LINGUISTICS IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC. 167 
being used alone. In the modern Mota books the words “‘from thence”’ 
in the Creed have no equivalent, but in this old catechism a perfectly 
correct rendering an ia is given. 
It is quite clear that in the teaching of religion among the peoples of 
the western Pacific many foreign words and terms must necessarily be 
employed. ‘Thus, in early days Bishop Patteson used in Mota the 
Greek word basileia as an equivalent for kingdom, there being no 
native word available; and just lately Mr. King has used the same 
word in the Binandere (Papuan) Gospel translation. But when intro- 
ducing this word what need is there for a translator to disguise it 
in the form pasideia, as is done in one London Missionary Society 
translation? 
The Melanesian Mission, when importing classical words and New 
Testament words for which there is no equivalent, has preferred to 
write them in their English rather than their classical form, but the 
London Missionary Society in New Guinea and Torres Straits has used 
imported words in more or less of their classical form: areto, bread; 
karite, barley; satauro, cross; also the Hebrew kohena for priest. Asa 
rendering for church, Bishop Patteson used log-lue in Mota, 7. ¢., called 
out; and similar words obtain throughout the Melanesian Mission. 
The London Missionary Society has used ekalesia for church. 
It is very difficult to render the word god. ‘The Polynesian missions 
have all used the word atua, and this has also been imported by the 
Presbyterians into southern Melanesia among Melanesian peoples. 
This word atua seems to be on a level, possibly, with the Mota vu, as 
meaning a being that never was a man; or it may be that just as 
Fijian kalou, which once was supposed to mean god but now has been 
degraded from its high place—so perhaps, though one says it with 
fear and trembling, atua may in time be shown to be equivalent in a 
measure to the Fijian kalou or to the Mota tamate, and may mean a 
ghost of the dead, the disembodied spirit of a person. The mission- 
aries of the eastern Pacific all spoke of the spiritual beings whom the 
people worshipped as gods, just as in the same way they found idols 
everywhere; but however this may be, it is safe to say that in the 
western Pacific there are neither gods nor idols. Even in Melanesian 
Fiji it was the custom to call the objects of the old worship gods, but 
Dr. Codrington wrote that Mr. Fison was “inclined to think all the 
spiritual beings of Fiji, including the gods, kalou, simply the Mota 
tamate, ghosts.”’ Mr. Hocart has shown the truth of this conjecture 
in a paper in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 
XLII, 1912. The Presbyterians of the New Hebrides also spoke of the 
spirits of the dead #-mat, Mota tamate, worshiped by the natives, as 
gods. 
In the islands of Torres Straits the word god was translated as ad, 
the meaning of which was ‘‘something about which a tale was told,” 
