To do justice to Mr. Max Muller, I will here state fully his view of the
story of Tuna, and then go on to the story of Daphne. For the sake of
accuracy, I take the liberty of borrowing the whole of his statement (i.
4-7):--
'I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show the real
difference between the ethnological and the philological schools of
comparative mythology.
'First of all, what has to be explained is not the growing up of a tree
from one or the other member of a god or hero, but the total change of a
human being or a heroine into a tree, and this under a certain
provocation. These two classes of plant-legends must be carefully kept
apart. Secondly, what does it help us to know that people in Mangaia
believed in the change of human beings into trees, if we do not know the
reason why? This is what we want to know; and without it the mere
juxtaposition of stories apparently similar is no more than the old trick
of explaining ignotum per ignotius. It leads us to imagine that we have
learnt something, when we really are as ignorant as before.
'If Mr. A. Lang had studied the Mangaian dialect, or consulted scholars
like the Rev. W. W. Gill--it is from his "Myths and Songs from the South
Pacific" that he quotes the story of Tuna--he would have seen that there
is no similarity whatever between the stories of Daphne and of Tuna. The
Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of aetiological
plant-stories, which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name
of a plant, such as Snakeshead, Stiefmutterchen, &c.; it is in fact a
clear case of what I call disease of language, cured by the ordinary
nostrum of folk-etymology. I have often been in communication with the
Rev. W. W. Gill about these South Pacific myths and their true meaning.
The preface to his collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific
was written by me in 1876; and if Mr. A. Lang had only read the whole
chapter which treats of these Tree-Myths (p. 77 seq.), he would easily
have perceived the real character of the Tuna story, and would not have
placed it in the same class as the Daphne story; he would have found that
the white kernel of the cocoanut was, in Mangaia, called the "brains of
Tuna," a name like many more such names which after a time require an
explanation.
'Considering that "cocoanut" was used in Mangaia in the sense of head
(testa), the kernel or flesh of it might well be called the brain. If
then the white kernel had been called Tuna's brain, we have only to
remember that in Mangaia there are two kinds of cocoanut trees, and we
shall then have no difficulty in understanding why these twin cocoanut
trees were said to have sprung from the two halves of Tuna's brain, one
being red in stem, branches, and fruit, whilst the other was of a deep
green. In proof of these trees being derived from the head of Tuna, we
are told that we have only to break the nut in order to see in the
sprouting germ the two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the
lover of Ina. For a full understanding of this very complicated myth
more information has been supplied by Mr. Gill. Ina means moon; Ina-mae-
aitu, the heroine of our story, means Ina-who-had-a-divine (aitu) lover,
and she was the daughter of Kui, the blind. Tuna means eel, and in
Mangaia it was unlawful for women to eat eels, so that even now, as Mr.
Gill informs me, his converts turn away from this fish with the utmost
disgust. From other stories about the origin of cocoanut trees, told in
the same island, it would appear that the sprouts of the cocoanut were
actually called eels' heads, while the skulls of warriors were called
cocoanuts.
'Taking all these facts together, it is not difficult to imagine how the
story of Tuna's brain grew up; and I am afraid we shall have to confess
that the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne
or on the etymology of her name. No one would have a word to say against
the general principle that much that is irrational, absurd, or barbarous
in the Veda is a survival of a more primitive mythology anterior to the
Veda. How could it be otherwise?'