Te Ika a Maui

Maui's elder brothers were jealous of him because their mother showered her potiki with her love. When they went fishing they used to leave early while he was sleeping but one day Maui outwitted them by rising even earlier and concealing himself in the bilges of the waka (canoe) until they were well out to sea. The brothers wanted to return Maui back home but when they turned around to look the shore was far away already; they had paddled out further than they realised. Maui then offered to bail the waka for them so in the end they consented to his presence.

Then they arrived at their usual fishing grounds but before they could drop anchor Maui said, "the fishing is better further out", so they paddled on. At the next fishing grounds the eldest brother said "let us drop anchor and fish here", but Maui said, "no, the fishing is better further out", so they paddled on.

At last they reached open sea having quite lost sight of land. Finally they start fishing and lo they hardly had to let down their hooks and they found themselves pulling fish into the canoe. Very soon they had more than enough fish and were ready to paddle home but Maui said, "wait, let me throw my hook into the sea". Whereupon he lowered his baited hook (carved from his grandmother's jawbone) down into the ocean depths until he felt a jolt and a pull on the line. Maui had to pull hard and then harder and then harder again, "this must be the heaviest fish," he thought and chanted a powerful incantation, a hiki, to bring the fish to the surface.

Then suddenly the huge fish broke to the surface of the sea rolling back waves just as an island might break through the surface of the water and Maui's brothers screeched in shock and struggled to keep their waka the right way up amidst the turmoil of the wake.

Now Maui realised that because he had landed such a large fish, (it was in the shape of a stingray), he needed to make thanksgiving offerings and perform certain rituals. He told his brothers not to touch the fish until he got back. However greed and avarice and impatience overcame Maui's brothers who started quarrelling over the fish and hacking into its flesh. Maui's fish (te Ika a Maui or the fish of Maui), writhed in agony in it's death throes and lashing it's tail and fins into the sea.

This is the reason that Te Ika A Maui (the North Island of New Zealand) is so rough and uneven with hills and valleys, mountains and gorges. Thus the myth not only condemned the cutting up of the fish as an offence against the gods but also is a reminder of the need to conduct appropriate rituals of thanksgiving for the gifts of nature. The failure to respect nature brought its own evil consequences.

Maui and Hinenuitepo, the Goddess of Death

Readers will hopefully remember the ill omen of Maui's tohi due to his father Mateatutara's error in the ritual (in the previous post). It came to pass that Maui must encounter the goddess of death Hinenuitepo whom he hoped to vanquish.

The task Maui hoped to accomplish was to enter Hinenuitepo through her vagina while she was sleeping and pluck out her heart, then by emerging from her mouth he would have effectively reversed the process of birth and won immortality for himself and the rest of humankind. This was the most dangerous task Maui had ever undertaken especially since Hinenuitepo was equipped with formidable weapons of vaginal teeth made of obsidian.

Unfortunately when Maui was only halfway into the birth passage of Hinenuitepo, the ludicrous sight of his legs thrashing around outside made a fantail (tiwakawaka) which was flitting by, burst out laughing. This woke Hinenuitepo who crushed Maui to death. Thus death came to humankind forever.

An Inauspicious Beginning

Maui was a potiki which means he was the last-born of five brothers. In a society where status and succession were based on the order of birth, Maui, as the last-born son, was immediately disadvantaged. Furthermore he was premature so his mother Taranga wrapped him up in a topknot of her hair and discarded him into the sea. It is this difficult start in life which gave him his name Maui-Tikitiki-o-Taranga (Maui wrapped in the topknot of Taranga).

Luckily for Maui he was rescued from the sea by his ancestor Tama-nui-ki-te-Rangi (otherwise there would be no story to tell), and revived by being suspended over a smoky fire. This was the customary way of reviving drowned people at the time. Maui lived in the ancestral celestial realm for some time. Then when he was old enough to be told about his birth and where he came from, his longing was strong inside him to return to his own people.

When he reappeared to his own people, he was challenged but was able to reveal himself to his mother Taranga as Maui-Tikitiki-o-Taranga. Now Taranga acknowledged Maui as being her last-born child by inviting him to stand on the ridgepole of his ancestor Hinenuitepo's house. The ridgepole was a metaphor for Maui's line of descent and so the invitation to stand upon the ridgepole validated his membership in the whanau (family).

A potiki (last born child) is often an indulged child and can be precocious. Taranga favoured her newly found son by allowing him to sleep in her bed. But when he awoke in the morning she had disappeared, not returning until night. Maui wondered about her disappearance and who his father was (a common question for many sons of the time), so he tricked his mother into oversleeping by darkening the room and hiding her clothes. He even stooped to spying on her to discover the portal to the passage that led to the nether world where his father lived.

In the nether world which was not his mother's own country, Taranga could not tell if the person standing before her was Maui and it was considered impolite to ask him directly. So she had to ask him whether he came from the north, east, south and west only to be answered with a no. Finally she concluded that he came from the direction of the breeze that touched her skin which identified to her where he had come from and that indeed it was her son Maui who stood before her. Now she welcomed him and introduced him to his father, Makeatutara.

Makeatutara now performed the tohi ritual of purification over him. This tohi purified Maui of tapu of the unclean type surrounding his birth and also served as a public legitimation by his father. Unfortunately for Maui, Makeatutara made an error in the ritual which was a bad omen. Thus Makeatutara knew that Maui would be the first human to die and lose immortality for humankind.

Maui Capturing Te Ra (the sun)

In those days the sun used to speed across the sky so that it could get quickly back to it's night's rest. This made the days very short and often it was not possible to get all the work done by sunset. One night a woman carrying Maui's food to him in the darkness tripped and fell, dropping his food onto the ground. Missing out on his dinner roused Maui to action. Maui said to his brothers; "We will catch the sun in a noose and hold him still until he agrees to travel across the sky more slowly, so that people will have time to finish their tasks".

So they began to spin and twist ropes to form a noose to catch the sun in, and in doing this they discovered the mode of plaiting flax into stout square-shaped ropes (tuamaka), and the manner of plaiting flat ropes (paraharaha), and of spinning round ropes; at last, they finished making all the ropes which they required.

Maui and his brothers travelled all through the night, then when it was dawn they hid themselves so that they would not be seen by the sun; Then the next night they continued their journey, and so on until at length they got very far, into the east, and they came to the very edge of the place out of which the sun rises.

Next they built themselves a long high wall of clay, with huts made of boughs of trees at each end to hide themselves in, set their trap, and lay in wait.

At last the sun rose, looking like a fire spreading far and wide over the mountains and forests, but as it rose this time it's head was caught in the noose, the more the sun struggled and moved, the tighter the ropes pulled until he was held fast. Maui and his brothers ran forth now with their weapons and beat the sun until finally it agreed to travel more slowly across the sky.