Māui (Hawaiian mythology)

In Hawaiian religion, Māui is a culture hero and ancient chief who appears in several different genealogies.

The great fish-hook of Māui is called Manaiakalani, and it is baited with the wing of Hina's pet bird, the ʻalae.

Māui repeated this trick several times, creating the Hawaiian Islands (Tregear 1891:236).

Hina, in the shape of a baling-gourd, appeared at the surface of the water, and Māui unwittingly grasped the gourd and placed it in front of his seat.

His mother Hina complained that her kapa (bark cloth) was unable to dry because the days were so short.

[2] The sun plead for life and agreed that the days shall be long in summer and short in winter (Pukui, Elbert, & Mookini 1974:36).

[3] In another version, Hina sends him to a big wiliwili tree where he found his old blind grandmother setting out bananas and steals them one by one until she recognised him and agreed to help him.

Tangled with the bait into a bitter death, Lifting up the very base of the island; Drawing it up to the surface of the sea.

—A song for Kualii, c. 1700 A.D. One day, Māui realized that men were being constrained by the sky.

Māui traveled to the town Lahaina in order to meet his father and push the sky up.

Some say if Māui and his father, Ru, had not worked together, the sky would have fallen completely and made the earth uninhabitable for humans.

The Long Eel had been causing trouble to a lot of the townsfolk, but thanks to Māui they were all safe now.

Then Māui buried Tuna, causing a palm tree to grow and creating the first coconuts.

[6] In the 2016 Disney computer-animated musical film Moana, the demigod Maui is voiced by Dwayne Johnson.

Abandoned by his human parents as a baby, the gods took pity on him and made him a demigod and gave him a magic fish hook that gives him the ability to shapeshift.

[7] He went on to perform miracles to win back the love of humanity, each of which earned him an animated tattoo.

He is fabled to have stolen the heart of Te Fiti, a powerful island goddess who creates life.

In the song "Shiny" composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mark Mancina, Tamatoa called Maui "Ya little semi-demi-mini-god".

[8] This version of Maui incorporates elements of the Māui from Māori mythology and other Polynesian narratives.