Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Australia

Oceania has exerted a singular fascination over the European mind. Travellers, painters, anthropologists, and psychologists have been drawn to the Pacific Ocean by an expectation that there they might find primitive cultures which illustrate how the early ancestors of all mankind lived and thought. Although this assumption has been attacked by modern scholars, it remains true that in the Australian Aborigines today we have men who are not far short of being ‘living fossils’. The age-old isolation of Australia, clearly evident in its archaic animals, such as flightless birds, egg-laying mammals, and marsupials, does find a parallel in the unique physical type of the aboriginal inhabitants. Of the Stone Age tribesmen of the central mountains of Papua, the world's second largest island, little is known at present, but it would appear that they may have maintained, too, a very primitive way of life through lack of contact with more advanced societies. The Pacific islanders, on the other hand, possess legends of migration and in their myths freely transfer divinities from island to island. A striking characteristic of Oceanic mythology in general is its closeness to what Carl Jung calls the archetypes, which are said to bring into our everyday consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past; but, with the exception of central Papua and Australia, the area has not been sealed off from outside influences and a view of its preservation of the earliest intellectual and spiritual ideas cannot be sustained.

Oceania, in fact, contains four major traditions: Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Australia. Polynesia, the easternmost cultural area, extends in a great triangle from New Zealand to Hawaii and Easter Island, and contains in its centre the island clusters of Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, and Taumotu. In this huge area there have been several migrations, but it is thought that the chief one was the arrival of the first Polynesians from South-east Asia by way of Micronesia. These settlers came about 2,000 years ago and carried with them an established pattern of culture, which has given a remarkable homogeneity to the mythology of the scattered archipelagos they colonized. The immense distances between islands—Hawaii is more than 4,000 miles from the northern island of New Zealand—have brought about local variations, a different emphasis in a legend here and a new concept of divinity there, but they are better described as modulations of a common theme. The Polynesian favourite, Maui, belongs to no particular island, and his trickery enlivens the legends of different gods and goddesses.

The Maori people of New Zealand, the supreme cosmologists and mythologers, explain the breaking of the one into the many as a conflict between the sky god Rangi and his children, imprisoned in the earth womb of Papa by their father's endless lovemaking. Like the Greek Ouranos, Rangi had to be separated from his docile spouse and forced upwards as the sky, but he was not emasculated in the conflict with his sons. After this cosmic adjustment, and a struggle for supremacy between Rangi's children, the numerous beings hidden in the earth womb found themselves free to increase and multiply. The ultimate victor of the divine battle was the warlike Tu-matauenga, god of fierce human beings. His long struggle with the storm god Tawhiri-ma-tea, the Maoris say, caused the great inundation that formed the Pacific Ocean. The Hawaiians, on the other hand, make their remote god of generation, Kane, the creator deity. His withdrawal was ascribed to the ingratitude and misbehaviour of the first men. Kane, Ku, and Lono, moulded Kumu-honua, the first man, out of wet soil, gave him for wife Lalo-honua, and made him a chief to rule over the whole world. The first human couple lived happily until Lalo-honua met Aaia-nui-nukea-a-ku-lawaia, ‘the great seabird with the white beak that stands fishing’, and was seduced to eat the sacred apples of Kane. She went mad and became a seabird, while her husband was condemned to die.

The composite divinity of Kane, Ku, and Lono instituted death as a punishment for Lalo-honua's transgression. Lono-nui-noho-i-ka-wai, ‘great Lono dwelling in the waters’, was a messenger god; Ku-ka-o-o, ‘Ku of the digging stick’, joined together the notions of good harvests, catches of fish, successful outcomes, and human continuity; and Kane, the chief deity, was a sky god, namely Kane-i-ka-pahu-wai, ‘Kane with a calabash of water’, and Kanehekili, ‘Kane the thunderer’. He was, however, sometimes associated with the sorcery god Kahoali, possibly because that god ruled the underworld. In Polynesia the souls of the departed were believed to travel to one of two lands: the souls of chiefs and outstanding men went to the paradise of the gods, an airborne island; the souls of ordinary people made their way to a shadowy place situated either beneath the ocean or the ground. The Hawaiians thought of the underworld as lua-a-milu, ‘the pit of Milu’, after the truculent chief Kane thrust down ‘to the nethermost depths of the night’. It was entered through clefts in the earth, called ‘casting-off places’, and these were found in every inhabited district.

The journeys of Polynesian heroes to the sun, to the underworld for fire, or to the heavens, are reminiscent of the sorcerer's quest after the spirits which determine sickness and health, life and death. In the Maori legend of Hakawau and the supernatural head, the hero and the sorcerer are actually combined in the same person. It is a feature of mythology that is less pronounced in the other Oceanic traditions. Yet common to all of them are man-eating legends. At the time of the discovery of the Pacific islands by European voyagers, cannibalism was practised extensively and shipwrecked sailors had to be as cautious as did visitors from other archipelagos. Though the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands seem to have preferred ‘manslaying’ rather than ‘man-eating’ customs, they have preserved details of the gruesome practice of cannibalism. Famous was Ka-lo-aikanaka, ‘Lo the man-eater’, a fierce chief of enormous strength and appetite. This warrior, tattooed with figures of birds, sharks, and other fishes, was driven from his ancestral home because of his relish of baked human beings. A related myth is the oven of food obtained from the body of a god, who once came as a stranger to an island and took a wife. When there was a famine, he built and heated an oven, then got into it and was covered with earth. After the time had elapsed for the body to be cooked properly, the people opened the oven and discovered all sorts of cooked food, while the man himself, perfectly untouched, was seen approaching again from the sea. A stream of fresh water was also found welling up at the sea where he had emerged after digging his way half a mile from the oven.

Melanesia, the central cultural area, is made up of the large island of Papua, a ring of volcanic archipelagos, including Admiralty Islands, Solomon Islands, Banks Islands, New Britain, New Hebrides, and New Caledonia, and, somewhat separate from the rest, the Fiji Islands. In striking contrast to the mythology of Polynesia, what stands out here is an amazing heterogeneity, which may have been encouraged by the apparent absence of the idea of a supreme deity.

In his formative study The Melanesians, which was published in 1891, R. H. Codrington noted that no supernatural being occupied a very elevated place in their world. On the contrary, ‘the Melanesian mind’, he wrote ‘is entirely possessed by the belief in a supernatural power or influence, called almost universally mana. This is what works to effect everything which is beyond the ordinary power of men, outside the common processes of nature; it is present in the atmosphere of life, attaches itself to persons and to things, and is manifested by results which can only be ascribed to its operation. When one has got it he can use it and direct it, but its force may break forth at some new point…’ Although modern scholars have questioned the supposed impersonality of mana, and suggested that it is a supernatural quality rather than an impersonal force, the description of Melanesian religion as a mixture of spirit and ancestor worship in Codrington's pioneer work has not been displaced. Because the Melanesians have, or had until very recent times, cosmogonic myths that assume the pre-existence of the world and its chief characteristics, and merely describe subsequent alterations in shape and form, there is little scope for the activities of potent deities. A creator figure like Qat was a vui ‘spirit’, not a god; he lived and thought like men, his superior knowledge and powers derived from a sure hold on mana.

Good and evil are explained by the New Britain islanders in the opposition of two brothers, To-Kabinana and To-Karvuvu. Unfortunate and unforeseen were the consequences of the half-witted brother's actions, his inept imitation of To-Kabinana's magic. For To-Karvuvu created the first shark, the symbol of terror in the Pacific Ocean. The perpetual rivalry between these twins is a reflection of the unending fluctuation of human destiny, and contains in it the subtle notion that mishaps arise as much from foolishness and misplaced endeavour than the conscious hostility of the environment. Man, the inhabitants of New Britain assert, must seek for equilibrium within society and within the natural surroundings. Other culture myths take up this theme, though in Papua the emphasis is on fertility and reproduction.

The northernmost cultural area is Micronesia, a constellation of scattered islands. There are four main archipelagos-the Gilbert, Marshall, Mariana, and Caroline groups of islands. Remote from world trade routes, Micronesia was until the end of the Second World War neglected by scholars, and even today we have no comprehensive study of its mythological traditions, which appear to combine elements from both Melanesia and Polynesia. Moreover, it is possible to discern themes that originated in Europe and became mixed with the indigenous materials sometime after Magellan reached Guam in 1521. This is certainly true of folklore collected in the Gilbert Islands by Sir Arthur Grimble. To the activities of Christian missionaries are due the notion that death came to the world as a consequence of the first people damaging a sacred tree.

The old religion of the Micronesians placed great emphasis on ancestor worship. The ani, ‘deified ancestors’, were carefully propitiated by the Caroline islanders, who coupled their totemic cult with that of local deities. Ani were honoured in the shape of a special bird, animal, fish, or tree in which they were supposed to reside, and with which they were identified. The dead, however, travelled to one of two final resting places: they went either to a submarine paradise, pachet, or to a gloomy underworld, pueliko, whose portals were guarded by two malevolent hags. As in other parts of Micronesia, the cause of misfortune and wickedness was blamed on a trickster brother, Olofat. This god of fire bore responsibility for such diverse things as the teeth of the shark and the prevalence of adultery. By assuming innumerable transformations, Olofat succeeded in upsetting the world and escaping the consequences of his action. Less disruptive were cultural founder heroes such as Lugeilan, the inventor of tattooing and hairdressing as well as a teacher of agricultural skills.

When in 1788 Britain annexed the last cultural area, Australia, there were some 300,000 Aborigines divided into more than 400 tribes. These people had no knowledge of agriculture, metallurgy, pottery, or writing, and lacked domesticated animals, except for the dingo: they had adjusted to the inhospitable environment by a nomadic way of life, hunting and gathering wild fruits. No date can be placed on the arrival of the Aborigines in Australia, but it would seem that at some unrecorded time bands of food-gatherers moved southwards from the Indonesian archipelago, and spread over the continent, giving rise to the development of distinct languages and dialects. In spite of their low level of material culture these tribes have evolved a complex social order and religion. Allowing for local variations, the main features of the latter are belief in a detached sky god, and in lesser but more active deities, often cultural founder heroes; the close association of myth and ritual, where legendary events are even relived by those taking part in certain ceremonies; secret initiation rites for men; and totemism, the linking of individuals and groups with natural phenomena.

Among the Aranda in central Australia there is an awareness of a primordial celestial being, erina itja arbamanakala, ‘him none made’, who was alive before alchera, ‘dream time’. During the ‘dream time’ the spirits sleeping beneath the ground arose and wandered the earth, shaping the landscape, making man and teaching the arts of survival. Their work done, these totemic ancestors subsided once more into sleep. While the Aranda have largely forgotten the primordial sky father, as have other groups with similar myths, they look back with intense nostalgia to the time when the chthonic deities walked the tribal lands. In initiation rites, a preserve of the men, the communication of the sacred traditions of the tribe about alchera is of central importance. These symbolical ceremonies represent a survival into modern times of an incredibly ancient system of spiritual instruction, and they involve a ritual eating of the primal father, since initiates drink the fresh-drawn blood of the older men. In former times this blood was obtained from a man who was killed for the purpose, just as portions of his body were eaten. On one recorded occasion, at the end of the nineteenth century, the blood-letting and cannibalism was practised on the initiates when two boys looked up and observed what they were forbidden to see. Although it is said that the first initiation rites were carried out in such a way that all the young men were killed, such a dramatic reversal of roles was unusual, not least because the consumption of blood coupled with the circumcision of the initiate is always intended to separate the boy from his mother and join him to the body of the warrior descendants of the totemic ancestors. About twelve months after the ordeal of circumcision, the initiate to manhood undergoes a second ritual operation: subincision. The opening of this phallic womb is intended to make him more than a man. Not surprising, therefore, was the interest shown by the Australian Aborigines in the Christian communion rite when they learned about it from the first missionaries.