Through most of Polynesia, the chief deity was Ka-ne, which means sunlight, the opposite of darkness, and is allied to the verb kanea, to see. Another name for Ka-ne is Tangaloa, the lord of light. The colour red is sacred to him, he was portrayed with long blond hair, and children who had light hair or were albinos were deemed his progeny. When the fair-skinned Europeans first landed on the islands they were called the “children of Tangaloa.”[71]
Sometimes the myths represent Tangaloa as the son of Vatea (Avatea, Wakea), “noon” or “noon-day.” He was father of gods and man, half man, half fish, to typify land and water, and it was said of him that his right eye was the sun, his left the moon. So far removed was he that no worship was ever paid him, and no representation made of him.[72]
If we turn to the extremely savage inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, a remnant of the ancient, almost pygmy, black race of Southern Asia, we find that their supreme being is Puluga, the creator of all things, who was never born and will never die. He is invisible, but of the nature of light; he lives in the sky, and placed there the sun and moon. He is omniscient, but only while it is day, when he can see.[73]
As the red rays of the morning and evening light caused in Polynesia all things red to be sacred to Tangaloa, so among the Hottentots of South Africa their supreme being was named Tsuni Goab, the red light of the Dawn, who in mythology stood in opposition to Gaunah, the Dark Sky.[74]
This worship of light has several constant associations in religious thought which find expression in the myth and cult.
In nature, light is a potent stimulus of organic growth, and this fact, obscurely apprehended by the primitive mind, led to the equivalence of Light and Life. Light as the vital principle recurs in most mythologies. As we obtain light artificially from fire, whose general warmth also is akin to that of the living as contrasted to the dead body, the soul or living element was allied to flame. In ancient German mythology the soul was called a torch or taper (J. Grimm), and in the beliefs of the Polynesians and American Indians the ghosts of the dead usually appear as luminous masses.[75] All will remember the words of Othello—
“Put out the light, and then,—put out the light!”
A second association of light was with the sky, in day the home of the bright sun, at night where glitter a thousand points of brilliancy.