536 Transactions . — Miscellaneous . 



" The kumara," says Colenso,''' " is Bongomaraeroa (fame-re- 

 soundiEg-(in)-long-open courts) ; the aruhe is Arikinoanoa : they 

 are both children of the Sky and Earth," (Eangi and Papa,) 

 which comes to much the same thing as their being descended 

 from Huruki (Tiki) and Pani. Mr. Colenso gives a translation 

 of the story of the fighting of Tumatauenga with his elder 

 brother Bongomaraeroa (the kumara), in which contest Tuma- 

 tauenga kills and eats Eongomaraeroa. Tumatauenga is evi- 

 dently the Tu, "whose contemptuous behaviour, and hungering 

 after the kumara,'' are mentioned in the xmiata just quoted from 

 Mr. Stack. Mr. Colenso, in his notes on his paper, explains 

 Tumatauenga (" Lord - with - the - fierce - (or - strongly-emotioned) 

 countenance") as man, who arms himself with weapons, which 

 Mr. Colenso interprets as the koo, the Maori spade, having " two 

 mouths, four eyes, four ears, and four nostrils to its two noses." 

 The name given to the battle was Moenga-toto ("sleeping in 

 blood," or " bloody sleep"). He adds : " Tumatauenga's destroy- 

 ing the kumara may indicate — (1.) That man at first did not 

 know how to cultivate and to preserve that valuable root. (2.) 

 That fierce fighting man was an enemy to the quiet cultivator, and 

 cared nothing for the arts of peace." A remnant of the kumara 

 tribe took refuge in Pani ; " her stomach (puku) was wholly 

 the storehouse for the kumara, and the kumara plantation was 

 also the stomach of Pani." 



In Mr. Taylor's work, Tumatauenga seems to be another 

 name for Tutenganahau, the third son of Kangi and Papa, and 

 the grand author of evil. He is also (I presume for shortness,) 

 designated Tu, the great god of war, in the North, answering to 

 Maru in the South." Now, Marti seems to answer to Mara, or 

 Death, the Sagittarius of the Hindu Zodiac. (Of Tu and his 

 family I shall have more to say later, in my next paper). It 

 will be seen from this that another construction than that given 

 by Mr. Colenso is possible. Tumatauenga, (" lord of the fierce 

 countenance,") who destroys the kumara field, reducing it to " a 

 bloody sleep," may mean the pestilence of drought in a tropical 

 country, drying up and reddening the kumara crops ; and it is 

 just as likely that the koo was modelled with a " Janus-like 

 appearance," (as Mr. Colenso describes, and conjectures it was 

 made so for some esoteric reason,) to meet a Hindu, rather than 

 a Latin, idea, and originally represented the symbolic weapon of 

 the destroyer ; just as Yama, the ruler of the Hindu Hades, is 

 represented as attended by his four-eyed hounds. The koo may 

 have taken this shape to commemorate this very contest with 

 the " lord of the fierce countenance;" or it may have been intro- 

 duced into the story as merely an exoteric feature, when the 

 true significance of the story was forgotten, or on purpose to 



• "Trans. N.Z. Inst." vol. xiv., p. 35. 



