Mythology - Cosmogony

In all variations of Polynesian mythology an element of philosophising appears in astonishing luxuriance. Nowhere do we find better confirmation of the fact that at this stage mythology includes all science. When, as in the Society Islands, we find the creation of spiritual forces following immediately upon the emerging of Ru from the side of his mother Papa, we are in the region of abstractions. Not till then is the material world created by the union of Tangaroa with the various forces of Nature. We get the impression of natural science in embryo when Tangaroa produces, with the goddess of the external world, clouds and rain; with the goddess of the inner world, the germs of movement; with the air, the rainbow, the light, the moon; and with a goddess dwelling in the earth, volcanic fire.

A man of Rotuma. (Godeffroy Album.)

Cosmogony

This structure of ideas, the creation of thoughtful minds, was not adapted for wider extension, and therefore the universal mythology of Polynesia could not accommodate itself to the analysis of its simple cosmogony, which made the world result from the embrace of heaven and earth, into these abstract conceptions. But in the great simple images of the sea, the islands, the earth as a fixed island or floating in the sea, in their need of orientation by the aid of sun, moon, and stars, the Polynesians found an inducement to observe the heavenly phenomena more keenly, and to form cosmogonic imaginations.

Their conception of the world, to the formation of which fancy has contributed more than understanding, is yet based upon a mass of observations. The moon is a woman, with an indwelling capacity for renewal. The man in the moon is Rona, who stumbled as he went about at night and was taken up by the moon with the branch of the tree to which he tried to hold. Both sun and moon renew their youth in the spring of the water of life. While the moon and stars are in a heaven nearer the earth, namely the third, the sun shines only from the fifth; else he would burn up everything. Sun and moon once lived together and produced the dry land of the earth. And while the sun is on one side made fast to the moon by Maui, on the other it is bound to the earth by its own beams. From this twofold attachment also eclipses arise. The stars were created by the ancestors of the present Polynesian race. As the population of heaven they are divided into two parts, between which the Milky Way, or "great shark," forms the boundary. The shooting-stars are the means by which they send messages to their former creators. Among the constellations Orion with the Southern Cross and the neighbouring stars as "Tamarereti's Canoe," and the Pleiads, under the name of "the bowsprit of the canoe," enjoy special consideration. In the rainbow they see also the bow, or the gleaming bowstring, or the ladder whereby the souls of chiefs ascend to heaven.