Manaiakalani
Mythological Narrative
Every Polynesian island group remembers the hook in Maui's hand. Hawaiian tradition gives it a name, Manaiakalani. In the versions gathered in Beckwith's Hawaiian Mythology, Maui meant to fish the scattered islands together into one land: he sank the hook into the deep, caught something vast on the sea floor — in one telling the great fish Pimoe — and set his brothers paddling with strict orders not to look back. Land was breaking the surface when one brother turned his head; the line snapped, and the islands have floated apart ever since.
The Maori version is in George Grey's 1855 record: the hook was made from the jawbone of his grandmother Murirangawhenua. Maui stowed away in his brothers' canoe, baited the hook with blood from his own nose, and hauled up the great fish that is the North Island of New Zealand, Te Ika-a-Maui. The Maori name of Hawke Bay, Te Matau-a-Maui, means "Maui's fishhook," after the hook-shaped sweep of headland at its southern end; the South Island, in the same telling, is Maui's canoe.
The hook ended up in the night sky. Hawaiian star lore calls the curved line of bright stars in the tail of Scorpius the big fishhook of Maui, Manaiakalani, and since the 1970s the navigators of the Polynesian voyaging revival, sailing the canoe Hokulea without instruments, have used it as one of the star lines of their wayfinding system.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Manaiakalani.
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Maui
The trickster demigod known across Polynesia: he fished up land from the sea floor, snared the sun to slow it, stole fire, and died trying to win immortality for humankind.
Hawaiki
The remembered homeland of Polynesia: the migration canoes set out from it, and the spirits of the dead return to it. Savaii, Hawaii and Raiatea's old name Havaii all carry the same name.
Tangaroa
The great sea god shared across Polynesia: in Maori tradition a son of Rangi and Papa and ancestor of fish; in Tahiti, as Taaroa, the supreme creator who broke out of a primal shell.
Jawbone of Muri-ranga-whenua
The enchanted jawbone of Māui's grandmother Muri-ranga-whenua, which, in the Māori traditions George Grey published, Māui used as a weapon to beat the sun and as the hook with which he fished up the North Island.