“PASSING MAORI MEMORIES”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 234, 31 August 1935, Page 2

“PASSING MAORI MEMORIES”

(Recorded by J.H.S. for “The Manawatu Evening Standard.”)

The Maori Origin

Oral tradition of great age presents elements of interest in regard to the question “NoJiea te Maori?’.’ (whence came the Maori?). “Jrihia” they describe as an extensive land, not an island, a hot country, inhabited by vast numbers of dark skinned people. The food supply included ari, which is described as kai toto kore (bloodless food). The natives of India describe sap as the blood of a tree. Ari, vari, pari, and fare are names given to rice. “Atia vari-nga nui” is tho Rarotongan name for the old homeland of tho Polynesian people. Wo may perhaps reasonably translate it as “Asia the great rice land.” The name Libia presents interesting parallels. An old Sanscrit name for India was Vrihia which no Maori could pronounce except as Libia or Wirihia. Vrihi is also a Sanscrit name for rice. By many inferences Elsdon Best decided that at a remote period the Maori knew rice as a food. Matorohanga of Wairarapa, versed in ancient lore, declared that rice was the "bloodless” food of Libia, the Ari of Maori tradition. Padi, another rice name, is connected with Pani, who in Maori myth’ gave birth to tho kumara “under water”—rice is grown in water. Percy Smith from genealogical records places the Polynesian migration from India as 450 8.0. Fenton shows that Sin, the moon god of Babylonia, was also called Rono. Fornander tells us that Sina, the Hawaiian moon goddess, took the name Uono. Tho Maori moon goddess is Hina and tho moon god Rono. Unless we push hack tho time of liis departure from India a thousand years or more, we cannot account for the fact that the Polynesian (and the Maori) ivere ignorant of metals and written languages. If they left India ere yet they were cultured sufficiently to appreciate these advantages, whence came their skill and intelligence for long sea voyages? Or have they forgotten those useful' aids during their long stay in the far scattered Isles of the Sea?

One other long preserved tradition is that the Maori in remote ages met fair skinned people in far off lands. Is the persistent recurrence of the nga uru kehu, a light complexioned red haired Maori, due to atavism? The ancestors of the Maori over sought the sunrise, the red road of Tane, the East. That is why their spirits flit west from Te Reinga when death releases them. Patu pai Arebe—Fairies, Facts, or Fancies.

John AVhite collected stores of lore from the old time Maori who has now “gone west,” a phrase which is not generally recognised as peculiarly of Maori or Polynesian origin. The Maori religion set the voyager's face ever toward tho rising sun, therefore at death he returned to the home of his fathers—west, always to the sun set. Oil the slopes of Moe hau, 2900 feet, in the Coromandel peninsula, White’s guide. Hapi Pataka, pointed out many ancient earthworks, pits and stone walls of tho Maruiwi 1350 A.D. Hapi showed him the native frogs (little red men) which the older Maoris called kuri peke (jumping dogs). He declared that the Maori fairies. Patu Paiarehe, intermarried with the kuri peke, and in many instances made pets or slaves (mokai) of them. Hapi showed a great kauri tree with ladder marks where the Fairy Chief’s family lived for many generations. These fairy folk were in great numbers on mountain tops, men, women and children occupied in playing, singing, dancing and music from the putorino, a native flute. On the mountain they found an old pa now covered by dense forest where these “little people” lived secure from intrusion by the ancient Maori, being closely surrounded by a wall of woven kareao (supplejacks) through which no man could pass. The Patu Paiarehe wore white garments, had soft flowing hair, and were not tattooed. They carried their children in their arms, not like the Maori on their backs. Sometimes they enticed a Maori maid to be the wife of one of these people. The children of the couple were called “Konako,” which may have some reference to Ngako, the crystal of white limestone. They had light soft hair and blue eyes, a colour unknown in a Maori, but now very frequently seen in that of a half caste cross. Tho Konako, like the ruru (owl) could not see in the daylight. From many parallel legends it is apparent that unlike our fairy stories, the Patu Paiarehe had some origin in a far off people now extinct. They had white.faces and the cross had blue eyes. An eminent Britisher’s view. In a trip up the AVhanganui River accompanied by Elsdon Best, George Pitt Rivers, F.R.A.1., puts on record the fruits of his enquiries among three generations of the Maori people. A schoolboy of thirteen, when asked what he learned at school, said lie was taught about the Wars of the Roses, and was now learning about the 100 Years War; but lie was never told of the Maori wars along the AVhanganui River GO years ago, nor of the famous traditions of the old pa of Operiki whose ramparts stand on the river terrace. There came a lime when this generation refused to look back into the pagan past, and refused to learn the names of their ancestors, of whom the old men proudly remembered 30 generations, 750 years. They faced the future at all cost and blotted out the painful past. “There is no going back to the proud records of our once unchallenged race. AVe learn to be like the pakelia, yet many of our young men return from college with so much in their heads that they arc wasters who do no work and loaf like superior beings.” Mr Best said the missionaries broke down the institution of the tapu. They destroyed it as a corrective force, a highly useful element in the life of the people. No missionary ever understood it, and knew not the harm they were doing. In the end the Maori drifted passively, hopelessly, down the stream of life —a rudderless ship. Mauri ora, the spiritual side of the physical life principle, is the most important of all human attributes. Vitiated and polluted, then the gods withdraw their protective powers leaving the Maori helpless, hopeless, defenceless. The inana of tho chiefs was also involved. Few of us realise or understand liow P ro ’ foundly this influences the outtook of the Maori, or how intimately it is connected with the depression of the race, which is usually attributed to the incurable laziness of the Maori the very last vice of which lie was ever formerly guilty.