Earth

Ta’aroa made the great foundation of the earth (te tumu nui o te fenua) to be the husband, and the stratum rock (te papa fenua) to be the wife .

“Roots (a’a) were born for growth in the world.” Ta’aroa fixes the dome of the earth upon pillars (pou) brought forth by Tumu-nui as male, Papa-raharaha as female parent.

Atea is above in space—“Earth had become land and it was filled with living creatures.

At one time he is a conjuror molding earth in his hands or uttering an incantation to stabilize the forms he has molded, at another time a god sending his essence into the rock Tumu-nui that it may unite with Papa-raharaha and upset the condition of equilibrium that has prevented growth and change.

They stress the period of darkness during which the shaping of earth and sea took place and their filling with living forms before man appeared.

In Maori myth one cosmogonic account takes the form of a family group like that in the Hawaiian “Chief-who-opened-heaven” to come down to earth and make the beautiful La’ila’i his wife.

Here it is the Wide-sky itself, Ranginui, who takes Papa-tu-a-nuku to wife, “sets” (hikaia) vegetation to cover her and “places” (makaia) small creatures “to animate the earth and the waters thereof.”

Wyatt Gill describe under a different symbol the change from life within the Po to that of the world of the Ao, the world of living men on this earth.

Kenneth Emory of the Bishop Museum collected a cosmic chant in which “the earth’s origins” or “roots,” as Gessler reads te tumu henua, are similarly compared to the growth of a plant.

Hawaiians use a similar incantation in approaching certain forms of plant life imagined to have originated in the underworld of the Po or ’Avaiki, referred to here as “Kahiki,” whose spirits are supposed to show themselves on earth in the body of the plant.

sleeps below in the non-existence of the earth,

the slime of the earth

the limpidity of the earth, etc.

Birth proceeds by the pairing of earth, the female, with sky, the male.

The two are translated by Emory, “Fruitfulness-of-earth” and “Space.” They are the parents of mankind:

In Tahiti Ta’aroa made “the great foundation of the earth” (te tumu nui o te fenua) to be the husband and “the stratum rock” (te papa fenua) to be the wife.

Three males join in the task of peopling earth with mankind, Ta’aroa, Tu, Ti’i in Tahiti and an equivalent trio of Kane, Kanaloa, and Ki’i in Hawaii.

Exactly in agreement is the Tahitian myth of the cutting away of the arms of the octopus Tumu-ra’i-fenua, “Beginning-of-Heaven-and-Earth,” into which Ta’aroa has placed his essence, and the consequent dawn of light (ao) after “the long wearisome night” (po).

Hitherto gods have been called into being in darkness; now light dawns over earth.

In the Kumulipo manuscript the first line of the refrain accompanying the births of the first four sections reads, not Ka po uhe’e i ka wawa with its suggestion of the “slipping away” (uhe’e) of night, but Ka pou he’e i ka wawa, thus picturing the god in the form of an octopus (he’e) supporting (pou) in darkness the first heaven and earth exactly as in the Tahitian chant.

.; of the prophet Hua of Maui—in all these prophesies—it is said that the gods (na akua) created heaven and earth.

The gods who created heaven and earth were three, Kane, Ku, and Lono.

Before this creation of heaven and earth, etc., everything was shaky, trembling and destitute, bare (naka, ’olohe-lohe); nothing could be distinguished, everything was tossing about, and the spirits of the gods were fixed to no bodies, only the three above gods had power to create heaven and earth.

The powers of the three joined together were sufficient to create and fix heaven and earth.

In the Tahitian octopus myth it is Tane who cuts away the clinging arms of the octopus body of Ta’aroa and fills earth and sky with beauty.

Again, in a composition called “Strife and reconciliation between heaven and earth,” Tumu-nui, the rock foundation in which Ta’aroa has placed his essence, is pitted against Tane, the two playing their enchantments: Tumu-nui sending heavy mists and rain, famine, night; Tane matching him with clear weather, abundance, the sun by day.

Poepoe quotes the Mo’olelo Hawaii in these words: “in this genealogy [the Kumulipo] it is said that the earth was not born nor was it made by hand but just grew.”1 

Kepelino, an early convert of the Roman Catholic mission and strongly influenced by the biblical story of creation, makes Kane the active agent in forming heaven and earth.

There is first darkness, po, or deep darkness, po-uli, then light, malamalama. Later in the passage Kepelino tells how “muddy-earth” (honua-kele) is “drawn by Kane out of the ocean.” Kane becomes “the chief who broke through heaven” of Malo’s account, ancestor of the high taboo chiefs or hoali’i in distinction from the low-ranking, na li’i noa, who do not command the taboos of gods.

Other later Hawaiian accounts of beginnings include a memorandum of “The Board of Genealogists of the Chiefs of Hawaii” given before the legislature of 1884, which calls the Kumulipo chant “a setting in order of the beginning of the earth for this race of men,” and the committee report of 1904 already quoted.

Hawaiians generally represent Po as a period of darkness and give the word the meaning of night as opposed to day (ao). So my translator in a passage from Kepelino: “There was Deep-intense-night (Po-nui-auwa’ea), a period of time without heaven, without earth, without anything that is made.

There he places the Kumulipo beside other genealogies of beginning like that of Puanue, where “the pillars of earth and the pillars of heaven” (na kukulu o ka honua a me na kukulu o ka lani) are said to have been “born” to Paia-ka-lani and his wife Kumu-kane-ke-ka’a; or that of Wakea, where Papa gave birth to “this group of islands”; or the statement of others that it “was really made by the hands of Kane” (?), although “in the genealogy of Kumulipo, it is said that the Po gave birth to all things and established (pa’a) the heavens, the earth, and all things therein.”

The head gods have great power (mana) in heaven and on earth.

There is no other explanation except the memory of the old faith held by this race that the chiefs are offspring and descendants of the ruling gods of Po, those who have power over the heavens and the earth.

Thus, Bṛhaspati is referred to as possessing a powerful bow with "Ṛta as its string" and as one prepared to "mount the chariot of Ṛta"; Agni is described as one who is "desirous of Ṛta", one who is "Ṛta-minded" and as he who "spread Heaven and Earth by Ṛta"; the Maruts are referred to as "rejoicing in the house of Ṛta" and as "knowers of Ṛta"; Ushas is described as having been "placed at the root of Ṛta"; Varuna is praised as "having the form of Ṛta" and, along with Mitra as Mitra-Varuna, as "destroying the foes by Ṛta" and as "professing Ṛta by Ṛta".

From the depths of Earth emerged Life in the covenant of Light and Darkness,