NOTES ON MAORI RELIGION. 461 



A member of the Ngaitaliu tribe once told me that lo was born, 

 01 Rangi and Papa, the Heavens and Earth. It is evident that the 

 cult of lo was a very ancient one, and was overlaid and partially 

 obliterated by the introduction of a number of inferior gods. No- 

 invocations to lo are known by the Maori of tlie present time, nor 

 would they have been divulged by the priests who knew them, whea 

 Europeans first settled here, to such persons of an alien race. And 

 why not I Because they were so intensely sacred, because everything 

 peitaining to the cult of lo was so excessively tapu, that any divulg- 

 ing of such matter would mean the death of the divulger, and also, 

 probably, the affliction of his people by some dire calamity. The gods 

 did not deal gently with those who broke the laws of tapu. Also, the 

 Maori saw at once that the strange new people who came across the 

 Great Ocean of Kiwa from unknown lands were absolutely devoid of 

 tapu, a wondrous tribe in many ways, possessed of much power and 

 knowledge, but as void of tapu as those who camp in cooking sheds. 



The few items pertaining to the cult of lo that have been placed 

 on record are but fragments heard and remembered by the sons of 

 some of the old priests of former days. 



Sir G. W. Cox, in his " Introduction to M}i:hology and Folklore," 

 speaks of the lo of classical mythology as a lunar myth : — '' lo, who is 

 snid to be the daughter of Inachos, is pre-eminently the horned maiden,^ 

 whose existence is one of many changes and wanderings, and of much 

 siiii'ering. In fact, her life is that of the moon in its several phases." 

 This lo was changed into a heifer, the symbol of the young or horned 

 moon. 



The late Mr. John White obtained another crumb of information 

 concerning lo — " The principal god was lo, who formed the earth and 

 the heavens."' He also obtained a fragment of what looks much like a 

 player to lo, a true invocation, not a primitive form, such as an incan- 

 tation. 



T. G. Pinches, in his " Religious Ideas of the Babylonians," speaks 

 of '■ The identification of so many gods with A, Ya, Jah, Au, or Yau," 

 and gives the many names of Merodach as the god of planting, of 

 strength, war, wealth, rain, the moon, &c., &c. He adds that — 

 '■ These are not the only indications of a tendency to monotheism, or 

 to the idea that all the gods were but manifestations of one supreme 

 deity." 



We observe in the cult of lo, as practised in ancient times by the 

 Maori, the idea of a creator who made the heavens and earth, and was 

 the origin of all other gods, as old Tutaka, my informant, put it. This 

 seems to point to a state of monotheism that clashes with our know- 

 ledge of the veiy pronounced polytheism of the Maori in later times. 

 It may be that, in times long passed away, the Maori lo also possessed 

 n'.any names as god of many departments, as we can see was the case 

 with Tane. In later times these different names may come to have 

 b^^en looked upon as those of separate and distinct gods, a hint of the 

 original belief being preserved in the statement that lo was " the 

 origin of all gods." The cuneiform inscriptions translated by Mr. 

 Pinches have preseiwed the ''many in one" belief of the old time folk 

 of far Babylonia, but the Maori had no form of script whereby to 

 conserve his ancient beliefs and history. Mr. Pinches seems to think 

 tliat the Babylonian priests were really monotheists, but that the bulk 



