Atkinson. — ihe Aryo-Semitic Maori. 569 



want the very word itself {I, as often, being substituted for r) 

 you will find it in the Agawi of Abyssinia — a language which is 

 at least claimed as Semitic, and in which a chief is called aliki. 



Next, I will take the Arabic hahr, " the sea." This word 

 evidently points to a primitive Mauri form, para ; and it is 

 precisely the latter which appears in many modern Maori " graft- 

 words" descriptive of or relating to the sea: Paraurl, "it was 

 dark-coloured;" pararaki, "it was spread out flat;" but was 

 liable to para) a, " sudden and violent gusts of wind;" when it 

 showed on its surface parahi, "steep slopes;" and, parare, 

 " made a great noise." It not only appears in the names of 

 fishes, and of the sperm whale (paraoa), but even in that of 

 food itself, parare, and paraparahanga ; while the simple form 

 duplicated, parapara, meant the "first-fruits of fish," and 

 (consequently?) "a sacred place." A flood was, not inappro- 

 priately, called par aivhenua, " sea (on) land." 



But there is a still more important word of this group, 

 strangely overlooked by Mr. Tregear when discussing the mean- 

 ing of Bharata, the ancient name for India — and that is 

 Farata. Now, who or what was Parata ? One of the highest 

 authorities we have on these matters, Mr. John White, says: 

 "The Maoris account for the tides in the following manner : 

 There is, in the deepest part of the ocean, a god, son of Tanga- 

 roa, called Parata, who is such a monster that he only breathes 

 twice in twenty-four hours ; when he inhales his breath it is 

 ebb-tide, and when he exhales his breath it is flood-tide. ""'^ 

 And it is he who also 'causes the whirlpool, which the Maoris 

 call " Te waha ote Parata,'" or " Te korokoro o te Parata'' — " the 

 mouth (or throat) of Te Parata. "f He was, therefore, the 

 ocean — at least in its aspects of power — personified, or rather, 

 deified. Now, remembering this, and that the ancient Mauri 

 must certainly have been an eminently seafaring race — or their 

 descendants would not now be found in islands as far apart as 

 Madagascar, Hawaii, and New Zealand — it would surely not be 

 surprising that, on arriving by sea in India, they should have 

 given to that country the name of the deity whose poAver they 

 had often experienced, and called it Parata, since corrupted 

 into Bharata. 



I have shown that Mr. Tregear points out and developes with 

 surprismg efiect the " graft-words " which he finds in Maori 

 relating to cattle, especially those containing kau and ko, 

 meaning " cow," and po and tara, " bull." 



The more ancient word, however, for cattle, appears to be 

 kar or kara, preserved in the Arabic ba-kara, " cow or ox " ; in 



* "Lectures on Maori Customs," i., p. 10. 



t See, for the latter expression, 8ir G. Grey's most valuable work on 

 " Polynesian Mythology," second edition, part ii., p. 74 



