Things Similar in India, etc., and Polynesia. 



H 



'OW FAR any distinct remembrance of the Siwa worship may be traced in 

 Polynesian traditions and customs is not easy to determine precisely. The blood- 

 thirsty wife of Siwa still survives hi name and attributes in the Tongan God of 

 War, Kaliai-tu-po. The name itself of Siwa recurs in the Polynesian word Hiwa, primar- 

 ily "dark colored, black or blue :'" secondarily, "sacred," as a sacrificial offering. In dif- 

 ferent dialects the word occurs as Siwa, Hiwa, or Heiwa, and is applied as an 

 adjective with derivative meanings, but in all the idea of sacredness underlies and 

 characterizes its application. Thus Nuka-Hiwa, one of the Marc[uesas, undoubtedly 

 meant originally the dark or sacred island; Fatu-Hiwa or Patu-Hiwa, another of the 

 same group, meant the "sacred rock or stone;" Hiwaoa, still another of the same group, 

 meant "very sacred or holy." In Hawaiian piiaa-likva means the "black or sacred 

 hog" offered in sacrifices. Hm'a-hkva was an epithet applied to gods and high chiefs. 

 The name of the Siwaite Liu gain, the symbol of productiveness, has unciuestionably its 

 root and derivation from the same source as the Tongan word linga, which means the 

 male organ of generation, and the primary sense of the word which is found in the 

 Hawaiian Una, "soft, yielding," as papa Una, cheek; New Zealand and Samoan fa-ringa, 

 ear, cf al. 



What the Hawaiians called poliaku a kanc, upright stones of from one to six 

 and eight feet in height, the smaller size portable and the larger fixed in the ground, 

 and which formerly served as altars or places of oft'ering at what may be called family 

 worship, probably referred to the Lingam symbolism of the Siwa cult in India, ^ where 

 similar stone pillars, considered as sacred, still abound." 



But Siwa, as before observed, was not a Vedic god, and his rites were held in 

 abomination by the earlier Yedic Aryans. These stone symbols refer, therefore, to a 

 period of pre-Aryan occupation of India and to the Cushite civilization or race. In the 

 Hawaiian group these stone pillars were sprinkled with water or annointed with coco- 

 nut oil, and the u]:)per ])art frequently covered with a black native kapa or cloth, the color 

 of garment which priests wore on special occasions, and which was also the cloth in 

 which the dead were wrapped 



It is possible that from these or similar considerations of superiority of sacred- 

 ness arose the Polynesian proverb (in Hawaiian), lie wco kc kanaka, lie pano ke aUi. 

 red is the common man, dark is the chief.^ 



'Dieffcnbacli (Travels in Xcm Zealand, p. 64,) says 

 that phallic sculptures are common on tombs, symbolic 

 of vis generatrix of male or female originals. 



In the Fiji group also, rude stones resembling mile- 

 stones, are consecrated to this or that god, at which the 

 natives deposit offerings and before wliich they worship. 

 (Fiji and the I'ijans, by Thos. Williams, p. 173). 



"In the Asiatic Journal, Feb., 1828, I lind that in Dec- 

 can and in the collectorship of Punah. the Koonbees, 

 living to the eastward of the western Ghats, worship 

 their principal gods in the form of particular unshaped 

 stones A black stone is the emblem of Vishnu ; a grey 

 one of Siwa or Mahades. So, also, stones are conse- 

 crated to or emblematical of Mussooba. the god of re- 

 venge; of Vital, the god of demons; of Bal Bheirow or 



Bharos. the beautiful god. Khundooba, the principal 

 household-god of the whole Deccan, is represented at 

 Jejour by a Lingam. 



'In Polynesian Researches Ellis explains a similar 

 expression in Tahiti, from the fact that a dark and 

 bronzed complexion was looked upon, among the chiefs, 

 as a sign of manliness, hardihood, and exposure to fa- 

 tigue and danger, and a pale complexion was considered 

 a sign of effeminacy. The probable reason and explana- 

 tion of tlie proverb may be found in the greater amount 

 of tatooing with which the bodies of the chiefs were 

 adorned. As late as the time of Kamehameha I. of 

 Hawaii, his rival Kahekili. King of Maui, had one-half 

 of his bodv entirely lilackened bv tatooing. 



(347) 



