POPULAR TRADITIONS. 115 
logy, customs, and language preserved among the 
Tahitians, and inhabitants of other isles of the 
Pacific, when they are compared with those pre¬ 
vailing in different parts of the world. One of 
their accounts of creation, that in which Taaroa is 
stated to have made the first man with earth or 
sand, and the very circumstantial tradition they 
have of the deluge, if they do not, as some have 
supposed, (when taken in connexion with many 
customs, and analogies in language,) warrant the 
inference that the Polynesians have an Hebrew 
origin; they show that the nation, whence they 
emigrated, was acquainted with some of the lead¬ 
ing facts recorded in the Mosaic history of the pri¬ 
mitive ages of mankind. Others appear to have 
a striking resemblance to several conspicuous 
features of the more modern Hindoo, or Brami- 
nical mythology. The account of the creation 
given in Sir W. Jones’s translation of the Institutes 
of Menu, accords in no small degree with the 
Tahitian legends of the production of the world, 
including waters, &c., by the procreative power 
of their god. The Braminical account is, that 
“ He (i. e. the divine Being) having willed to pro¬ 
duce various beings from his own Divine sub¬ 
stance, first, with a thought, created the waters, 
and placed in them a productive seed. That seed 
became an egg, bright as gold, blazing like the 
luminary with a thousand beams, and in that egg 
he was born himself, in the form of Brama, the 
great forefather of all spirits. The waters were 
called nara , because they were the production of 
narau , the Spirit of God ; and since they were his 
first ay ana, or place of motion, he is thence named 
Narayana , or moving in the waters. In the egg 
the great power sat inactive a whole year (of the 
l 2 
