The Origin and Destiny of the Maori.

Maori Record : a journal devoted to the advancement of the Maori people, Volume I, Issue 1, 1 July 1905, Page 2

The Origin and Destiny of the Maori.

PART I.—THE ORIGIN OF THE MAORI. CHAPTER I. It required considerable courage on my part—some may call it by a ruder name—to undertake any task having for its object the imparting of information on the above subject, soon after so valuable a writer as Mr. S. Percy Smith, F.R.G.S., had given the world his erudite and at the same time quite charming book on “Hawaiiki: The Original Home of the Maori.” In respect to the history of the Maori people during their long wanderings and temporary journoyings in the isles of the Southern Pacific, it appears to me that in our present state of knowledge there is nothing to add to what Mr. Smith has so ably written after exhaustive investigation. As a matter of fact, Mr. Smith has traced his Maori neighbour near Mataimoana, from his home in New Zealand to an ancient dwelling-place in Java or thereabouts, and only a wish to find fault with the book could possibly result in fault being found. For myself I can find none. Putting on one side the occasional lapses for generations in Maori traditions pointing to events contemporaneous with the genealogies, in the homes of the people then living, there is no lack of continuity in the steady march of the race and its temporary homes from Java eastwards and southwards. In the aggregation of Polynesian genealogies there is no hiatus from the present day to ninety-five generations back, when tradition domiciles the race at Hawaiiki-nui, otherwise Avaiiki-te-varinga-nui or Atia-te-varinga-nui. In doing this alone the author of “Hawaiiki” has conferred an immense service in arranging in chronological order the events of the native record. But the fixing of the date of these means, at so late a time as B.C. 55, as being that when the Polynesians arrived in Java, which he and other writers tentatively identify as the first Oceanic home of the Maoris in the Malay Archipelago, differed so much from my own reading and investigations that I was compelled to withhold my confirmation from that part of the work. That difference of opinion increased when I found that the author of “Hawaiiki” and others had traced the Polynesians direct down the Straits of Malacca to India, without any sojourn in Sumatra, and that he placed the time when the two Maori ancestors, Te Ngataito-ariki and Tu-te-rangi-marama ruled in India, which he recognises as Hawaiiki-nui, at so late a date as B.C. 450. Soon after “Hawaiiki” appeared, the “New

Zealand Magazine” advertised a paper on the “Birthplace of the Maoris” as to shortly appear. I waited anxiously for the issue, thinking that another view of the subject might be taken, but when I read it I found nothing at all original or departing from the line of enquiry followed by Mr. Percy Smith, from whom, indeed, he quotes an article published on the subject some time ago in the Canterbury Press. It was then that I finally determined to write what I had learned in the matter from a study of Professor Keane and other authorities. I am well aware that Keane’s decisions were received with doubt at first, but his theory has been steadily gaining recognition, and from writings in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,’ published in 1902, I conclude that it has now been pretty generally accepted. It will at once be seen how very convincing would be any two theories, the one confirmatory of the other, which starting from the two opposite hemispheres, and relying on a different class of evidence respectively, came to one identical conclusion at a given point. And this, I think, will be found, and the scheme derived by Mr. Percy Smith from tradition, and that of Professor Keane, argued on ethnical, philological, and general anthropological grounds, will satisfy all requirements. First it will be necessary for me to point out where and why I differ from the theories which have been formerly, and indeed are now, so generally accepted in New Zealand. I will quote the pointers which writers have depended upon to prove the theory that the Polynesians came from India to Java or thereabouts, leaving the former country in such recent times. And I will notice what Mr. Shanaghan, the writer of the essay in the “New Zealand Magazine,” has to say to account for a neolithic people having resided in India. He says:“ The Maori had no knowledge of metals. His songs and traditions show no trace of metals having been possessed. As soon as he came in contact, with metals he made all haste to use them, by changing the stone adze and cutting tools for metal ones. It may be mentioned here that India, while rich in gems, is poor in metals.” This latter appears to me a most rash assertion. I quite agree that the Maori would seize with avidity any opportunity to acquire iron or other metals, for his weapons especially, and more, I think that- once having seen them in use he would never be happy till he got them, and would travel any distance to renew his supply. He would go as far after iron to destroy his enemies as he would after a wooden god (socalled) to aid him in the same end. But we have no record of his seeking in his old homes, generations after he had left them, a new supply of iron, though it is recorded that a canoe returned from the South Pacific to Hawaiiki to fetch a god or an incantation. And to recognise exactly where that land was, we must first find an island which was still neolithic as so late a date as the time of Tangiia, A.D. 1250. Now, India was not neolithic at the time the Polynesians arc erroneously supposed to have left it, neither is there in India a dearth of iron. And it must be remembered that possibly before iron was used there was a bronze age, and, at least in one country, prior to that, copper was hardened to a fitting temper for cut-

lery, an art long lost to the world.. From a long and exhaustive' article by Mr. Alfred G. Harmsworth, in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” Vol. XII., p. 764, I extract the following - “The Indian peninsula, with its wide area and diversified features, supplies a great store of mineral wealth, characterised both by variety and unusual richness. . . . Iron.- —In purity of ore, and in antiquity of working, the iron deposits of India probably rank first in the world. They are to be found in every part of the country, from the northern mountains of Assam and Kumaun, to the extreme south of the Madras Presidency. Wherever there are hills iron is found and worked to a greater or less extent. The indigenous methods of smelting ore, which are everywhere the same, and have been handed down unchanged through countless generations, yield a metal of the finest quality in a form suited to native wants. . . . Copper is known to exist in many parts of the country in considerable quantities. . . . Tin is confined to the Burmese peninsula.” After dealing with so positive an assertion as that concerning metals, by the writer in the “New Zealand Magazine,” it is a real pleasure to turn to so modest and tentative a suggestion as that of Mr. Percy Smith:“ Whether the race can be traced further back than Indonesia, with any degree of certainty is a moot point, but the writer is of opinion that it is a fair deduction from the traditions that they can be traced as far back as India.” And I think so, too, but not to the same extent nor in so recent times. There appear to be two factors which have operated in taking authors to India. The first is the tracing of rice to its indigenous home, rice being supposed to be a former food of the Maori, only relinquished on the discovery of bread-fruit ; and the second is the apparently sufficient enquiries of Mr. J. R. Logan, which led that scientist to form the opinion that the “Polynesians formed part of the very ancient Gangetic Race, which had been in India from remote antiquity, but which became modified from time to time by contact with Thibetan, Semitic, and other races.” With respect to the rice question, I will quote what Mr, Percy Smith has written about rice, and its alleged Maori name, which is included in such place-names as Hawaiiki-te-varinga-nui and Atia-te-varinga. The latter has been tentatively identified as Java. Of the former Mr Percy Smith says : “The above is the most ancient name known to the Raratongans, and, under the variation Atia, is the first name mentioned in their karakias, reciting the course of their migrations. It can be shown that one meaning of the word ‘vari,’ which is the descriptive word in the above name., is mud, slime, earth, and the deduction might be drawn that it meant the origin of the race, from the primitive earth. There is another and very interesting meaning of the word ‘vari,’ which will be new to Polynesian scholars, and as it bears intimately on the origin of the people it may be here stated. In one of the Rarotongan traditions it is stated that, when living in Atia, the common food of the people was vari, and this continued to be so until the discovery of the bread-fruit and the, ui-ara-kakeno, the latter of which was discovered by one Tangaroa. The writer of the tradition from which this is taken evidently thought that this word vari referred to

mud, as he calls it ‘he-kai vii-vii,’ or disgusting food, evidently not knowing what the other meaning of the word is. Thinking there was a history in this word, and that it might be connected with pari, rice, I asked Mr Edward Tregear to see what he could make of it. and this is the result : In Madagascar the name for rice is vari or vare: in Sunda (Java), MacasSar, Kolo, Ende, rice is pare in the Bima tongue it is fare in Malay it is pad! or pari. It is stated that the Arabs changed the original Malay ‘f’ into ‘p,’ so that originally the name was fari. It is sufficiently clear from the above that vari means rice, and that the Rarotongan tradition is correct, though not now understood by the people themselves. It would seem from this that Atia was a country in which rice grew, and the name Atia-te-varinga may be translated Atia-the-be-riced, or where it grow.” (To be Continued.)