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This is an introduction to karakia, the ritual chants of the Maori. It is based on an examination of over four hundred karakia and on statements about Maori ritual, contained in the Maori manuscript collections of Grey, White, Shortland, and Taylor, collections of the 1840s, 50s and 60s.
The karakia, like other Maori recited chants, are partly composed of conventional formulae. They differ in their musical style, a very rapid monotone chant, and in their almost exclusive use of conventional language, symbols and structures. They thus 'speak the words of the ancestors' and are the work of a people, rather than an individual.
The chants of Maori ritual, often invoke the atua and are a means of participation, of becoming one with the ancestors and events of the past in the 'eternal present' of ritual.
I have classified the karakia, like the rituals, according to their subject matter. There are karakia for the major rituals, that is, for the child, the canoe, the kumara, the war-party and for death. There are also karakia for minor rituals and for more individual needs – for the weather, for sickness, for daily work and daily living, and karakia maakutu for cursing and countering curses.
Some I have also classified according to their ritual function. There are opening karakia, sometimes named tuuaa, loosing and binding karakia, sometimes referred to as pure, and karakia whakanoa, which remove various restrictions and conclude the rituals.
The two dominant symbols in Maori ritual, referred to in the karakia, are the rods and food. The setting up of the rods as symbolic pathways and abiding places for the atua is usually the first element in Maori ritual. The ritual offering of food to the atua and the eating of that food forms the third, or final, element, the acknowledgement of the atua as the source of life and strength.
The second, or middle, element in Maori ritual consists of the pure rites in which the atua are either loosed from, or bound to, the subject of the ritual. Each atua is associated with a particular area of creation.
Two terms often referred to in the karakia are tapu and noa. Like the atua, tapu and noa are either loosed from, or bound to, the subject of the ritual. There is need to distinguish between tapu in itself, that tapu which is a person's greatest possession, and its extensions, the restrictions arising from it. Noa, 'freedom from restriction', is in direct opposition, not to tapu in itself, the primary tapu, but to its restrictions.
Individual karakia are also highly conventional. For example Tuuaatuuaa i te orooro (GNZMMSS 81:1) is made up mainly of elements from the canoe and war-party rituals. Its also follows the traditional structure: firstly the setting up of the pathway, secondly the loosing and binding, and finally the whakanoa, the freeing from restrictions.
The appendix provides an index of karakia in the four Maori Manuscript collections and lists published versions and translations. |
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