Blyth.— On " The Whence of the Maoris 537 



disguise it. The word Ifoo, the Maori spade, is probably derived 

 from the Hindu hhndh, (the rhyme with " loathe " gives the pro- 

 nunciation,) which means to dir/. 



If Tumatauenga is man, he must have lost a good deal of 

 the "fierceness of his countenance" before he had any kiimaras 

 to fight : and it is strange that the milder he has grown the 

 bloodier has been the field of struggle, and the wider the devas- 

 tation ; for the more civilized man has become, the more fiercely 

 and ravenously has his poor brother the kumara been attacked 

 and devoured. It seems to me Mr. Colenso's interpretation 

 halts ; but Mr. Taylor's account of Tumatauenga, as the great 

 author of evil, sets it running. 



In Mr. Colenso's valuable notes on the " Invocation to Pani, 

 on the plantmg of the Kumara,''' one or two other points are 

 noticed that recall Hindu Turanian influence. Mr. Colenso says 

 of the invocation itself: "It is just possible that the kernel 

 of this charm, or invocation of Pani, may be amongst the very 

 oldest known !" and again, " Of the various spells, etc., anciently 

 used in planting the kumara that I have acquired from several 

 tohungas during many years, there are no less than three which 

 contain this direct invocation to Pani ; and while the introduc- 

 tory words of those three forms vary a little, the kernel — the 

 invocation itself — is almost literally the same in them all." He 

 adds, m a later note on the invocation itself: " Note its great 

 simplicity, its gradations, and its recurring refrain, repeated 

 regularly six times." It will be plain that Mr. Colenso has not 

 exaggerated either its importance or its interest. Its extreme 

 importance will, I trust, be the more thoroughly appreciated, 

 since a comparative study of it with Hindu antiquities has 

 proved the claim to antiquity put forward for it by Mr. Colenso ; 

 and certainly its interest will not be lessened when " its poetical 

 structure, and its regular fitting and progressive disposition, 

 and its recurring refrain," point its kinship with the hymns of 

 the Veda. 



The muttering of the charms in the plantations to procure 

 fertility, by the tohungas, reminds Mr. Colenso of similar practices 

 among the Egyptians and Eomans at the vernal festivals. But 

 this was a Hindu feature as well as an Egyptian ; and from the 

 East it passed in much later times to the West. Mr. Colenso 

 mentions another " strange plan '' adopted by the Maoris of the 

 interior to insure the fertility of the soil. The skulls and bones 

 of Tia and his party, who had died at Titiraupenga, near Taupo, 

 were " annually brought ovit and placed with much ceremony in 

 the hwiara plantations, by the margins of the plots, that the 

 plants might become fertile and bear many tubers." This might 

 be a traditional echo of the Meriah sacrifice, as is still practised 

 by the Khonds, an aboriginal tribe of Turanian India. "The 

 objects of their worship," says Canon Trevor, in a little book on 



