POLYNESIA. 



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tions of Lycurgus are another example, owing their authority less to 

 their own excellence, or to the rank of the legislator, than to the 

 solemn oath by which he enforced their observance, and to the mys- 

 tery of his death. With the Lacedemonians it was tabu to use silver 

 money, to wear certain clothes, to eat certain dishes, and the like. 



These examples may give us a clue to the probable origin of the 

 tabu-system. If the individual to whom the Polynesians owe their 

 present civil and religious code, for such in fact it is, was one who 

 claimed to communicate with divine powers, or to possess superna- 

 tural attributes, his precepts would have, in the eyes of a people so 

 strongly imbued with religious feeling, an authority infinitely supe- 

 rior to that which they could derive from any other source. That 

 such was actually the case, would seem probable from certain pecu- 

 liarities in the language and customs of the natives. In most of the 

 groups, the word aliki, (or ariJti, alfi, ari'i, &c.,) is the usual word 

 for chief. In the dialect of New Zealand, however, which has retained 

 many features of the original Polynesian tongue that have been else- 

 where lost, the term ariki is applied to an individual in a tribe who is 

 considered to have received, by hereditary descent, a peculiar rank 

 and sanctity, entitling him to certain observances which are rendered 

 to no others, and making his person inviolate in war. He has, how- 

 ever, no authority whatsoever over the other freemen of a tribe. In 

 Lee's, vocabulary, ariki is rendered "a representative of God, a 

 priest," and rvakariki, " making an ariki or priest." This, though 

 not strictly correct, is perhaps as good a translation as could be given. 

 In Samoan, alfi is chief, and va'ali'i, priest ; it seems likely that the 

 latter was originally the same word with the former, and that the par- 

 ticle va has been prefixed for the sake of distinction. 



In short, we may suppose that the author of the tabu-code was a 

 person, who, in the original seat of the Polynesian race, united the 

 power of a ruler and lawgiver to the dignity of a chief-priest, and per- 

 haps of an inspired being. From the latter circumstance, his laws or 

 tabus, whether promulgated as divine commands or not, would be 

 received and obeyed as such, and would retain their force, from this 

 cause, long after the legislator was forgotten. His descendants, find- 

 ing the duties of their religious office less to their taste than the enjoy- 

 ments of civil power, might, like the Eastern caliphs, devote them- 

 selves chiefly to the latter, while retaining the name (aliki), and 

 perhaps much of the homage belonging of right to the former. Such 



