564 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CH. XIV. 



" return to the land of thy forefathers," the words with which the 

 victims in human sacrifices were speeded to the other world ; 

 lastly in Hawaii, the name of the chief island of the Sandwich 

 group. 



That such reminiscences should be preserved for long ages is 

 characteristic of these Indonesians, whose myths and legends, 

 sometimes unexpectedly verified in surprising ways, show that 

 they were gifted with very long memories. Some of their poetic 

 and even sublime cosmogonies would almost seem to have ac- 

 companied all their wanderings from their Central Asiatic cradle 

 through Malaysia to their present eastern homes. More than 

 one of these cosmogonies starts with Chaos, Immensity, Gloomy 

 Night not so much concrete as abstract concepts. Almost 

 purely subjective notions, these entities, writes Dr Tautain 1 , 

 must have been preceded by more material beings, by simpler 

 and more tangible deities. In all the Polynesian cosmogonies, 

 of which there is great store, we find Heaven, Earth, the Universe, 

 the After- World, recurring under diverse names and forms, per- 

 sonified by language, embodied in animistic and anthropomorphic 

 philosophies echoes, as it were, of the Vedic hymns reverberating 

 from isle to isle over the broad Pacific waters. 



1 L' Anthropologie^ 1896, p. 542. 



