contact of food designed to be eat; for the act of eating food which had touched anything tapu, involved the necessity of eating the sacredness of the Atua, from whom it derived its sacredness.
It seems that the practice of cannibalism must have had a close connexion with such a system of belief. To eat an enemy was the greatest degradation to which he could be subjected, and so it must have been regarded as akin to blasphemy to eat anything containing a particle of divine essence.
Everything not included under the class tapu was called noa, meaning free or common. Things and persons tapu could, however, be made noa by means of certain ceremonies, the object of which was to extract the tapu essence, and restore it to the source whence it originally came. It has been already stated that every tribe and every family has its own especial Atua. The Ariki, or head of a family, in both male and female lines, are regarded by their own family with a veneration almost equal to that of their Atua.[1] They form, as
- ↑ It is observable that Homer attributes special honor to a few of his heroes, who appear to have been the male representatives of their race,—as to Agamemnon of the race of Pelops, and to Aeneas of the race of Assaracus. With respect to each of them, it is mentioned that he was honored as a God by his people. "Θεὸς δ' ὥς τίετο δήμῳ." Among the Maori these chiefs would have been distinguished by the title of Ariki. Homer gives them the title "ἅναξ ἀνδρῶν," the old meaning of which words has been a matter of much inquiry. Mr Gladstone (Homer and Homeric Age, vol. i. p. 456) says, "It seems to me that this restraint in the use of the name 'ἅναξ ἀνδρῶν was not unconnected with a sense of reverence towards it;" and he suggests the word chieftain as its fit representative. Might not its original meaning have been similar to that of Ariki?
