ones, and with it made a woman, whom he gave to the man as his
wife, and they became the progenitors of mankind. This," Mr. Ellis
continues, "always appeared to me a mere recital of the Mosaic account of
creation, which they had heard from some European, and I never placed any
reliance on it, although they have repeatedly told me it was a tradition
among them before any foreigners arrived. Some have also stated that the
woman's name was _Ivi_, which would be by them pronounced as if written
_Eve_. _Ivi_ is an aboriginal word, and not only signifies a bone, but
also a widow, and a victim slain in war. Notwithstanding the assertion of
the natives, I am disposed to think that _Ivi_, or _Eve_, is the only
aboriginal part of the story, as far as it respects the mother of the
human race. Should more careful and minute inquiry confirm the truth of
this declaration, and prove that their account was in existence among them
prior to their intercourse with Europeans, it will be the most remarkable
and valuable oral tradition of the origin of the human race yet known."

In this case, I believe the probability is that the story of the creation
of the first woman from the bone of a man(50) existed among the Tahitians
before their intercourse with Christians, but I need hardly add that the
similarity between the Polynesian name for bone, _ivi_, even when it was
used as the name of the first woman, and the English corruption of the
Hebrew {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, Chavah, Eve, could be the result of accident only. Whatever
Chavah meant in Hebrew, whether life or living or anything else, it never
meant bone, while the Tahitian _ivi_, the Maori _wheva_,(51) meant bone,
and bone only.

These principles and these cautions were hardly thought of in the days of
Sir William Jones and Colonel Wilford, but they ought to be thought of at
present. Thus, before Bopp had laid down his code of phonetic laws, and
before Burnouf had written his works on Buddhism, one cannot be very much
surprised that Buddha should have been identified with Minos and Lamech;
nay, that even the Babylonian deity Belus, and the Teutonic deity Wodan or
Odin, should have been supposed to be connected with the founder of
Buddhism in India. As Burnouf said in his "Introduction a l'Histoire du
Buddhisme," p. 70: "On avait meme fait du Buddha une planete; et je ne
sais pas si quelques savants ne se plaisent pas encore aujourd'hui a
retrouver