6

Pre-Buddhist and Hindu Influences on Maori Religion

In his book The Aryan Maori, Tregear makes the argument that the Maori culture was historically rooted in the same general regions of the Fertile Crescent, and perhaps India, as the archaic tradition we have been pursuing. In support of that view, Tregear presents a long list of Maori words whose meanings he assigns to Sanskrit roots. As might be expected, many of these words center on phonemes that also have symbolic significance within an ancient cosmology that we believe was passed down to some later cultures by way of ancient India. In part because of the relationship of Maori words to Sanskrit words that Tregear perceives, he interprets various Maori mythic and cosmological references as having originated with Buddhism. However, from our perspective, the suggestion is that the Maori culture, like that of the Dogon, may reflect archaic influences that actually predated Buddhism and so ultimately were also ancestral to it. Likely affirmation of this outlook lies with a circumstance that Tregear himself notes: the lack of reference in the Maori culture to virtually any of the later Buddhist deities.

Among the Maori parallels to Buddhism that Tregear mentions are mythic storylines that assign the formation of the universe to the rupturing of a cosmogonic egg, a theme that is broadly shared among the traditions we have studied. He also cites as evidence of Buddhist influences on the Maori certain artifacts excavated in New Zealand, such as a bell that carried an inscription written in the Tamil language. Although Tregear acknowledges that the Maori never actually adopted a Buddhist faith, in his view such artifacts imply the likely presence of Buddhist priests in New Zealand. Looked at in another way, Tregear’s artifacts seem to only necessarily imply the influence of a pre-Buddhist cosmological tradition comparable to the one we have been pursuing as the likely parent to later traditions in India and Africa, which we also associate closely with the Tamil. Best cites parallels to Hinduism in the Maori culture but makes no outward claim for a direct relationship between the religion of the Maori and Buddhism. As a foundation for his presentation of the key elements of the Maori creation tradition, Best does devote extended discussion to the nature of religion in general and to common aspects of its expression among early cultures and tribal groups.

Knowing that the linguistics of the cosmological term po may relate phonetically and symbolically to the concept of buddha in India, that term, which in our view directly ties to Dogon cosmology, also seems our likeliest entry point to Buddhist parallels to the Maori creation tradition. It is understood that the Sanskrit term Buddha can refer to “the awakened one,” one who is roused to the realities of the universe and of existence. This definition echoes a theme that is commonly referred to in myths of ancient India, Egypt, and elsewhere. It also takes its expression in the notion of a sleeping goddess. For many cultures, the physical form of this sleeping goddess seems to have governed the plan of early stone houses and burial chambers during (and just following) the Neolithic era of our tradition. Likewise, in the metaphors of many cultures, the cosmological processes that culminate in the formation of the atom, or po, begin with what is described as a symbolic awakening. From that perspective, the po (as a conceptual counterpart to the Buddha) would be an outgrowth of the one who is metaphorically awakened.

In Maori cosmology, these same processes by which matter conceptually “awakens” can be expressed as a series of progressive stages whose names rest on the prefix po te, a term that, phonetically speaking, falls midway between the Dogon word po and the Buddhist term buddha, linked by the common term po. As a compound of two cosmological phonemes that can be reversed, the concept of po te can alternately be expressed as te po. The eight transformative stages that produce the po constitute the Dogon egg-of-the-world, or po pilu, a structure that compares to the tiny bundle of eight wrapped-up dimensions (called the Calabi-Yau space) of string theory. Through these processes, matter in its wavelike state is transmuted into mass, and then into matter in its particle-like state. Cosmologically, the po pilu relates to the po in the same way that the Calabi-Yau space relates to an atom in modern astrophysics.

We have mentioned that in Dogon cosmology, a set of specific cosmological metaphors are defined as conceptual guides by which to organize and understand the processes of creation. Concepts that relate to these metaphors are often given in distinctly scientific terms. For example, one of these metaphors is expressed in relation to how a spoken Word forms from sound vibrations. Within the perspective of this metaphor, the terms breath and wind become symbolic glosses for the concept of vibration, the impulse by which mass and matter are produced. Another of the Dogon metaphors for creation is framed as stages in the growth of a plant and so is cast in relation to seeds that sprout and grow into reeds. Very similarly, Best explains that the staged processes that are defined by the term po te denote phases in the growth of the progeny of the Earth Mother, during which they acquire “form, breath of life, and growth.”¹

From one symbolic perspective, the Dogon compare the transformations that result in the po pilu to the actions of a sieve, the same essential concept that we have taken the Hindu god Siva to represent in previous volume of this series. (Foundation for this outlook is found in chapter 15 of Point of Origin and relates to the process by which particles are said to be differentiated from waves.) This symbolism makes better sense when we understand that the Dogon, after harvesting beans they have cultivated, preserve them by covering them with sand. At some later time when they want to make use of the beans, the Dogon employ a sieve to separate the beans from the sand. This scenario relates metaphorically to the process by which particles of matter emerge from waves. Within the mind-set of the cosmology, the concept of mass is equated with the term earth and can be represented by the phoneme ta, and so it seems sensible that the Maori term for “sieve” is tatari.² The Maori root word tari means “to carry” or “to bring.”³ Based on these definitions, the word tatari might be reasonably interpreted to mean “brings mass.”

The stages of creation, which are conceptualized in Buddhism as the process by which multiplicity emerges from unity, take definition in the geometry by which a Buddhist stupa shrine is ritually aligned. The base plan of the stupa begins with a circle that is drawn around a central stick called a gnomon. Execution of this simple figure creates a working sundial, by which the hours of a day can be measured. However, with a few additional geometric steps, the structure also evokes a line oriented from east to west that can be plotted daily to track the apparent back-and-forth motions of the sun over the course of the year. The plotted figure brings visibility to the concepts of a solstice and an equinox and can be used to differentiate seasons and to measure the length of both a season and a year. A likely Maori link to this same set of concepts is found in their word for “season,” which Tregear gives (appropriately) as po.⁴ The concept of a year is defined by the Maori word tau,⁵ a phonetic term that becomes significant when used as a prefix to other Maori cosmological words. Another word tau means “to turn away,” suggesting the motion of the tiny vortex that is conceptually associated with the po pilu. The Maori word tautau refers to “a string or a cluster,” two scientific concepts that pertain to the formation of the Calabi-Yau space and to matter.⁶

Over the course of our studies, we have come to regard the geometric method by which a stupa shrine is aligned to represent a signature of the tradition. By this we mean that any culture in which key aspects of that alignment process are evident is likely to have been influenced by the same ancient cosmological tradition. For example, during the era of 3000 BCE, it is evident that the plans of the earliest civic centers in ancient China were aligned according to this same geometric method. Furthermore, there is clear evidence that these Chinese cities grew up around sites that originally served as ancient ritual centers. The implication is that the cities had housed ritually aligned shrines comparable to a Buddhist stupa.

Within the symbolism of the cosmology, the center point of the shrine (which also seemingly came to define the center point of early civic centers) was interpreted on one level as representing a navel. In the mythology of India that defines the deities Siva and Sati, an Osiris-like tale is given in which the goddess Sati is killed, her body is dismembered, and its various parts fall to earth in the form of standing stones called pithas, whose locations came to define the placement of important ritual centers. Since these stones effectively defined the center point of alignment for the ritual shrines that came to stand on the sites, the pithas can also be said to represent navels. Reflections of this outlook are seen in a Maori word for “navel,” which Tregear gives as pito.⁷ Based on their relative positions and roles in the ancient mythology of India, we see Siva and Sati as likely counterparts to Osiris and Isis in ancient Egypt. Traditional researchers recognize symbolic associations between Isis and the star Sothis, or Sirius, in Egypt. A likely connection is seen here to a Dogon practice in which large stones are placed on a plateau to represent stars that are important to their cosmology, and so also by inference to the Egyptian placement of stone structures on the Giza plateau.

The cosmological concept of ascension is one that is central to the practice of Buddhism. According to the parallel creational themes of the cosmology, the term can be applied to the spiritual growth of a person, to the progressive stages by which matter is conceptually “raised up,” and to a concept of ascension in the larger universe by which an ostensible gateway or door can be reached between our material universe and its ostensible nonmaterial paired universe. Discussed in the context of a more worldly frame, the concept of ascension can be expressed in terms of efforts by a person to reach the top of a mountain. In Buddhism, a central aspect of ascension is defined by the word sakti, a term that relates to a kind of spiritual energy that emanates from the region of a person’s navel and rises upward. However, the phoneme s is not vocalized in Maori words, so no direct phonetic correlate can be offered for the Buddhist term sakti. However, Tregear defines a Maori term for “ascend” as kake,⁸ a word that is arguably within the same phonetic ballpark as sakti. It means “to ascend,” “to climb upward,” and “to excel” or “to rise above others.”