Tuna and Daphne
To do justice to Mr. Max Müller, I will here state fully his view of the story of Tuna, and then go on to the story of Daphne. For the sake of accuracy, I take the liberty of borrowing the whole of his statement (i. 4-7):—
‘I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show the real difference between the ethnological and the philological schools of comparative mythology.
‘First of all, what has to be explained is not the growing up of a tree from one or the other member of a god or hero, but the total change of a human being or a heroine into a tree, and this under a certain provocation. These two classes of plant-legends must be carefully kept apart. Secondly, what does it help us to know that people in Mangaia believed in the change of human beings into trees, if we do not know the reason why? This is what we want to know; and without it the mere juxtaposition of stories apparently similar is no more than the old trick of explaining ignotum per ignotius. It leads us to imagine that we have learnt something, when we really are as ignorant as before.
‘If Mr. A. Lang had studied the Mangaian dialect, or consulted scholars like the Rev. W. W. Gill—it is from his “Myths and Songs from the South Pacific” that he quotes the story of Tuna—he would have seen that there is no similarity whatever between the stories of Daphne and of Tuna. The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of ætiological plant-stories, which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, such as Snakeshead, Stiefmütterchen, &c.; it is in fact a clear case of what I call disease of language, cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology. I have often been in communication with the Rev. W. W. Gill about these South Pacific myths and their true meaning. The preface to his collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific was written by me in 1876; and if Mr. A. Lang had only read the whole chapter which treats of these Tree-Myths (p. 77 seq.), he would easily have perceived the real character of the Tuna story, and would not have placed it in the same class as the Daphne story; he would have found that the white kernel of the cocoanut was, in Mangaia, called the “brains of Tuna,” a name like many more such names which after a time require an explanation.
‘Considering that “cocoanut” was used in Mangaia in the sense of head (testa), the kernel or flesh of it might well be called the brain. If then the white kernel had been called Tuna’s brain, we have only to remember that in Mangaia there are two kinds of cocoanut trees, and we shall then have no difficulty in understanding why these twin cocoanut trees were said to have sprung from the two halves of Tuna’s brain, one being red in stem, branches, and fruit, whilst the other was of a deep green. In proof of these trees being derived from the head of Tuna, we are told that we have only to break the nut in order to see in the sprouting germ the two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the lover of Ina. For a full understanding of this very complicated myth more information has been supplied by Mr. Gill. Ina means moon; Ina-mae-aitu, the heroine of our story, means Ina-who-had-a-divine (aitu) lover, and she was the daughter of Kui, the blind. Tuna means eel, and in Mangaia it was unlawful for women to eat eels, so that even now, as Mr. Gill informs me, his converts turn away from this fish with the utmost disgust. From other stories about the origin of cocoanut trees, told in the same island, it would appear that the sprouts of the cocoanut were actually called eels’ heads, while the skulls of warriors were called cocoanuts.
‘Taking all these facts together, it is not difficult to imagine how the story of Tuna’s brain grew up; and I am afraid we shall have to confess that the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne or on the etymology of her name. No one would have a word to say against the general principle that much that is irrational, absurd, or barbarous in the Veda is a survival of a more primitive mythology anterior to the Veda. How could it be otherwise?’
Criticism of Tuna and Daphne
Now (1), as to Daphne, we are not invariably told that hers was a case of ‘the total change of a heroine into a tree.’ In Ovid [{14}] she is thus changed. In Hyginus, on the other hand, the earth swallows her, and a tree takes her place. All the authorities are late. Here I cannot but reflect on the scholarly method of Mannhardt, who would have examined and criticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it. However, Daphne was not mangled; a tree did not spring from her severed head or scattered limbs. She was metamorphosed, or was buried in earth, a tree springing up from the place.
(2) I think we do know why the people of Mangaia ‘believe in the change of human beings into trees.’ It is one among many examples of the savage sense of the intercommunity of all nature. ‘Antiquity made its division between man and the world in a very different sort than do the moderns.’ [{15a}] I illustrate this mental condition fully in M. R. R. i. 46-56. Why savages adopt the major premise, ‘Human life is on a level with the life of all nature,’ philosophers explain in various ways. Hume regards it as an extension to the universe of early man’s own consciousness of life and personality. Dr. Tylor thinks that the opinion rests upon ‘a broad philosophy of nature.’ [{15b}] M. Lefébure appeals to psychical phenomena as I show later (see ‘Fetishism’). At all events, the existence of these savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact. I established it [{15c}] before invoking it as an explanation of savage belief in metamorphosis.