144 



Man a?7d Shark 





The "Festival of the Shark" used to be held annually in some parts of the New 

 Hebrides. The ceremony lasted for a week. The body of a shark was placed in a sort 

 of native altar and was buried. A native artist, with white pigment, painted the figure 

 of a shark upon the grave, which for a time was constantly guarded. 



Courtesy, Sydney and Melbourne Publishing Co. from 

 The Fishes of Australia by G. P. Whitley, 1940. From Pacific Island Monthly 



prophesied that Okuninushi, not his brother, would win the hand of the 

 goddess. And, as the hare had foretold, the goddess Yakami did marry 

 Okuninushi. 



One of Japan's mythological deities is a god of storm, known as the 

 Shark Man. In fact, the shark is so terrifying in Japanese legends that 

 when the Chinese sought a talisman to be painted on war planes raiding 

 the Japanese, they chose the evilly leering face of the Tiger shark. The 

 American pilots who flew these shark-invoking planes were known 

 throughout the world as the "Flying Tigers," but actually they should 

 have been called the "Flying Sharks." 



Wars are not new to shark-gods. On some Pacific islands, such as 

 the Marshalls, tribes fought religious wars over sharks centuries ago. 

 These battles were caused by members of one tribe defying the shark or 

 sting ray taboos of another. What usually happened was that a member of 

 a tribe which did not worship a certain kind of shark or sting ray would 

 catch one of the sacred creatures. When word of the sacrilege reached 

 the tribe that did worship that specific shark or sting ray, a delegation 

 would be sent to the tribe whose member had committed the sacrilege. 

 If that tribe refused to heed the worshipers' pleas to desist from the 

 desecration, a holy war would begin. 



The coming of Christianity lessened shark worship among the Pacific 

 islanders, but the white man's religion did not completely stamp out de- 

 votion to the shark. On Samoa, for instance, the Great White shark was 



