236 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



1 60. 



taru-si, taro-si, tarotaro, to pray. 



Samoa: tatalo, to pray; talosanga, a prayer. Futuna: tatalo, to 

 imprecate, to desire. Tahiti: tarotaro, to pray. Rapanui: 

 tarotaro, a malediction, to curse. Hawaii: kalokalo, to pray 

 to the gods, to supplicate favors. Nukuoro: tarotaronga, a 

 prayer. 



Mota, Arag: tataro, a prayer. 



Aravic: sala', to pray. Ethiopic: salaya, id. Chaldee: sela, id. 



The Proto-Samoan stem is talos. 



The word has passed along its course with little variety in form or sig- 

 nification. Tregear, with such recognition of doubt as the cf. note may 

 carry, associates Avith this stem the Maori tarotaro to cut the hair. His 

 explanation "that the cutting of hair among Polynesians was generally 

 accompanied by a solemn and religious ceremony," while unimpeachable 

 as a statement of manners and customs, seems, for the purposes of philolog- 

 ical comparison, an impossible exaltation of the incident over the essential. 



161. 



taumafa, taumofa, to invoke or pray while sacrificing or giving an offering. 



Samoa: taumafa, to eat, to drink (of a chief or a chief's pigeon). 

 Tonga : taumafa, to eat, applied to the Tuitonga but now used 

 to high chiefs. Futuna : taumafa, a thank-offering to the gods 

 or to a chief. Niue: taumafa, to eat, used to chiefs only. 

 Uvea: taumafa, a religious feast, to eat. Fotuna: taumafa, 

 an offering to the gods. Nukuoro : taumaha, taamaha, a feast, 

 a sacrificial feast; hakataumaha, to forbid. Maori: taumaha, a 

 thank-offering to the gods ; whakataumaha, to offer in sacrifice. 

 Tahiti: taumaha, an offering of food to the gods. Hawaii: 

 kaumaha, a sacrifice, to offer in sacrifice, to kill a victim for 

 sacrifice. Rarotonga: tau maa, to curse. Mangareva : toumaha, 

 a prayer offered up before a feast or a meal, to offer first fruits 

 to a god. 



Malekula Pangkumu: tomav, to offer in sacrifice. 



Hebrew: habhabim, offerings. 



The Proto-Samoan stem is taumafat. 



The identifications show remarkable accord in form and sense. It is 

 only in Samoa, Tonga, Niue and Futuna, strictly Nuclear Polynesia, that 

 the word is applied at all to mortal men. It might be taken as a piece of 

 gross flattery to the chiefs to assign to their eating the word which belongs 

 to the great gods. In my understanding of the spiritual ideasof thiscentral 

 area of Polynesia, which holds the most primal concepts of the race, it seems 

 more reasonable to regard the word as originally belonging to the great 

 chiefs (Polynesian Basakrama) and thence extended to the divine essences 

 when the Polynesians had learned to make gods in their own image. 



Dr. Macdonald finds no difficulty in accounting for the word as a com- 

 posite of materials now in Efate, tau to pray or invoke, ma fa (mo fa) giving 

 or offering. The latter element he thus explains: "when the blood of men 



