516 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
influence of the gods, who, they fancied, had actually 
entered the weapons of their murderers. Hence, 
those who died suddenly were said to be seized by the 
god. 
Their ideas of a future state were vague and indefinite. 
They generally spoke of the place to which departed 
spirits repaired on leaving the body, as the joo, state of 
night. This also was the abode or resort of the gods, 
and those deified spirits that had not been destroyed. 
What their precise ideas of a spirit were, it is not easy 
to ascertain. They appear, however, to have imagined 
the shape or form resembled that of the human body, in 
which they sometimes appeared in dreams to the sur¬ 
vivors. 
When the spirit left the body, which they called miuhi 
te varua e te atua^ the spirit drawn out by the god, (the 
same term, unuhi, is applied by them to the drawing of 
a sword out of its scabbard,) it was supposed to be 
fetched, or sent for, by the god. They imagined that 
oramatuas^ or demons, were often waiting near the body, 
to seize the human spirit as it should be drawn out (they 
supposed) from the head; and, under the influence of 
strong impressions from such superstitions, or the effects 
of a disordered imagination, when dying, the poor crea¬ 
tures have sometimes pointed to the foot of the mat or 
the couch on which they were lying, and have exclaimed. 
There the varua, spirits, are waiting for my spirit; 
guard its escape, preserve it from them,^^ &c. 
On leaving the body, they imagined it was seized by 
other spirits, conducted to the po, or state of night, 
where it was eaten by the gods; not at once, but by 
degrees. They imagined that different parts of the 
human spirit were scraped with a kind of serrated shell. 
