Polynesian Pantheontool
Manaiakalani
- Island Raising
- Sun Snaring
- Ocean Mastery
Maui's magical fishhook, baited with his own blood in some tellings, used to haul islands from the deep and snare the sun to slow its course across the sky.
About Manaiakalani
Māui's hook
Hawaiian tradition: Māui's fishhook Manaiakalani hauls islands, or the Hawaiian chain, from the sea; other cycles have him snare the sun to lengthen the day. Some tellings make the hook from an ancestor's jawbone. The hook is also a star-figure. Sources are oral chants, later written by Hawaiian scholars and compilers (among them Fornander, and Hawaiian-language newspapers). There is no museum fishhook with a proven "original." Island geography is the proof the stories offer. Treat late written versions as records of older recitation, not as first invention.
Origin
Fashioned from the jawbone of an ancestor in several Polynesian traditions.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Hawaiian tradition (Māui cycles; later written collections)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
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