Nu'u
(Oceanian mythology)
The Hawaiian Noah. Nu'u-pule, ‘praying Nu'u’, escaped the flood in a large vessel with a house on top of it. Having landed at the summit of a mountain on Hawaii and sacrificed kava, pig, and coconuts to heaven, the god Kane descended on a rainbow and explained ‘his mistake’. The tidal wave, a familiar catastrophe in the Pacific Ocean, was connected with the rising of an ‘undersea goddess’ from the depths. The Banks islanders relate how the Melanesian hero Qat built a canoe on high ground and awaited the coming of the deluge there. The biblical flood story has been entwined with both Melanesian and Polynesian legend, but there is no reason to suppose that independent stories did not exist prior to the arrival of missionaries. In Hawaii there was said to be a certain tree that grew over Ka-wai-o-ulu, ‘the waters of generation’, and held these waters together with its great roots. Were it not for this tree water would submerge all the valleys.
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In Hawaiian mythology, Nu'u was a man who built an ark with which he escaped a Great Flood. He landed his vessel on top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island. Nu'u mistakenly attributed his safety to the moon, and made sacrifices to it. Kane, the creator god, descended to earth on a rainbow, explained Nu'u's mistake.[1]
Missionaries to Hawaii in the 19th century considered him analogous to Noah of the Bible.
References
- ^ "Nu'u" A Dictionary of World Mythology. Arthur Cotterell. Oxford University Press, 1997. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 30 September 2010 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t73.e525
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Copyrights:
Oxford Dictionary of World Mythology
A Dictionary of World Mythology. Copyright © Arthur Cotterell 1979, 1986, 2003. All rights reserved.
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