Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/65

Rh the mountain? Again, the name Tohinga means the act or time of Baptism or cleansing according to Maori rites. Can this name be connected with the sacred Ganges, in which to this day devout Hindus bathe to cleanse them of their sins?

next come to Wawau, the Maori form of this old name, which has evidently been a very ancient one referring to some distant land in which the ancestors of the Maoris once dwelt. It is to be found in some of the ancient chants, often with an adjectival termination, as Wawau-atea a qualifying term which is also applied to other old names, and the meaning of which I think is best rendered by "happy," "free from care," though it has also the meaning of "open," "spacious." The name often occurs in the karakia whakato kumara, or incantations said at the time of planting the kumara (Batatas). In another old chant descriptive of the original formation of various lands, it is coupled with Whiwhi-te-rangiora, a term synonymous with Hui-te-rangiora already alluded to as Paradise, thus showing it to be very ancient. Like other ancient names it has been applied as a place name to various stages in the migrations of the Polynesians. Fornander considers it to be identical with "Babao, an ancient name of Coupang, Isle of Timor; also a village and district there, and probably the name of the whole island before the Malays conquered and settled it, and named it Timor." That there was such an island, or land, westward of New Guinea is shown by the fact that the spirits of the Motu people of New Guinea, went to Lavau,