Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nganga

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was DELETE. Mo0[talk] 03:12, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nganga

This one's a little odd - I was notified about it by User:Kahuroa, who (as his username suggests) knows a few details about Māori culture. There seems to be no such god as Nganga, and no Māori god of sleet... googling on nganga + Māori leads to about 350 hits. take out Bible translations (in which it means "hailstorm"), and you're left with about 175. Only about 1/3 of these refer to Maori mythology, so we're down to only about 60 hits. Several - all identical to a stub on Encyclopedia Mythica - refer to Nganga being the Māori god of sleet. The rest all talk about Ua, the Māori god of rain, who is known by variants of that name depending on what type of rain is involved: Ua-Roa for long rain, Uanui for heavy rain, and Ua-Nganga for rainstorms. It looks like somewhere along the line some lines of communication have got crossed, and a new, fictional god may have been created... Grutness...wha? 12:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Per nom, nice bit of research. I wonder, now that you have learned some, if you should add the Maori gods you have identified as a list, perhaps to the Polynesian mythology page? A list seems better than a bunch of non expandedable stubs.Obina 13:50, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Ua is just the word for rain. These 'gods' (seems to me) reflect the kind of expansions on a theme that you get in chants or songs in oral cultures - such repetitions are part of the structure of almost any oral traditional composition. Rhythm helps recall and transmission, and so a word in a chant, like ua, rain, might be followed by expanded variants, ua, ua roa, ua nui, ua nganga (rain, long rain, heavy rain, storming rain) etc. - it's a bit like deciding that la la la is the European god of rhythm and song. Please no list unless evidence of actual worship/ritual exists, not just a line in a song somewhere that has been misinterpreted. Kahuroa 19:12, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I've since noticed that the Ua variants are listed on the article for Ua. I've modified the text of that article a little to reflect the comments above. Grutness...wha? 23:55, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• Delete or listify. Stifle 02:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
• me again...Delete On further thought there seem to be several related articles that are of dubious origin. Nganga and Ua are not genuine Maori gods - same prob goes for Polynesian. Ua and therefore also Nganga and Hau Marangi (Wind from the Sky) seem to be someone's attempt to combine the Biblical Flood story with Maori/Polynesian mythology. This combining could have happened in the 19th century - like the Great Fleet idea started by 19th century Europeans with a romantic view of us Polynesians. There must be some obscure source for Nganga and co, since I haven't come across them before. Maybe someone's found some old mouldy 19th century tome and is quoting from it to make these articles. The article Papa (mythology) is genuine - the earth mother was Papatuanuku, but the article has a detail about a flood that seems strange to me and may also be Biblical Flood-derived (It kinda conflicts with the Ruaumoko part of the story anyway). Anyhoo, if it is decided to list, they should not be described as gods without some pretty heavy qualification. Kahuroa 11:41, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete unless some kind of verification can be found (although I doubt it). Nice researching, people! Ziggurat 20:56, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete unless verified. -Sean Curtin 01:38, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.