[1] Voyages of the Dutch brig of war Dourga, by D. W. Kolff, trans. by G. W. Earl, p. 133, London, 1840. [↑]
[2] This is but a brief outline of characters prominent in this story and incidents of their connection therewith, rather than an outline or condensation of the several plots of this popular myth, its purpose being working notes, likely, for comparison of its celebrities and localities with other legends or traditions, here and in other parts of the Pacific. The same applies to “Extracts from Story of Keanini,” following. [↑]
[3] From Ka Hoku o ka Pakipika, Oct. 1. 1861, see also note 1. [↑]
Things Similar in India, etc., and Polynesia.
How far any distinct remembrance of the Siwa worship may be traced in Polynesian traditions and customs is not easy to determine precisely. The blood-thirsty wife of Siwa still survives in name and attributes in the Tongan God of War, Kaliai-tu-po. The name itself of Siwa recurs in the Polynesian word Hiwa, primarily “dark colored, black or blue;” secondarily, “sacred,” as a sacrificial offering. In different dialects the word occurs as Siwa, Hiwa, or Heiwa, and is applied as an adjective with derivative meanings, but in all the idea of sacredness underlies and characterizes its application. Thus Nuka-Hiwa, one of the Marquesas, undoubtedly meant originally the dark or sacred island; Fatu-Hiwa or Patu-Hiwa, another of the same group, meant the “sacred rock or stone;” Hiwaoa, still another of the same group, meant “very sacred or holy.” In Hawaiian puaa-hiwa means the “black or sacred hog” offered in sacrifices. Hiwa-hiwa was an epithet applied to gods and high chiefs. The name of the Siwaite Lingam, the symbol of productiveness, has unquestionably its root and derivation from the same source as the Tongan word linga, which means the male organ of generation, and the primary sense of the word which is found in the Hawaiian lina, “soft, yielding,” as papa lina, cheek; New Zealand and Samoan ta-ringa, ear, et al.
What the Hawaiians called pohaku a kane, upright stones of from one to six and eight feet in height, the smaller size portable and the larger fixed in the ground, and which formerly served as altars or places of offering at what may be called family worship, probably referred to the Lingam symbolism of the Siwa cult in India,[1] where similar stone pillars, considered as sacred, still abound.[2]
But Siwa, as before observed, was not a Vedic god, and his rites were held in abomination by the earlier Vedic Aryans. These stone symbols refer, therefore, to a period of pre-Aryan occupation of India and to the Cushite civilization or race. In the Hawaiian group these stone pillars were sprinkled with water or anointed with coconut oil, and the upper part frequently covered with a black native kapa or cloth, the color of garment which priests wore on special occasions, and which was also the cloth in which the dead were wrapped.…
It is possible that from these or similar considerations of superiority of sacredness arose the Polynesian proverb (in Hawaiian), he weo ke kanaka, he pano ke alii, red is the common man, dark is the chief.[3] [[348]]
The emblem of Siwa, in Hindu mythology, is the double trident. On the hill called Kaulanahoa, back of Kalae, Molokai, of the Hawaii group, are a number of singularly shaped volcanic stones, standing on the brow of the hill, amongst which is one marked with a double trident