Maui and Yama

The New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, as Dr. Tylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given it a ‘solar’ explanation.  It is an audacious thing to differ from so cautious and learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, but I venture to give my reasons for dissenting in this case from the view of the author of Primitive Culture (i. 335).  Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology.  He was not precisely a god, still less was he one of the early elemental gods, yet we can scarcely regard him as a man.  He rather answers to one of the race of Titans, and especially to Prometheus, the son of a Titan.  Maui was prematurely born, and his mother thought the child would be no credit to her already numerous and promising family.  She therefore (as native women too often did in the South-Sea Islands) tied him up in her long tresses and tossed him out to sea.  The gales brought him back to shore:  one of his grandparents carried him home, and he became much the most illustrious and successful of his household.  So far Maui had the luck which so commonly attends the youngest and least-considered child in folklore and mythology.  This feature in his myth may be a result of the very widespread custom of jungsten Recht (Borough English), by which the youngest child is heir at least of the family hearth.  Now, unluckily, at the baptism of Maui (for a pagan form of baptism is a Maori ceremony) his father omitted some of the Karakias, or ritual utterances proper to be used on such occasions.  This was the fatal original mistake whence came man’s liability to death, for hitherto men had been immortal.  So far, what is there ‘solar’ about Maui?  Who are the sun’s brethren?—­and Maui had many.  How could the sun catch the sun in a snare, and beat him so as to make him lame?  This was one of Maui’s feats, for he meant to prevent the sun from running too fast through the sky.  Maui brought fire, indeed, from the under-world, as Prometheus stole it from the upper-world; but many men and many beasts do as much as the myths of the world, and it is hard to see how the exploit gives Maui ’a solar character.’  Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of early civilisation, with which the sun has no more to do than with patent safety-matches.  His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality for ever.  There are various legends on this subject.

Maui Myths

Some say Maui noticed that the sun and moon rose again from their daily death, by virtue of a fountain in Hades (Hine-nui-te-po) where they bathed.  Others say he wished to kill Hine-nui-te-po (conceived of as a woman) and to carry off her heart.  Whatever the reason, Maui was to be swallowed up in the giant frame of Hades, or Night, and, if he escaped alive, Death would never have power over men.  He made