638 Transactions. 



Upon tlie question of the general use by the islanders of the central 

 Pacific of some form of ngahuru for ten 1 have little to offer. I have made 

 some little progress in the study of several leading dialects, but have found 

 nothing which I would care to adapt to Maori with a view to its improve- 

 ment. I am not inclined to seek from those sources the first principles of 

 the language, any more than I would expect to find from them particular 

 instructions in matters of Maori art, such as carving and tattooing. While 

 dictionary-makers and compilers generally neglect to define, where ascer- 

 tainable, the derivation and legitimate uses of words, students will continue 

 to remain verj^ much in the dark as to such. The Hawaiian anahulu (=ten 

 days) is something to the purpose, but it is not enough. An Easter Island 

 angahuru for ten occurs in our table. But, as I have tried to show, that 

 table exhibits peculiarities which are apparently not entirely due to dialect 

 alone, but rather to compilers and to their assistants. On the other hand, 

 it can be readily proved that the Maori has from time immemorial used 

 the term mahuru for spring-time, and that the term speaks of returning 

 warmth and spring gro'R'th. It is equally clear that for a similar long 

 period the allied term ngahuru has been used to indicate harvest-time, the 

 harvest month — incidentally, the tenth month of the year. What, one 

 may ask, is the original and true meaning of their forms of ngahuru to the 

 islanders of the central Pacific ? W^ith that question I leave it. 



(c.) The Term " Tekau." 



The question for our consideration is this : Had the Maori an original 

 name for ten ? To those Avho understand something of the past history 

 and language of the Maori the question would appear to be ridiculous. 

 None the less, that is the position which Mr. Best forces upon us ; for he 

 urges that tehau sometimes meant ten, that it sometimes meant eleven, 

 and that it sometimes meant twenty. So that tehau apparently had no 

 fixed meaning. He states this : "I cannot prove that among all the Maori 

 tribes of New Zealand tekau represented twenty " ; and so on. Of course 

 Mr. Best cannot prove it ; but why should he try ? Again, he states, " As 

 old Tutaka expressed it, ' Tehau as a term for ten is a modern usuage. It 

 was the white man and his books that made it known to us.' " " The white 

 man and his books ! " Save us from such authorities as we have here ! 



Mr. Best proceeds, " Several old Natives of the Tuhoe and Ngatiawa 

 Tribes confirm the statement that tehau was formerly used to denote twenty, 

 and was not used for ten. As hau seems to have been a Polynesian word 

 meaning ' collection ' or ' assembly,' then the expression would probably 

 have been originally te hau = the whole, or the assembling of the ten fingers 

 and ten toes." " Ten fingers and ten toes ! " This is put forward as a 

 suggestion that ten did not really mean ten of the fingers, but twenty — 

 the ten fingers and ten toes together — a suggestion without authority. 

 Presumably it is from the same old Native that Mr. Best obtains his names 

 for the " five fire-children," whose names, according to Mr. Best, are " tahonui 

 (thimib), tahoroa (forefinger), manaiva, mapere, toiti. These are termed the 

 tohorima a Maui (the five of Maui)." The " five of Maui " is an euphemism 

 for the five fingers of man, which produce the sacred fire by means of 

 friction. Now, the name of the thumb is horomatua ; that of the fingers 

 watihao, matihara. When a Native wishes to enumerate them in their 

 regular order he uses the numeral prefix toi (the taho of Mr. Best), in this 

 way : Toi-nui (great finger, thumb) ; toi-roa (extended, index finger) ; toi- 



