Note 33 — Chapter I · TABOOED DAYS AT CRITICAL EPOCHS
Reading edition
James Cowan, The Maoris of New Zealand, Melbourne and London, 1910, pp. 116 sq. The kumara crop was sacred, all persons engaged in its cultivation were temporarily tabooed, and the offering of the first-fruits of the kumara formed a very solemn religious ceremony (E. Tregear, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1890, xix, 110). Compare Richard Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, London, 1855, p. 57.