ORIGIN, AS TRACED BY LANGUAGE. 
389 
for the faithfulness of the description given of their manners 
and customs, or for the general interest of his narrative, from 
it may be gathered many particulars of resemblance between 
the inhabitants of New Zealand and Tonga ; whilst the former 
believed that Maui fished up their island, which thence bears 
the name of his fish, the latter also state that theirs were 
drawn out of the water by Tangaloa, whilst fishing with the 
line and hook.* Tangaloa, as has already been said, is identical 
with Tangaroa, one of the most ancient of the Maori deities, 
he is also viewed in Tonga as the god of the ocean ; their 
ideas likewise agree in the pre-existence of the ocean, and 
of the sky being solid, and originally resting on the earth. 
The Hotua Pou , who are spoken of as mischievous gods, 
whose attribute is never to dispense good, but petty evils, 
not as a punishment, but indiscriminately from a mischievous 
disposition, exactly agree with the Atua Potihi of the Maori. 
The New Zealander also has some idea of high chiefs, or 
arikis, going to heaven after death, whilst those of inferior 
note went to Po, or Hades; also that their gods manifest 
themselves to their descendants or priests, under the form of 
lizards, spiders, moths, and in whirlwinds, flashes of lightning, 
&c. Their ideas of omens are also similar, as well as the 
word for divination, f ta niu , although the way of divining is 
different, the Tonga native drawing a favorable or unfavor- 
able conclusion from the spinning of the cocoa nut. 
The tuitonga and veachi , sacred chiefs, have no representa- 
tive in New Zealand, except that every high chief or ariki 
is a sacred character, and supposed to have the power of 
conversing at pleasure with his ancestral gods, and, in fact, 
to be one himself on earth ; the former seem to have been 
rather spiritual kings, more nearly resembling the Dairi of 
Japan, the Lama, Sovereign Pontiff of Thibet, or the Pope 
of Pome.J ’The carnal intercourse of atuas and females is 
the common belief of both races, the way that gods speak 
to men, by whistling from the roof of houses, is also the same, 
* Mariner’s Tonga Isles , vol. ii. page 99.- 
f Ibid , vol. ii. page 191. 
t Ibid , vol. ii. pages no — 124. 
