Maori mythology

The tradition & historical record

Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two types of New Zealand Māori oral history regarding the remote past. Māori myths are tales of supernatural events relating to the origins of the observable world for the pre-European Māori, often involving gods and demigods. Māori traditions are more folkloric legends, often involving historical or semi-historical forebears. Both categories merge in whakapapa to explain the overall origin of Māori and their connections to the world in which they lived. Māori did not have a writing system before European contact, beginning in 1769, therefore they relied on oral retellings and recitations memorised from generation to generation. The three forms of expression prominent in Māori and Polynesian oral literature are genealogical recital, poetry, and narrative prose. Experts in these subjects were broadly known as tohunga. The rituals, beliefs, and general worldview of Māori society were ultimately based on an elaborate mythology that had been inherited from a Polynesian homeland (Hawaiki) and adapted and developed in the new setting. Alongside different Polynesian cultures having different versions of a given tradition, often the same story for a character, event, or object will have many different variations for every iwi, hapū, or individual who retells it, meaning there is never a fixed or 'correct' version of any particular story. ¹

The reciting of genealogies (whakapapa) was particularly well developed in Māori oral literature, where it served several functions in the recounting of tradition. Firstly it served to provide a kind of time scale which unified all Māori mythology, tradition, and history, from the distant past to the present. It linked living people to the gods and the legendary heroes. By quoting appropriate genealogical lines, a narrator emphasised his or her connection with the characters whose deeds were being described, and that connection also proved that the narrator had the right to speak of them. ¹

Prose narrative forms the great bulk of Māori legendary material. Some appear to have been sacred or esoteric, but many of the legends were well-known stories told as entertainment in the long nights of winter. ¹

Nevertheless, they should not be regarded simply as fairy tales to be enjoyed only as stories. The Maui myth, for example, was important not only as entertainment but also because it embodied the beliefs of the people concerning such things as the origin of fire, of death, and of the land in which they lived. The ritual chants concerning firemaking, fishing, death, and so on made reference to Maui and derived their power from such reference. ¹

Māori poetry was always sung or chanted; musical rhythms rather than linguistic devices served to distinguish it from prose. Rhyme or assonance were not devices used by Māori; only when a given text is sung or chanted will the metre become apparent. The lines are indicated by features of the music. The language of poetry tends to differ stylistically from prose. Typical features of poetic diction are the use of synonyms or contrastive opposites, and the repetition of key words. ¹

Archaic words are common, including many which have lost any specific meaning and acquired a religious mystique. Abbreviated, sometimes cryptic utterances and the use of certain grammatical constructions not found in prose are also common. ¹

Few records survive of the extensive body of Māori mythology and tradition from the early years of European contact. The missionaries had the best opportunity to get the information, but failed to do so at first, in part because their knowledge of the language was imperfect. Most of the missionaries who did master the language were unsympathetic to Māori beliefs, regarding them as 'puerile beliefs', or even 'works of the devil'. Exceptions to this general rule were Johan Wohlers of the South Island, Richard Taylor, who worked in the Taranaki and Wanganui River areas, and William Colenso who lived at the Bay of Islands and also in Hawke's Bay. Their writings are valuable as some of the best sources for the legends of the areas where they worked. ¹

In the 1840s Edward Shortland, Sir George Grey, Te Rangikāheke, and other non-missionaries began to collect the myths and traditions. At that time many Māori were literate in their own language and the material collected was, in general, written by Māori themselves in the same style as they spoke. The new medium seems to have had minimal effect on the style and content of the stories. Genealogies, songs, and narratives were written out in full, just as if they were being recited or sung. Many of these early manuscripts have been published, and as of 2012 scholars have access to a great body of material (more than for any other area of the Pacific) containing multiple versions of the great myth cycles known in the rest of Polynesia, as well as of the local traditions pertaining only to New Zealand. A great deal of the best material is found in two books, Nga Mahi a nga Tupuna (The Deeds of the Ancestors), collected by Sir George Grey and translated as Polynesian Mythology; and Ancient History of the Māori (six volumes), edited by John White. The earliest full account of the genealogies of atua and the first humans was recorded from Ngāti Rangiwewehi's Wī Maihi Te Rangikāheke in Nga Tama a Rangi (The Sons of Heaven), in 1849. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Māori mythology”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Maori mythology is tales relating to the origins of the (Māori) world, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²