Page 5 - Puhipi

accomplished, how many craft and crew vanished forever from sight of men below the

curve of the horizon.

The Society Islands with their windward and leewood groups about 100 miles apart
were the centre of Eastern Polynesia and it was from this centre that the people
dispersed. The leeward group includes Borabora, Tahaa, Ra’iatea and Huahine. The
windward group comprise Tahiti, which is the largest island and Moorea which is close
to it. Ra’iatea is the Rangiatea of Maori tradition, also often called Hawaiki. It was

from this island that the people of Eastern Polynesia spread north, east and most
importantly south. From it the ancestors of the Maori people brought with them to
Aotearoa the same basic cultural elements that their relations took to other parts of

Polynesia fanning out from the land which Sir Peter Buck,Te Rangihiroa quoting a
Tahitian chant calls “Havai’i fanaura’a fenua” (Hawaiki birth place of lands), and
writing of it in Vikings of the Sunrise, he said from this centre various groups later
dispersed to people other islands, taking with them a common basic language, the same
foodstuffs and animals a common religion and a common cultural background of myth

and tradition.

Therefore all Polynesian cultures wherever found in the wide spaces of the Polynesian
triangle have common elements that can be traced back to a common re-organisation in
Central Polynesia. It is through Rangiatea that the Maori may trace his links with

other Polynesians. Radiating from it are several main routes, the first southwest to
Aotearoa includes also the Book & Chatham Islands, then comes the North-Western
sea road which links Manihiki, Rakahanga, Tongareva & Phoenix Island. The
Northern Route passes through Penrhyn and the Equatorial Islands to Hawaii. The
one to the North East stretches to the Marquesas then to the east to Tuamoto,

Mangareva & Easter Island. Traditionally another two links are South East to Rapa
& south to Austral Island, but in fact these really lie in one line.

Rangiatea was a religious centre of ancient Polynesia. It is assumed that here the
theology which formed the basis of Polynesian religious practices was evolved from the
myths, history and stories of centuries of voyaging through Micronesia. At Opoa on

Rangiatea stood the temple of Taputapuatea which was to Eastern Polynesia what
Rome was to the early Western Christian Church, not so much the originating point of
its faith as its unquestioned theological heart.

Voyagers bent on long journeys would if they could pay a visit to this island which was
the centre of their world. Tradition tells that they sometimes took small quantities of

the sacred soil to faraway places. This would ensure that the spirit of the old land
would go with them to the new, it also meant that the Mana and the Mauri, the
prestige and the life force would not be lost.

A comparision of traditions from all parts of the Pacific based on the premise that those
settlements most distant from the heartland retain elements of the heart culture as it