22 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol.79 



nesia, along the border of the Melanesion-Papuan land masses, 

 such as Kaniet in the west and Sikaiana and Loaniiia in the east. 

 Tattooing, for example, was not taken up by the people of dark 

 skins, who used instead an abundance of paint, which, in turn, was 

 not used by the lighter-skinned Indonesians who tattooed themselves. 

 The coasts of all Melanesian islands, inclusive of New Guinea, have 

 become Malayan in culture and decorative art. The painting of bark 

 cloth, which appears to best advantage in Polynesia, occurs but 

 seldom in Indonesian and Micronesian art, as in Celebes, for exam- 

 ple, where painted bark cloth substitutes for woven rectangular 

 matting. 



The Polynesians fashioned their hardwood gods in artistic manner 

 and saw no need to paint them, while the Melanesians fashioned 

 their gods of softer woods in sketchy manner and painted them with 

 gaudy colors. These gods served them only for the festival period. 

 Throughout entire Melanesia there is a riot of color painting, ex- 

 cepting such wooden vessels as are fashioned on the Admiralty 

 Islands, which are not painted. 



The carved and tied objects of New Ireland, designed for the cult 

 of the dead, namely the large helmeted heads with small body and 

 yet smaller legs, are similar to the sculptured figurines of Raratonga 

 and New Zealand. In all these figures the painting of the face is 

 similar. This is replaced by the Maori with tattooing. The Uli 

 figures of New Zealand (dead cult) show breasts and phallus — a sort 

 of a fertility fetish similar to that of India. The Uli figure is also 

 somewhat similar to the New Guinea ancestral figurines from the 

 Sepik River tribes, and even resembles the wooden idols of the Maori 

 and of the ancient Easter Islanders, apparent in the rib structure 

 revealed on the New Guinea and Easter Island figures. Papuan in- 

 fluence may be seen in the ray-like appendages on the body sculptures 

 of idols from the Tugeri of the south coast of New Guinea, also on 

 the plastic puppets which are occasionally provided with wooden 

 masks. These wooden figurines are found also in the New Hebrides, 

 in New Guinea, in the Admiralty and Solomon Islands. The Solo- 

 mon Island puppets have black heads inset with mother of pearl and 

 the Sepik River type is like the bill of a bird. Squatting figures, 

 strangely reminiscent of the Sepik type and of those of the island of 

 Bali, also occur. 



The bird motive in Melanesian religious art design goes back to 

 their mythology and is similar to Indian religious art. Thus the 

 bird motive is present not only in figurines but in shield decoration 

 and in symbolism from New Guinea, particularly the ancestral 

 images with bird beak and red paint, and stylized incised border de- 

 signs, otherwise apparently foreign to the Australian-Papuan and 

 the purely Polynesian art motivation. One finds it in west New 



