38 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



owner thus secretly doomed to death. If the cord is used it is 

 indispensable that' the sorcerer should procure it from the home 

 of the doomed person. The counter-ceremony for the rua-iti 

 sorcery was thus described by a Maori to Elsdon Best : " Should 

 I become aware that a tohunga is bewitching me so as to cause 

 my body to waste away — and I should know at once if he were— 

 I send some one to his place to bring me a piece of cord, of any 

 kind. I take the cord and smear it with blood procured from 

 an incision in the left side of my body. I then kindle a fire and 

 burn the cord ; also, I cook a single kumara or taewa at that fire. 

 The cooked kumara I give to the ruahine (a childless woman 

 employed in various sacred rites), who eats it, Friend, that 

 man is dead ! Another method of averting the evil is to place 

 the kumara beneath the paepae-poto (door-sill) of my house 

 and get the ruahine to step over it." It is not easy to explain 

 the rationale of this counter-ceremony. Perhaps, however, the 

 string is an ohonga (bait), and by cooking a kumara at the fire 

 in which the ohonga was burned the aria of the victim is trans- 

 ferred to the kumara, the eating of which is symbolic of his 

 destruction. The burning of an ohonga is sometimes considered 

 sufficient to cause the death of the enemy. 



Many ailments are supposed to be caused by magic, as in- 

 sanity (porangitanga, porewarewa, porangi, ivairangi, haurangi, 

 potete, apa, awhireinga), leprosy (ngerengere, mutumutu, tuawhe- 

 nua, tuhawaiki), wasting sickness, and many obscure complaints 

 of the internal organs, both chronic and acute. Sorcerers were 

 supposed to be able to bring about the death of their victim 

 within a week, sometimes at the end of the third day after 

 the commencement of their magic rites. Many deaths resulted 

 doubtless from melancholia or fear. 



We have seen that when a person's illness has been caused 

 by magic the tohunga can identify the individual by whose evil 

 sorceries the disease-demon was sent, either by means of the 

 hirihiri or of the paepae. But if the patient be dead when the 

 priest arrives, then he will find out who caused his death when 

 the body is buried, either when the grave is being prepared or 

 when the body is being placed in it, or sometimes afterwards. 

 If the tohunga arrive before his patient dies he may be able to 

 counteract the sorcery. If the ease is a complicated one and 

 his patient is of high rank, then the elaborate and prolonged 

 rites and incantations about to be described must be care 

 fully carried out to effect a cure. In minor cases a man might 

 undertake his own cure, for most people had a knowledge of 

 charms or simple karakia to ward off sorcery. But if he had 

 opposed to him a very powerful tohunga makutu his own kara- 

 kia would not have sufficient mana to overpower those of his 



