Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/70

58 ui-ara-kakano, the latter of which was discovered by one Tangaroa. The writer of the traditions from which this is taken evidently thought this word vari, referred to mud, as he calls it e kai viirii or disgusting food, evidently not knowing what the other meaning of the word is. Thinking there was a history in this word, and that it might be connected with pari, rice, I asked Mr. Edward Tregear to see what he could make of it, and this is the result: In Madagascar, the name for rice is vari or vare; in Sunda (Java), Macassar, Kolo, Ende, rice is pare: in the Bima tongue it is fare; in Malay it is padi and pari. It is stated that the Arabs changed the original Malay "f" into "p," so that originally the name was fari. It is sufficiently clear from the above that vari means rice, and the Rarotongan tradition is correct, though not now understood by the people themselves. It would seem from this that Atia was a country in which the rice grew, and the name Atia-te-varinga may be translated Atia-the-be-riced, or where plenty of it grew.

De Candolle, in his "Origin of Cultivated Plants," says that rice was known to the Chinese 2,800 years B.C., and that they claim it as an indigenous plant, which seems probable. Rumphius and other modern writers upon the Malay Archipalego give it only as a cultivated plant there. In British India it dates at least from the Aryan invasion, for rice has the Sanskrit name vrihi, arunya, etc. It was used in India, according to Theophrastus, who lived about the fourth century B.C., and it was grown in the Euphrates valley in the time of Alexander (B.C. 400). "When I said that the cultivation of rice in India was probably more recent than in China I did not mean that the plant was not wild there." The wild rice of India is called by the Telingas newaree (in which we recognise the word wari or vari; the Telingas are not Aryans). "Historical evidence