The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai | Page 5

in New Zealand and in Hawaii scarcely changed, even in name.

Footnotes to Section II, 1: Polynesian Origin of Hawaiian Romance
[Footnote 1: Bastian In Samoanische Sch?pfungssage (p. 8) says: "Oceanien (im Zusammenbegriff von Polynesien und Mikronesien) repr?sentirt (bei vorl?ufigem Ausschluss von Melanesien schon) einen Fl?chenraum, der alles Aehnliche auf dem Globus intellectualis weit ��bertrifft (von Hawaii bis Neu-Seeland, von der Oster-Insel bis zu den Marianen), und wenn es sich hier um Inseln handelt durch Meeresweiten getrennt, ist aus solch insularer Differenzirung gerade das Hilfsmittel comparativer Methode geboten f��r die Induction, um dasselbe, wie biologiseh sonst, hier auf psychologischem Arbeitsfelde zur Verwendung zu bringen." Compare: Kr?mer, p. 394; Finck, in Royal Scientific Society of G?ttingen, 1909.]
[Footnote 2: Lesson says of the Polynesian groups (I, 378): "On sait ... que tous ont, pour loi civile et religieuse, la m��me interdiction; que leurs institutions, leurs c��r��monies sont semblables; que leurs croyances sont fonci��rement identiques; qu'ils ont le m��me culte, les m��mes coutumes, les m��mes usages principaux; qu'ils ont enfin les m��mes moeurs et les m��mes traditions. Tout semble donc, a priori, annoncer que, quelque soit leur ��loignement les uns des autres, les Polynesiens ont tir�� d'une m��me source cette communaut�� d'id��es et de langage; qu'ils ne sont, par consequent, que les tribus disperses d'une m��me nation, et que ces tribus ne se sont s��par��es qu'�� une epoque o�� la langue et les id��es politiques et religieuses de cette nation ��taient d��ja fix��es."]
[Footnote 3: Compare: Stair, Old Samoa, p. 271; White, I, 176; Fison, pp. 1, 19; Smith, Hawaiki, p. 123; Lesson, II, 207, 209; Grey, pp. 108-234; Baessler, Neue S��dsee-Bilder, p. 113; Thomson, p. 15.]
[Footnote 4: Lesson (II, 190) enumerates eleven small islands, covering 40 degrees of latitude, scattered between Hawaii and the islands to the south, four showing traces of ancient habitation, which he believes to mark the old route from Hawaii to the islands to the southeast. According to Hawaiian tradition, which is by no means historically accurate, what is called the second migration period to Hawaii seems to have occurred between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries (dated from the arrival of the high priest Paao at Kohala, Hawaii, 18 generations before Kam��ham��ha); to have come from the southeast; to have introduced a sacerdotal system whose priesthood, symbols, and temple structure persisted up to the time of the abandoning of the old faith in 1819. Compare Alexander's History, ch. III; Malo, pp. 25, 323; Lesson, II, 160-169.]
[Footnote 5: Kahiki, in Hawaiian chants, is the term used to designate a "foreign land" in general and does not refer especially to the island of Tahiti in the Society Group.]
[Footnote 6: Lesson, II, 152.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid., 170.]
[Footnote 8: Ibid., 178.]

2. POLYNESIAN COSMOGONY
In theme the body of Polynesian folk tale is not unlike that of other primitive and story-loving people. It includes primitive philosophy--stories of cosmogony and of heroes who shaped the earth; primitive annals--migration stories, tales of culture heroes, of conquest and overrule. There is primitive romances--tales of competition, of vengeance, and of love; primitive wit--of drolls and tricksters; and primitive fear in tales of spirits and the power of ghosts. These divisions are not individual to Polynesia; they belong to universal delight; but the form each takes is shaped and determined by the background, either of real life or of life among the gods, familiar to the Polynesian mind.
The conception of the heavens is purely objective, corresponding, in fact, to Anaxagoras's sketch of the universe. Earth is a plain, walled about far as the horizon, where, according to Hawaiian expression, rise the confines of Kahiki, Kukulu o Kahiki.[1] From this point the heavens are superimposed one upon the other like cones, in number varying in different groups from 8 to 14; below lies the underworld, sometimes divided into two or three worlds ruled by deified ancestors and inhabited by the spirits of the dead, or even by the gods[2]--the whole inclosed from chaos like an egg in a shell.[3] Ordinarily the gods seem to be conceived as inhabiting the heavens. As in other mythologies, heaven and the life the gods live there are merely a reproduction or copy of earth and its ways. In heaven the gods are ranged by rank; in the highest heaven dwells the chief god alone enjoying his supreme right of silence, tabu moe; others inhabit the lower heavens in gradually descending grade corresponding to the social ranks recognized among the Polynesian chiefs on earth. This physical world is again the prototype for the activities of the gods, its multitudinous manifestations representing the forms and forces employed by the myriad gods in making known their presence on earth. They are not these forms themselves, but have them at their disposal, to use as transformation bodies in their appearances on earth, or they may transfer them to their offspring on earth.