Lord of the forests and birds from Maori myths. Maori tales and legends

Maori of New Zealand

The religious beliefs of the Maori of New Zealand coincide with the beliefs of the peoples of Polynesia (the triangle between Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island). Their creation myths are very similar and they worship the same gods, although there are differences in their roles and status.

Why does it rain

Maori mythology tells of the ancestors, Ranginui (Rangi) and Papatuanuku (Papa), locked in each other's close embrace. When their sons were born, the parents kept them between themselves, letting only rays of light reach them. The myth tells how the sons tried to free themselves. After several unsuccessful attempts, one of the sons, Tane, rested his feet on Rangi and his outstretched arms on Papa. Pushing with all his might, upside down, he managed, with the help of his brothers, to separate his parents. Rangi became the sky, and Papa became the earth - Heaven-Father and Mother-Earth. The grief of separated parents is expressed in rain falling from the sky and mist rising from the ground.

Finding themselves in the world of light (Te Aomarama), the brothers began to fight for power. Tane became the god of forests, Tangaroa - the seas, Rongo - agriculture, and Vhiro, the evil brother, became the lord of the dark sides of life. Tavhirimatea remained with his father and became the god of winds and hurricanes.

The brothers were immortal. From the earth they made a woman, and Tane breathed life force (hauora) into her; a woman entered the world. Tane named her Hinechitama and took her as his wife. People came from their children. These gods are called gods of power (atua).

From oblivion

Ancient Maori philosophers speculated a lot about the beginning of the world and expressed their beliefs in songs. One of them talks about the time of non-existence (Te Kore); after which a long time ago came the time of possible existence (Te Korekore), then the time of deep darkness (Te Po). Eventually the darkness was defeated and a world of light (Te Aomarama) emerged. This song was created long before Europeans came to New Zealand. These myths are the basis for the Maori concept of the trinity of the world: the sky (Te Rangi), the world of light (Te Aoma-rama) and deep darkness, the kingdom of the dead (Te Po).

Io was the original source of all supernatural power (mana). He lived in the highest of the twelve heavens and could control all events in the world. Io was known only to carefully selected initiates who were educated in complete isolation. In secluded places they performed appropriate rituals and never spoke about Io.

Mythical monsters

Along with the gods of various spheres of life, the Maori recognized various other forces.

Some of them were the forces of individual tribes and territories; others were family gods and served as guards (kaitiaki), warning of danger and instilling confidence. Most tribes and communities had some object identified with mythical monsters, such as a log or a floating pile of grass. They were to be avoided as untouchable (tapu) objects. According to beliefs, many monsters lived in deep pools at the bottom of rivers or lakes; they were sometimes considered good, and sometimes evil.

Spirits (wairua) could be good or evil. A deceased ancestor who was not properly buried and therefore did not join his ancestors became a wandering spirit, disturbing the descendants until the necessary rites were performed. The spirits of miscarriages were considered restless and malevolent.

God's Staff for Priests

The Maori did not have temples or altars, although special secluded places were used for certain rituals. Sometimes large, roughly hewn stones were placed in clearings in the forest. They were used by seers (tohunga ma-takite) to summon their personal god. The stones were not shrines or idols. They were placed in the place where the seer made a sacrifice and waited until the god agreed to temporarily reside in the stone. In agricultural rituals, the god’s “staff” was used for the same purposes. Minor gods who did not live up to the hopes placed on them were subject to oblivion.

Eating the Battle Fallen

Sacrifice was hardly practiced in Maori religion, except for the donation of food to appease the god and confirm one's respect. It was the custom to give Rongo the first fruit of the harvest. The heart of the first enemy killed in a war was offered to Tumatauenga, and then, if the slain was of high position, the victor would eat it to take away the spiritual power of the victim. When an important ornate meeting house was built, it was customary for the body of a slave to be buried under the main pillar.

Strict rules were followed. During the mourning of the deceased, the body was displayed in the meetinghouse for farewell until all rituals were completed. This could last for several days and nights in the presence of all relatives. Among the Maori, death was and remains a social event. When no rituals were performed in the meeting house, he was freed from tapu, but was still treated with respect.

If a child sneezes...

"Mauri" is the vital force contained in every person and in some talismans that protected vitality, spiritual strength, fertility of the earth and forests. When children sneezed at birth, it was a sign of their vitality. If a person's life force is destroyed, spiritual strength is lost and the person soon dies.

• Spiritual power is bestowed by God and has to do with social status and authority. It is powerful and can cause harm to individuals or communities.
• Tapu is a system of prohibitions that warn of danger and protect a person from uncontrolled spiritual force.
• Noa is freedom from the restrictions of tapu. If the tapu is broken, the danger can only be averted by a cleansing ritual (whakanoa).

Rituals in running water

Maori attached exceptional importance to rituals, especially the correct reading of karakia (karakia). If the priest made a mistake in a spell, it was considered a bad omen and misfortune would follow.

Water, fire and cooked food were of particular importance in rituals, as they could defeat evil. Sometimes the priest performing the ritual had to stand waist-deep in running water to protect himself from the forces he evoked.

Back to Papa's fold

Maori considered the environment to be sacred and therefore attached great importance to the land. After death, everyone returns to Mother Earth (Papatuanuku). They are accepted into the bosom of the Pope. The land is entrusted to tribes and communities to be passed on to future generations and should be taken care of as a husband takes care of his wife. Many people derive not only their food from the earth, but also their identity.

Not having land means being a nobody, a nonentity. To have land means to belong to people, both living and dead.

Wake up carefully!

Dreams and visions are considered messages from the spirit world. The dream is usually retold by the priest to explain its meaning. It was believed that during sleep the soul leaves the body and travels long distances. The sleeping person had to be woken up carefully to give the soul time to return to the body.

Birth and death were the most important events for Maori. At birth, the father or priest would recite the karakia to give the child supernatural powers, especially if it was the first-born. Then a celebration was held. No initiation rituals were performed, since the child was considered a member of the tribe from birth.

Funeral rituals were complex and lengthy and even today play a large role in the life of the Maori. This is a time to express grief, say goodbye to the deceased, forget grievances and send the soul of the deceased to the ancient homeland (Hawaiki), where it will join the ancestors. The last rituals return living relatives to everyday life, cleansed of grief and death. Mourning is carried out publicly, if possible in a meetinghouse, since the deceased belonged to the entire tribe, and not just to his family.

The concept of future reward or punishment is completely absent. The souls of the dead are sent "up" or "down" and seem to lead lives similar to those in this world. They can contact living members of the community to which they belonged during life. The Kingdom of the Dead (Rarohenga) is guarded by the Great Hino of Darkness (Hinenuitepo), which must be passed by to get to the underworld. Hinenuitepo was originally called Hinetitama, who ran away from her husband Tane, who breathed life into her.

Papatuanuku

Mother Earth; ancestress (abbreviated Papa)

The collection includes myths, fairy tales and legends of the Maori - the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand, telling about their morals, customs, beliefs, gods and heroes. The texts are taken from the books of the famous New Zealand folklorist writer A. Reed, a collector and popularizer of Maori folk art.

Maori tales and legends

Moscow: Main editorial office of oriental literature of the publishing house "Nauka", 1981

Haere mai! (Preface)

"Haere mai!" - Maori greeting. "Haere mai, reader!" - this is how the myths, legends, traditions, and fairy tales collected in this book greet you, which were born in New Zealand many centuries ago and whose creators were the indigenous inhabitants of this huge island - the Maori.

“There is no doubt that the Maoris should be spoken of in poetry,” the English writer Anthony Trollope once said. The whole Maori story reads like a heroic poem. Its setting is the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean. The period of action is from the beginning of this millennium to the present day.

These ancestors lived in the country of Hawaii, legends tell. The country of Hawaii is both the legendary ancestral home of the Polynesians, and a mythical land where the spirits of ancestors live and where the souls of the dead go, and very real Polynesian islands like the Hawaiian archipelago or the island of Savaii (dialect forms of the word "Hawaii"). And the Hawaiians of Maori legends are Central Polynesia, the Tahiti archipelago.

According to Maori legends, the fisherman Kupa, who lived in Hawaii, was disturbed by the leader of a school of squid: every day he stole fish bait. And then Coupe decided to punish the robber. The chase continued for many days, the squid swam further and further south from Hawaii. And then a land appeared, unknown before, with high mountains shrouded in fog, with huge trees and countless flocks of birds. Ao-Tea-Roa - "Long White Cloud" - this is what Kupe called the land he discovered, and this poetic name has remained with New Zealand to this day.

And Kupe drove the squid leader into the Raukawa Strait, which separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand (now it is Cook Strait, but perhaps it would be more fair to call it Kupe Strait?), and there he killed the robber...

Having defeated the monstrous squid, Kupe returned to Hawaii and told about a beautiful, distant country in the south, inhabited... This is where the versions of the legends diverge. According to one of them, Ao-Tea-Roa was inhabited only by insects and birds. According to another, Kupe saw here “people of the earth,” tall, with flat noses and dark skin.

Who were these people? Here the versions of scientists already diverge. Archaeologists call them "moa hunters." A number of ethnographers suggest that the first inhabitants of New Zealand were Melanesians. And other researchers believe that Ao-Tea-Roa was originally settled by Polynesians, only not those whose memory was preserved in legends, but an earlier wave (we find a similar picture in other areas of Polynesia - on the Marquesas Islands, Hawaii, Easter Island).

Be that as it may, in Central Polynesia they learned about the existence of a large land in the south. Several centuries passed after the discovery of Kupe - and in the middle of the 14th century, many boats from Hawaii moved to Ao Tea Roa. There were hundreds of men in the boats, with wives and children, with pets; among other things, they carried with them seeds of cultivated plants. The great migration of the Maori ancestors began. This was not only the most significant event in the history of New Zealand, whose area exceeds the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe rest of the lands of Polynesia combined, it was perhaps the most heroic act in the history of the "Vikings of the South Seas" - the Polynesians.

Maori memory has preserved the names of the boats on which their ancestors arrived from Hawaii. And not only boats, but also stern oars, which also had their own names. The names of leaders - ariki, priests - tohunga and skilled helmsmen, the names of ancestors from whom modern Maori trace their ancestry were passed down from generation to generation. (When Maoris meet each other, it takes them almost a whole day to figure out which boat their great-great-great-great-grandfathers arrived on - more than two dozen generations have changed since then, but the keepers of traditions cherish in memory of the names of all ancestors!)

Waka is the name of a boat in the languages ​​of the peoples of Polynesia. And in the Maori language this word has another meaning: “union of tribes.” For from the crews of the boats that arrived from Hawaii to Ao Tea Roa, the various tribes of "iwi" originate. From each boat there are from one to a dozen tribes. But, of course, before these tribes were formed, more than one century had to pass, and these centuries passed - for almost half a thousand years, after the great migration from Hawaii, the inhabitants of Ao-Tea-Roa found themselves in complete isolation from the rest of the world.

When the first settlers arrived on Ao Tea Roa, says one of the Maori legends, it was the time of flowering of pohutukawa - trees from the myrtle family, covered with bright red flowers. Seeing them, the delighted leader of the settlers took off his headdress of feathers, a symbol of a noble family, and threw it into the sea with the words:

The color of the Hawaiian chiefs is cast aside for the color of the new land that welcomes us!

Indeed, over several centuries the Maori created a culture that differed from the common Polynesian one. The heritage received from the ancestral land of Hawaii became the distinctive heritage of the Maori, for whom New Zealand became their new homeland. For here, on Ao Tea Roa, there was a completely different world from the other islands of Polynesia lying in the tropics, be they coral atolls or volcanic islands.

The problem of land is one of the main ones for the inhabitants of Polynesia. It was the lack of land that forced brave Polynesian sailors to embark on long voyages in search of new islands. There was plenty of land in Ao Tea Roa. Is it not because the Maori ancestors remained isolated when they settled New Zealand because they had no incentive to make dangerous long journeys in the ocean?

New Zealand is a continental island, it is a kind of “microcontinent”, a fragment of an ancient continent. Fire-breathing mountains and dense forests, glaciers and geysers, wingless birds led by giant moa, relatives of dinosaurs, the hatteria lizard, cowrie pines, raising their peaks to a height of more than fifty meters and second only to American redwoods, landscapes reminiscent of the Caucasus with its snow-covered peaks, then Norway with its fiords, then Kamchatka with its volcanoes, then Scotland with its hills, bushes and lakes, then Iceland with its geysers - all this was not in Hawaii, all this was completely different from their native Polynesia. More land, more dangers, more game, more cold, more forests, more natural disasters... In the struggle with nature, the character of the Maori was forged - people who were truthful, courageous, brave and straightforward. No wonder the Maoris are referred to as the “Spartans of Polynesia”!

In order to preserve the traditions of the people, the Maori language was even recognized as the second official language of New Zealand in 1987 - along with English, although in reality only 14% of Maori consider it their native language, and more than 40% of Maori do not know it at all. Most Maori are socialized and far from traditional culture. But many Maori are making efforts to preserve traditional culture; in recent years, the study of the Maori language has been introduced in some schools. Respect for Maori traditions on the part of the New Zealand government went so far that changes were made to plans for the construction of a highway on the North Island just in order ... not to disturb the Water Monster.. The fact is that, according to the project, the new road had to pass through a large swamp. And according to the legends of the local Maoi tribe Nhati Naho, an ancient one-eyed Water monster - a taniwha named Karutahi - spends several months in this swamp every year. To ensure the monster was not disturbed, Transit New Zealand made a design change and the road was built away from Karutahi's habitat.

One of the key ideas of Maori philosophy is the unity of man and nature. Maori explain it this way: every creation (people, gods, animals and plants, earth, seas, air) has a particle of life force (“mauri”). Thanks to "Mauri" everything that exists in the world is interconnected. Since each part depends on everything else, neglecting to care for the surrounding world will harm a person. Maori culture and religion in its classical form requires the observance of a large number of rituals designed to minimize the potential harm that can be caused to the entire environment in general and to humans in particular. The Maori’s explanation of why it is necessary to “not harm” nature is interesting - for every action, be it hunting an animal or cutting down a tree, you need a good reason and you need to ask the gods’ permission through a special ritual.

The Maori people have many beautiful legends, many of which can still be heard told by Maori oral storytellers to this day. One of the main themes for the legends is related to the sea and fishing - one of the main activities of the Maori, who many years ago learned to navigate the open sea in special canoes called waka.

One of the legends tells how the god Maui went fishing to the North Island.

Fishing Maui
One day Maui decided to go fishing with his brothers. But when he told them about this, the brothers refused to take Maui with them. And he had to hide unnoticed at the bottom of their fishing boat. Only when the brothers were already on the open sea did Maui, to their displeasure, jump out of his hiding place. It was too late to turn back, and the brothers had to continue fishing with him.

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