In Colden’s “Five Indian Nations,” p. 167, I find an Indian chief says: “Now before the Christians arrived, the general council of the Five Nations was held at Onondaga, where there has from the Beginning a continual fire been kept burning; it is made of two great logs, whose fire never extinguishes.”
[265] I find, in Falkner’s “Description of Patagonia,” &c., 1774 (Falkner resided near 40° 7′ in those parts), “that in the vocabulary of the Moluches, although the word for ‘fire’ is ‘k’tal,’ the word for ‘hot’ is ‘asee,’ ‘cold’ ‘chosea.’”
But Sir J. Lubbock admits “asi” is the same word as “ahi,” and if “ahi” denotes light and heat, it also signifies fire.
Should we not expect, at least ought it to cause surprise, that the word for “fire,” where poverty of language may be presumed, should stand also for light and heat? In the Andaman vocabulary (Earl’s “Papuans”) “ahay” is their word for the sun—in which the two senses seem to combine. In Shortland’s “Comp. Table of Polynesian Dialects” (Traditions of the New Zealanders"), I find ahi means fire, and not light.
| New Zealand. | Raratonga. | Navigator’s (Savaii). | Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). | |
| Fire = | Ahi.[C] | Ai. | Afi. | Ahi. |
[C] And as would appear from Shortland (id. pp. 55, 56, “ao,” a seemingly cognate though not identical word with “ahi,” is the New Zealand word for light. But in Bougainville’s “Vocabulary of Faiti (Otaheite) Island,” I find again “eaï,” i.e. their word for fire, whereas their word for light, not darkness, is “Eouramaï” and “Po” = day light), whilst they have a distinct word for “hot” = “Ivera”—“Era” being the sun. Compare Sanscrit “aghni” = ignis, fire.—Vide Card. Wiseman, “Science and Revealed Religion,” p. 40, 5th ed.
[266] The works of Garcilasso de la Vega, Valera, P. de Cieza, and De Sahagun must be excepted. As an instance of the neglect which we have reason to regret, the former gives an account of one only (the Raymi) of the four annual festivals of the Peruvians.—Hakluyt Soc. ed. ii. 155. He gives the name, however, of another—namely, the Situa.
[267] Probably a tradition of the penitence of Adam.
[268] Here, the admixture of sun-worship, as identifying the mythology at any rate with the Hamitic and “Cuthite,” directly militates in favour of my view against the conjecture that Manco Capac was a missionary.
[269] Vide also the like confused tradition of Nimrod (Assyria) and Menes (Egypt), Bunsen, p. 192.