Fig. 127.—Rubbing of part of the carving of the handle of a symbolic paddle from the Hervey Islands, in the Natural History Museum, Belfast. One-half natural size.
Fig. 128.—Rubbing of “part of the terminal of a paddle-shaped implement in the Vienna Museum”; from March, after Stolpe. Two-thirds natural size.
“It is abundantly certain,” adds Dr. March, “that the forms that crown the shaft are those of women, for they are invariably distinguished by pendant-pointed breasts. The solitary exception that Dr. Stolpe has been able to find is one in appearance only, for in his Fig. 23 the breasts are really fused into a single cone, exactly as are the legs in his Fig. 24” (p. 322).
Dr. March’s contribution is that these carved shafts of sacred paddles and adzes were pedigree-sticks. Descent is traced through the male line as a rule among the Polynesians, but it is certain that some tribes traced their descent through the female line. Dr. Gill states that this was in some places simply a matter of arrangement. Dr. Gill tells us that the designs on these shafts were called “tiki-tiki-tangata;” tangata means a man, or in this combination connotes human, for in a Polynesian word compounded of two nouns, that which comes last has a secondary, explanatory, or adjectival force. Tiki was the first man, and when he died, ruled the entrance of the under-world. The name signifies a “fetched” soul; the spirit of a dead man the frequentative or plural tiki-tiki must mean spirits in succession, or “ancestors.” “The conclusion now drawn is that tiki-tiki-tangata were the multitudinous human links between the divine ancestor and the chief of the living tribe. But to what ancestry did these pedigrees of female lineage assert a claim? From what goddess was it the pride of Mangaians to be descended, unless from the mother, the wife and the daughter-wife of Rongo—from Tu-metua, Taka, and Tavake.
“In Mangaia all the gods were called the children of Vatea, and of these Tane was one. His name indicates the generative principle in Nature. In Mangaia he was especially the drum-god and the axe[164]-god; he presided over the erotic dance as well as over the war-dances. Gill observes[165] that ‘Tane mata ariki,’ Tane with the royal face, was enshrined in a sacred triple axe,[164] which symbolised the three priestly families on the island of Mangaia. This axe was buried in a cave, and has disappeared. The K pattern which covers the shafts of the sacred Mangaian axe,[164] is an assertion of a Tane pedigree, the tiki-tiki-tangata of the clan. ‘Awake Tane!’ was the invocation,[166] ‘Awake unnumbered progeny of Tane!’” (March, p. 331).
4. Religious Symbolism.
The study of religious symbols[167] is not only a very extensive and extremely attractive undertaking, but it is one of peculiar difficulty, for with it is combined, not a danger, but a certainty of falling into errors. There is hardly a subject upon which such diverse views can be proposed and even maintained with a fair amount of presumptive evidence.