Taking this epoch as the starting-point for the appearance of the Polynesian in the Pacific, we have an interval of time of 900 to 1000 years, in which to people the various islands and groups now held by the Polynesian family, and before we meet the uncontested Hawaiian traditions which assure us that twenty-eight generations ago this group was already peopled by that family.
Among the Hawaiian genealogies, now extant, I am, for reasons which will hereafter appear, disposed to consider the Haloa-Nanaulu-Maweke line as the most reliable. It numbers fifty-seven generations from Wakea to the present time, twenty-nine from Wakea to, and including, Maweke, and twenty-eight from Maweke until now. Fifty-seven generations, at the recognized term of thirty years to a generation, makes 1710 years from now up to Wakea, the recognized progenitor and head of most of the southern and eastern Polynesian branches—or, say, A.D. 150, which would in a great measure correspond with the invasion and spread of the Hindu-Malay family in the Asiatic Archipelago. It became known to, and was acknowledged, however, in the time of Kamehameha I, by his bards and genealogists, that the first thirteen names on the Haloa line, to Nanaulu, were shared in common with the Marquesan and Tahitian branches of the Polynesian family. These then must have existed before the occupation of the Hawaiian Islands, which would leave sixteen generations or about 480 years in which to discover and people the islands previous to the era of Maweke and his contemporaries—the Paumakua of Oahu, the Kuheailani of Hawaii, the Puna family of chiefs on Kauai, the Hua family on Maui, the Kamauaua family on Molokai, and others. By which of these sixteen generations, from Maweke up to Nanaulu, the islands were settled upon there is nothing positively to show. The historical presumption, however, would indicate Nanaulu, the first of these sixteen, as the epoch of such discovery, and there exists still a Hawaiian tradition connected with the name of his grandson, Pehekeula, a chief on Oahu.
We get, then, the following leading propositions as chronological sign-posts, approximately at least, of the Polynesian migrations in the Pacific: 1. During the close of the first and the beginning of the second century of the present era, the Polynesians [[234]]left the Asiatic Archipelago and entered the Pacific, establishing themselves on the Samoa and Tonga groups and spreading eastward and northward. 2. During the 5th century Polynesians settled on the Hawaiian Islands and remained there comparatively unknown until 3. the eleventh century when several parties of fresh immigrants from the Marquesas, Tahiti and Samoa groups arrived at the Hawaiian Islands, and for the space of five or six generations revived and maintained an active intercourse with the first-named groups and the mother-stock.
It is rather singular that while most of the principal groups of the Polynesian family claim, each for itself, the honor of being the first-created of mankind and, so to say, autochthones on their respective islands—as the Tonga, Samoan, Society and Hawaiian Islands—with the exception of the legend of Hawaii Loa, the Marquesans alone own to a foreign birthplace and a migration from a far-off land. In the meles and legends collated and preserved by Mr. Lawson, a resident of Hiwaoa, Marquesan Islands (and now held in MS. by Professor Alexander of Punahou College, Oahu, Hawaiian Islands), mention is made of a number of lands or islands, on which they successively stopped in their migration, ere they finally reached the Marquesan Islands, or, as they are called by them, the Ao-maama. According to these, the Marquesans started from a land called Take-hee-hee, far away to the westward from the group they now occupy; and the name by which they call themselves is “te Take.” There are two accounts of their wanderings after being driven out of Take-hee-hee. One mentions thirteen places of stoppage before they arrived at Ao-maama, the present Marquesan Islands; the other account mentions seventeen places before their final settlement on the last-mentioned group. During all these migrations the Take, or Marquesan people represent themselves as coming from below (mei-iao) and going up (una). Throughout the Polynesian groups, however, within the tropics, when a land is spoken of as iao, ilalo, iraro of the speaker’s place, it invariably means to the leeward, before the prevailing trade-wind. This being from northeast or southeast, these migrations pursued a course from west to east, and thus corroborate the Polynesian descent from Asia or the Asiatic Archipelago.
That the Polynesians, during their sojourn in India or the Indian Archipelago, had received no inconsiderable share of the culture and civilization which the ancient Arabs, through their colonies and commerce, had spread over these countries long before the Vedic branch of the Aryans occupied Aria-warta or had crossed the Ganges,—there is much in their legends, customs and religions to denote. Whether that culture was received however, while in India or in the Archipelago, it is now impossible to decide. That those old-world Arabs, those Cushites of the Indian records and of Holy Writ, had, long before the Vedas were written, controlled the ante-Aryan peoples of India and its Archipelago, and moulded them to their own usages and religion is now, I believe, an admitted fact by antiquarians and ethnologists. That that culture and those usages were greatly modified by the subsequent occupation and predominancy—temporal and spiritual—of the Aryan race, and that that, in its turn, was reacted upon by the previous Arab or Cushite culture, there are numerous proofs in the Hindu writings. Hence that mixture of myths, that jumble of confused reminiscences, which stock the legends and load the memory of the Polynesian tribes. Monotheism, zabaism, polytheism and [[235]]fetishism were inextricably mixed up in their religious conceptions, and while the two latter were the ordinary practice of everyday life for, at least, the last thirty generations of their abode in the Pacific, yet glimpses of the former were retained in their memory and hoarded as deposits “mai ka Po mai”—from a hoary antiquity—by their kilos, kaulas and kahunas (prophets and priests). Hence their diversity of worship: some tribes making Kanaloa, some Kane, some Kali, some Atea the chief of their deities and the originator of all things. Hence some tribes continued the Arab practice of circumcision, while others did not. Hence the Arab institution in social life of independent yet confederated communes among some tribes, while the monarchial or feudal system obtained among others. Hence the Arabic type of truncated pyramids in the shape of their temples, side by side with the Hindu practice of promenading their god in gorgeous processions. Hence while the Arab doctrine of a primal chaos is retained by nearly all the Polynesian tribes, some still retain the Braminical doctrine of the World-egg. So far as I am acquainted only one of the Polynesian tribes designates itself by a national name, other than that of the habitat or country which they occupy, and that is the Southern Marquesans. They call themselves the nation or tribe of the Take—te Take. Now this word, allowing for the Polynesian pronunciation, is identical with Tasi, an ancient national name, by which Iranian writers designated the Arabs of Southern and Eastern Arabia, from Yemen to Irak-Arabi; and their progenitor was called “Taz,” probably representing “Tasm,” one of the twelve original tribes of the old Cushite race, according to Arabian traditions. The name occurs again in Thas-os, an island in the Ægean, off the coast of Thrace, which, according to Herodotus, was colonized by the Phœnicians and called after their leader Thas-us. This Phœnician origin and name connects it with the great Cushite family in race and language of which the Phœnicians formed so conspicuous a branch. The same word occurs again in “Desi,” a name by which the Sanskrit writers designated the language of the people who occupied India before the Aryans entered it. This word occurs again in “Dasyus,” a name by which the Sanskrit speaking Aryans designated the non-Aryan population of India, who were also called by them “Rakshasha” and “Mlechcha,” the latter of which words still survives in the Polynesian maloka and with the same meaning—impious, profane—as in the Sanskrit.
The inhabitants of the plateau of Moldi, opposite the Island of Massua, on the coast of Abyssinia, being of the pure Greek race and speaking the Tigrai dialect of the old Ethiopian, are called Khasi by the Arabs, signifying “unaltered, pure.”
The word take, as expressing a nation or race, exists in other Polynesian dialects under the form of tae, tai or kai, which in the Marquesan itself is used interchangeably with the former. Thus we find Ani-tai and Ahee-tai for Anitake and Ahee-take. In the Tonga group tai is a common expression to designate a race, people or generation—Kai-Fiti, Viti people, Kai-Tonga, Tonga people, etc. In Hawaiian we find Kakai, a family including servants and dependents.
In the Hindu legend of Arachandran,[4] the perfect man, it is said that when he had been tormented and tried and driven out of his kingdom, he started to go to the country [[236]]of Kasi, on the Ganges. The “Khasi” in Abyssinia, and the “Kasi” on the Ganges were both of Cushite origin. Again, in the Polynesian legends reference is made to a country called Kua-i-helani and a king of that country called Iku or Aiku who had twelve children, whose adventures and exploits are fully related in the legend of Aukelenuiaiku. Now we know from Indian lore that, far off in the prehistoric times, a famous king ruled over Arabia and upper Egypt whose name was It or Ait, and whom the Greek traditions called Aetus.[5] We know that before the Aryans entered India, and long after, they called the country between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf by the name of “Cusha-dwipa,” and that the same extent of country was by the Semite Hebrews called “Cush.” These words in Polynesian pronunciation would infallibly become either “Kua” or “Ku,” the suffixed “Helani” being merely an epithet of grandeur and glory.
Again, Oro or Koro, of the Society and Hervey groups, was the terrible God of War, on whose altars human sacrifices were offered. He was the son of Kangaloa, the principal deity of these groups. His name and attributes forcibly recall Horus the son of Osiris of Egyptian traditions and uro the Egyptian hieroglyphic name for king, as well as Hor the invincible War-God, from time immemorial, of the Raypoots in Northwestern India. “Gourou” or “Goro,” moreover, is an old Indian and Javanese word for deity in general, and its modern meaning is “a religious instructor.”[6]
Unless, then, we concede the origin of the Polynesian family to have been, proximately in the Asiatic Archipelago, more remotely in India, as one perhaps of the many branches of the Dravidian family, certainly as one of the ante-Aryan peoples living there and being more or less impregnated with the Arab blood and culture which in these early days controlled India, the Indian Ocean and all the coasts and islands near it, from Mozambique to Japan,—unless we concede this, Polynesian myths, songs, traditions and customs become unintelligible, and the people itself becomes an historical puzzle, an ethnological accident.