Abstract
Whereas the previous chapter established divergent trends in the representation of Indian and Polynesian religion until the 1850s, this chapter examines the subsequent emergence of Indocentric, or more specifically Hindu-centred, interpretations of Maori religion. From the 1850s there was a marked shift in Pakeha and British understandings of Maori culture as the ‘discourse of negation’ examined in Chapter 3 was undermined. Pakeha increasingly believed that Maori had gods, religious traditions and a form of socio-religious organization. Against the backdrop of the emergence of the Indocentric interpretations of Polynesian language and history traced in Chapter 2, several leading ethnographers and anthropologists saw Maori religion as a form of transplanted Hinduism; it was defined by its localized Indian gods, tapu (seen as a modified form of caste) and phallic worship.
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David Chidester, Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville, VA, 1996);
L. R. Hiatt, Arguments about Aborigines (Cambridge, 1996).
George Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-west and Western Australia, during the years 1837, 38, and 39, under the authority of Her Majestys Government (London, 1841); A Vocabulary of the Dialects of south-western Australia (London, 1840). For Grey’s impact see Hiatt, Arguments about Aborigines, 18–20, 84–6, 96, 115.
Sir George Grey, Polynesian Mythology, and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race, as Furnished by their Priests and Chiefs (London, 1855), iii—iv, vii.
Jenifer Curnow, ‘Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikaheke: his life and work’, JPS, 94 (1985), 97–147.
See Giselle M. Byrnes, ‘“The Imperfect Authority of the Eye”: Shortland’s southern journey and the calligraphy of colonization’, History and Anthropology, 8 (1994), 207–235.
John White, The ancient history of the Maori, his mythology and traditions, 6 vols (Wellington, 1887–90);
M. P. J. Reilly, ‘John White: an examination of his use of Maori oral tradition and the role of authenticity’ (MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1985), 375–80.
Tony Ballantyne, ‘The mission station as “The Enchanter’s Wand”: Protestant missionaries, Maori and the notion of the household’, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 13 (1994), 100–1.
For example, Bill Dacker, Te Mamae me te Aroha: The Pain and the Love. A History of Kai Tahu Whanui in Otago, 1844–1994 (Dunedin, 1994), 31–3.
John White, ‘Journal written at Mata’, 14, 19 June, 1 July, 17 September 1847, qMS 2201, ATL.
Michael Reilly, ‘John White. Part II: Seeking the exclusive Mohio: White and his Maori informants’, NZIH. 24 (1990). 55.
Cited in Samuel Butler, A First Year in the Canterbury Settlement, A. C. Brassington and P. B. Maling eds (Auckland, 1964), 50. Also see R. Bourke to Lord Glenelg, 9 September 1837, enclosure C, J. Busby to Colonial Secretary, New South Wales, 16 June 1837, GBPP, 1838 (585) XXXIX, 7–8.
At the Treaty of Waitangi negotiations Tamati Waka Nene instructed Lieutenant Governor William Hobson to ‘remain for us a father, a judge, a peacemaker… You must preserve our customs’. T. Lindsay Buick, The Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington, 1914), 120.
John White, Te Rou; or, the Maori at home (London, 1874), v; Grey, Polynesian Mythology, x.
Jane Simpson, ‘Io as Supreme Being’, History of Religions, 37 (August 1997), 50–85.
C. O. Davis, The Life and Times of Patuone, the Celebrated Ngapuhi Chief (Auckland, 1876), 13–14.
See, for example, John White, Ancient History, I, 32; Edward Tregear, The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Christchurch, 1891), 106;
T. G. Hammond, ‘Atua Maori’, JPS, 30 (1899), 89–92.
Eisdon Best, ‘The cult of Io, the concept of a supreme deity as evolved by the Ancestors of the Polynesians’, Man, 57 (1913), 98–103. The quotation is at 99.
Compare Simpson’s article with James Irwin, An Introduction to Maori Religion (South Australia, 1984), 33–5; Jonathon Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago, 1982), 66–89; Margaret Orbell, ‘Io: a high god’, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Maori Myth and Legend (Christchurch, 1995), 72–5.
Andrew Lang, The Making of Religion (London, 1898);
Grant Allen, The Evolution of the Idea of God (New York, 1897);
J. H. King, The Supernatural: its Origin, Nature and Evolution (London, 1892);
Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion, 2 vols (Glasgow, 1893).
F. Max Müller, The Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Müller. Edited by his wife, 2 vols (London, 1902), II, 135.
F. Max Müller, ‘Preface’, in William Wyatt Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (London, 1876), vi.
F. Max Müller, ‘Solar myths’, Nineteenth Century, 18 (December 1885), 918.
Ibid., 901, 906–7; R. M. Dorson, The British Folklorists: A Histoty (London, 1968), 163.
Richard Taylor, Te Ika Maui, 1st edn (London, 1855), 12.
W. E. Gudgeon, ‘Maori Religion’, JPS, 55 (1907), 107, 110.
For example, Thomas Trautmann, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (Berkeley, CA, 1987), 71–3, 88–9, 104–13.
A. S. Thomson, The Story of New Zealand: past and present — savage and civilized, 2 vols (London, 1859), I, 108–9.
James Belich has deconstructed this interpretation: James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Auckland, 1986).
Bryan S. Turner, ‘Introduction: the study of religion’, The Early Sociology of Religion. Volume I. Readings in Nineteenth Century Theory, Bryan S. Turner ed. (Routledge, 1997), 1–14.
Elsdon Best, ‘Maori beliefs concerning the human organs of generation’, Man, 14 (1914), 132–4.
Elsdon Best, The Maori, 2 vols (Wellington, 1924), I, 294.
Jean Smith, Tapu Removal in Maori Religion (Wellington, 1974); Te Uira Manihera, Ngoi Pewhairangi and John Rangihau, ‘Learning and Tapu’, Te Ao Hurihuri, 9–14; Maori Marsden, ‘God, man and universe: a Maori view’, Ibid., 118–38.
For example, Joel Samuel Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, 2 vols (London, 1840), I, 274.
Ernst Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, 2 vols (London, 1843), II, 105.
James Buller, Forty Years in New Zealand (London, 1878), 222.
William Brown, New Zealand and its Aborigines (London, 1845), 11–12.
Hiram Bingham, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands; or the Civil, Religious, and Political Histoty of Those Islands (Hartford, 1849), 21.
James Mill, The History of British India, Horace Hayman Wilson ed, 5th edn, 10 vols (London, 1858), I, 127.
Walter L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England (Columbia, MO, 1982), 214;
Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church. Part One (London, 1966), 441.
K. R. Howe, ‘Some origins and migrations of ideas leading to the Aryan Polynesian theories of Abraham Fornander and Edward Tregear’, Pacific Studies, 11 (1988), 67–81.
Abraham Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race its Origin and Migrations and the ancient history of the Hawaiian people to the times of Kamehameha I, 3 vols (London, 1878–85), I, 109, 112.
Jesse Page, Among the Maoris or Daybreak in New Zealand. A record of the Labours of Samuel Marsden, Bishop Selwyn, and Others (London, n. d. [1864?]), 77.
Ibid., 77. This is an almost direct quotation from A. S. Thomson, see A. S. Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, 2 vols (London, 1859), I, 100–1.
Colenso, ‘On the Maori races’, TPNZI, 1 (1868), appendix, 43.
Newman, Who are the Maoris?, 160–1. Newman wrote to Smith arguing that tapu was the key Polynesian social custom and that it was ‘surely like caste’. Alfred Newman to Percy Smith, 10 July 1906, PSC, MS-1187–268.
Cf. William R. Pinch, Peasants and Monks in British India (Berkeley, CA, 1996).
See, for example, Risley’s use of tapu in his discussions of race and caste: H. H. Risley, ‘The study of ethnology in India’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 20 (1891), 259.
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© 2002 Tony Ballantyne
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Ballantyne, T. (2002). ‘Hello Ganesha!’: Indocentrism and the Interpretation of Maori Religion. In: Orientalism and Race. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508071_5
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