Newman.— .4 Very Rare Maori Implement. 217 



My ahao is 14 in. long. It is beautifully cylindrical in shape, smooth, 

 and accurately rounded. About 3 in. from one end it begins to taper to 

 a sharp point. Mr. Percy Smith noted that when it began to taper, and 

 for some distance on, it is quadrilateral — gradually its sides lessening to- 

 wards the point. He points to this four-sidedness as being the Maori Avay 

 of tapering off. Had it been made by a European it would have begun to 

 taper in the round. The diameter of the ahao is nearly | in. At about 

 one-third of the length (starting from the butt) are two parallel circular 

 lines about ^ in. apart. Rising from the butt to the. first of these two 

 consecutive circles are engraved eleven straight lines, not perpendicular, 

 but slanting — a rare form of Maori carving, its meaning unknown to us, 

 but, like all Maori engraving, certainly very ancient. 



The fact that ahaos were used in Rangitikei, Hawke's Bay, Poverty Bay, 

 Taranaki, and doubtless in other parts w'ould tend to show that they had 

 been in use from very remote ages : in fact, as there is, 1 believe, no single 

 Maori w^ork of art indigenous to aborigines in New Zealand, it probably 

 was used, like all others, in the ancient fatherland, Hawaiki — it was pro- 

 bably a tool used by their Aryan forefathers in India. As our own Aryan 

 forefathers in western Asia were the forefathers of the Maoris, before our 

 ancestors went west into Europe and their fathers-invaded north-west India, 

 and thence spread to Indonesia and the isles of the Pacific, it is perhaps a 

 prehistoric tool : hence this Maori ahao, and its exact counterpart the 

 English marlinspike, may have had a common Aryan ancestral marlinspike. 

 Nor is this idea far-fetched, for when I showed my beautifully carved Maori 

 fishing-dredge or roidrilaJn to Colonel Whitney, who had never seen one, 

 he exclaimed, "An oyster - dredge from the Severn." and declared it 

 was the identical dredge. Like the big wooden Maori trumpet .used in 

 temples in India and old French churches, like the nasal flute, the drums, 

 the conch-shell, pan pipes, and hosts of other articles, this ahao probably 

 goes back to the old Aryan times. 



Its Names. 



Archdeacon Samuel Williams called it an ahao. A Maori spelt it for me 

 ahau. The word does not occur either in Williams's, or Colenso's, or Tregear's, 

 or the Hawaiian, or Nine, or Mangarewa, or other dictioiiaries, which shows 

 the instrument had nearly gone out of use. Hao in Maori = to do and 

 round, to enclose, to shut in, to encircle as a fisherman draws in a net. 

 This ahao draws together the gills of fishes, the top of a basket, and shuts 

 in the contents. Hao is a word used for hard substances- of bone ; 

 hahao = to put up in a basket ; sao = to collect food ; and fotao = a sharp 

 point. In Mangarewa ahao is to put into a basket, and taotaomu is a wooden 

 implement used to collect fish out of a pond. Among the negroes of Assam, 

 a closely allied race, dao is a sharp-pointed substance of wood or bone. In 

 Nine a fish-spear was taohokaika ; haohao is a fish with a beak, and fulu is 

 cocoanut-husk. The Taranaki Maori expert. Kauri, called it a purupuru — an 

 instrument used for caulking purposes. Puru in Maori is a plug or cork — to 

 plug. In Mangaia puru is the fibre of cocoanut, used in caulking canoes 

 to make them watertight. In Samoa bula (New Zealand Maori puru) is a 

 kind of gum used as pitch in caulking canoes. It will be noticed that 

 Maoris used their marlinspike exactly as did the English sailors — for caulking 

 purposes. The European used tow and the Maori cocoanut-fibre or raupo; 

 the European sailor used pitch, the Maori sailor used gum ; and centuries 



