Bushmen gods--Cagn, the grasshopper?--Hottentot gods--"Wounded
knee," a dead sorcerer--Melanesian gods--Qat and the spider
--Aht and Maori beasts-gods and men-gods--Samoan form of
animal-gods--One god incarnate in many animal shapes--One
for each clan--They punish the eating of certain animals.
Passing from Australia to Africa, we find few races less advanced than
the Bushmen (_Sa-n_, "settlers," in Nama). Whatever view may be taken of
the past history of the Bushmen of South Africa, it is certain that at
present they are a race on a very low level of development. "Even the
Hottentots," according to Dr. Bleek, "exceed the Bushmen in civilisation
and political organisation".*
* See Waitz, Anthrop. Nat. Volk, ii. 323-329.
Before investigating the religious myths of the Bushmen, it must be
repeated that, as usual, their religion is on a far higher level than
their mythology. The conception of invisible or extra-natural powers,
which they entertain and express in moments of earnest need, is all
unlike the tales which they tell about their own.
Our main authorities at present for Bushman myths are contained in
A Brief Account of Bushman Folk-lore, Bleek, London, 1875; and in A
Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen, by Mr. Orpen, Chief
Magistrate, St. John's Territory, Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.
Some information may also be gleaned from the South African Folk-lore
Journal, 1879-80, gods, if gods such mythical beings may be called. Thus
Livingstone says: "On questioning intelligent men among the Bakwains as
to their former knowledge of good and evil, of God and the future state,
they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a
tolerably clear conception on all these subjects".* Their ideas of sin
were the same as Livingstone's, except about polygamy, and apparently
murder. Probably there were other trifling discrepancies. But "they
spoke in the same way of the direct influence exercised by God in
giving rain in answer to the prayers of the rain-makers, and in granting
deliverance in times of danger, as they do now, before they ever heard
of white men ". This was to be expected. In short, the religion of
savages, in its childlike and hopeful dependence on an invisible friend
or friends, in its hope of moving him (or them) by prayer, in its belief
that he (or they) "make for righteousness," is absolutely human. On
the other side, as in the myths of Greece or India, stand the absurd and
profane anecdotes of the gods.
* Missionary Travels, p. 158.
We now turn to a Bushman's account of the religious myths of his tribe.
Shortly after the affair of Langa-libalele, Mr. Orpen had occasion to
examine an unknown part of the Maluti range, the highest mountains in
South Africa. He engaged a scout named Qing, son of a chief of an almost
exterminated clan of hill Bushmen. He was now huntsman to King Nqusha,
Morosi's son, on the Orange River, and _had never seen a white man,
except fighting_. Thus Qing's evidence could not be much affected by
European communications. Mr. Orpen secured the services of Qing, who
was a young man and a mighty hunter. By inviting him to explain the
wall-pictures in caves, Mr. Orpen led him on to give an account of Cagn,
the chief mythical being in Bushman religion. "Cagn made all things, and
we pray to him," said Qing. "At first he was very good and nice, but
he got spoilt through fighting so many things." "The prayer uttered by
Qing, 'in a low imploring voice,' ran thus: 'O Cagn, O Cagn, are we not
your children? Do you not see our hunger? Give us food.'" Where Cagn is
Qing did not know, "but the elands know. Have you not hunted and heard
his cry when the elands suddenly run to his call?"* Now comes in myth.
Cagn has a wife called Coti. "How came he into the world? Perhaps with
those who brought the sun;... only the initiated men of that dance know
these things."**
* Another Bushman prayer, a touching appeal, is given in
Alexander's Expedition, ii. 125, and a Khoi-Khoi hymn of
prayer is in Hahn, pp. 56, 57.
** Cf. Custom and Myth, pp. 41, 42. It appears that the
Bushmen, like the Egyptians and Greeks, hand down myths
through esoteric societies, with dramatic mysteries.
Cagn had two sons, Cogaz and Gcwi. He and they were "great chiefs," but
used stone-pointed digging sticks to grub up edible roots! Cagn's wife
brought forth a fawn, and, like Cronus when Rhea presented him with a
foal, Cagn was put to it to know the nature and future fortunes of this
child of his. To penetrate the future he employed the ordinary native
charms and sorcery. The remainder of the myth accounts for the origin of
elands and for their inconvenient wildness. A daughter of Cagn's married
"snakes who were also men," the eternal confusion of savage thought.
These snakes became the people of Cagn. Cagn had a tooth which was
"great medicine"; his force resided in it, and he lent it to people
whom he favoured. The birds (as in Odin's case) were his messengers, and
brought him news of all that happened at a distance.*
* Compare with the separable vigour of Cagn, residing in his
tooth, the European and Egyptian examples of a similar
myth--the lock of hair of Minos, the hair of Samson--in
introduction to Mrs. Hunt's Grimm's Household Stories,
p. lxxv.
He could turn his sandals and clubs into dogs, and set them at his
enemies. The baboons were once men, but they offended Cagn, and sang a
song with the burden, "Cagn thinks he is clever"; so he drove them into
desolate places, and they are accursed till this day. His strong point
was his collection of charms, which, like other Bushmen and Hottentots,
he kept "in his belt". He could, and did, assume animal shapes; for
example, that of a bull-eland. The thorns were once people, and killed
Cagn, and the ants ate him, but his bones were collected and he was
revived. It was formerly said that when men died they went to Cagn, but
it has been denied by later Bushmen sceptics.
Such is Qing's account of Cagn, and Cagn in myth is plainly but a
successful and idealised medicine-man whose charms actually work. Dr.
Bleek identifies his name with that of the mantis insect. This insect is
the chief mythological personage of the Bushmen of the western province.
Kaggen his name is written. Dr. Bleek knew of no prayer to the mantis,
but was acquainted with addresses to the sun, moon and stars. If Dr.
Bleek's identification is correct, the Cagn of Qing is at once human and
a sort of grasshopper, just as Pund-jel was half human, half eagle-hawk.
"The most prominent of the mythological figures," says Dr. Bleek,
speaking of the Bushmen, "is the mantis." His proper name is Kaggen, but
if we call him Cagn, the interests of science will not seriously suffer.
His wife is the "Dasse Hyrax". Their adopted daughter is the porcupine,
daughter of _Khwdi hemm_, the All-devourer. Like Cronus, and many other
mythological persons, the All-devourer has the knack of swallowing
all and sundry, and disgorging them alive. Dr. Bleek offers us but
a wandering and disjointed account of the mantis or Cagn, who is
frequently defeated by other animals, such as the suricat. Cagn has one
point at least in common with Zeus. As Zeus was swallowed and disgorged
by Cronus, so was Cagn by _Khwai hemm_. As Indra once entered into the
body of a cow, so did Cagn enter into the body of an elephant. Dr. Bleek
did not find that the mantis was prayed to, as Cagn was by Qing. The
moon (like sun and stars) is, however, prayed to, and "the moon belongs
to the mantis," who, indeed, made it out of his old shoe! The chameleon
is prayed to for rain on occasion, and successfully.
The peculiarity of Bushman mythology is the almost absolute predominance
of animals. Except "an old woman," who appears now and then in these
incoherent legends, their myths have scarcely one human figure to show.
Now, whether the Bushmen be deeply degenerate from a past civilisation
or not, it is certain that their myths are based on their actual
condition of thought, unless we prefer to say that their intellectual
condition is derived from their myths. We have already derived the
constant presence and personal action of animals in myth from that
savage condition of the mind in which "all things, animate or inanimate,
human, animal, vegetable or inorganic, seem on the same level of life,
passion and reason" (chap. iii.). Now, there can be no doubt that,
whether the Bushman mind has descended to this stage or not, in this
stage it actually dwells at present. As examples we may select the
following from Dr. Bleek's _Bushman Folk-lore_. _Dialkwain_ told how the
death of his own wife was "foretold by the springbok and the gems-bok".
Again, for examples of living belief in community of nature with
animals, Dialkwain mentioned an old woman, a relation, and friend of
his own, who had the power "of turning herself into a lioness". Another
Bushman, Kabbo, retaining, doubtless, his wide-awake mental condition in
his sleep, "dreamed of lions which talked". Another informant explained
that lions talk like men "by putting their tails in their mouth".
This would have pleased Sydney Smith, who thought that "if lions
would meet and growl out their observations to each other," they might
sensibly improve in culture. Again, "all things that belong to the
mantis can talk," and most things do belong to that famous being.
In "News from Zululand,"* in a myth of the battle of Isandlwana, a
blue-buck turns into a young man and attacks the British.
* Folk-lore Journal of South Africa, i. iv. 83.
These and other examples demonstrate that the belief in the personal
and human character and attributes of animals still prevails in South
Africa. From that living belief we derive the personal and human
character and attributes of animals, which, remarkable in all
mythologies, is perhaps specially prominent in the myths of the Bushmen.
Though Bushman myth is only known to us in its outlines, and is
apparently gifted with even more than the due quantity of incoherence,
it is perhaps plain that animals are the chief figures in this African
lore, and that these Bushmen gods, if ever further developed, will
retain many traces of their animal ancestry.
From the Bushmen we may turn to their near neighbours, the Hottentots
or Khoi-Khoi. Their religious myths have been closely examined in Dr.
Hahn's _Tsuni Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi_. Though Dr.
Hahn's conclusions as to the origin of Hottentot myth differ entirely
from our own, his collection and critical study of materials, of oral
traditions, and of the records left by old travellers are invaluable.
The early European settlers at the Cape found the Khoi-Khoi, that is,
"The Men," a yellowish race of people, who possessed large herds of
cattle, sheep and goats.* The Khoi-Khoi, as nomad cattle and sheep
farmers, are on a much higher level of culture than the Bushmen, who are
hunters.**
* Op. cit. i. pp. 1, 32.
** Ibid., p. 5.
The languages of the two peoples leave "no more doubt as to their
primitive relationship" (p. 7). The wealth of the Khoi-Khoi was
considerable and unequally distributed, a respectable proof of nascent
civilisation. The rich man was called _gou, aob_, that is "fat". In the
same way the early Greeks called the wealthy "(------------)".* As
the rich man could afford many wives (which gives him a kind of
"commendation" over men to whom he allots his daughters), he "gradually
rose to the station of a chief".** In domestic relations, Khoi-Khoi
society is "matriarchal" (pp. 19-21 ).***
* Herodotus, v. 30.
** Op. cit., p. 16.
*** But speaking of the wife, Kolb calls "the poor wretch" a
"drudge, exposed to the insults of her children",--English
transl., p. 162.
All the sons are called after the mother, the daughters after the
father. Among the arts, pottery and mat-making, metallurgy and
tool-making are of ancient date. A past stone age is indicated by the
use of quartz knives in sacrifice and circumcision. In Khoi-Khoi society
seers and prophets were "the greatest and most respected old men of
the clan" (p. 24). The Khoi-Khoi of to-day have adopted a number of
Indo-European beliefs and customs, and "the Christian ideas introduced
by missionaries have amalgamated... with the national religious ideas
and mythologies," for which reasons Dr, Hahn omits many legends which,
though possibly genuine, might seem imported (pp. 30, 31).
A brief historical abstract of what was known to old travellers of
Khoi-Khoi religion must now be compiled from the work of Dr. Hahn.
In 1655 Corporal Mueller found adoration paid to great stones on the
side of the paths. The worshippers pointed upwards and said _Hette hie_,
probably "Heitsi Eibib," the name of a Khoi-Khoi extra-natural being. It
appears (p. 37) that Heitsi Eibib "has changed names" in parts of South
Africa, and what was his worship is now offered "to |Garubeb, or Tsui
|Goab". In 1671 Dapper found that the Khoi-Khoi "believe there is one
who sends rain on earth;... they also believe that they themselves can
make rain and prevent the wind from blowing". Worship of the moon and of
"erected stones" is also noticed. In 1691 Nicolas Witsen heard that the
Khoi-Khoi adored a god which Dr. Hahn (p. 91) supposes to have been "a
peculiar-shaped stone-fetish," such as the Basutos worship and spit at.
Witsen found that the "god" was daubed with red earth, like the Dionysi
in Greece. About 1705 Valentyn gathered that the people believed in
"a great chief who dwells on high," and a devil; "but in carefully
examining this, it is nothing else but their _somsomas_ and _spectres_"
(p. 38). We need not accept that opinion. The worship of a "great chief"
is mentioned again in 1868. In 1719 Peter Kolb, the German Magister,
published his account of the Hottentots, which has been done into
English.* Kolb gives Gounja Gounja, or Gounja Ticqvoa, as the divine
name; "they say he is a good man, who does nobody any hurt,... and that
he dwells far above the moon ".** This corresponds to the Australian
Pirnmeheal. Kolb also noted propitiation of an evil power. He observed
that the Khoi-Khoi worship the mantis insect, which, as we have seen, is
the chief mythical character among the Bushmen.***
* Second edition, London, 1788.
** Engl. transl., 95.
*** Engl, transl., i. 97, gives a picture of Khoi-Khoi
adoring the mantis.
Dr. Hahn remarks, "Strangely enough the Namaquas also call it |Gaunab,
as they call the enemy of Tsui |Goab".* In Kolb's time, as now, the
rites of the Khoi (except, apparently, their worship at dawn) were
performed beside cairns of stones. If we may credit Kolb, the Khoi-Khoi
are not only most fanatical adorers of the mantis, but "pay a religious
veneration to their saints and men of renown departed". Thunberg (1792)
noticed cairn-worship and heard of mantis-worship. In 1803 Lichtenstein
saw cairn-worship. With the beginning of the present century we find
in Apple-yard, Ebner and others Khoi-Khoi names for a god, which are
translated "Sore-Knee" or "Wounded-Knee ".
This title is explained as originally the name of a "doctor or sorcerer"
of repute, "invoked even after death," and finally converted into a
deity. His enemy is Gaunab, an evil being, and he is worshipped at the
cairns, below which he is believed to be buried.** About 1842 Knudsen
considered that the Khoi-Khoi believed in a dead medicine-man, Heitsi
Eibib, who could make rivers roll back their waves, and then walk over
safely, as in the _maerchen_ of most peoples. He was also, like Odin, a
"shape-shifter," and he died several times and came to life again.***
* Page 42; compare pp. 92, 125.
** Alexander, Expedition, i 166; Hahn, op. cit., pp. 69,
50, where Moffat is quoted.
*** Hahn, p. 66.
Thus the numerous graves of Heitsi Eibib are explained by his numerous
deaths. In Egypt the numerous graves of Osiris were explained by the
story that he was mutilated, and each limb buried in a different place.
Probably both the Hottentot and the Egyptian legend were invented to
account for the many worshipped cairns attributed to the same corpse.
We now reach the myths of Heitsi Eibib and Tsui |Goab collected by Dr.
Hahn himself. According to the evidence of Dr. Hahn's own eyes, the
working religion of the Khoi-Khoi is "a firm belief in sorcery and the
arts of living medicine-men on the one hand, and, on the other, belief
in and adoration of the powers of the dead" (pp. 81, 82, 112, 113). Our
author tells us that he met in the wilds a woman of the "fat" or wealthy
class going to pray at the grave and to the manes of her own father. "We
Khoi-Khoi always, if we are in trouble, go and pray at the graves of
our grandparents and ancestors." They also sing rude epic verses,
accompanied by the dance in honour of men distinguished in the late
Namaqua and Damara war. Now it is alleged by Dr. Hahn that prayers are
offered at the graves of Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab, as at those of
ancestors lately dead, and Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab within living
memory were honoured by song and dance, exactly like the braves of the
Damara war.
The obvious and natural inference is that Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab
were and are regarded by their worshippers as departed but still helpful
ancestral warriors or medicine-men. We need not hold that they ever were
actual living men; they may be merely idealised figures of Khoi-Khoi
wisdom and valour. Here, as elsewhere, Animism, ghost-worship, is
potent, and, in proportion, theism declines.
Here Dr. Hahn offers a different explanation, founded on etymological
conjecture and a philosophy of religion. According to him, the name of
Tsui Goab originally meant, not wounded knee, but red dawn. The dawn
was worshipped as a symbol or suggestion of the infinite, and only by
forgetfulness and false interpretation of the original word did the
Khoi-Khoi fall from a kind of pure theosophy to adoration of a presumed
dead medicine-man. As Dr. Hahn's ingenious hypothesis has been already
examined by us,* it is unnecessary again to discuss the philological
basis of his argument.
Dr. Hahn not only heard simple and affecting prayers addressed to Tsui
Goab, but learned from native informants that the god had been a chief,
a warrior, wounded in his knee in battle with Gaunab, another chief, and
that he had prophetic powers. He still watches the ways of men (p. 62)
and punishes guilt. Universal testimony was given to the effect that
Heitsi Eibib also had been a chief from the East, a prophet and a
warrior. He apportioned, by blessings and curses, their present habits
to many of the animals. Like Odin, he was a "shape-shifter," possessing
the medicine-man's invariable power of taking all manner of forms. He
was on one occasion born of a cow, which reminds us of a myth of Indra.
By another account he was born of a virgin who tasted a certain kind
of grass. This legend is of wonderfully wide diffusion among savage and
semi-civilised races.**
* Custom and Myth, pp. 197-211.
** Le Fits de la Vierge, H. de Charency, Havre, 1879. A tale
of incest by Heitsi Eibib, may be compared with another in
Muir's Sanskrit Texts, iv. 39.
The tales about Tsui Goab and Heitsi Eibib are chiefly narratives of
combats with animals and with the evil power in a nascent dualism,
Gaunab, "at first a ghost," according to Hahn (p. 85), or "certainly
nobody else but the Night" (pp. 125, 126). Here there is some
inconsistency. If we regard the good power, Tsui Goab, as the Red Dawn,
we are bound to think the evil power, Gaunab, a name for the Night.
But Dr. Hahn's other hypothesis, that the evil power was originally a
malevolent ghost, seems no less plausible. In either case, we have
here an example of the constant mythical dualism which gives the
comparatively good being his perpetual antagonist--the Loki to his Odin,
the crow to his eagle-hawk. In brief, Hottentot myth is pretty plainly
a reflection of Hottentot general ideas about ancestor worship, ghosts,
sorcerers and magicians, while, in their _religious_ aspect, Heitsi
Eibib or Tsui Goab are guardians of life and of morality, fathers and
friends.
A description of barbarous beliefs not less scholarly and careful
than that compiled by Dr. Hahn has been published by the Rev. R. H.
Codrington.* Mr. Codrington has studied the myths of the Papuans and
other natives of the Melanesian group, especially in the Solomon Islands
and Banks Island. These peoples are by no means in the lowest grade of
culture; they are traders in their way, builders of canoes and houses,
and their society is interpenetrated by a kind of mystic hierarchy,
a religious _Camorra_. The Banks Islanders** recognise two sorts of
intelligent extra-natural beings--the spirits of the dead and powers
which have never been human.
* Journal Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881.
** Op. cit., p. 267.
The former are _Tamate_, the latter _Vui_--ghosts and _genii_, we
might call them. Vuis are classed by Mr. Codrington as "corporeal" and
"incorporeal," but he thinks the corporeal Vuis have not _human_
bodies. Among corporeal Vuis the chief are the beings nearest to gods in
Melanesian myths--the half god, half "culture-hero," I Qat, his eleven
brothers, and his familiar and assistant, Marawa. These were members of
a race anterior to that of the men of to-day, and they dwelt in Vanua
Levu. Though now passed away from the eyes of mortals, they are still
invoked in prayer. The following appeal by a voyaging Banks Islander
resembles the cry of the shipwrecked Odysseus to the friendly river:--
"Qat! Marawa! look down upon us; smooth the sea for us two, that I may
go safely on the sea. Beat down for me the crests of the tide-rip; let
the tide-rip settle down away from me; beat it down level that it may
sink and roll away, and I may come to a quiet landing-place."
Compare the prayer of Odysseus:--
"'Hear me, O king, whosoever thou art; unto thee am I come as to one
to whom prayer is made, while I flee the rebukes of Poseidon from the
deep....' So spake he, and the god straightway stayed his stream and
withheld his waves, and made the water smooth before him, and brought
him safely to the mouth of the river."
But for Qat's supernatural power and creative exploits,* "there would be
little indeed to show him other than a man". He answers almost precisely
to Maui, the "the culture-hero" of New Zealand. Qat's mother either was,
or, like Niobe, became a stone.
* See "Savage Myths of the Origin of Things".
He was the eldest (unlike Maui) of twelve brothers, among whom were
Tongaro the Wise and Tongaro the Fool. The brothers were killed by an
evil gluttonous power like Kwai Hemm and put in a food chest. Qat killed
the foe and revived his brothers, as the sons of Cronus came forth alive
from their father's maw. His great foe--for of course he had a foe--was
Qasavara, whom he destroyed by dashing him against the solid firmament
of sky. Qasavara is now a stone (like the serpent displayed by Zeus at
Aulis*), on which sacrifices are made. Qat's chief friend is Marawa, a
spider, or a Vui in the shape of a spider. The divine mythology of the
Melanesians, as far as it has been recovered, is meagre. We only see
members of a previous race, "magnified non-natural men," with a friendly
insect working miracles and achieving rather incoherent adventures.
* Iliad, ii. 315-318.
Much on the same footing of civilisation as the Melanesians were
the natives of Tonga in the first decade of this century. The Tongan
religious beliefs were nearly akin to the ideas of the Samoans and of
the Solomon Islanders. In place of Vuis they spoke of Hotooas (Atuas),
and like the Vuis, those spiritual beings have either been purely
spiritual from the beginning or have been incarnate in humanity and are
now ghosts, but ghosts enjoying many of the privileges of gods. All men,
however, have not souls capable of a separate existence, only the _Egi_
or nobles, possess a spiritual part, which goes to Bolotoo, the land of
gods and ghosts, after death, and enjoys "power similar to that of the
original gods, but less".
It is open to philosophers of Mr. Herbert Spencer's school to argue that
the "original gods" were once ghosts like the others, but this was
not the opinion of the Tongans. They have a supreme Creator, who alone
receives no sacrifice.* Both sorts of gods appear occasionally to
mankind--the primitive deities particularly affect the forms of
"lizards, porpoises and a species of water-snake, hence those animals
are much respected".**
* Mariner, ii. 205.
** Mariner's Tonga Islands, Edin., 1827, ii 99-101.
Whether each stock of Tongans had its own animal incarnation of its
special god does not appear from Mariner's narrative. The gods took
human morality under their special protection, punishing the evil and
rewarding the good, in this life only, not in the land of the dead.
When the comfortable doctrine of eternal punishment was expounded to the
Tongans by Mariner, the poor heathen merely remarked that it "was very
bad indeed for the Papalangies" or foreigners. Their untutored minds,
in their pagan darkness, had dreamed of no such thing. The Tongans
themselves are descended from some gods who set forth on a voyage of
discovery out of Bolotoo. Landing on Tonga, these adventurers were much
pleased with the island, and determined to stay there; but in a few days
certain of them died. They had left the deathless coasts for a world
where death is native, and, as they had eaten of the food of the new
realm, they would never escape the condition of mortality. This has been
remarked as a widespread belief. Persephone became enthralled to Hades
after tasting the mystic pomegranate of the underworld.
In Samoa Siati may not eat of the god's meat, nor Wainamoinen in
Pohjola, nor Thomas the Rhymer in Fairyland. The exploring gods from
Bolotoo were in the same way condemned to become mortal and people
the world with mortal beings, and all about them should be _mea mama_,
subject to decay and death.* It is remarkable, if correctly reported,
that the secondary gods, or ghosts of nobles, cannot reappear as
lizards, porpoises and water-snakes; this is the privilege of the
original gods only, and may be an assumption by them of a conceivably
totemistic aspect. The nearest approach to the idea of a permanent
supreme deity is contained in the name of Tali y Toobo--"wait there,
Toobo"--a name which conveys the notion perhaps of permanence or
eternity. "He is a great chief from the top of the sky to the bottom of
the earth."**
* Mariner, ii. 115.
** Ibid., ii. 205.
He is invoked both in war and peace, not locally, but "for the general
good of the natives". He is the patron, not of any special stock or
family, but of the house in which the royal power is lodged for the
time. Alone of gods he is unpropitiated by food or libation, indicating
that he is not evolved out of a hungry ghost. Another god, Toobo Toty or
Toobo the Mariner, may be a kind of Poseidon. He preserves canoes
from perils at sea. On the death of the daughter of Finow, the king in
Mariner's time, that monarch was so indignant that he threatened to kill
the priest of Toobo Toty. As the god is believed to inspire the priest,
this was certainly a feasible way of getting at the god. But Toobo Toty
was beforehand with Finow, who died himself before he could carry the
war into Bolotoo.* This Finow was a sceptic; he allowed that there were
gods, because he himself had occasionally been inspired by them; "but
what the priests tell us about their power over mankind I believe to
be all false". Thus early did the conflict of Church and State declare
itself in Tonga. Human sacrifices were a result of priestcraft in Tonga,
as in Greece. Even the man set to kill a child of Toobo Toa's was moved
by pity, and exclaimed _O iaooe chi vale!_ ("poor little innocent!") The
priest demanded this sacrifice to allay the wrath of the gods for the
slaying of a man in consecrated ground.** Such are the religious ideas
of Tonga; of their mythology but little has reached us, and that is
under suspicion of being coloured by acquaintance with the stories of
missionaries.
* Mariner, i. 307, it 107.
** Compare the ayos of the Alcmaenidae.
The Maoris, when first discovered by Europeans, were in a comparatively
advanced stage of barbarism. Their society had definite ranks, from that
of the Rangatira, the chief with a long pedigree, to the slave. Their
religious hymns, of great antiquity, have been collected and translated
by Grey, Taylor, Bastian and others. The mere possession of such hymns,
accurately preserved for an unknown number of years by oral tradition,
proves that the mythical notions of the Maoris have passed through the
minds of professed bards and early physical speculators. The verses,
as Bastian has observed (_Die Heilige Sage der Polynesier_), display a
close parallel to the roughest part of the early Greek cosmogonies, as
expounded by Hesiod. Yet in the Maori hymns there are metaphysical ideas
and processes which remind one more of Heraclitus than of Hesiod, and
perhaps more of Hegel than of either. Whether we are to regard the
abstract conceptions or the rude personal myths of gods such as A, the
Beyond All, as representing the earlier development of Maori thought,
whether one or the other element is borrowed, not original, are
questions which theorists of different schools will settle in their own
way to their own satisfaction. Some hymns represent the beginning of
things from a condition of thought, and Socrates might have said of
the Maori poets as he did of Anaxagoras, that compared with other early
thinkers, they are "like sober men among drunkards". Thus one hymn of
the origins runs thus:--
From the conception the increase,
From the increase the swelling,
From the swelling the thought,
From the thought the remembrance,
From the remembrance the desire.
The word became fruitful,
It dwelt with the feeble glimmering,
It brought forth Night.
From the nothing the begetting,
It produced the atmosphere which is above us.
The atmosphere above dwelt with the glowing sky,
Forthwith was produced the sun.
Then the moon sprang forth.
They were thrown up above as the chief eyes of heaven,
Then the heavens became light.
The sky which floats above dwelt with Hawaiki,*
And produced (certain islands).
* The islands of Hawaiki, being then the only land known, is
put for Papa, the earth.
Then follow genealogies of gods, down to the chief in whose family this
hymn was traditional.*
* Taylor, New Zealand, pp. 110-112.
Other hymns of the same character, full of such metaphysical and
abstract conceptions as "the proceeding from the nothing," are quoted at
great length.
These extracts are obviously speculative rather than in any sense
mythological The element of myth just shows itself when we are told that
the sky dwelt with the earth and produced certain islands. But myth of
a familiar character is very fully represented among the Maoris. Their
mythical gods, though "mixed up with the spirits of ancestors," are
great natural powers, first Heaven and Earth, Rangi and Papa, the
parents of all. These are conceived as having originally been united in
such a close embrace, the Heaven lying on the Earth, that between
their frames all was darkness, and in darkness the younger gods, Atua,
O-te-po, their children, were obliged to dwell. These children
or younger gods (answering to the Cronidae) were the god of war
(Tumatauenga), the forest-god (Tane Mahuta), in shape a tree, the
wind-god (Tawhiri Matea), the gods of cultivated and natural fruits, the
god of ocean (Tangaroa). These gods were unable to endure the dungeon
and the darkness of their condition, so they consulted together and
said: "Let us seek means whereby to destroy Heaven and Earth, or to
separate them from each other". The counsel of Tane Mahuta prevailed:
"Let one go upwards and become a stranger to us; let the other remain
below and be a parent to us". Finally, Tane Mahuta rent asunder Heaven
and Earth, pushing Heaven up where he has ever since remained. The
wind-god followed his father, abode with him in the open spaces of the
sky, and thence makes war on the trees of the forest-god, his enemy.
Tangaroa went, like Poseidon, to the great deep, and his children, the
reptiles and fishes, clove part to the waters, part to the dry land. The
war-god, Tu, was more of a human being than the other gods, though his
"brethren" are plants, fish and reptiles. Still, Tu is not precisely
the first man of New Zealand.
Though all these mythical beings are in a sense departmental gods,
they yield in renown to a later child of their race, Maui, the great
culture-hero, who is an advanced form of the culture-heroes, mainly
theriomorphic, of the lower races.*
Maui, like many heroes of myth, was a youngest son. He was prematurely
born (a similar story comes in the Brahmanic legend of the Adityas);
his mother wrapped him up in her long hair and threw him out to sea. A
kinsman rescued him, and he grew up to be much the most important member
of his family, like Qat in his larger circle of brethren. Maui it was
who snared the sun, beat him,** and taught him to run his appointed
course, instead of careering at will and at any pace he chose about the
heavens.
* Te-Heu-Heu, a powerful chief, described to Mr. Taylor the
departmental character of his gods. "Is there one maker of
things among Europeans? Is not one a carpenter, another a
blacksmith, another a shipbuilder? So it was in the
beginning. One made this, another that. Tane made trees, Ru
mountains, Tangaroa fish, and so forth." Taylor, New
Zealand, p. 108, note.
** The sun, when beaten, cried out and revealed his great
name, exactly as Indra did in his terror and flight after
slaying the serpent. Taylor, op. cit., p. 131.
He was the culture-hero who invented barbs for spears and hooks; he
turned his brother into the first dog, whence dogs are sacred, he fished
New Zealand out of the sea; he stole fire for men. How Maui performed
this feat, and how he "brought death into the world and all our
woe," are topics that belong to the myths of _Death_ and of the
_Fire-Stealer_.* Maui could not only change men into animals, but could
himself assume animal shapes at will.
Such is a brief account of the ancient traditions of mythical Maori gods
and of the culture-hero. In practice, the conception of _Atua_ (or a
kind of extra-natural power or powers) possesses much influence in New
Zealand. All manner of spirits in all manner of forms are _Atuas_. "A
great chief was regarded as a malignant god in life, and a still worse
one after death."** Again, "after Maui came a host of gods, each with
his history and wonderful deeds.... These were ancestors who became
deified by their respective tribes,"***--a statement which must be
regarded as theoretical.
* See La Mythologie, A. L., Paris, 1886.
** Taylor, op. cit., pp. 134, 136.
***Op. cit., p. 136.
It is odd enough, if true, that Maru should be the war-god of the
southern island, and that the planet Mars is called after him Maru.
"There were also gods in human forms, and others with those of
reptiles.... At one period there seems to have been a mixed offspring
from the same parents. Thus while Tawaki was of the human form, his
brethren were _taniwa_ and sharks; there were likewise mixed marriages
among them." These legends are the natural result of that lack of
distinction between man and the other things in the world which, as
we demonstrated, prevails in early thought. It appears that the great
mythical gods of the Maoris have not much concern with their morality.
The myths are "but a magnified history of their chiefs, their wars,
murders and lusts, with the addition of some supernatural powers"--such
as the chiefs are very apt to claim.* In the opinion of a competent
observer, the gods, or Atua, who are feared in daily life, are "spirits
of the dead," and _their_ attention is chiefly confined to the conduct
of their living descendants and clansmen. They inspire courage, the
leading virtue. When converted, the natives are said not to expel,
but merely to subordinate their Atua, "believing Christ to be a more
powerful Atua".**
* Op. cit., p. 137.
** Shortland, Trad, and Superst. of New Zealanders, 1856,
pp. 83-85.
The Maoris are perhaps the least elevated race in which a well-developed
polytheism has obscured almost wholly that belief in a moral Maker which
we find among the lowest savages who have but a rudimentary polytheism.
When we advance to ancient civilised peoples, like the Greeks, we shall
find the archaic Theism obscured, or obliterated, in a similar way.
In the beliefs of Samoa (formerly called the Navigators' Islands,
and discovered by a Dutch expedition in 1722) may be observed a most
interesting moment in the development of religion and myth. In many
regions it has been shown that animals are worshipped as totems, and
that the gods are invested with the shape of animals. In the temples
of higher civilisations will be found divine images still retaining in
human form certain animal attributes, and a minor worship of various
beasts will be shown to have grouped itself in Greece round the altars
of Zeus, or Apollo, or Demeter. Now in Samoa we may perhaps trace the
actual process of the "transition," as Mr. Tylor says, "from the
spirit inhabiting an individual body to the deity presiding over all
individuals of a kind". In other words, whereas in Australia or America
each totem-kindred reveres each animal supposed to be of its own
lineage--the "Cranes" revering all cranes, the "Kangaroos" all
kangaroos--in Samoa the various clans exhibit the same faith, but
combine it with the belief that one spiritual deity reveals itself in
each separate animal, as in a kind of avatar. For example, the several
Australian totem-kindreds do not conceive that Pund-jel incarnates
himself in the emu for one stock, in the crow for another, in the
cockatoo for a third, and they do not by these, but by other means,
attain a religious unity, transcending the diversity caused by the
totemic institutions. In Samoa this kind of spiritual unity is actually
reached by various stocks.
The Samoans were originally spoken of by travellers as the "godless
Samoans," an example of a common error. Probably there is no people
whose practices and opinions, if duly investigated, do not attest their
faith in something of the nature of gods. Certainly the Samoans, far
from being "godless," rather deserve the reproach of being "in all
things too superstitious". "The gods were supposed to appear in some
_visible incarnation_, and the particular thing in which his god was in
the habit of appearing was to the Samoanan object of veneration."*
* Turner's Samoa, p. 17.
Here we find that the religious sentiment has already become more or
less self-conscious, and has begun to reason on its own practices. In
pure totemism it is their kindred animal that men revere. The Samoans
explain their worship of animals, not on the ground of kinship and
common blood or "one flesh" (as in Australia), but by the comparatively
advanced hypothesis that a spiritual power is _in_ the animal. "One, for
instance, saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the
turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard,"
and so on, even to shell-fish. The creed so far is exactly what
Garcilasso de la Vega found among the remote and ruder neighbours of the
Incas, and attributed to the pre-Inca populations. "A man," as in
Egypt, and in totemic countries generally, "would eat freely of what
was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man", but the
incarnation of his own god he would consider it death to injure or eat.
The god was supposed to avenge the insult by taking up his abode in that
person's body, and causing to generate there the very thing which he had
eaten until it produced death. The god used to be heard within the man,
saying, "I am killing this man; he ate my incarnation". This class of
tutelary deities they called _aitu fale_, or "gods of the house," gods
of the stock or kindred. In totemistic countries the totem is respected
_per se_, in Samoa the animal is worshipful because a god abides within
him. This appears to be a theory by which the reflective Samoans have
explained to themselves what was once pure totemism.
Not only the household, but the village has its animal gods or god
incarnate in an animal As some Arab tribes piously bury dead gazelles,
as Athenians piously buried wolves, and Egyptians cats, so in Samoa "if
a man found a dead owl by the roadside, and if that happened to be the
incarnation of his village god, he would sit down and weep over it, and
beat his forehead with a stone till the blood came. This was supposed to
be pleasing to the deity. Then the bird would be wrapped up and buried
with care and ceremony, as if it were a human body. This, however,
was not the death of the god." Like the solemnly sacrificed buzzard in
California, like the bull in the Attic _Dupolia_, "he was supposed to
be yet alive and incarnate in all the owls in existence".*
In addition to these minor and local divinities, the Samoans have gods
of sky, earth, disease and other natural departments.** Of their origin
we only know that they fell from heaven, and all were incarnated or
embodied in birds, beasts, plants, stones and fishes. But they can
change shapes, and appear in the moon when she is not visible, or in any
other guise they choose. If in Samoa the sky-god was once on the usual
level of sky-gods elsewhere, he seems now to be degenerate.
* (------------------) Porph., De Abst.t ii. 29; Samoa, p.
21.
** I am careful not to call Samoan sacred animals "Totems."
to which Mr. Tylor justly objects, but I think the Samoan
belief has Totemistic origins.