The New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, as Dr.
Tylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given it a
'solar' explanation. It is an audacious thing to differ from so cautious
and learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, but I venture to give my
reasons for dissenting in this case from the view of the author of
Primitive Culture (i. 335). Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology.
He was not precisely a god, still less was he one of the early elemental
gods, yet we can scarcely regard him as a man. He rather answers to one
of the race of Titans, and especially to Prometheus, the son of a Titan.
Maui was prematurely born, and his mother thought the child would be no
credit to her already numerous and promising family. She therefore (as
native women too often did in the South-Sea Islands) tied him up in her
long tresses and tossed him out to sea. The gales brought him back to
shore: one of his grandparents carried him home, and he became much the
most illustrious and successful of his household. So far Maui had the
luck which so commonly attends the youngest and least-considered child in
folklore and mythology. This feature in his myth may be a result of the
very widespread custom of jungsten Recht (Borough English), by which the
youngest child is heir at least of the family hearth. Now, unluckily, at
the baptism of Maui (for a pagan form of baptism is a Maori ceremony) his
father omitted some of the Karakias, or ritual utterances proper to be
used on such occasions. This was the fatal original mistake whence came
man's liability to death, for hitherto men had been immortal. So far,
what is there 'solar' about Maui? Who are the sun's brethren?--and Maui
had many. How could the sun catch the sun in a snare, and beat him so as
to make him lame? This was one of Maui's feats, for he meant to prevent
the sun from running too fast through the sky. Maui brought fire,
indeed, from the under-world, as Prometheus stole it from the
upper-world; but many men and many beasts do as much as the myths of the
world, and it is hard to see how the exploit gives Maui 'a solar
character.' Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of
early civilisation, with which the sun has no more to do than with patent
safety-matches. His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality
for ever. There are various legends on this subject.