The Manaia is a mythological creature in

Māori culture Māori culture () is the customs, cultural practices, and beliefs of the Māori people of New Zealand. It originated from, and is still part of, Polynesians, Eastern Polynesian culture. Māori culture forms a distinctive part of Culture of New ...

, and is a common motif in Māori

carving Carving is the act of using tools to shape something from a material by scraping away portions of that material. The technique can be applied to any material that is solid enough to hold a form even when pieces have been removed from it, and y ...

and

jewellery Jewellery (or jewelry in American English) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment such as brooches, ring (jewellery), rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the ...

. The Manaia is usually depicted as having the head of a bird and the tail of a fish and the body of a man, though it is sometimes depicted as a bird, a serpent, or a human figure in profile. Other interpretations include a seahorse and a lizard. The word ''manaia'' is cognate with the founding Samoan term ''fa'amanaia'', and relevant to the Niuean ''fakamanaia'', both meaning to make a decoration or embellishment.www.maori.info Manaia page
/ref> The Manaia is traditionally believed to be the messenger between the earthly world of mortals and the domain of the spirits, and its symbol is used as a guardian against evil.
/ref> In this form, it is usually represented in a figure-of-eight shape, the upper half culminating in a bird-like beak. This form was also widely used in designs of door and window lintels and other architectural features, as well as in ceremonial hafts of weapons. Te Rangi Hiroa (1950) ''The Coming of the Maori'' a
The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
/ref> A study of Māori carving suggests that every naturalistic figure there is an equivalent Manaia form which can be seen as a distorted profile-face version of the equivalent full-face figure. It may be that the Manaia represents some spiritual or inner facet of the full face figure. Related Manaia-like symbols are also found in other

Polynesia Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in ...

n cultures, such as in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

and

Easter Island Easter Island (, ; , ) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, ...

. The manaia is a useful motif in carving, as it can be distorted to fit any shape and blended into many different designs. As such, it can be used to fill the empty spaces in wood carving, and in many compositions the background between the main figures is filled in with Manaia. It is a very common form in Maori jewellery (possibly only less common than the

hei-tiki The hei-tiki (, ) is an ornamental pendant of the Māori of New Zealand. Hei-tiki are usually made of pounamu ( greenstone), and are considered a taonga (treasure) by Māori. They are commonly called '' tiki'' by New Zealanders, a term th ...

and

hei matau A ''hei matau'' is a bone or greenstone carving in the shape of a highly stylised fish hook. They represent good luck and safe travel across water. Meaning The fish-hook shape of the ''hei matau'' means to know, which holds that the North Islan ...

), and is often found worn as a pendant carved from

bone A bone is a rigid organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells, store minerals, provide structure and support for the body, ...

or greenstone. Manaia designs vary subtly in form between

iwi Iwi () are the largest social units in New Zealand Māori society. In Māori, roughly means or , and is often translated as "tribe". The word is both singular and plural in the Māori language, and is typically pluralised as such in English. ...

, though they are often depicted as three-fingered, with these digits representing the trinity of birth, life, and death. A fourth finger, representing the circular rhythms of the life cycle and the afterlife, is also sometimes shown.

References

Modern Examples of Manaia Carvings
{{Māori Māori art Māori words and phrases Māori legendary creatures

See also

References