TAPU. 
173 
the people, it formed no bad substitute for a dictatorial 
form of government, and made the nearest approach to an 
organized state of society, or rather, it may be regarded 
as the last remaining trace of a more civilized polity pos- 
sessed by their remote ancestors. In it may be discerned 
somewhat of the ancient dignity and power of the ari- 
kis, and a remnant of the sovereign authority they once 
possessed, with the remarkable union of the kingly and 
sacerdotal character in person, as in that of the Lama; it 
rendered them a distinct race ; more nearly allied to gods 
than men ; their persons, garments, houses and everything 
belonging to them, being so sacred, that to touch or meddle 
with them, was sufficient to occasion death. The gods 
being no more than deceased chiefs, the arikis were re- 
garded as living ones, and thus were not to be killed by 
inferior men, but only by those who had more powerful 
atuas in them ; the victorious chief who had slain numbers, 
swallowed their eyes, and drank their blood, was supposed 
to have added the spirits of his victims to his own; and 
thus increased his mana or power; to keep up this idea, 
and hinder the lower orders from trying whether it were 
possible to kill such corporeal and living gods, was the 
grand work of the tapu, and it did succeed in doing so : 
during by-gone ages it has had a wide spread sway, and 
exercised a fearful power over benighted races of men, until 
the stone cut without hands, smote this mighty image of 
cruelty on its feet, caused it to fall, and like the chaff of the 
summer’s threshing floor, the wind of God^s word has swept 
it away ! 
HE RAKAU WAKAPAPARANGA, OR GENEALOGICAL BOARD. 
