e of the rite, which seems
to have been to enable the novices to put off the old, or rather the
young, man and to put on a higher form of existence by participating in
the marvellous powers and privileges of the mighty dead. And if such was
really the intention of the ceremony, it is obvious that it was better
effected by compelling the young communicants, as we may call them, to
die and rise from the dead in their own persons than by obliging them to
assist as mere passive spectators at a dramatic performance of death and
resurrection. Yet in spite of this difference between the two rituals,
the general resemblance between them is near enough to justify us in
conjecturing that there may be a genetic connexion between the one and
the other. The conjecture is confirmed, first, by the very limited and
definite area of Fiji in which these initiatory rites were practised,
and, second, by the equally definite tradition of their origin. With
regard to the first of these points, the _Nanga_ or sacred stone
enclosure with its characteristic rites was known only to certain
tribes, who occupied a comparatively small area, a bare third of the
island of Viti Levu. These tribes are the Nuyaloa, Vatusila, Mbatiwai,
and Mdavutukia. They all seem to have spread eastward and southward from
a place of origin in the western mountain district. Their physical type
is pure Melanesian, with fewer traces of Polynesian admixture than can
be detected in the tribes on the coast.[695] Hence it is natural to
enquire whether the ritual of the _Nanga_ may not have been imported
into Fiji by Melanesian immigrants from the west. The question appears
to be answered in the affirmative by native tradition. "This is the word
of our fathers concerning the _Nanga_," said an old Wainimala grey-beard
to Mr. Fison. "Long, long ago their fathers were ignorant of it; but one
day two strangers were found sitting in the _rara_ (public square), and
they said they had come up from the sea to give them the _Nanga_. They
were little men, and very dark-skinned, and one of them had his face and
bust painted red, while the other was painted black. Whether these two
were gods or men our fathers did not tell us, but it was they who taught
our people the _Nanga_. This was in the old old times when our fathers
were living in another land--not in this place, for we are strangers
here. Our fathers fled hither from Navosa in a great war which arose
among them, and when they came t