tohunga
Sign in to saveIn the culture of the Māori of New Zealand, a tohunga (tōhuka in Southern Māori dialect) is an expert practitioner of any skill or art, either religious or otherwise. Tohunga include expert priests, healers, navigators, carvers, builders, teachers and advisors. A tohunga may have also been the head of a whānau (family) but quite often was also a rangatira (chief) and an ariki (noble). The equivalent and cognate in Hawaiian culture is kahuna, tahu'a in Tahitian.
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Encyclopedic overview
4 sectionsContents
- Callings and practices
- Practices and knowledge
- Tohunga under tapu
- References
In the culture of the Māori of New Zealand, a tohunga (tōhuka in Southern Māori dialect) is an expert practitioner of any skill or art, either religious or otherwise. Tohunga include expert priests, healers, navigators, carvers, builders, teachers and advisors. A tohunga may have also been the head of a whānau (family) but quite often was also a rangatira (chief) and an ariki (noble). The equivalent and cognate in Hawaiian culture is kahuna, tahu'a in Tahitian.
==Callings and practices== thumb|"Matapo, a blind tohunga" in Te Tohunga by Wilhelm Dittmer, 1907
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “tohunga” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.