528 Transactions.- -Miscellaneous. 



originally, as applicable to animals that z*ecalled the Naga of 

 India.* 



I come now to a group of unmistakably Tm-anian and Hindu 

 deities ; but, before I mention them, or their originals, certain 

 points of complication in both the Maori and Hindu traditions 

 must be explained. 



There has been some misplacement of sex in the ]\Iaori 

 story, arising probably from the somewhat undefined nature as 

 to sex of the Hindu deities. The female deities are really con- 

 ceived as rather the energies of their consorts, (the vacti, as it 

 was called, of the male deities,) than as having any individu- 

 ality of their own. 



Then, again, there has been a misplacement among the cha- 

 racters themselves ; but in this the Maori story seems studiously 

 to have been modelled on the Hindu that preceded it, which in 

 the shape that it has reached us has been considerably modified. 

 The time when the later Hindu accounts were framed was 

 evidently a period of transition. The contests of Aryans and 

 Turanians had resulted in the subjugation of the inferior race. 

 In the interests of peace and conciliation it became the policy 

 of the Aryan priesthood to try and smooth away religious differ- 

 ences as far as possible, by remodelling the Turanian deities 

 somewhat, so as the more easily to adapt them to a companion- 

 ship with Aryan deities in the Hindu pantheon. Accordingly, 

 Eudra, the Phallic deity, was identified with Siva, the third 

 member of the Brahminic Trinity : his consort Durga, or Kali, 

 also called Uma, took the place of Aditi (space), or I)ewaki, the 

 original or celestial mother goddess, Uma being the terrestrial 

 mother-goddess, that is, mother earth : and Krishna, the solar 

 god-man or offspring, was identified with Vishnu, the second 

 member of the Aryan Trinity, as one of his incarnations. The 

 original mythology was distorted to suit an Aryan order of 

 things. Kudra, Uma or Kali, with Krishna, really represent 

 the original Turanian Trinity (personifying, as they do, the male 

 and female principles, with their offspring,) of the old Phallo- 

 pantheistic faith. 



That Kali and Krishna are Turanian deities, is plain by 

 the signification of their names, both names meaning " black." 

 " Whenever there is a relaxation of duty, son of Bharata," 

 says Krishna, in the Bhagavat Gita, " I then reproduce myself, 

 for the protection of the good and the destruction of the 

 evil." The state of anarchy that accompanied the Aryan in- 

 vasions might well provoke such an incarnation ; and Hindu 

 ingenuity has been taxed to the extreme, to invent several 

 intricate distortions and substitutions, to prove that Krishna, 



• N<iarara may, howevur, be Nga = the, and ra?'a = ribs ; as applied to 

 animals wbo appear to progress by means of, or on, their ribs, in which 

 case, of course, Nya is the plural form of the deliuite article. 



