{"collection":"Sacred Texts -- Pacific Islander Religions","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_pac_om_om07_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_pac_om_om07_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_pac_om_om07_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/pac/om/om07.htm","summary":"This is a work of comparative mythology scholarship, written in the academic tradition of early 20th-century anthropology, analyzing the Maui cycle \u2014 the body of myths surrounding the demigod Maui across Polynesian cultures. The text systematically surveys variants of three core Maui exploits (fishing up land from the sea, snaring the sun to slow its movement, and questing for fire) as recorded across Hawaii, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Rarotonga, and neighboring Melanesian and Micronesian cultures. Its central argument is that the Maui myths form a coherent, traceable mythological tradition with identifiable core elements that radiate outward from a Polynesian origin, with regional variants representing later overlays on older shared structures. A distinctive feature of the analysis is its rigorous cross-cultural comparison: for each exploit, the author maps where incidents appear, where they are absent, and where analogous motifs surface in Melanesia, Micronesia, and Indonesia \u2014 using distribution patterns as evidence for the myths' relative age and direction of diffusion. The text is notably concrete in retelling the myths at length (including direct quotation of Maori sources) rather than merely abstracting them, making it useful both as a scholarly argument and as a primary anthology of the tales themselves.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Oceanic Mythology: Part I. Polynesia: Chapter II. The Maui Cycle","tradition":"Sacred Texts -- Pacific Islander Religions","translated_text":null,"word_count":6011}