270 JOHN FRASER. 
that that home was in Asia and among an Aryan people; for our myth 
ends by saying that the Sa-Tangaloa—the heavenly race—were conquered 
by the giants and driven out; and that is exactly the fate of the heavenly 
Titans in Hesiod’s account of the war. It is true that the later Grecian 
traditions, and to some extent Homer also, tell a different tale, when they 
narrate how the giants ‘‘ waged war on heaven with vain attempt,” pil- 
ing Pelion on Ossa in their efforts to capture Olympus and its gods; and 
that Jove at last scattered and quelled them with his thunderbolts. Our 
myth knows nothing of such a war; but it agrees with Hesiod in recog- 
nising the giants as earth-born and as overcoming the host of inferior 
gods and expelling them from heaven; in no other respect does it agree 
with the Norse Edda except in this that there was a war between the gods 
and the giants. Now, South-eastern Asia is the only locality from which 
the ancestors of the brown Polynesians can have come, and in that locality 
there are only two main races, the Mongolians and the Caucasians of 
India, the remnants of the black race being a negligeable quantity in 
this connection. The Mongolians may also be dismissed from consider- 
ation, for the Polynésian physique and character show nothing Mongolian. 
I therefore argue from this myth that, in some way and at some time, the 
founders of the Polynesian race must have been in contact with the Cau- 
casians of India, and got from them the original tales about the giants 
and their wars. I donot know enough about the Vedas and the Puranas 
of the Sanskrit-reading Brahmins to be able to say how far this myth 
corresponds with any incidents they tell about the devas of their pantheon; 
but, in examining a dictionary of the Pali language of India—the sacred 
language of the Buddhists—lI find there are in it many things which 
‘bear a close resemblance to the Samoan ideas of a cosmogony. And so, 
if the progenitors of the brown Polynesians came from India, that race 
is allied to the Caucasians, and not to the Malays, who are essentially 
Mongolian. 
The next curious thing in our myth is the mode by which the giants 
ascended to heaven. They climbed up by a huge fau or ‘ hibiscus’ tree. 
This at once reminds one of Jack-and-the-bean-stalk and other folk-lore 
tales among many nations. | 
Then the Sa-Tangaloa, seeing so many strong men arrive, and suspect- 
ing their intentions to be hostile, prepared to offer them the usual hospi- 
tality of food, but intended to set upon them and kil! them when their 
weapons were laid aside at the feast. This agrees with similar devices 
in all ages. Apparently, these young men of the heavens do not respect 
the protection which the laws of hospitality afford. But the plot did not 
