126 SISSANO. 
+I have so far considered chiefly the region of Melanesia with which I deal 
particularly in this book, but if the use of kava is ancient there it is probably 
ancient also in the southern New Hebrides; it may be that the closer resem- 
blance to Polynesian procedure which is found in such an island as Eromanga 
is due to modification of an ancient practice through more recent Polynesian 
influence. ‘The account of a case in which the Fijian method was adopted 
in the Banks Islands well illustrates how an ancient procedure can be modified ; 
it may be pointed out that a chance visitor who saw the proceedings described 
by Mr. Durrad would have had no hesitation in deriving the practice of the 
Banks Islands from that of Polynesia or Fiji. 
The distribution of the use of kava in the Santa Cruz Islands is strongly 
in favor of its fundamental place in Melanesian culture. According to the 
available evidence kava is not drunk in the Reef Islands, the culture of 
which is largely Polynesian, while its use is undoubtedly present in Vanikolo. 
If the use of kava had been due to relatively late Polynesian influence this 
would be very difficult to understand. We should have to suppose that an 
element of Polynesian culture is absent in those islands which one must 
suppose to have been the medium of its introduction, while it is present in 
another island of the group in which Polynesian influence in general is least 
apparent. It is very significant that the only island of the Santa Cruz 
group in which we have definite evidence of the use of kava is one which lies 
nearest to the Torres Islands geographically and resembles those islands 
in its culture more closely than other parts of the group. 
An interesting possibility is suggested by a study of the treatment of the 
kava root in Polynesia and in different parts of Melanesia. In Polynesia 
the root was formerly chewed. We have no evidence that it was pounded 
or grated in any part of this region till quite recent times, when the practice 
of chewing has been given up in many places through European influence. 
In Fiji the root was generally chewed when the islands were first visited, but 
it would seem that the original Fijian practice, at any rate in the interior 
of Viti Levu, was to grate or pound the root, the practice of chewing having 
been introduced from Tonga. 
In the Banks and ‘Torres Islands the root is chewed, but in the New 
Hebrides, which we have every reason to regard as a region of more archaic 
culture, it is grated and there is no chewing. We find, then, grating or 
pounding the root in those regions, viz, Pentecost and the interior of Viti 
Levu, which the nature of the systems of relationship has led us to regard 
as regions of more archaic Melanesian culture, while chewing is found in 
Polynesia and in the Banks and Torres Islands. 
One is tempted to ask whether the use of kava may not have been a prac- 
tice of the aborigines of Melanesia which was taken over by the immigrants 
into that area; in this connection I may recall the fact that, in the northern 
New Hebrides and in Fiji, the terms for kava are wholly different from those 
of Polynesia and of other regions of Melanesia. It is also noteworthy that 
the people of Pentecost have a tradition of the origin of kava, said not to 
be known. in the neighboring Banks Islands. ‘This tradition is that kava 
was first discovered through the observation of its effects on a rat which 
had been nibbling a root. [The story in great detail and with the added 
item of the use of sugar cane for the correction of the intoxication is included 
in my collection of Samoan myths.] When in Fiji, however, Professor 
Stanley Gardiner was told a similar story of the origin of the practice in 
Tonga, so that the idea is probably not indigenous in Pentecost. [It should 
be noted that the presence of the tale in three such widely sundered loca 
argues most strongly for a common source of both story and custom.] 
