■ COOK AND cook: THE MAHO OR MAHAGUA 159 



Although Httle can be inferred with confidence from single 

 instances, the Polynesian maho vocabulary includes several 

 rather prominent groups of words, as the examples will show. 

 Many other words that may prove to be compounds or deriva- 

 tives of maho names are to be found in the vocabularies of 

 Tregear, Andrews, Pratt, and Churchill. 



In suggesting that the Polj^nesian hau and fau probably came 

 from a root meaning to "bind or tie up," Christian is in ac- 

 cord with a custom of philologists to deduce particular names 

 from words of more general meaning, but primitive languages, 

 though usually rich in spedfic names, may lack generic terms, 

 which are a later development. Thus a language having many 

 names for different kinds of spiders and different kinds of plants 

 may still have no terms to include all spiders or all plants, so 

 that such names as spider-wort or hind-weed are impossible. 

 Even the Spanish could not have hind-weed, there being no 

 proper equivalent of weed, as representing a class of plants that 

 infest cultivated lands and interfere with the growth of crops. 



The question whether fau refers primarily to the tree or to 

 the act of using the bark is raised by Churchill:' 



In the utter absence of perspective in which these languages appear 

 before us it would be idle to engage upon the attempt to discover 

 whether in sense the tree or the act of using its bast is primordial. In 

 the records before us the stem carries the tree sense without the verb 

 in the Paumotu, the Marquesas, Nukuoro, and Aneityum; nowhere the 

 verb where the noun does not designate a plant which yields a string. 



It seems not impossible, however, that orientation in such 

 matters may be improved by taking account of the origins, dis- 

 tributions, names, and uses of the agricultural and economic 

 plants. Churchill has collected hnguistic evidence of Poly- 

 nesian migrations from west to east. That such migrations 

 took place may also be inferred from the cultivation of Malayan 

 and Asiatic plants in all of the islands, but the possession of 

 American plants by the early Polynesian has also to be recognized 

 and explained. 



' Polynesian Wanderings, 328. 



