be derived from Aryan myths. The latter and greater part, however, of Hesiod's Theogony cannot be accepted as a purely Aryan tradition; for colonists from Egypt and Phoenicia had settled in Greece, at an early period, and had brought with them alien mythical fables which were adopted in a modified form, in addition to the antient family religion of worship of ancestors.

Herodotus asserts that Homer and Hesiod made the Theogony of the Greeks; and to a certain extent this may be true, for the bard was then invested with a kind of sacredness, and what he sung was held to be the effect of an inspiration. When he invoked the Muses his invocation was not a mere formal set of words introduced for the sake of ornament, but an act of homage due to the Divinities addressed, whose aid he solicited.?

? Hom. Il., 2-484. Invocat. to Muses:--

Tell me now, O Muses, ye who dwell in Olympus; For ye are goddesses, and are present, and know all things, But we hear only rumour, and know not anything.

The traditions prevalent in Boeotia would naturally be strongly imbued with fables of foreign origin; and Hesiod, who was a Boeotian by birth, by collecting these local traditions and presenting them to the public in an attractive form, no doubt contributed, as well as Homer, to establish a national form of religion, made up of old Aryan tradition and what had been imported by Phoenician and Egyptian colonists.

Thus Zeus and the other Olympian deities formed the centre of a national religious system; but at the same time the old Aryan religion of worship of ancestors maintained a paramount influence, and every tribe and every family had its separate form of worship of its own ancestors. The prayer of the son of Achilles, when in the act of sacrificing Polyxena to the manes of his father, is a striking instance of the prevalent belief that the deified spirits of ancestors had power to influence the destinies of the living.

"O son of Peleus, my father, receive from me this libation, appeasing, alluring, the dead. Come now, that you may drink the black pure blood of a virgin, which we give to thee--both I and the army. And be kindly disposed to us, and grant us to loose the sterns of our ships, and the cables fastening to the shore, and all to reach home favoured with a prosperous return from Ilium."?

? Hecuba, l. 533-9.

Euripides would not have put these words into the mouth of the son of Achilles had they not been in accord with the sympathies of an Athenian audience.

MAORI COSMOGONY AND MYTHOLOGY.

The Genealogies recorded hereafter are divisible into three distinct epochs:--

Ancestral spirits who had lived in the flesh before the migration to New Zealand would be invoked by all the tribes in New Zealand, so far as their names had been preserved, in their traditional records as mighty spirits.

MAORI COSMOGONY.

Powers | Te Ata . of | Te Ao-tu-roa . Light. | Te Ao-marama . | Whaitua .

From the union of Te Mangu with Mahorahora-nui-a-Rangi came four children:--

GENEALOGICAL DESCENT FROM TOKO-MUA.

? Whose wife was Hine-titamauri de qu? infra.

? Whose wife was Puhaorangi de qu? infra.

? Tamatea was settled at Muriwhenua, and his son Kahuhunu was born there. The latter went on a journey to Nukutauraua near the Mahia, and there married Rongomai-wahine, having got rid of her husband Tamatakutai by craft. Tamatea went to bring him home, but on their return their canoe was upset in a rapid, near where the river Waikato flows out of the lake Taupo, and Tamatea was drowned.

GENEALOGICAL DESCENT FROM TOKO-ROTO.

After the birth of Rauru, the son of Toi-te-huatahi and Kuraemonoa, while Toi was absent from home fishing, Puhaorangi came down from Heaven, and carried off Kuraemonoa to be his own wife. She bore four children from this union:--

From Ohomairangi descended:--

GENEALOGICAL DESCENT FROM TOKO-PA.

Kohu was the child of Tokopa.

Kohu married Te Ika-roa , and gave birth to Nga Whetu .

Rangi-potiki had three wives, the first of which was Hine-ahu-papa; from her descended:--

| Tu-nuku. Sky | Tu-rangi. Powers. | Tama-i-koropao. | Haronga.

Rangi-potiki's second wife was Papatuanuku. She gave birth to the following children:--

Rehua . Rongo. Tangaroa. Tahu. Punga and Here, twins. Hua and Ari, do. Nukumera } twins. Rango-maraeroa }

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