TARANGA, THE NIGHT-SUN, AND MAUI
His mother recognises him as her son whom she had given birth, and had thrown into the sea, and she takes him into her house; through cunning he follows his mother—who only lives with her children during the night—as pigeon; bird—sunrays, through the caves of the lower world to Hawaiki. Here he throws his berries (sunrays) upon his father and the people and is again recognised by his mother and received with songs of welcome by her and with incantations by his father to make him all-powerful, in the world into which he has now entered as the first Sun-rise.
But after a time he extinguishes all the fires of the world, and enters the Lower World to steal new fire from his ancestress Mahuika.
Mahuika is the mother of the fire, and her children, living in her fingers are the first rays of light which shoot over the sky in the mornings. In order to ask for one of her fingers he visits Mahuika, but he deceives her, and she, to punish him, sets fire to the world. Out of this fire—the second Sunrise—emerges the flying Maui, flying as sun-eagle over the heavens, and hurling himself at last into the ocean.
That was the first sunset.