therefore, the king was worshipped, consulted as an oracle and had sacrifices and prayers offered to him.”[1] This was not an exceptional case. The kings of the island regularly enjoyed divine honours, being deified at the time of their accession.[2] At his inauguration the king of Tahiti received a sacred girdle of red and yellow feathers, “which not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with their gods.”[3] The gods of Samoa generally appeared in animal form, but sometimes they were permanently incarnate in men, who gave oracles, received offerings (occasionally of human flesh), healed the sick, answered prayers, and so on.[4] In regard to the old religion of the Fijians, and especially of the inhabitants of Somo-somo, it is said that “there appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods, nor between gods and living men, for many of the priests and old chiefs are considered as sacred persons, and not a few of them will also claim to themselves the right of divinity. ‘I am a god,’ Tuikilakila would say; and he believed it too.”[5] In the Pelew Islands it is believed that every god can take possession of a man and speak through him. The possession may be either temporary or permanent; in the latter case the chosen person is called a korong. The god is free in his choice, so the position of korong is not hereditary. After the death of a korong the god is for some time unrepresented, until he suddenly makes his appearance in a new Avatar. The person thus chosen gives signs
- ↑ Tyerman and Bennet, Journal of Voyages and Travels in the South Sea Islands, China, India, etc., i. 524; cp. p. 529 sq.
- ↑ Tyerman and Bennet, op. cit. i. 529 sq.
- ↑ Ellis, Polynesian Rescarches, iii. 108.
- ↑ Turner, Samoa, pp. 37, 48, 57, 58, 59, 73.
- ↑ Hazlewood in Erskine’s Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific, p.246 sq. Cp. Wilkes’s Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, iii. 87.
