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POLYNESIAN MYTHOLOGY.
255
At first, no doubt, we feel startled by such coincidences; and that they often offer a prima facie presumption in favour of a common origin cannot be denied. But as we read on from one mythology to another, our sensitiveness with regard to these coincidences becomes blunted, and we feel, hardened against appeals which are founded exclusively on such evidence.
At first sight, what can be more startling than to see the interior of the world, the invisible or nether world, the Hades of the Mangaians, called Avaiki, Aviki, lit. the lower region, being the name of one of the lower regions, both among Brahmans and Buddhists? But we have only to look around, and we find that in Tahitian the name for Hades is Hawaii, in New Zealand Hawaiki, and more originally, I suppose, Sawaiki ; so that the similarity between the Sanskrit and Polynesian words vanishes very quickly.
That the name of the Sun-god in Mangaia is Ra has been pointed out as a strange caincidence with Egypt; but more really important is the story of Ra being made captive, as reminding us of similar solar legends in Greece, Germany, Peru, and elsewhere 1.
Who can read the Mangaian story of Ina (the moon) and her mortal lover, who, as he grew old and infirm, had to be sent back to the earth to end his days there, without thinking of Selene and Endymion, of Eos and Tithonos ?
Who again, if acquainted with the Vedic myth of the Maruts, the strikers, the Storm-gods, and their gradual change into the Roman god of war, Mars, can fail to see the same transition of thought in several of the gods of the storms, of war and destruction among the Polynesians, though here again the similarity in the name of Maru is purely accidental,
1 Chips from a German Workshop. Second edition, vol. ii. p. 116.
? Rig Veda-Sanhita, The Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans. Translated by F. Max Müller. Vol. i. Hymns to the Maruts, or the StormGods. London, Trübner & Co., 1869.
