Tregear. — 071 Old Maori Civilisattoji. 543 



twilled cloth, writing so thick that the paper seems black, 

 dimly lighted, to look earnestly at, to think deeply, to seize 

 hold of as the mind." This word naJco, meaning at once 

 " tattooing" and " to think deeply," is most interesting in its 

 principal compound vianaho. We find that in Polynesian 

 manako means " thought, idea, conception, to exercise 

 anxious thought" (the Maori nalconako, which we referred to 

 above), " to muse, to reflect, to call to mind something known 

 before, memory, imagination, fancy."* If the idea of being 

 " tattooed, striped, rippled, lined, so that the paper appears 

 black," passes into the concepts of " thought, idea, calling to 

 mind something known before," then this word nako agrees 

 with and confirms the words previously examined as to the 

 connection between the meanings of "carving, stamping, en- 

 graving, pecking dots, making stripes, printing native-cloth," 

 and the use of the same expressions for " thinking, teaching, 

 making decrees, publishing information, buying, trading," &c., 

 which only the conception of the tattoo as a thing to be read 

 and understood makes plain, and otherwise is perfectly incom- 

 prehensible. 



I have now quoted the whole of the Polynesian words 

 which are used for tattooing,! and each one of them shows 

 this recondite signification, this secondary sense, lurking be- 

 hind the modern meaning. No representation of hogs, or 

 fern-leaves, or spirals could possibly have led to the abstract 

 conceptions attached to the tattooing- words ; and therefore 

 we may conclude that it was in no spirit of mere ornamenta- 

 tion that the ancestor of the Maori invented the tattoo. If, 

 afterwards, the Maori allowed the art of communicating 

 intelligence from one to another by means of letters to die 

 away, his forefathers nevertheless understood by " engraving " 

 a great deal more than to regard it as only the carving of a 

 gable, or the twisting of worms in rotten wood. 



* Just as tato means " to tattoo," and matau " to know," so diocsnako 

 mean " to tattoo," and manaJco " to reflect, to think upon." 



t That is, for tattooing in its general sense; the tattoo on the different 

 parts of the face and body are all named, but they are local only; the 

 patterns differ in the different Island groups. 



