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Polynesian mythology is the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia (meaning "many islands" in Greek) a grouping of Central and South Pacific Ocean island archipelagos in the Polynesian triangle together with the scattered cultures known as the Polynesian outliers. Polynesia (from Greek: πολύς many, νῆσος island) is a Subregion of Oceania, comprising a large grouping of over The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth 's Oceanic divisions An archipelago (ɑrkəˈpɛləgoʊ is a chain or cluster of Islands The word archipelago literally means "chief Sea " from Italian The Polynesian Triangle is a region of the Pacific Ocean anchored by three island groups Hawai‘i, Easter Island (Rapa Nui and New Zealand Polynesian outliers are a number of culturally Polynesian islands which lie in geographic or political Melanesia and Micronesia. Polynesians speak languages that descend from a language reconstructed as Proto-Polynesian that was spoken in the Tonga - Samoa area in the early CE. Proto-Polynesian is the hypothetical Proto-language, from which all modern Polynesian languages descend The Kingdom of Tonga is an Archipelago in the south Pacific Ocean comprising 169 islands 36 of them inhabited stretching over a distance of about 800 kilometres (500 miles Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa, is a country governing the western part of the Samoan Islands Archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean

Contents

Description

Prior to the 11th century AD, Polynesian people fanned out to the east, to the Cook Islands, and to other groups such as Tahiti and the Marquesas. Polynesian culture refers to the aboriginal Culture of the Polynesian -speaking peoples of Polynesia and the The Cook Islands ( Cook Islands Māori: Kūki 'Āirani) are a self-governing parliamentary democracy in free association with New Zealand. Tahiti is the largest Island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the Archipelago of Society Islands in the Their descendants eventually discovered the islands of New Zealand by 1000 AD, the islands of Hawai‘i somewhat earlier and Rapa Nui, which, for some unknown reason, was settled even before New Zealand and Hawai'i. New Zealand is an Island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (the North Island and the South Island The Hawaiian Islands, once known as the Sandwich Islands, form an Archipelago of 19 Islands and Atolls numerous smaller The various Polynesian languages are all part of the Austronesian language family. The Polynesian languages are a Language family spoken in the region known as Polynesia. Many are close enough in terms of vocabulary and grammar to permit communication between some other language speakers. There are also substantial cultural similarities between the various groups, especially in terms of social organization, childrearing, as well as horticulture, building and textile technologies; their mythologies in particular demonstrate local reworkings of commonly shared tales.

Thus, in some island groups, Tangaroa is of great importance as the god of the sea and of fishing. In Māori mythology, Tangaroa is one of the great gods the god of the sea There is often a story of the marriage between Sky and Earth; the New Zealand version, Rangi and Papa, is a union that gives birth to the world and all things in it. Māori mythology the primal couple Rangi and Papa (or Ranginui and Papatuanuku) appear in a Creation myth explaining the origin of the world There are stories of islands pulled up from the bottom of the sea by a magic fishhook, or thrown down as rocks from heaven. Magic, sometimes known as sorcery, is a Conceptual system that asserts human ability to control the natural world (including events objects people and Heaven may refer to the physical heavens the sky or the seemingly endless expanse of the Universe beyond There are stories of voyages, migrations, seductions and battles, as one might expect. Stories about a trickster, Māui, are widely known, as are those about a beautiful goddess/ancestress Hina or Sina who shakes her barkcloth to make lightning, provides fish and sharks to fishermen, brings weaving techniques and sails her boat to the moon. Māui (Maui is the great hero of Polynesian mythology. Stories about his exploits are told in nearly every Polynesian land

In addition to these shared themes in the oral tradition, each island group has its own stories of demi-gods and culture heroes, shading gradually into the firmer outlines of remembered history. Often such stories were linked to various geographic or ecological features, which may be described as the petrified remains of the supernatural beings.

From oral to written

The various Polynesian cultures each have distinct but related oral traditions, that is, legends or myths traditionally considered to recount the history of ancient times (the time of "pō") and the adventures of gods (“atua”) and deified ancestors. In Polynesian languages the word atua refers to gods in certain circumstances it may also refer to spirit beings generally The accounts are characterised by extensive use of allegory, metaphor, parabola, hyperbole, and personification. An allegory (from αλλος allos "other" and el αγορευειν agoreuein "to speak in public" is a figurative mode of representation Metaphor (from the Greek: μεταφορά - metaphora, meaning "transfer" is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects A parable is a brief succinct story in Prose or verse, that illustrates a Moral or Religious lesson Hyperbole (haɪˈpɝːbəli hye-PER-buh-lee; "HYE-per-bowl" is a mispronunciation comes from Greek "υπερβολή" (meaning exaggeration and is a Personification is an ontological metaphor in which a thing or abstraction is represented as a person Orality has an essential flexibility that writing does not allow. Orality can be defined as Thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of Literacy (especially writing and print are unfamiliar to most of In an oral tradition, there is no fixed version of a given tale. The story may change within certain limits according to the setting, and the needs of the narrator and the audience. Contrary to the Western concept of history, where the knowledge of the past serves to bring a better understanding of the present, the purpose of oral literature is rather to justify and legitimatise the present situation.

An example is provided by genealogies, which exist in multiple and often contradictory versions. The purpose of genealogies in oral societies generally is not to provide a 'true' account, but rather to emphasise the seniority of the ruling chiefly line, and hence its political legitimacy and right to exploit resources of land and the like. If another the ruling line should rise to ascendency, it was necessary to bestow upon the new line the most prestigious line, even if this meant borrowing a few ancestors from the preceding dynasty. Thus each island, each tribe or each clan will have their own version or interpretation of a given narrative cycle.

This process is disrupted when writing becomes the primary means to record and remember the traditions. When missionaries, officials, anthropologists or ethnologists collected and published these accounts, they inevitably changed their nature. By fixing forever on paper what had previously been subject to almost infinite variation, they fixed as the authoritative version an account told by one narrator at a given moment. In New Zealand, the writings of one chief, Wiremu Te Rangikāheke, formed the basis of much of Governor George Grey's Polynesian Mythology, a book which to this day provides the de facto official versions of many of the best-known Māori legends.

Some Polynesians seem to have been aware of the danger and the potential of this new means of expression. Thus as of the mid-19th century, a number of them wrote down their genealogy, the history and the origin of their tribe. These writings, known under the name of "pukapuka whakapapa" (genealogy books, Māori) or in tropical Polynesia as "puta tumu" (origin stories) or "puta tūpuna” (ancestral stories) were jealously guarded by the heads of households. Many disappeared or were destroyed. Thus in the 1890s, Makea Takau, a Rarotongan chief, ordered his tribe to burn all their family books, save his own. As a result, Makea Takau's version became the official history of the chiefly line, removing the possibility of dissent. At his request, extracts were published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society. Polynesian Society is a non-profit organization based at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, dedicated to the scholarly study of the history ethnography and

Deities

Hawaiian

See also: Menehune. Hawaiian mythology is a variant of a more general Polynesian mythology. For the municipality in Spain see Atea Zaragoza Atea (Marquesas Islands In the mythology of the Marquesas Islands, Atea In Polynesian mythology, Ina is a Lunar deity (daughter of Kui or Vaitere) who kept an Eel in a jar but it soon grew into the eel-god In Hawaiian mythology, Kāne Milohai is the father of Kamohoali{{okina}}i, Pele (whom he exiled to Hawai{{okina}}i) Kapo, Nāmaka In Hawaiian mythology, Lono is a fertility and music god who descended to Earth on a Rainbow to marry Laka. Māui (Maui is the great hero of Polynesian mythology. Stories about his exploits are told in nearly every Polynesian land In Hawaiian mythology, Pele (ˈpɛlɛ PEH-leh not PAY-lay is the goddess of Fire, Lightning, In Hawaiian mythology, the Menehune meh-neh-HOO-neh are said to be a people sometimes described as dwarfs in size who live in the deep forests and hidden valleys of the

Māori

Rapanui

See also

References

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