Experts do not yet agree on the nature of Maori decorative carving. Was it originally done in honour of ancestors? Or was there a more strongly religious motive? In this article Mrs Thornton, senior lecturer in Classics at the University of Otago, demonstrates that the origin of carving is magical and religious, and that most of the patterns are symbols of the food supply for which the ancient Maori depended on his gods. WHAT IS MAORI CARVING? by AGATHA THORNTON “The Maori people have their own idea of their historic monuments and it is different from the European. Perhaps you could put it briefly by saying that they are more concerned with the sacred side of them than with their beauty.” This suggestion was made in an article published in this magazine last year (Issue 21, p. 34). Perhaps an investigation like the one I am putting forward here may suggest that the meaning of Maori art down to its detail lies in the region of the sacred, and that its beauty is the artist's reverent tribute to powers that he believes to be divine. Aesthetic considerations would thus be secondary to an appreciation of the religious meaning expressed in this art. Let us look at the picture of the carved figure of this ancestor. The whole body seems to be bursting with vitality. Now, it appears that the ancient Polynesians believed—as did the ancient Greeks and Romans—that the whole body of a man is full of creative power, and, in fact, that all the parts of the body have their own particular powers. This conception finds expression in many different ways. A wooden figure e.g. of the god Tangaroa from Rurutu, Tubuai Islands (see left) is covered with small figures of human beings all over. According to Tischner, this figure represents the god Tangaroa “at the moment of creation of other goods and human beings.” In addition, we know, of course, that the gods, by their creative powers, gave increase not only in the divine and human world, but also in the world of animals and plants: in fact, they were the creators and providers of food. Increase in human beings and food, however, is not only the work of the great cosmic gods, but it is also and perhaps more immediately the work of the “ancestors” It is this idea that seems to underlie the decorative carving of the Maori human figures. W. J. Phillipps shows the picture of “A stockade post from the East Coast” (see right) which is topped by the figure of an ancestor. The body of this ancestor is covered with a carved pattern which is called tara tara o kai. This means “peaks and peaks of food,” as Phillipps says, who also points out that this type of pattern “is almost universally used on carved food stores or pataka”. The intention of this pattern is, then, to express and perhaps enhance the powers which are alive and active in the whole body of this ancestor, namely to grant food to his descendants. The plain ridges on the above figure are called patapata which means “rain drops.” Some forms of these parallel lines of carving are called ‘pata nui’ or ‘patapata nunui’ which means “great rain” or “downpour.” The notched ridge is called pakati. If we divide this work into ‘paka’ and ‘ti’ we find the following: ‘paka’ means “dried provisions,” and ‘ti’ means “cordyline of several species,” a plant the tubers of which were eaten. If this is right, the notched ridge represents “dried provisions of ti-tubers.” The individual notch is called “arapata.” “Ara” has many meanings; perhaps “talisman” is most suitable here. For an “ara” of wood or stone was carried on a canoe. “Pata” means “drop of water,” as we have seen, and also “seed, grain, as of maize etc.”—If, then, the plain ridges represent “rain drops,” presumably as they fall in long line the notched ridge a row of food-stuffs, and the individual notch either a “drop of water” or a “grain of seed” or rather both these things at the same time, what is pictured here is food, and the seed from which food grows, and the rain that fertilises the earth so as to make food grow. The meaning of the details of the carving pattern is, then, the same as that of “tara tara o kai.” What about the name of this pattern as a whole: “rauponga”? “ponga” or “pongaponga” means “a method of adzing timber” which comes to much the same as what we should call a carving pattern. The particular character of this pattern is indicated by another meaning of “ponga”