MAORI MYTHOLOGY

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 5 (Supplement)

MAORI MYTHOLOGY

Before endeavouring to picture to ourselves the daily life of the ancient Maori it is absolutely necessary that we should have some idea of his mythology, and of that strangely i complex belief which we may call his religion. The reasoi

i for this is obvious. The mythological and religious beliefs of j the ancient Maori were so interwoven with his e very-day life, i habits, and emotions', that we must study the spiritual development of him before we can realise the physical life of' l>im.

Those who, from lack either of interest or opportunity, lave never tried to acquaint themselves with the ancient history of the Maori will find some difficulty in realising that the following elaborate mythology of Creation was formulated and taught by so primitive a people. No finer

or more conclusive evidence of the luxuriant and poetic-il imagination of the Maori can b«- found than in his history of Creation . Scientific, too, you observ" in its theory of slow and gradual evolution. Indeed, there is nothing in the vi hole history of the Maoris at once so curious and so

interesting as the contrast between the actual savagery of many of their customs and much of their daily life, and the elaborate nature of their religious formula, the wealth and innate beauty of their legendary lore. Tt is only Ly reminding ourselves that these myths and traditions belonged to a

past lost in the mipts of antiquity, and embodied ideals^ of a life and, perhaps, civilisation existing behind centuries of sea-rovine and larcd-f.ghting, that we may realise the complex influences which iormed the Maori character, andl apparent inconsistencies of the Maori life. Another fact-

I must be borne in mmd — namely, that Maori mythology owesnothing to the New Zealand period of his history of the race. Many of the Maori's domestic arts — his fishing, hunting, and folk-lore, — no doubt were added to, modified by, adapted tothose of the peaceful aboriginals whom he found there, but-

liis gods were his own, and remained so ; his myth-logy, comprehensive and mysterious, was an integral pan of his being, and knew no shadow of change in his adoption of the "Land of the Long Whits Cloud."