,POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
529 
was not exceedingly painful to them to cut themselves as 
they were accustomed to do. They have always answered 
that it was very painful in some parts of the face—that 
the upper-lip, or the space between the upper-lip and the 
nostril, was the most tender, and a stroke there was 
always attended with the greatest pain—that it was their 
custom, and therefore considered indispensable, as it was 
designed to express the depth of their sorrow—that any 
one who should not do so, would be considered deficient 
in respect for the deceased, and also as insulting to his 
family. The acts of violence committed, they added, 
were the effects of the paroxysms of their sorrow, which 
made them neneva^ or insensible. They continued till 
their grief was ua maha, or satisfied, which often was 
not the case till they had received several severe blows 
upon the tender part above mentioned. 
The females on these occasions sometimes put on a 
kind of short apron of a particular sort of cloth, which 
they held up with one hand, while they cut themselves 
with the other. In this apron they caught the blood that 
flowed from these grief-inflicted wounds, until it was almost 
saturated. It was then dried in the sun, and given to the 
nearest surviving relations as a proof of the affection of 
the donor, and was preserved by the bereaved family as a 
token of the estimation in which the departed had been 
held. 
Had the otohaa been confined to instances of death, or 
seasons of great calamity, it would not have appeared so 
strange, as it does in connexion with the fact, that it 
was practised on other occasions, when feelings, the 
most opposite to those of calamity, were induced. 
In its milder form, it was an expression of joy, as 
well as grief; and when a husband or a son returned to 
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