Page:The disappearance of useful arts.djvu/20

124 of arts so useful as those of making pottery and canoes. Nevertheless we have found that arts have disappeared for this reason and it remains to discover why. In many parts of Oceania an art practised by a special group of craftsmen is not a mere technical performance but has a definitely religious character and may be regarded as a long series of religious rites. It is not enough to be able to make a canoe but you must also know the appropriate rites which will make it safe to use it for profane purposes without danger from ghostly or other supernatural agencies. To go in a canoe which has not been the subject of such rites would be to put oneself into the midst of all kinds of hidden and mysterious dangers. In Polynesia this religious character of crafts is shown even in the terms applied to those who practice them. The tufunga of Tonga and Tikopia is only one form of the tohunga of the Maori, the tuhuna of Tahiti, the taunga of Mangaia, the tahunga of the Low Archipelago and the kahuna of the Hawaian Islands. Most of these words are used both for priests and craftsmen, thus pointing clearly to the religious character of the occupations they follow. In combination with rites which so often accompany the process of manufacture this common nomenclature suggests that the disappearance of useful arts through the dying of craftsmen may not have been due solely, or even chiefly, to the loss of their manual skill but that the quenching of their spiritual power, the mana of Oceania, may have been another and most potent factor.

I have no case in which I can definitely show that a useful art has disappeared from religious or magical motives. I wish rather to direct attention to the possibility of such motives in order that workers in the field and theorists at home may not be content with obvious utilitarian