The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 2 (of 3) / The Belief Among the Polynesians

by James George Frazer

[166] J. A. Moerenhout, op. cit. i. 431.

[167] G. Forster, op. cit. ii. 151 note *.

[168] J. Cook, op. cit. vi. 151.

[169] J. A. Moerenhout, op. cit. i. 430.

[170] J. Wilson, op. cit. p. 346. In the Polynesian languages po is the word both for "night" and for "the shades," the primaeval darkness from which all forms of life were evolved, and to which the souls of the dead return. See E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, p. 342, s.v. "po."

[171] W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 378 sq.

[172] Compare W. Ellis, op. cit. i. 396, "What their precise ideas of a spirit were, it is not easy to ascertain. They appear, however, to have imagined the shape or form resembled that of the human body, in which they sometimes appeared in dreams to the survivors."

[173] J. Cook, op. cit. vi. 150.

[174] J. A. Moerenhout, op. cit. i. 507.

[175] W. Ellis, op. cit. i. 395; J. A. Moerenhout, op. cit. i. 433, 538 sqq.