CHAPTER I: THE MAORIS.
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THE HISTORY OF TARANAKI.
CHAPTER I.
THERE is a tradition among the Maoris that their forefathers came to New Zealand in certain canoes from a country called Hawaiiki, and that on their arrival they found the land thinly populated with a race short and plump, but physically inferior to themselves, called Moriori. The concluding part of this tradition is borne out by the fact of a people of that name and character having existed at the Chatham Islands within the memory of the present generation. It has also been confirmed by the discovery in the Waikato district of a number of skeletons arranged round a circular pit in an erect position, each with a block of wood upon its head, which was a mode of burial adopted in certain cases by the Morioris of the Chatham Islands. The Maoris are members of the brown portion of the Polynesian family, their language being a dialect of that spoken in the Sandwich Islands, and there are strong reasons for supposing that the family migrated from India at an early date. Mr. Thomson, of Otago, who has spent many years in India, says in a valuable paper in the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute" that there is in that country a people who bear a very strong resemblance to the Maoris. The fierceness of the passions of the Maori, and the occasionally dusky hue of his skin, would lead us to suppose that he has African blood in his veins, and Mr. Thomson supposes that the original inhabitants of India were Ethiopians and that they were driven out by the influx of Aryans. The analogy between the Maori and Indo-European tongues is very striking. Mr. Fairburn, writing on this subject in the "Transactions," observes that "the definite and indefinite articles in Maori are te and he, the latter pronounced ha, which are nearly identical with the English the and a. The Maori ko is also interchangeable with our to, and like it is a sign of the dative case." Mr. Fairburn also observes that "it is a mistake
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to suppose Maori to be a section of the Turanian group of tongues. It is rather a mixture of the Indo-European and Semitic. Maori-- Moriori--Malay--Maure--Moor--the evident relationship between these names indicate that the Maori is a fierce cross between the Arab and the Ethiopian. Again, the name Maori seems to indicate that this people came from the East; Maori--Malay--that is to say an inhabitant of Malacca or Malaka--bears evident affinity to the Maori words marangai the east, arangi rising, and maranga to arise. The Maori contains many old Arabic and Egyptian words." There is a singular circumstance in connection with this subject mentioned by Professor Max Muller in his "Chips from a German Workshop" --"In the Chinese province of Yunnan there are tribes of aborigines ---not Chinese--called Mau-tze or soil-children, who salute as they did when first observed by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century by rubbing noses." The identity of this mode of salutation with that practised by the Maoris, the approximation of their names in sound and signification--for the word Maori signifies native--are at least very remarkable. Still more remarkable are the resemblances we can trace between existing Maori customs and some which have become obsolete among certain tribes of Africans. In Max Muller's review of the "Zulu Nursery Tales," by the Rev. H. Calloway of Natal, he says:-- "There is one feature in these stories which to a great extent attests their antiquity. Several of the customs to which they allude are no longer in existence among the Zulus. It is not for instance any longer the custom among the natives of South Africa to bake meat by means of heated stones, the recognised mode of cooking among the Polynesians. Yet when Usikulumi orders a calf to be roasted he calls upon the boys of the kraal to collect large stones and to heat them. There are several other peculiarities which the Zulus seem to share in common with the Polynesians. The avoiding of certain words which form part of the names of deceased kings or chieftains is a distinguishing feature of the Zulu and Polynesian languages. If a person who has disappeared for some time and is supposed dead returns unexpectedly to his people, it is the custom both among the Zulus and Polynesians to salute him first by making a funeral lamentation. There are other coincidences in the stories of both races which make it more than probable that at some distant period they had lived either together or in close neighbourhood."
A circumstance strongly tending to show that oceanic communication existed between India and New Zealand in ancient times is the fact that in the interior of the Northern Island of New Zealand part of a ship's bell has been found, bearing an inscription in very ancient Tamil, which was thus translated in Ceylon:--"Mohoyden Buks Ship's Bell." Proof is also not wanting of an intimate connection between the Maori and the Egyptian at some very distant date. Ra is the term used by the Maori as expressive of day and the light of the sun, and it was used in precisely the same sense by the ancient Egyptians. A magnificent hymn to the sun, recently translated by
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M. Marietta and attributed to the 12th Dynasty, begins thus:-- "Thou awakenest beneficially Ammon-Ra." In the Egyptian Ritual of the Dead the Divinity is made to say, "I am Ra, at his rising in the beginning, he who governs that he has made." In the Egyptian Trinity Ra is also the solar agent. The idea is also entertained that Pharaoh, the general title of the kings of Egypt, corresponds to the Egyptian phra or ra the "sun," which is written as an hieroglyphic symbol over the titles of kings. The similarity in sound and meaning of the Egyptian word typhon with that of the Maori taipo, both being the name of the Spirit of Evil, is also not a little remarkable.
