Note 83 — Chapter I

E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 80. Compare id., Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 81; id., The Southern Districts of New Zealand, p. 294; id., Maori Religion and Mythology, pp. 10 sq. In Maori mythology Rangi is the personification of the sky, and Papa of earth. They were the primal parents, and the other great gods were their offspring. See Elsdon Best, "The Maori Genius for Personification," Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, liii. (1921) p. 2. Among the great primordial deities who were worshipped by all tribes of New Zealand may be mentioned Tane, Tu, Tangaroa, and Rongo. Of the four, Tane was the origin and tutelary deity of forests and birds: no tree might be felled and no bird caught till certain rites had been performed to placate him. Tu was the god of war. Tangaroa was the god of the ocean, the origin and tutelary deity of fish. Rongo was the god of peace, and presided over agriculture. See Elsdon Best, "Maori Religion," Report of the Twelfth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Brisbane, 1909, p. 458. The same four gods, with names only dialectically different, were, as we shall see later on, the principal deities of the Sandwich Islanders, the most distant geographically from the Maoris of all the Polynesians. The coincidence furnishes an example of the homogeneity of religion which prevailed among the various branches of the Polynesian race.