Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/161

Rh MYTHOLOGY 149 navian myth. He is usually, however, regarded as a raven, and holds the same relation to men and the world as the eagle-hawk Pund-jel does in Australia. His great opponent (for the eternal dualism comes in) is Khanukh, who is a wolf, and the ancestor or totem of the wolf-race of men as Yehl is of the raven. The opposition between the Crow and Eagle-hawk in Australia will be remembered. Both animals or men or gods take part in creation. Yehl is the Prometheus Purphoros of the Thlinkeets, but myths of the fire-stealer would form matter for a separate section. Yehl also stole water, in his bird-shape, exactly as Odin stole &quot; Suttung s mead &quot; when in the shape of an eagle. 1 Yehl s powers of metamorphosis and of flying into the air are the common accomplishments of sorcerers, and he is a rather crude form of first father, &quot;culture-hero,&quot; and creator. 2 Among the Cahroc Indians we find the great hero and divine benefactor in the shape of, not a raven, nor an eagle- hawk, nor a mantis insect, nor a spider, but a coyote. Among both Cahrocs and Navajos the Coyote is the Pro metheus Purphoros, or, as the Aryans of India call him, Matarisvan the fire-stealer. Among the Papagos, on the eastern side of the Gulf of California, the Coyote or Prairie Wolf is the creative hero and chief supernatural being. In Oregon the Coyote is also the &quot;demiurge,&quot; but most of the myths about him refer to his creative exploits, and will be more appropriately treated in the next section. Moving up the Pacific coast to British Columbia, we find the Musk-rat taking the part played by Vishnu, when in his avatar as a boar he fished up the earth from the waters. Among the Tinnehs a miraculous dog, who, like an enchanted fairy prince, could assume the form of a handsome young man, is the chief divine being of the myths. He too is chiefly a creative or demiurgic being, answering to Purusha in the Rig- Veda. So far the peculiar mark of the wilder American tribe legends is the bestial character of the divine beings, which is also illustrated in Australia and Africa, while the bestial clothing, feathers or fur, drops but slowly off Indra, Zeus and the Egyptian Ammon, and the Scandinavian Odin. All these are more or less anthropomorphic, but retain, as will be seen, nume rous relics of a theriomorphic condition. Passing from the lower savage myths, of which space does not permit us to offer a larger selection, we turn to races in the upper strata of barbarism. Among these the Maoris of New Zealand, and the Polynesian people gener ally, are remarkable for a mythology largely intermixed with early attempts at more philosophical speculation. The Maoris and Mangaians, and other peoples, have had speculators among them not very far removed from the mental condition of the earliest Greek philosophers, Empedocles, Anaximander, and the rest. In fact the pro cess from the view of nature which we call personalism to the crudest theories of the physicists was apparently begun in New Zealand before the arrival of Europeans. In Maori mythology it is more than usually difficult to keep apart the origin of the world and the origin and nature of the gods. Long traditional hymns give an account of the &quot; becoming out of nothing &quot; which resulted in the evolution of the gods and the world. In the beginning (as in the Greek myths of Uranus and Geea), Heaven (Rangi, conceived of as a person) was indissolubly united to his wife Earth (Papa), and between them they begat gods which necessarily dwelt in darkness. These gods were some in vegetable, some in animal form ; some traditions place among these gods Tiki the demiurge, who (like Prometheus) made men out of clay. The off spring of Rangi and Papa (kept in the dark as they were) held a council to determine how they should treat their 1 Dasent, Bragi s Telling : Younger Edda, p. 94. 2 Bancroft, vol. iv. parents, &quot;Shall we slay them, or shall we separate them?&quot; In the Hesiodic fable, Cronus separates the heavenly pair by mutilating his oppressive father Uranus. Among the Maoris the god Tutenganahan cut the sinews which united Earth and Heaven, and Tane Mahuta wrenched them apart, and kept them eternally asunder. The new dynasty now had earth to themselves, but Tawhiramatea, the wind, abode aloft with his father. Some of the gods were in the forms of lizards and fishes ; some went to the land, some to the water. As among the gods and Asuras of the Vedas, there were many wars in the divine race, and as the incantations of the Indian Brahmanas are derived from those old experiences of the Vedic gods, so are the incantations of the Maoris. The gods of New Zealand, the greater gods at least, may be called &quot; departmental ; &quot; each person who is an elementary force is also the god of that force. As Te Heu, a powerful chief, said, there is division of labour among men, and so there is among gods. &quot; One made this, another that ; Tane made trees, Ru mountains, Tanga-roa fish, and so forth.&quot; 3 The &quot;de partmental &quot; arrangement prevails among the polytheism of civilized peoples, and is familiar to all from the Greek examples. Leaving the high gods whose functions are so large, while their forms (as of lizard, fish, and tree) are often so mean, we come to Maui, the great divine hero of the supernatural race in Polynesia. Maui in some respects answers to the chief of the Adityas in Yedic mythology ; in others he answers to Qat, Quawteaht, and other savage divine personages. Like the son of the Yedic Aditi, 4 Maui is a rejected and abortive child of his mother, but after wards attains to the highest reputation. As Qat brought the hitherto unknown night, so Maui settled the sun and moon in their proper courses. He induced the sun to move orderly by giving him a violent beating. A similar feat was performed by the Sun-trapper, a famous Red Indian chief. These tales belong properly to the depart ment of solar myths. Maui himself is thought by Mr E. B. Tylor to be a myth of the sun, but the sun could hardly give the sun a drubbing. Maui slew monsters, invented barbs for fish-hooks, frequently adopted the form of various birds, acted as Prometheus Purphoros the fire-stealer, drew a whole island up from the bottom of the deep ; he was a great sorcerer and magician. Had Maui succeeded in his attempt to pass through the body of Night (considered as a woman) men would have been immortal. But a little bird which sings at sunset wakened Night, she snapped up Maui, and men die. This has been called a myth of sun set, but the sun does what Maui failed to do, he passes through the body of night unharmed. The adventure is one of the myths of the origin of death, which are almost universally diffused. Maui, though regarded as a god, is not often addressed in prayer. 5 The whole system, as far as it can be called a system, of Maori mythology is obviously based on the savage con ceptions of the world which have already been explained. The Polynesian system differs mainly in detail ; we have the separation of heaven and earth, the animal-shaped gods, the fire-stealing, the exploits of Maui, and scores of minor myths in Gill s Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, in the researches of Ellis, of Williams, in Turner s Polynesia, and in many other accessible works. The Maoris and other Polynesian peoples are perhaps the best examples of a race which has risen far above the savagery of Bushmen and Australians, but has not yet 3 Taylor, New Zealand, p. 108. 4 Rig-Veda, x. 72, 1, 8 ; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iv. 13, where the fable from the Satapatha-Brahmana is given. 5 The best authorities for the New Zealand myths are the old traditional priestly hymns, collected and translated in the works of Sir George Grey, in Taylor s Neiv Zealand, in Shortland s Traditions of New Zealand (1857), and in Bastian s Heilige Sage der Polynesier.