C odrington, K eesing, and Central M elanesianmana: Two Historic Trajectories of P olynesian Cultural Dissemination

Abstract

Abstract Much has been said aboutmanasinceRobertHenryCodrington's 1891 exegesis based mainly on ethnography from theBanksIslands in northernVanuatu. InPolynesian contexts, mana has been regarded as a cultural common denominator, with comparatively minor differences within the vastPolynesian cultural area. InMelanesian scholarship, however, consistent with the general emphasis on cultural diversity within the region, it remains a matter of considerable debate whether there is much to gain from approaching mana with generalising ambitions. In his seminal contributions to the discussion,RogerKeesing insists thatCodrington mistook mana for a noun and consequently derailed scholarship onMelanesian mana. ButCodrington's work is mainly based in the language of the island ofMota, whereCodrington spent several years during his almost three‐decade long tenure as a pioneer linguist and missionary with theAnglicanMelanesianMission. And in theMota language, mana is nominalised. In this article,Iargue that this is attributable to regular visits from thePolynesian outlier Tikopia in pre‐Christian times, intensified by the proclivity of theMaori‐speaking first leaders of theMelanesianMission to identify concepts that were phonemically familiar in their search for adequate translations of theological notions related to spiritual agency. When the language ofMota was chosen as thelingua francaof theMelanesianMission in the 1860s, theBanksIslands' version of mana, soon explicitly associated with the powers of theChristianGod, was disseminated through large parts of the south and centralSolomonIslands and northernVanuatu – includingTikopia. This has provided the islands exposed to Anglicanism with relatively new notions of agency and efficacy and created some common cultural denominators.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.