Associated With Planting of Fields

Te Ao Hou, June 1965, Page 43

Associated With Planting of Fields In his book Frazer shows that these myths of death and resurrection are associated with the planting of the fields. The first of these personages represents the seed (barley, rice, root crops and other products of the earth); he or she goes under the ground just as the seed does at planting time. The second figure, who pursues the first and attempts to bring him or her up again, is often associated with a human sacrifice whose death is regarded as assisting in the annual renewal of the fertility of the fields. Myths following this pattern, and concerned with the renewal of fertility, have been found among agricultural societies all over the world. In the Greek legend of Demeter and Persephone and in the parallel Latin legend of Ceres and Proserpine, the names of the goddesses Demeter and Ceres both signify ‘grain’. In my opinion the names Pare and Niwareka can also be shown to signify a food plant, in that they are related to Sanskrit words for rice. After the Maori people left South-East Asia and the rice plant behind them, they retained these names but forgot their original significance. For a discussion of the sound-shifts upon

which this theory rests, the reader is referred to the article which follows this one. The name Pare appears to be derived as follows:— Maori : Pare Malay : padi Sanskrit : phali-kri The Malayan word ‘padi’ signifies rice. The Sanskrit word ‘phali-kri’ means ‘to winnow rice’. (‘Kri’ is the common word for ‘to do or make’.) Percy Smith in his book ‘Hawaiki’ (p.61), discusses another related Indian word for rice, ‘vari’, and associates it with the Rarotongan expression ‘Atia te Varinga nui’, said to be one of the ancient homelands of the Polynesians; he tells us that in Tregear's opinion, this is to be translated as ‘Atia, the be-riced’—that is, ‘the great riceland’.1. ‘Ari’, which may be a variant form of the word, is one of the ‘bloodless foods’ of Hawaiki referred to in Takitumu tradition and mentioned by Elsdon Best in his book, ‘Maori Agriculture’, p. 3. In Indonesia the name Pare (sometimes in variant form, Padi) occurs as a component in many of the names given to the rice-goddesses in those areas.2. Sir James Frazer, ‘The Golden Bough vol. V, p. 180 ff. The Maori name Niwareka may be derived as follows:— Maori : Niwareka Sanskrit : nivara The Sanskrit word ‘nivara’ means wild rice. There is also a related Sanskrit word ‘varaka’ which means ‘a kind of rice’.