Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/359

is especially manifested in that great mythologic divinity of the Polynesian race, whom the New Zealanders call Tangaroa, the Hawaiians Kanaroa, the Tongans and Samoans Tangaloa, the Georgian and Society islanders Taaroa. Students of the science of religion who hold polytheism to be but the mis-development of a primal idea of divine unity, which in spite of corruption continues to pervade it, might well choose this South Sea Island divinity as their aptest illustration from the savage world. Taaroa, says Moerenhout, is their supreme or rather only god; for all the others, as in other known polytheisms, seem scarcely more than sensible figures and images of the infinite attributes united in his divine person. The following is given as a native poetic definition of the Creator. 'He was; Taaroa was his name; he abode in the void. No earth, no sky, no men. Taaroa calls, but nought answers; and alone existing, he became the universe. The props are Taaroa; the rocks are Taaroa; the sands are Taaroa; it is thus he himself is named.' According to Ellis, Taaroa is described in the Leeward Islands as the eternal parentless uncreate Creator, dwelling alone in the highest heaven, whose bodily form mortals cannot see, who after intervals of innumerable seasons casts off his body or shell and becomes renewed. It was he who created Hina his daughter, and with her aid formed the sky and earth and sea. He founded the world on a solid rock, which with all the creation he sustains by his invisible power. Then he created the ranks of lesser deities such as reign over sea and land and air, and govern peace and war, and preside over physic and husbandry, and canoe-building, and roofing, and theft. The version from the Windward Islands is that Taaroa's wife was the rock, the foundation of all things, and she gave birth to earth and sea. Now, fortunately for our understanding of this myth, the name of Taaroa's wife, with whom he begat the lesser deities, was taken down in Tahiti in Captain Cook's time. She was a rock called Papa, and her name plainly suggests her identity with Papa the Earth, the wife of Rangi the