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Blacker, Carmen

Deliberate religious transformation in Japanese Buddhism: Methods of symbolic imitation in Shingon and Zen

Irwin, James

Approaching the 
Sacred 
Reference has already been made to the extensive use of a form of 
prayer termed karakia. This word was translated by the early 
missionaries as 'prayer' and 'worship' and so used in all the 
churches. What the old-time Maori meant by the term was often 
misunderstood by Europeans and it is inadequate to use such 
simplistic translation, although long usage will doubtless ensure its 
continuance. 
Karakia is a general term for verbal approaches to the 
sacred, and for gatherings for the recital of karakia. The actual 
verbal recitals are not based on European Christian understandings 
of prayer and worship but on symbolism, analogy and sympathetic 
magic (Best 19766: 306). The word can denote a spell, a charm, an 
incantation or an invocation and is composed of a formula of words 
that have mana (power) and are therefore effective. Such a karakia 
does not have ethical dimensions as such, although it was essential 
to fulfil all the necessary ceremonial requirements . A feature of a 
karakia utterance was that its power and efficacy depended upon 
accurate repetition of set phrases, sometimes seeming to have little 
bearing on the particular concern. This however, must be 
understood in the light of the reference to symbolism and analogy. 
Symbolical language is always difficult to translate accurately and 
when, as in the Maori situation, there are included historical 
references whith, for a particular listener, are obscure, the karakia 
could well seem incomprehensibe. It was essential that nothing 
should be omitted and nothing added. To make a mistake was 
considered a serious ill-omen and disaster was expected to follow. 
Thus in the Maui myth we are told that Maui's father omitted certain 
words from the birth rites and so Maui was marked from birth for 
disaster. 
There was a large number of karakia known to the people in 
general - especially those to cause rain to stop, those that 
protected from the danger of makutu (ill wishes, curses), and those 
appropriate to their work. The important karakia were known only 
to the tohunga who was the medium of the particular atua . What 
little is known of those karakia which pertain to the cult of Jo shows 
them to be of a different character and closer to the European ideas 
of prayer and worship. 
43 
Apart from the karakia associated with public ceremonies 
such as tangihanga, the dedication of a Meeting House, and so on, ' 
most of the karakia were recited in the presence of those 
immediately concerned. The potency of the particular karakia was 
in no small measure dependent upon the mana of the tohunga 
conducting the ritual. 
Karakia can be classified under the following headings for 
convenience: 
Placatory: as in setting out on a fishing expedition or sea 
journey. The main intention seems to be to persuade the atua (in this 
case Tangaroa) to remain quiescent. 
Invocatory: according to Best, karakia were not invocations 
in the sense that Christians use the word; but in as much as they 
were addressed to an atua they do have this element, although the 
idea of submission is lacking. 
Intercession: this was an element of many recorded karakia 
although these mainly concerned the sub-tribe or the extended 
family seeking to gain benefits or avert some disaster. Thus they 
were aimed at dominating the atua and manipulating him to secure 
the desired ends. Although this is contrary to the Christian 
conception of intercessory prayer yet it reflects a universal 
tendency. 
Incantation: this more adequately describes the more 
significant karakia as they sought to cause the inherent mana to 
accomplish the desired ends. It is most likely that the recital of the 
incantation itself brought about the desired result through 
sympathetic magic. 
Exorcism: the final type of karakia is that associated with 
nullifying a makutu, and turning the effects of such utterances back 
on the one who had caused it to be said. In the same category are the 
karakia for healing, for one of the signs of a makutu was a sickness 
that did not yield to such medicines as were available. 
A great deal of criticism has been levelled at the content of 
many karakia because they do not have the structure familiar to 
Christians. An early deviation from Christianity among the Maori 
people known as Pai Marire was led by Te Ua Haumene. Certain of 
the prayers seemed to be nonsense sentences, sometimes being the 
names of notable Europeans, or the transliteration into Maori of the 
commands of English officers to their troops. What is not recognised 
is that the structure was in Maori thought-forms, the names and 
commands were those of people with great mana, and the words 
were filled with mana (as when a troop is called to attention). Thus 
the karakia were not "gibberish" or "nonsense" as European 
observers frequently described them, but entirely congruous in the 
Maori situation. 
44 
Karakia were, of course, only part of what could be simple 
ritual ceremonies or complex and elaborated ones. The former is 
illustrated by the casual tossing of a portion of food over th~ 
shoulder accompanied by the words "To kai, e Maru" (your portion, 
0 Maru) to placate the fierce war god Maru . The other extreme, in a 
serious situation, could require the tohunga to stand naked in 
running water for his own protection from the malign influences he 
was attempting to nullify. 
Healing and Exorcism 
From the earlier discussion on sickness we have seen that any illness 
not responding to the usual treatment was regarded as a mate 
Maori. Such illnesses required the services of a tohunga skilled in 
such matters who had to decide what had caused the illness before 
he could treat it. If it had been caused by an infraction of tapu , or 
because a makutu ( curse or ill-wish) had been placed on the person, 
then different forms of ritual were required. While both would be 
termed whakanoa rituals, the content of the karakia would be 
different. 
The failure of traditional medicine and healing procedures 
after the coming of the European had seriously undermined the 
position of the tohunga and the old sanctions. However, the advent 
of new epidemic diseases , and the failure of European medicines to 
cure what may be termed psychosomatic illnesses, led to a renewed 
concern with the old tapu restrictions and the whakanoa rites. It 
seemed to the Maori that there was a class of illness which was 
impervious to European medical procedures. Such illnesses were 
termed mate Maori, indicating a malady caused by some spiritual 
disturbance. A number of tohunga had accepted Christianity and 
the Christian atua, and sought to synthesize the old and the new. It 
was unfortunate that few missionaries appeared to have understood 
what the Maori participants were saying in these attempts to 
combine the two systems into a whole (see Hamlin: 163). 
An early example of this was seen in the emergence in 1851 of 
a cult named Wahi Tapu (Sacred Place). This cult was an attempt to 
cope with the people's belief that by accepting Christianity death 
and sickness were inflicted upon them by the spirits of their 
ancestors . To deal with this they held what was clearly a whakanoa 
ceremony within the ancestral burial place. By this means they 
attempted to destroy the mana of those ancestors by a combination 
of traditional practices and Christian prayers. Food was cooked 
over the burial place and then eaten by the participants, followed by 
a reading of Scripture from the Temptation of Christ ("It is written 
that thou shalt worship the Lord they God"). Then prayer was 
45 
offered that the place be cleansed of its tapu (i.e. that it be rendered 
noa). Insufficient attention has been given to this radical innovation 
as an attempt to Christianise the ancient ritual (see J.P.S., 76(1) 
1967: 42f). The missionary Taylor, who described the ceremony, 
obviously saw this as syncretistic and therefore to be rejected. 
While the Wahi Tapu movement did not persist for very long 
yet the ideas behind the cult contined to exert influence, as Hohepa 
shows in an account of two tohunga in Northland during the 1880's. 
Hammond, a Methodist missionary, describes them as follows: 
There resides at Mangakahia a wonderful healer, who seems just now at 
the zenith of his prosperity ... proceeding at once to cure by cold water 
and prayer all sicknesses ... During the whole course of treatment, strict 
rule of tapu is observed, any violation of which would nullify the good 
effect ... 
We have had, too, a visit from a young man from Kaipara, who assumes 
wonderful sanctity and scriptural knowledge, while at the same time he 
pretends to have all the old power of the tohungas. He professed to tell of 
certain bewitchments that had caused the death of a number of persons, 
thus reviving in the minds of the young men ideas that we do our best to 
dispel (Hohepa: 45f). 
From these quotations it will be seen that, despite the 
changes taking place, the acceptance of Christianity did not mean 
that the ideas of mana and tapu had been abandoned but that the 
ideas were now attached to the atua of the European. Moreover, the 
basic understanding of life, as shown in the outline of the Maori 
world view, cannot be understood without the concept of mana and 
tapu, and without seeing the need for rites of cleansing and 
purification to continue. 
Some years ago I discussed with an old man his recent 
healing from the nearly fatal results of gangrene in the leg. The leg 
had been black and swollen from toes to thigh (I had seen him at that 
time) and the district nurse had said that death was very close. Yet 
after the ministrations of a tohunga ( who was from another district 
and was said to have great mana) , he had fully recovered. He related 
that the tohunga had enquired of him as to possible causes, then 
given him a drink of an infusion made from boiling flax leaves 
(harakeke - phormium tenax) , laid hands on him and prayed. After 
the procedure had been repeated for three days, healing 
commenced. The tohunga cautioned the elderly patient that his life 
must be blameless and his heart given to God. The procedures used 
by the tohunga were plainly those of the whakanoa rituals, yet it is 
impossible to judge from the information whether the ritual was for 
exorcism of a makutu or of a tapu infringement. It is also impossible 
to judge whether the illness had a psychosomatic basis. All we can 
46 
say is that the ritual had action and words that were effective. The 
participants believed that the power (mana) of God did the healing. 
What is important is that the procedures were meaningful for the 
patient. i" 
Shortland gives an illustration of whakanoa procedures in an 
occurrence in the 1870's. In a village where the residents were mainly 
Christian, an increase in population had created a need for more 
land and hatl resulted in new houses being built too close to a wahi 
tapu (probably a cemetery). Early in the morning the villagers 
gathered at the chosen place where a large umu (earth oven) had 
been fired. It was being opened by the women, and each participant 
was handed a cooked kumara taken from the umu. This was held in 
the hand while the usual morning service was read, concluding with 
a short prayer that God's blessing might rest on the place. Then 
each person ate the kumara they were holding and the place was 
declared noa. Shortland (1856) comments: 
I could not but think that the native · teacher had done wisely in thus 
adapting so much of old ceremonial as to satisfy the scruples of those of 
little faith ... every one present, by eating food cooked on the tapu 
ground, equally incurred the risk of offending the atua of the family, 
which risk was believed to be removed by the Christian karakia . 
We should note that it was the women who opened the oven 
- a significant role in the whakanoa ritual, for normally this is a task 
only for men. Shortland's explanation is not entirely correct for, as 
we have shown, cooked food is an effective agent in nullifying (or 
lifting) a tapu. The use of the kumara was also significant, for this has 
special importance to Maori people. Each part of the service was 
equally important for the efficacy of the ceremony. 
47 


English

Approaching the Sacred

Introduction 
The Maori people of New Zealand belong to that· family of peoples 
generally known as Polynesian. There have been many attempts to 
determine where they came from. Most likely their origins lie 
somewhere in eastern Indonesia or the Philippines whence they 
migrated through Melanesia and Micronesia into the so-called 
Polynesian Triangle. This area in the Pacific is bounded by Hawaii in 
the North, New Zealand in the South and Easter Island in the East. 
Modern research suggests that the movement of these people began 
far back, between 2,000 and 1,000 BC (Bellwood: 20f). It is thought 
that the settlement of New Zealand took place before 1,000 AD and 
that larger and smaller migrations occurred until about 1500 AD. 
Polynesians speak some 30 closely related languages, with a 
large number of dialects. These are a branch of a wider grouping 
known as Austronesian (Bellwood: 26). 
While there is no absolute certainty, archaeological and 
linguistic research indicates that the New Zealand Maori derives in 
the main from the Cook Islands, the Society Islands and possibly the 
Marquesan group (Bellwood: 152). 
Examination of the myths and legends of the New Zealand 
Maori shows that many of the higher gods of the pre-European 
religion are the same as those found in the ancient religions of 
Eastern Polynesia, although some (e.g. Tangaroa) are known 
farther west. Thus, archaeologically, linguistically and religiously the 
people of Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) are linked 
with Polynesia. 
This monograph attempts to describe the religious rites and 
beliefs of the Maori people of New Zealand as they were at the time 
of the coming of the Pakeha (European). To accomplish this we 
must examine the myths and legends of the people in some detail. It 
scarcely should be necessary to point out that it is no longer 
acceptable to dismiss pre-European religion as mere superstition 
and ignorance. As Berger points out, "every society is engaged in the 
never completed enterprise of building a humanly meaningful 
world". 2 At the same time we should not assume that the early Maori 
thinkers were incapable of philosophical reflection (as will be 
shown), although the expression of such reflection was in 
mythological form , not in creeds or confessions of faith. In line with 
modern practice the early religion of the New Zealand Maori will be 
referred to as "primal", to indicate that it was their first religion and 
not that it was necessarily inferior. The term may be ambiguous but 
is not offensive (Turner: 27f). The standpoint of the writer is that 
religion is a response to the sacred, although the rituals expressing 
response are the devising of the specialists of the sacred. Tribal 
societies have profound thinkers and acute minds even though a 
characteristic of primal religion is that it is geared to a technologically 
and economically simple people. Primal religions differ from some of 
the m9jor World religions insofar as the latter are based on or relate 
to historical figures (e.g. Jesus , Buddha, Mohammad etc.), are 
strongly ethical in character, have strong missionary tendencies and 
are exclusivistic. None of this is the case with the primal religions 
which are tolerant of religions of other people, do not attempt to 
convert others and lack organised and rational accounts of beliefs 
(expressing them instead in their myths and rituals). 
There is frequently interpenetration of primal religions and 
the great world religions , and this interpenetration throws light on 
the way the new religion has been understood in terms of the primal 
society. One would wish to say that when an observer meets what is 
obviously a survival from a primal religion, this should not be 
dismissed out of hand; rather, the observer should look for what 
positive function the surviving concept performs. Only thus can 
there be a meeting of minds. 
2 
Maori Cosmology 
The Realm of Ultimate Reality 
IO - High God 
The myth of Rc1ngi and Papa-tu-a-Nuku 
The Realm of the Human 
Mana - Tapu - No? 
The Realm of the Dead 
The myth of Hine-nui-o-te-po 
Diagram 1 
3 
King Tawhiao 
Tawhiao was the second Maori King and is the epitome of the Prophet-Priest-King. 
Gottfried Lindauer. Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand. 


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Deliberate religious transformation in Japanese Buddhism: Methods of symbolic imitation in Shingon and Zen

Approaching the Sacred

Introduction

Front Matter

The Study of Australian Folk Religion Some Theoretical and Practical Problems

Institutionalized Spirit-Possession and Healing Rites in a Balinese Village

Samsara is Nirvana - A Key to Buddhist Philosophy

Introduction

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Reconstructing Women's Religious Agency: Critical Feminist Perspectives and the Ekklesia of Women

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