Page:Pounamu, notes on New Zealand greenstone (IA pounamunotesonne00robl).djvu/61

Rh the ornament belongs. The thumbs are always shewn, but never more than three fingers appear.

This fashion of carving the hand has puzzled many students of the ancient New Zealand art. The Maori have the ingenious, but perhaps hardly credible, explanation of this phenomenon, that the first man to carve and decorate was an ancestor who had himself only three fingers on each hand. Whether this is true or not the fashion has been rigidly followed since the legendary Nuku-mai-teko, the skilful worker, deceived Tangaroa with his art. This representation of three-fingered hands is not, however, peculiar to the Maori. Hands of this rude form have been noted in ancient Chinese ideographs and in other Eastern sculptures, in the relics of the Peruvian Incas and in other forms of primitive art, as is remarked by Mr. Cowan in his Maoris of New Zealand.

From this general description it will be seen that tiki conform to a certain conventional shape, which is that which was handed down from generation to generation; for the Maori considered that it was aitua, an ill omen, to depart from the lines laid down by their forefathers. Some of these little effigies are squat and others more elongated, a result no doubt due to the dimensions of the piece of stone at the artist’s disposal. They vary in form, as our illustrations shew, but a close inspection shews that they fall into two main types, in both of which the head is inclined to right or left, and in many cases resting, as it were, upon the shoulders.

In both types the legs are shewn with the knees bent, and the feet, with what appear to be sometimes two and sometimes three pairs of toes, gathered under the body. But these limbs are really an attempt to represent the motif of the manaia