The Death of Maui

… Maui was crushed, and man comes not forth again from Hades —TYLOR

This paper discusses the death of Maui, the renowned Polynesian culture hero. As would be expected, different heroic or creative achievements are ascribed to Maui in the several parts of Polynesia; and there are also variant versions of the same myths. A cosmic deity, Maui is associated in some Polynesian islands with solar or celestial phenomena, while elsewhere he is identified with the winds.

Among Maui's Promethean achievements are; the gift of fire to mankind, with the fire stolen from the subterranean hearth of the volcanic deity (earthquake—or fire-god) who used it destructively, and whom Maui cripples during the struggle for the fire; the fishing up (from the bottom of the sea) of New Zealand, known in Polynesian as Te-Ika-a-Maui (the fish of Maui); the capture and wounding (and consequent slowing) of the Great-Man-Sun, with the assistance of a magical jawbone obtained from an ancestress; the taming of the winds; and so on (2), (5).

The "creation" of New Zealand is of special interest because it was fished up in its finished state, that is, with a complete Polynesian culture, including plants, animals, houses, dogs barking, fires burning, people working; and because Maui accomplished this heroic deed with a fishhook made from the wondrous jawbone—the fishhook being smeared with his own blood for bait. (In other versions, Maui took the jawbones from his two sons, whom he killed when they were young.) Completely formed but in a submarine environment, like a peculiarly mature fetus, New Zealand was fished out of the watery domain of another ancestress,