Tkegeae. — The Maori in Asia. 15 



suspicious relation to nas, the nose (Fr., nez), that I believe the 

 Maori nose-rubbing was what "nik&h " meant originally. 



The Maoris knew of no musical stringed instruments. The 

 Hindu word tar, a string of a musical instrument (whence, 

 guitar), is represented by (M.) tail, a string, a rope ; but the 

 music-meaning of tau was a song. 



The New Zealanders not only do not seem to know the later 

 Indian deities, but they do not know their demons. The Hindu 

 hhut or bhat, a goblin dwelling in holes and graves, may have 

 connection with (M.) patu-paiarehe, the Maori fairies (perhaps 

 paiarehe is the Persian word peri, a fairy), but it is closely allied 

 to puta, a hole ; the Persian ghoul, a demon haunting graves, 

 also being found in Jcoro-puta, a hole — ghoul-v?oi& and bhut-vroid 

 together — but the hole had as yet no ghostly habitant. 



The Aryans had not learnt to discriminate ( in words) between 

 colours, when the Maoris left. The Sanscrit word gaura, yellow, 

 really means shining, splendid; from gaura the Europeans 

 named their metal gold— but (as ghar) it became the root of 

 green. The Maoris kept the original word : k is older than g ; 

 kura older than gaura, but it was preserved by them as " red ;" in 

 fact, it is not any particular tint ; kura is our own English word 

 " colour." 



Next, they had not learnt to drink kava. I think this a very 

 important addition to my argument used in " The Aryan Maori," 

 that the South Sea Aryans came as a little later wave of migra- 

 tion than the New Zealander. Almost everyone knows what 

 kava is — the leaves of a tree chewed into pulp, and spat out into 

 a vessel for use as an intoxicating beverage ; it is much in- 

 dulged in in tbe South Seas. But everyone is not aware that 

 kava was auciently drunk in India as a sacred potation, and 

 under the idea that the drunkenness was inspiration — hence the 

 Sanscrit word for a poet is kcivi, divinely inspirited, " in a fine 

 frenzy rolling." There was enmity between the Kahvasakha, 

 the kava-drinker, and those who drank the Soma, the later holy 

 beverage of India. 



But if we wish to find the meaning of kava we must go back 

 to " cow " again. In Sanscrit, the genitive case of gau, the cow, 

 is gavas (once kau, kava*), and kava means " chewing the cud." 

 In a book called " South Sea Bubbles," whose titled author 

 described the preparation of kava, he says that the pretty girls 

 sitting around the kava bowl did not " chew," they did it so 

 prettily that it should be called " ruminate." That is precisely 

 the case, the word comes from that ruminating animal, the 

 cow. 



As an instance of cattle words in Maori, I will notice that 

 the original meaning of kowae, cleft, divided, is ko-wae, " cow's 

 foot," the cloven hoof. This, too, was once the meaning of the 

 Sanscrit word gabha, split, divided ; it was ga-pad, cow's foot. 



