SUN‐CULT AND MEGALITHS IN OCEANIA

1See Behrens. Reise durch die Sdd-Lander tmd um die Welt. 1737. Leipzig, p. 83 (Translated as an Appendix to "Voyage of Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez," Hakluye Soc., Second series. No. 13. Cambridge, 1908, p. 133; for another account. see The World Displayed. London. 1773, Vol. IX. p. 120). 2Life in the Southern Isles, London, 1876, p. 75. S ef. W. J. Perry, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 1914. XLIV, 281. THERE is at present no decisive evidence that the sun was the . object of a public religious cult in any part of Polynesia. Roggeveen and his companions1 observed the inhabitants of Easter island prostrating themselves towards the rising sun, but as these prostrations seem to have had some relation to the stone statues of the island, it would be dangerous to conclude that the sun was the object towards which the prostrations were directed. Similarly, Gi112 speaks of an "ancient solar cult" in Mangaia, but it is doubtf8.1 whether this is more than an infereIfce from the mode of orientation of the dead which probably arises directly out of the belief in the direction of the home of the dead and only corresponds with the direction of the sun if this home lie either east or west.3 While there is thus no direct evidence of any cult of the sun in Polynesia, there are features of the ritual of the Areoi organization of eastern Polynesia which point to its essential purpose having been closely associated with the sun. The Areois were outwardly bands of strolIing players and NO·3