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Sick persons were often treated in the same way, and inasmuch as the unlucky might be supposed to have offended the gods, the victims of sudden and striking misfortune were treated as law-breakers and subjected to the punishment of Muru described in the last chapter. Death in Maori eyes was not the Great Leveller, as with us.
He also that beareth on his head that gem which is known as the most wonderful on earth, that king of the Yavanas, who hath chastised Muru and Naraka, whose power is unlimited, and who ruleth the west like another Varuna, who is called Bhagadatta, and who is the old friend of thy father, hath bowed his head before Jarasandha, by speech and specially by act.
Under the law of muru a man smitten by sudden calamity was politely plundered of all his possessions. It was the principle under which the wounded shark is torn to pieces by its fellows, and under which the merchant wrecked on the Cornish coast in bye-gone days was stripped of anything the waves had spared. Among the Maoris, however, it was at once a social duty and a personal compliment.
Moreover they would have been insulted if he had not claimed it. Of course, he who lost by muru one week might be able to repay himself the next. Certain colonial writers have exhausted their powers ridicule no very difficult task upon what they inaccurately call Maori communism.
Earth says, 'Why should I ever tell anyone to kill my own son? and is silent. None the less the boon is granted, the conditions are in due course fulfilled and after a furious encounter with Naraka at his city of Pragjyotisha, Krishna is once again victorious. During the battle, Muru or Mura, the arch demon, aided by seven sons, strenuously defends the city.
There, after slaying innumerable Danavas that will be thorns in the side of the deities, I shall take up my residence in Kusasthali at the city of Dwaraka. While residing in that city I shall slay the Asura Naraka, the son of the Earth, him, that is, who will do an injury to Aditi, as also some other Danavas of the names of Muru and Pitha.
They determined to stay at their posts as long as possible, but they shipped some tons of goods to Sydney, in case of a taua or stripping-party which might be expected to visit them as soon as their protector should have died. Such a proceeding would have been strictly in accordance with Maori law of muru, and would be understood as a complimentary testimonial to the dead man's dignity.
In the worst of times no missionary's life was taken. The Wesleyans at Whangaroa did indeed, in 1827, lose all but life. But the sack of their station was but an instance of the law of Muru. Missionaries were then regarded as Hongi's dependants. When he was wounded they were plundered, as he himself was more than once when misfortune befel him.
He also that beareth on his head that gem which is known as the most wonderful on earth, that king of the Yavanas, who hath chastised Muru and Naraka, whose power is unlimited, and who ruleth the west like another Varuna, who is called Bhagadatta, and who is the old friend of thy father, hath bowed his head before Jarasandha, by speech and specially by act.
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