The Andaman Islanders: A Study in Social Anthropology

(Tug Andaman Islands are past of a chain of islands 
stretching fiom Cape Negrais in Burma to Achin Head in 
Sumatra. This line of islands forms a single geographical 
system, as it were a submarine range of mountains, the highest 
points rising here and there above the surface of the ocean, 
Some 80 miles or so from Cape Negrais lies the first of the 
islands in the chain, Preparis Island, between which and the 
mainland the sea depth does not exceed 100 fathoms. South- 
wards of this the submarine ridge sinks to a depth of about 
180 fathoms, rising again to form the small group of islands 
known as the Cocos, some $0 miles from Preparis. Geographi- 
cally the Cocos may be regarded as part of the Andaman 
Group, Landfall Island, the most northerly point of the 
, Andamans proper, is only distant from them some 30 miles, 

' and the sea depth between does’not exceed 45 fathoms, The 
Aridaman Group itself consists of the Great and Little Andaman 

"with their outlying islets, and occupies a distance approximately 
noéh and south of about 210 miles, Eighty miles to the 

‘south of the Andamans lie the Nicobar Islands, a scattered 

, archipelago occupying a distance of about 160 miles from north 
to south. The sea betwecn the Andamans and the Nicobars is 
‘wver zoo fathoms deep, Deep sea also divides the Nicobars 
rom Sumatia, which is about rto milesgdistant from the most 
doutherly point of Great Nicobar. 

Whis line of islands is part of a long fold extending from 
fre edstern end of the Himalayas, which includes the Arakan 
"Yomah Range of Burma and the Andaman and Nicobar 

BAS 

Islands and finds its continuation in the islands off the west 
coast of Sumatra’. 

On the west the Andamans ate separated from the coast of 
Madras, 700 miles distant, by the Sea of Bengal, On the east 
the Andaman Sea, a depression with a depth of over 1000 fathoms, 
sepavates the Andamans and Nicobars from the Malay Isthmus 
and Peninsula, Acioss the Andaman Sea, less than 100 miles 
distant from the Andamans, there runs a line of volcanic activity, 
marked by two small islands, Barren Island in Lat. 12° 15’ N, and 
Long. 93° 50’ E., and Narkondam in Lat, 13° 26’ N, and Long, 
gs” 15’ Et 

The Cocos, the Andamans and the Nicobars ate now part of 
the Indian Empire. The Cocos Islands are occupied by a 
station for witeless telegraphy. In the Andaman Islands there 
is a penal settlement at Port Blair, to which are sent the 
criminals of India and Burma. The Nicobars are treated as 
one with the Andamans for administrative purposes, 

Until the nineteenth century the Cocos Islands were un- 
inhabited. The Andamans and the Nicobars have for many 
centuries been inhabited by two entirely different races. The 
Andamanese belong to that branch of the human species known 
to anthropologists as the Negrito race, They are short of 
stature with black skins and frizzy hair. The Nicobarese, on 
the other hand, resemble the races of Indo-China and Malaya, 
and have brown skins and lank hair, and are of medium stature, 

’The Andaman Islands consist of the Great Andaman and 
the Little Andaman, and a number of smaller islands. The 
Great Andaman may be regarded as one island, although it is 
divided by narrow sea water creeks into four areas, e“ten 
spoken of as separate islands and called North Andaman, 

1 The formation of the Arakan Fold (including the Andaman and Nicobar 
Islands), dates from the middle of the Tertiary Period, and was apparently gonnected 
with the great movements that produced the Ilimalaya-Alpme mountain system and 
the Circum-Pacific Fold, The Andaman Sea, in the Iater Tertiary period, was 

prolonged much fmther to Re north, over the region now occupied by the Pegu 
Yomah. 

© This line of volcanic activity is a minor continuation of the Sunda Range of 
volcanoes of Java and Sumatra, It is continued noxthwaid, parallel to the Arakan 
Fold, as far as the extinct volcano of Puppadoung, east of Pagan, not fer from 

Lat. 21° 

Middle Andaman, Baratang and South Andaman, It isea 
long narrow stretch of land with a much indented coast, 
surrounded by many smaller islands, of which the most im- 
portant are Interview Island off the west coast, Ritchie’s 
Archipelago on the east, Rutland Island at the extreme south, 
and the outlying North Sentinel Island. The length of,the 
Great Andaman with Rutland Island is nearly 160 miles, while 
the breadth from sea to sea is nowhere more than 20 miles, 
The Little Andaman lies to the south of the Great Andaman, 
about 30 miles distant fiom Rutland Island, from which it is 
separated by a shallow strait with a maximum depth of only 
ar fathoms, The island is about 26 miles long from north to 
south and about 16 miles wide. 

Viewed from the sea the islands appear as a series of hills, 
nowhere of any great height, covered fiom sky-line to high- 
water mark with dense and lofty forest. The hill-ranges run 
approximately north and south, in the same direction as the 
islands themselves, and attain a greater clevation on the east 
than on the west. The highest point of the North Andaman is 
Saddle Peak (2402 feet), that of Middle Andaman is Mt Diavolo 
(1678 feet), while the South Andaman has the Mt Harriett Range 
(1805 feet), and in Rutland Island there is Mt Foord (1422 feet), 
There ate no streams of any size, The water drains from the 
hills into tidal crecks running through mangrove swamps, often 
many miles in length. The coast is broken by a number of 
magnificent harbours, The shores are fringed with extensive 
coral reefs, and on these and in the creeks there is abundance 
of fish and molluscs. 

“gUhe islands, save for the clearings of the Penal Settlement, 
are covered with dense tropical forest, There are few mammals, 
the only two of any size being a species of pig (Sus anda- 
manensis, Blyth) and a civel-cat (Paradoxurus tytlerti, Tytler). 
The other mammals are a few specics of rats, a tree-shrew and 
some species of bats. Of birds there ate many different species, 
some of them peculiar to the islands. The reptiles include a 
considerable number of species of snakes, and a few" species of 
lizards, of which the most noteworthy is the large Monitor 
lizard (Varanus salvator), 

Img 

’ 

The climate is warm and moist, and fairly uniform throughout 
the year. The mean temperature for the year at Port Blair is 
about 86° F, (80° F. on the wet bulb thermometer), The lowest 
temperatures are recorded in January and February, and the 
highest in March, April, or May. The average lowest tempera- 
turesin the South Andaman over a peiiod of seven years is 
667° F., the minimum during that period being 63° F. The 
average highest temperature in the shade for the same period 
was 96° F,, the maximum being 97°. The average diurnal 
variation is 10°, 

The average rainfall of seven stations in the Penal Settlement 
of Port Blair, for a period of seven years, was 138 inches per 
annum, the averages of the different stations varying from 104 
to 172 inches, For the same period the average number of 
rainy days in the year was 177, the minimum being 160 and the 
maximum 196, 

The islands are sufficiently far from the Equator to have a 
single well-defined rainy season, The greater part of the rain 
falls during ‘the south-west monsoon, which lasts fiom the middle 
of May to the middle of November. The north-east monsoon 
extends over the other six months of the year, which include 
the dry and hot seasons. 

The average weather can be shown most conveniently by 
means of a calendar. 

January. Cool; little or no 1ain; wind N.N.E.; nights sbmetimes 
foggy, 

Febiuary. Cool; little or no rain; wind N.N.E.; very clear; light airs, 

March. Hot by day, cool nights ; little or no 1ain ; wind N,N.E. ; light 
aixs, occasional haze ; the weather gets hotter as the month passes, 

April. Very hot; little or no rain; wind variable, off-shore at night 
and on-shoie by day; calm and hazy, 

May. The fist half of the month Itke April; the south-west monsoon 
sets in about the 15th; the remainder of the month cooler and ypith wind 
W.S.W. 

June. Fairly cool ; heavy rains ; wind W.S.W,, squally. 

July. } 

August. ® - Do. do, do do, 

September. i) 

October. Variable wind and weather; generally some calm weather ; 
waterspouts may occur. 

November. Duiing the fist half of the month the wind and weathor 
are very unceitain; a cyclone may occur; after the middle of the month 
the noith-east monsoon sets in. 

December, Faitly cool ; not much rain; wind N.N.E, 

Many of the violent cyclonic storms that sweep across the 
Sea of Bengal seem to form themselves a little to the south of 
the Andamans. Cyclones of exceptional violence struck Port 
Cornwallis in 1844 and Port Blair in 1864 and 1891. 

The aborigines of the Andaman Islands have been in their 
present home for a great many centuries, It is not possible to 
say with any degree of certainty how or when they first reached 
the islands, Geological and other evidence would seem to show 
that the Andamans were united to the mainland along the line 
of the Arakan Fold in later Tertiary times, but even this ig 
perhaps not quite certain. In any case the period of past land 
connection seems to be so remote that it had probably ceased 
to exist at the time when the islands were peopled by the 
ancestors of the present natives. If the ancestors of the 
Andamanese reached the islands at the time of a past land 
connection, they can only have done so from the Arakan region 
of Burma. On the other hand, if they travelled by sea they 
must almost certainly have started from the Burmese coast 
(Pegu or Arakan). The north-east monsoon would drift them 
thence on to the Andamans, It is conceivable that they might 
have travelled from Sumatra by way of the Nicobars, but the 
north-east monsoon would have opposed their progress in this 
direction, while the south-west monsoon would have driven 
them to the east of the Andamans’, It is hardly possible to 
imagine them coming from the Malay Peninsula across the wide 

1 The flom of the Andamans and Cocos contains a number of species, the 
presence of which can only he explained by the supposition of a past Innd con- 
nection wh the Arakan region. (See Piain, ‘The Vogatation of the Coco Group,” 
Jou n, Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, Vol. ux, Part u, pp. 283—406.) On the other hand, 
the paucity of mammalian fauna is such as to lend to the conclusion that tha islands 
were isolated at a period when the mammals now Lypical of the mainland did not 
exist there. (See Miller, ‘‘Manunals of the Andaman and Nicobar lands," Broc, 
National Museum, U.S: A, Vol. XX1¥.) 

2 There is no evislence of the former existence of Negritos in the Nicabas, but 
on the other hand, thee is equally no direct evidence of their former presence in 
Lower Burma, 

stretch of the Andaman Sea. The balance of probability is in 
favour of the view that the Andamans wee peopled, either by 
Vv’ sea or by land, fiom the 1egion of Lower Burma, 

Of the Negrito race, to which the Andamanese belong, 
there are two other branches still in existence. The fist of 
theSe consists of the people who may be conveniently spoken 
of as the Semang, inhabiting the interior of the Malay Peninsula 
between 5° and y® N, Latitude The other branch of this 
primitive race 1s found in the interior of the Philippine’ Islands 
From their present distribution it is clear that the Neguttos 
must at some long past time have wandered over a wide area in 
south-eastern Asia, The connection between the Andamanese 
and the Semang can only have been either through Sumatra 
and the Nicobars, or, more probably, by way of Lower Burma, 
Communication between the Malay Peninsula and the Philippine 
Islands must have been either by way of Borneo or Celebes, or 
else by way of Annam and Cochin China, It is certainly 
many centuries, and probably many thousands of years, since 
the three surviving bianches of the race were cut off from all 
communi¢ation with each other. 

In the Malay Peninsula and in the Philippines the Negritos 
have for a long time been living in contact with other races, 
They have been driven back from the coasts ahd fortile valleys 
into the less accessible districts, There is ample) evidence that 
they have adopted many of the customs of the raceS around 
them, and have even adopted to a great extent the language 
of their alien neighbours. The original Negrito cultue and 
language and even perhaps the original physical type have bes 

+ Modified in these two branches of the race. 
z In the case of the Andaman Islanders it is possible that they 
Ly M have been entirely isolated in their island home, and have not 
ete n affected by contact with other races, but have beew free to 
evélop their own cultme in adaptation to their own enviton- 
srgnent, If a bypothests to this effect were accepted we should 
e "see in tke Andamanese the direct descendants, in physical 
Y , character, in language, and in culture, of the original Nefrito 

: 

wy x 2 On the accompanying map of south-eastern Asia the regions now oveupred bys 
> “ the Negntos ate shown by the shading, ’ 

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Map [ 

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tace. In historical times it is known that the islands have been 
avoided by mariners navigating the adjacent seas, owing to the 
fact that the natives attacked all strangcis who landed or were 
wrecked upon their shores, Moreover, the islands offered little 
inducement 1o visitors or settlers, The coconut, which is one 
of the mainstays of fife in tropical islands, was not found ia the 
Andamans prior to the first European settlement. 

The earliest authentic reference to the Andaman Islands 
seems to be that of two Arab travellers dating from A.D, 871, 
In the eighteenth century the Abbé Renaudot translated the 
account of these travels. Of the Andamans we read, “Au dela 
‘de ces deux Isles on trouve la mer appellée d’Andeman, Les 
peuples qui habitent sur la coste, mangent de la chair humaine, 
toute crud, Ils sont noirs, ils ont les cheveux crespus, le visage 
et les yeux affreux, les pieds fort grands et presque longs d'une 
coudée, et ils vont tout nuds, Ils n’ont point de barques, et s'ils 
en avoient ils ne mangerojent pas tous les passants qu’ils peuvent 
attraper. Les vaissaux se trouvant retardez dans leur route 
par Jes vents contraires, sont souvent obligez dans ces mers de 
mouiller 4 Ja coste ob sont ces Barbares pour y faire de 
Teau, lors quiils ont consommé celle guils avoient a bord, 
Ils en attrapent souvent quelques-uns, mais la pluspart se 
sauvent}” 

It would scem that the Chinese and Japanese knew the 
islandsein the first millenium A.D, and referred to them by the 
names Yeng-t'o-mang and Andaban respectively Marco Polo 
gives a brief notice of the islands. “Angaman is a very large 
island, not governed by a king. The inhabitants are idolaters, , 
amd are a most brutish and savage race, having heads, eyes, 4nd 
teeth resembling those of the canine species. Their dispositions 
are cruel, and evéry person, not being of their own nation, whom 
tlicy gan lay their hands upon, they kill and eat%” Some of 
Marco Polo's statements about the Andamans, as that the natives 

1 Anetennes Relations des Tudes et dela Chine; De Deux Voyageurs Mahometans, 
qui y kilerent dans le neuviéme sitcle 5 ‘Traduites d'Arabe (par M. I’Adbé Renaudol, _ 
Pa®is, MDCCXVIII, pp. 5 and 6. 

2 Takakasu's Edition of I-tsing, pp. xxviii seq. 

® The Trauels of Marco Pola, Edited by John Masefield, Buerymnan's Library, 

1908, p. B47 

live on rice and milk, and that they have coconuts, and plantains, 
are incorrect. It is evident that all he knew of the islands was 
derived from hearsay. The passage quoted is only of importance 
as showing that the reputation of the Andamanese was such as to 
cause them to be feared and avoided. 

fe more trustworthy account is that of Master Caesar 
Frederike, who passed near the Nicobars in 1566, “From 
Nicubar to Pegu is, as it were, a row or chain of an infinite 
number of islands, of which many are inhabited with wild people; 
and they call those islands the Islands of Andemaon, and they 
call their people savage or wild, because they eat one ahother: 
also, these islands have war one with another, for they have small 
barques, and with them they take one another, and so eat one 
another: and if by evil chance any ship be lost on those 
islands, as many have been, there is not one man of those ships 
lost there that escapeth uneaten or unslain. These people have 
not any acquaintance with any other people, neither have they 
trade with any, but live only of such fruits as those islands yield.” 

There are numerous references to the Andamans in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth century, and all of them show that 
the islands were feared and avoided. During these and the 
previous centuries wrecks must have occurred in considerable 
numbers, and it is probable, from what is now known of the 
natives, that the mariners would be immediately slain. Visits 
were also paid by ships whose water supply had run out, and 
by Malay pirates, There is evidence that boats, either Malay 
or Chinese, sometimes visited the islands in search of edible 
birds’ nests and trepang, In some cases Andamancse were 
captured and carried off as slaves, It is extremely improba‘le 

1 Extracts of Master Caesar Frederike : his Bighteene Yeeres’ Indian Obseive- 
tions, Purchas: his Pilgrimes, London, 1625; Vol. 1, p. 1710. In spite of the 
repeated descriptions of the Andamanese by early writers as ferocious cannibals, 
there is good 1eason to think that they haye not deserved quite so evil a reputation. 
If they had ever been cannibals they had certainly abandoned the custom by the 
time the islands weie occupied in 1858. It is improbable that such invelerate man- 
eaters, as they-are supposed to have been, would have entirely altered their ways in 
the couse of a century or two, The legend probably had its origin in the fact shat 
the Andamanese attacked all strangers who landed on their coasts, and (in the North 
Andaman, at any rate) often disposed of the bocies of slain enemies by cutting them 
in pieces and burning them on a fire. 

that such visitors ever succeeded in establishing friendly relations 
with the islanders. 

There is one way in which the life of the Andamanese was 
affected by the vessels that visited or were wrecked upon their 
shores, since it was by this means that ihey learnt the use 
of iron, bd 

It is impossible now to determine the date at which they 
became acquainted with the metal. The earliest reference 1o 
the subject is in an account of a visit to tha Andamans 
in 1771, where it is shown that the natives were at that time 
aware of the value of iron’. Until the middle of the nine- 
teenth century the only supply of the metal was from wrecks, 
of which there have always been a fair number, 

Until the end of the eighteenth century there was no 
attempt made to open up communication with the Andaman 
Islands, although the Nicobar Islands were the scene of several 
attempts to establish a colony. In 1788, owing to the menace 
to shipping constituted by the islands and their inhabitants, the 
East India Company, under Lord Cornwallis, commissioned 
Archibald Blair to start a settlement, convicts being sent as 
labourers. The settlement was founded in September, 1789, 
in the harbour now known as Port Blair, but then called Port 
Cornwallis, In spite of the hostility of the natives the colony 
seems to have been successful. In 1792 it was transferred from 
the first site to the harbour in the North Andaman now known 
as Port Cornwallis, The transfer was made with the idea of 
creating a naval base, for which the spot chosen was well 
adapted. Unfortunately the new site proved to be very un- 
healthy, and in 1796 the scheme was abandoned, the convicts 
were transferred to Penang, and the settlers returned to 
India. 

7 the account is that of a visit to the Andamans in t7yx by John Richie, 
published in the Judian Antiguary, Vol. XXX, Igot, pp. 232 seq, Two natives 
came off to the ship in a canoe, and Ritchie writes: I gaye them some nails and 
bits of old iron which pleased them much; and about Unee in the aftewoon, they want _, 
injp the canoe, and tried hard to pull the obain plates from the yessel’s side. They 
went astern when this would not do, and dragged strongly and long at the rudder 
chains; but these were too well fixed ; and at last, they went towards the shore at 
an easy rate, looking al their nails, and singing all the way.” 

oe 4 

During the next sixty years the islands remained unoccupied 
save by the aborigines. There were a number of wrecks in 
different parts of the islands, and in some cases the crews were 
slain, In 1839 a geologist, Dr Helfer, visited the islands in 
the hope of finding minerals, and was killed by the natives. 
In 1834 two transports, the Briton and the Runnymede, were 
wrecked in a cyclone on Ritchic’s Archipelago, one of the 
ships being thrown high up over a reef into a mangrove swamp. 
The crew and soldiers were safely landed, and were eventually 
rescued with hardly any loss of life. As they were a large 
party they were safe from the possible attacks of the natives, 
and they lived on stores rescued from the wrecks, 

In view of the number of wrecks that occurred on the 
islands and the desirability of establishing there some harbour 
where vessels might safely call for water or shelter from storms, 
the East India Company again considered the question of 
colonizing the Andamans. When the Company, at the end 
of the Indian Mutiny, found themselves with a large number 
of prisoners on their hands, it was decided to create a new 
Penal Settlement, and the site of the settlement of 1788 was 
chosen for this purpose, and renamed Port Blair, 

~ The Penal Settlement was established in March 1858, and 
has been in existence ever since, The aborigines were hostile 
from the outset, and gave much trouble by their raids. They 
made a determined effort to oust the invaders front their 
country, To establish friendly relations with them an institution 
known as the Andamanese Homes was founded, to provide free 
tations and lodging, and medical attendance, to such of them as 
could be induced to visit the Settlement, Through the efforts 
of successive officers in charge of these Homes friendly relations 
were established, first of all with the Ada-Bea tribe in the 
neighbourhood of Port Blair, then with other tribes @f the 
South Andaman, and at a later date with the inhabitants of 
the North Andaman and the Little Andaman. At the present 
day there 4s only~o dy of Andamanese still persistently 
hostile, and these are the so-called /grawa of the interior of the 
South Andaman. These /gvawa, since about 1870, have made 
repeated attacks on isolated parties of convicts and forest 

LAV IT 

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The Andaman Islands, showing the distribution of tribe 

“ey 

workers and on the friendly Andamanese. Punitive expeditions 
have been sent against them on several occasions, and attempts 
to set up friendly relations with them have becn made by 
leaving presents in their huts, and by captuiing some of them 
and keeping them for a time at Port Blair, At the ptesent time 
the Jarawa are as hostile as eve. @ 

Although of one race throughout, the Andaman Islanders 
are divided into several groups, with differences of language 
and culture. There are two main divisions, which will be 
spoken of as the Great Andaman Group and the Little 
Andaman Group respectively. The Great Andaman Group 
includes all the natives of the Gieat Andaman with the 
exception of those of the interior of the South Andaman 
who ate known as /arawa, The Little Andaman Group 
includes all the inhabitants of the Little Andaman, those 
of the North Sentinel Island and the Javawa of the South 
Andaman. 

These two different divisions exhibit many differences of 
language and culture. All the languages of the Great Andaman 
Group are closely related to one anothei. They have the same 
grammatical structure, and a large number of 1oots are the 
same in all or in several of them, In the same way the 
language of the /grazva, so far as it is known, is very similar 
to that of the natives of the Little Andaman. On the other 
hand*when the language of the Little Andaman is compared 
with the Great Andaman languages there is a very striking 
difference, Of a vocabulary of several hundred words collected 
in the Little Andaman there were less than a dozen in which 
the root or stem was clearly the same as that of words in the 
Great Andaman. While the grammatical structure of the 
languages of the two groups is fundamentally the same, this 
can enly be shown in a somewhat detailed analysis, and there 
are many important differences, : 

With regard to technical culture the same grouping appears, 
There is a.gdneral similarity betwcen all the tribes of the , 
Great Andaman Group, while thé Javawa and the inhabitants 

_ of the Little Andaman have a technical culture of, thelreow a 
that is mackedly different from that of the: other division, ly 

The natives of the Great Andaman Group are divided into 
tribes, of which there are ten, each with its own distinctive 
language or dialect, and with a name, The following is a list 
of these tribes, passing from north to south —Aka-Cari, 
Aka-Kora, Aka-Bo, Aka- Jertt, Aka-Kede, Aka-Kyl, Qhg i urwot, 
A-Puétkwar, Akar-Bale,and Aka-Bea, In each case the name 
is given in the form in which it is used by the tribe itself, 
Thus the Afa-Bea speak of the A-Pudikwar as Aka-Bojig-yab, 
and refer to the Akar-Bale as Aka-Bala-wa, and there are 
similar variants of other tribal names, 

The natives of the Little Andaman refer to themselves as 
Onge (men), It is probable that the so-called /grawa of the 
South Andaman have the same word. In a vocabulary obtained 
by Colebrooke in 1790-from a Jarawa near Port Blair, the word 
Mincopie is given as meaning a native of the Andaman Islands. 
This would seem to be simply the same pire as the Little 
Andaman MM'onge-bi = 1 am Onge, or lama“man,.” The word 
J grawa is apparently derived from the Asa-Bea language, but 
is now used by all the friendly natives (ie. the natives of the 
Great Andaman Group) to denote those of the Little Andaman 
Group. In the official publications dealing with the Andamans, 
however, the term /arawa has come to be applied solely to the 
hostile natives of the Great Andaman, It is in this sense that 
the word is used in the present work, the name Onge being 
reseryed for the natives of the Little Andaman, It must be 
remembered, however, that the so-called /avawa probably call 
themselves Onge, while the Oxge of the Little Andaman are 
called Jarawa by the natives of the friendly tribes of the Great 
Andaman, The name Alincopie was at one time common in 
ethnological literature as a term for the Andaman Islanders, 

It is convenient to divide the tribes of the Great Andaman 
Group into two subdivisions, to be spoken of as the Northern 
Group (including the first four tribes mentioned above) and 
the Southern Group (including the other six tribes). Between 
_ these two divisions there are a number, of differences of culture. 
They have, for example, different forms of bow, and differertt 
kinds of baskets, The differences between them are much 
-slighter than those between the Great Andaman tribes and 

the natives of the Little Andaman, but they areof sufficient 
importance to make it necessary to distinguish them from one 
another. 

The different divisions of the Andamanese may for con- 
venience be set out in the form of a table. 

I, GREAT ANDAMAN GROUP, 
A. Northern Group, including the tribes -— 
Aka-Cari, 
Aka-Kora, 
Aka-Bo, 
Aka-Jeru, 

B, Southern Group, including the tribes -— 

Aka-Kede, 
Aka-Kol, 
Qho-Jumet 
A-Putikwar, 
Akar-Bale, 
Aka-Bea, 

Il, Lirrte ANDAMAN GROUP. 

A, The inhabitants of the Little Andaman (Oxge), 
&, The /grawa of the South Andaman, 
C. The inhabitants of the North Sentinel Island, 

The distribution of these different groups as it was in 1858 
is shown on the map. 

There is one important feature of this distribution that 
requires a few words of explanation, and that is the presence 
in the South Andaman of the /gvawa who ave allied by 
langugge and technical culture to the natives of the Little 
Andaman, There can be no doubt that the Jgrawa are the 
descendants of emigrants who at some time in the past made 
their way across from the Little Andaman and tltrust them- 
sewes in upon the inhabitants of Rutland Island and the South 
Andaman, maintaining their footing in the new country by 

force e axS 

The identity of the flora and fauna of the Little Andaman 
with those of the Gieat Andaman and the shallowness of the 
strait between the islands, suggests that at no very remote 
period they have been united by a continuous land connection. 
Whether or not this connection existed at the time when the 
islands were first peopled, it is at any rate reasonable to suppose 
that the original ancestors of the present Andamanese had one 
language and one cultwe. Once the Little Andaman was 
peopled, the strait between it and the Great Andaman seems to 
have acted as an effective barrier, to keep the two divisions of 
the race apart for many centuries. During the period of this 
separation each division followed its own line of development, 
with the result that there arose the considerable differences of 
language and culture that now exist. 

Ata much later date than this separation of the Andamanese 
into two isolated groups, and after the typical differences of 
language and culture had been developed, a party of natives 
must have made their way by canoe from the north of the 
Little Andaman to Rutland Island, They would have found 
that country occupied by natives of the Gieat Andaman Group. 
In spite of this they succeeded in establishing themselves in the 
South Andaman, and became the progenitors of the present 
Jarwwa, Owing to the difference of language all communica- 
tion between the Little Andaman invaders and those already 
occupying the invaded country would be impossible. @At the 
present day a native of the Little Andaman cannot make 
himself understood to a native of one of the Great Andaman 
tribes.) The result has been that the Jarawa have lived in a 
state of constant warfare with theit neighbours, and this hostility 
has lasted down to the present day, 

It is only on the above hypothesis that it is possible to 
explain how it comes about that we find in the South Andaman 
people with language and technical cultuie very similar to that 
of the Little Andaman, and differing from that of the remaining 
inhabitanto of the Great Andaman, It is impossible to say 
how long it is since this invasion from the Little Andaman taok 
place, At the end of the eighteenth century the /grawa were 
to be found in the neighbourhood of Port Blair. Lieutenant 

Colebiooke in 1790 came across an individual of this tribe 
and obtained from him a vocabulary. A comparison of this 
vocabulaiy with the language of the Little Andaman shows it 
to be essentially the same language’. 

A few words must be said on the position of the natives of 
the North Sentinel Island. Almost nothing is known of these 
people, What little information is available concerning their 
weapons and implements seems to point to their belonging to 
the Little Andaman Division. Thee is no communication 
between them and either the Great Andaman or the Little 
Andaman. It is possible that they have been separated from 
the other Andamanese as long as those of the Little Andaman 
have been separated from those of the Gieat Andaman, and 
would therefore constitute a third separate division, The South 
Sentinel Island is uninhabited, 

The total area of the Andamans is estimated to be about 
2500 square miles. This area is divided as follows:— 

Sq. miles, 

North Andaman, being the teiritory of the four tubes Aka- 

Cari, Aka-Koia, Aka-Bo, and Aka-Jeiu . © 8 4 540 

Middle Andaman and Batatang, occupied by fom tribes, 

Aka-Kede, Aka-Kol, Oko-Juwoi and A-Pucikwar. =, 790 

The Archipelago, occupied by the Akat-Bale tiibe . 9  . 140 

The South Andaman, occupied by the Aka-Bea and the 
Jaiawa. . eee ot . . en + 630 
Noth Sentinel Island 2... : . . 1 3a 
Little Andaman ‘ . oe . % : . « 370 

Tt is not possible to give accurately the area occupied by 
each tribe, as the boundaries are difficult to discover. The 
Aka-Bea is in an exceptional position, as there was no definite 
boundgry between them and the /gratwa, The two parties of 
natives lived in the same territory at enmity with each other, 
It would seem that the Asa-Bea kept on the whole more to the 
coast, while the /grawa lived in the interior, ry 

fin 1906 some Little Andaman visitors to Rutland Island enptured a Jarawe of 
that part. They told me that though he spoke diffciently fiom them, they could 
understand him faily well. 

Leaving aside the Aka-Bea, the largest of the Great Andaman 
tribes, as regards area of territory, was the Asa-Kede, which 
possessed over 300 square miles, After this tribe in order of 
size come the A-Pudikwar, Aka- Jeru and Aka-Kora tribes, while 
the smaller ones are the Okv-/uwoi, Aka-Kyl, Aka-Bo, Akar 
Balennd Aka-Cari, the last being perhaps the smallest of all, 

In 1901 an enumeration of the natives of the Great 
Andaman was attempted in connection with the census of 
India. Such an enumeiation was of course very difficult, and 
liable to considerable error. The results are given in the 
following table :— 

Adults Children Z 

Name of Tbs Males Females Males Females nota 

) Aka-Cart 16 15 6 2 39 
® Aka-Kova 31 32 14 19 96 
+, Aka-Bo 15 16 7 10 48 
Aka-Jeru 98 80 26 14 218 
Aka-Kede 24 30 3 2 59 

/ Aka-Kol 6 2 3 I 
, Oko-Juwoi 21 19 7 1 48 
ye A-Pucikwat 3r 14 2 3 50 
«s Akar-Bale 5 10 9 I 19 
}; Aka-Bea, 14 16 3 4 37 
Total 261 234 74 36 625 

These figures aie likely to be more accurate for the southern 
tribes (the last five on the list) than for the northern tribes, 
It is probable that, in the ‘North Andaman, some of the persons 
entimerated were entered under the wrong tribe, For many 
years the officers of the Andamans did not know of the existence 
of the Aka-Kova and Aka-Bo tribes, and members of these 
tribes have fallen into the habit of describing themselves to 
Europeans as either Aka-Jeru or Aka-Cari, My own opinion 
is that the numbers given for the Ada-/ern tribe are tog large, 
while those of the A#a-Kgra and Aka-Bo, and perhaps also the 
Aka-Kede, ate too small. 

For the census of 1901 an attempt was made to estimate 
the numbers of the Jarawa and the natives of the Little 
Andaman, any attempt at enumeration being impossible. The 
estimate given was as follows :— 

Little Andaman . . a » 672 
South Andaman Jarawa . .)sO1I7 
Rutland Island Juawa » 352 
North Sentinel Island. 4 / U7 

Total . + 1257 

This estimate is not of any great value. As regards the 
Little Andaman, my own information would lead me to 
estimate their numbers at between 600 and 700, thus agreeing 
with the estimate above. Concerning the North Sentinel Island 
nothing is known on which a satisfactory estimate could be 
based, The figures for the Rutland Island Jarawa are certainly 
very much too high. In 1907 I spent some weeks on Rutland 
Island trying to get into touch with the Jarawa there, At that 
time there were certainly not more than 50 all told on the 
island. I was only able to discover one camp, and that had 
been deserted just before it was discovered, but had not con- 
tained a dozen persons, The Rutland Island Jarawa have been 
cut off fiom the other Jarawa by the spread of the convict 
Settlement since about 1885. The majority of the /arawa now 
inhabit the interior and western coast of the South Andaman 
north of Port Blair, 

During the last fifty years the numbers of the Andamanese 
have been gieatly diminished. This has been the result of the 
European occupation of the islands, and is chiefly due to new, 
diseases that have been introduced amongst them, Syphilis | 
was introduced among the tribes of the South Andaman about 
1870, and this has now spread among all the Great Andaman 
tribes (that is, excluding the hostile /grawa), A large number; 
of natives are infected, and the disease is responsible directly 
and indirectly for a considerable increase in the death-rate, In 
March, 1877, an epidemic of measles broke out among the 
Andamanese, intioduced with a batch of convicts from Madras, 
and sfftead rapidly from one end of the Great Andaman to the 
other. In six weeks §1 out of 184 cases treated in hospital 
proved fatal. It is almost certain that the proportion of deaths 
wag much greater in the case of those, the vast majority, to whom 
no medical aid could be given. A writer on the Andamans' has 

? Portman, M. V., 4 History of Our Relations with the Andamanese, Caleutta, 

B.A, 

estimated that the mortality from measles and its sequelae was 
one-half if not two-thirds of the whole population of the Great 
Andaman, Other diseases which were formerly unknown to the 
islands seem also to have been introduced, including influenza. 

While the death-rate amongst the friendly Andamanese 
has Been enormously increased, the birth-rate has at the same 
time fallen to almost nothing, This is evident from the pro- 
portion of adults to children in the population table given 
above. In 1907, out of a total of about §00 natives whom 
I saw at different times, there were not more than a dozen 
children of less than five years old. A birth is a rare occur- 
rence, and of the children born very few survive infancy. 

This decrease of population has rot as yet affected the 
Little Andaman. The natives of this island have had very 
little contact with the Penal Settlement or with the tribes of 
the Great Andaman, and have thus escaped the diseases which 
are mainly responsible for the depopulation of the larger island, 

Several attempts have been made to estimate the former popu- 
lation of the Andamans, In the “Census Report” for rg01 the 
estimate given is 4800 for the whole group. Mr M. V. Portman 
has given an estimate of 8000. It seemed to me that one of 
these is too small and the other too large. Judging from what it 
is possible to learn about the habits of the natives, and the food 
supply available, I should estimate that the former population 
of the islands (in 1858) was about 55001 An estimate’ for the 
proportion of the different groups is as follows :— 

Estimated Density 

former per square 
population. mile, 
_Morth Andaman (four tribes) . ’ . + 1500 2°75 
Middle Andaman with Baiatang and Ruitchie’s 

Aichipelago ‘ see 2250 25 
South Andaman (Aka-Bea and Jaiawa) . =. -—:1200 %o 

* Little Andaman and North Sentinel . ~. _700 175° 
Total. « §650 2°25 

1 This estimate 1s based on what the Andamanese were able to tell me of the 
conditions under which they formerly lived. Of course such an estimate can only 
be of small value. I think it is more probable that I have underestimated the former 
population than that I have overestimated it, 

iM ¥ 

With regard to the comparative density per square mile of 
the different groups it may be pointed out that the reason for 
the smaller density of the South Andaman is the fact that the 
Aka-Bea and Jarawa were living there at war with one another, 
and the territory was -therefore probably not so fully occupied 
as in other patts of the islands where boundarics between 
neighbouring tribes were well defined, The food supply of the 
Little Andaman does not seem to be so abundant as that of 
the Great Andaman in proportion to its area, It must be 
remembered that length of coast-line is of more importance 
to the Andamanese than the actual area of their country. (The , 
natives of the Little Andaman are not able to harpoon turtle 

and largé fish, which constitute an important element ¢ of the 
food “supply of the tribes of the Great Andaman. 

“if the figures of the abave-estimaté be “correct, it will be 
seen that the population of the North Andaman has been 
reduced in less than fifly years (1858-1901) to about 27 per 
cent, of its former volume, while in the same period the 
population of the Middle Andaman and South Andaman has 
been reduced to about 18 per cent. As the tribes in the south 
were the first to come into contact with the Settlement, their 
numbers have diminished more rapidly than those of the 
northern tribes, It is probable that in another fifty years thes 
natives of the Great Andaman tribes will be extinct. i 

The “diminution of population has combined with other’ 
causes to alter considerably the mode of life of the islanders, 
What were formerly distinct and often hostile communities are 
now merged together, The different languages have become 
corrupt, and some tribes have adopted customs of other tribes 
and have abandoned their own. Most of the younge: men and 
women of the friendly tribes of the Great Andaman now speak 
a little “Hindustani (Urdu) in a somewhat corrupt form, The 
friendly natives are under the charge of an officer of the Scttle- 
ment, known as the Officer in Charge of the Andamanese, 
A Home and Hospital are provided for them in Pert Blair, 
and natives from all parts, even from the extreme north, go 
there either to be treated in the Hospital or to stay at the 
Home. During certain parts of the year some of the natives 

Bnd 

+ 

are employed in collecting trepang (béche de mer) under the 
direction of petty officers, who are natives of India or Burma. 
The trepang, together with wild honey and shells collected by 
the Andamanese, is sold, and the money is devoted to the 
service of the Andamanese Department. There is also a grant 
of money from the Government of India, in return for which 
the Officer in Charge must, when necessary, provide Andamanese 
to track and capture any convicts who may run away from the 
Penal Settlement, The funds thus made available serve to 
provide the natives with blankets, cloth, iron tools and scrap 
iron, tice, sugar, tea and tobacco, The result of this system 
is that there is a free circulation of natives in all parts of the 
Great Andaman. Whereas, formerly, the natives kept carefully 
to their own part of the country, they now make long journeys, 
either in their own canoes, or in Government launches, and 
members of the northern tribes are to be found at Port Blair 
and elsewhere in the south, while men and women of the southern 
tribes are to be found engaged in collecting trepang in the north, 

The natives of the Little Andaman have as yet scarcely heen 
affected by these changes. Within recent years, however, some 
of the natives oftthe northern part of the Little Andaman have 
been in the habit of making periodical visits to Rutland Island 
in their canoes, and occasionally come as far as Port Blair. 
Their chief reason for visiting the Settlement is to obtain iron 
for their arrows and adzes, but they have also begun t6 appre- 
ciate sugar and tobacco, 

The manners and customs of the Andaman Islanders have 
formed the subject of a number of writings. By far the most 
important of these is a work by "Mr E. H. Man, who was for 
some years an officer of the Penal Settlement of Port Blair, and 
for four years of that time was in charge of the Andamanese 
Home. Mr Man made a special study of the language of the 
Aka-Bea tribe and compiled an extensive vocabulary, which, 
however, has neyer been published. His observations on the 
manners Gnd customs of this tribe and others of the South 
Andaman were published in the Journal of the Anthropological 
Institute of the year 1882 (Volume X1J), and were reprinted in 
the form of a book On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the 

Andaman Islands. As the reprint is difficult to obtain, the 
references to Mr Man’s work in the chapters that follow are all 
to the pages of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 
Volume xi. 

Another writer on the Andamanese is Mr M, V. Portman, 
who was for some years an officer of the Andaman Commigsion, 
and was for a long time in charge of the Andamanese, His 
Manual of the Andamanese Languages, London, 1887, is full of 
errors and entirely unreliable. A later work, entitled Modes on 
the Languages of the South Andaman Group of Tribes, Calcutta, 
1898, is of much greater value, and though not entirely free from 
errors, is on the whole useful and accurate. Mr Portman has 
also compiled 4 History of Our Relations with the Andamanese 
(2 volumes, Calcutta, 1899), which contains a mass of information 
on the subject with which it deals, but does not add very much 
to our knowledge of the Andamanese themselves, The British 
Museum possesses an excellent collection of photographs of the 
Andamanese taken by Mr Portman. 

A good general description of the islands and of their 
inhabitants by Colonel Sir Richard Temple, who was for 
many years Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar 
Islands, is contained in Volume 111 of the Census of India, 
tgor, here referred to as “Census Report” 1901,

In the present chapter we are to deal with the customs 
and institutions by which the natives of the Great Andaman 
regulate the conduct of persons one to another. At the outset 
it is necessary to get as clear an idea as possible of the 
structure of the Andamanese society. (That structure, as will 
be shown, is extremely simple, } 

{What is really of interest to the ethnologist is the social 
organisation of these tribes as it existed before the European 
occupation of the islands. The changes that have taken place 
in recent years have been extensive, the most important being 
the great diminution in numbers and the merging together of 
what were formerly distinct and often hostile communities, It 
is fairly easy, however, to discover from the natives themselves 
what was the constitution of the society in former times, though 
there remain a few points about which no satisfactory informa- 
tion can be obtained, 

{When the islands were first occupied by the British, before 
depopulation had affected their institutions, the natives of the 
Great Andaman were to be found living in small communities 

“ scattered over the islands, mostly on the coast, but some of 
them in the forest of the interior of the island, Each “such 
community, which will be spoken of as a " Jocal group, vas 
lating its own affairs. Each” group had occasional relations 
with other ee groups; visitors might pass’ from, ne 
to another; or the two groups might meet together for a few 
days and join in feasting and dancing, On the other hand 

ie 

there were often quarrels between neighbouring groups, which 
might result in a state of feud between them for many months. 
Between communities separated from one another by a distance 
of only $0 miles or even less ‘there were no direct relations 
whatever, The members of one community kept to their own 
part of the country, only leaving it to visit their friends within 

a narrow radius. 

[Fes local groups were united into what are here called 
tribes, A tribe consisted of a number of local groups all 
speaking what the natives themselves regard as one language, 
each tribe having its own language and its name. The ttibe 
was of very little importance in regulating the social life, and 
wag merely a loose aggregate of independent local groups. 

The local groups are furthe: distinguished by the natives 
themselves as being of two kinds according as they lived on 
the coast or inland.) This division was independent of that 
into tribes, Some tribes consisted of coast-dwellers only, while 
others included both coast-dwellers and forest-dwellers, 

Within {the local group the only division was that into 
families. A family consists of a man and his wife and their 
unmarried children own or adopted 

These were the only social divisions existing among the 
Andamanese, who were without any of those divisions known as 
“clans” which are characteristic of many primitive societies, 

The natives of the Great Andaman (leaving aside the 

Jevawa, who by language and culture belong to the Little 

Andaman division of the race) are divided into ten tribes, 
each occupying a certain area of country, Each tribe consists 
of a number of persons who speak what is regarded by the 
natives themselves as one language. That the tribe is funda- 
mentally a linguistic group is shown by the tribal names, 
These are all formed from a stem with the prefix afa-, which 
prefix"is used in the languages of the Great Andaman to 
convey a reference to the mouth and thereby to the function 
of speech, Thus in the Aha-ern language the stem poy means 
“a hole of any kind,” and aka-foy means “the méuth,” there 
being no other word for that part of the body. In the same 
language the stem -av- meaning “to talk” can only be used 

with the prefix eka-, as ak’-ar-ha, “he says.” (The prefix 
which is characteristic of the tribal names, indicates, therefore, 
that these are really the names of languages, 

The meanings or derivations of some of the tribal names 
have not been ascertained with certainty. The name Afa- 
Cari,is derived from the word dari meaning “salt water,” and 
therefore means “the salt-water language." Similarly the name 
Aka-Jeru is derived from jeru, a species of Sterculia from which 
canoes are made, In the Northern languages the word of-do 
means “the back” of anything, and og-#era means “the hand.” 
It is possible that the names Aka-Bo and Afha-Kora are derived 
from these stems (the of- and the oy- being prefixes), but there 
is no evidence that they are associated with them in the minds 
of the natives of the present day. Among the Southern tribes 
the name Akar-Bale is derived from a word meaning “the 
other side” of a creek or strait, thus referring to their position 
in the Archipelago, The name A-Pudih-war (of which the 
Aka-Bea equivalent is Aka-Bojig-yab) means “those who speak 
our own language,” from a stem pucik (Aka-Bea, bojig) which 
means “belonging to ourselves” as opposed to strangers of 
the same race, Mr Portman! gives the following meanings of 
the other tribal names of the South and Middle Andaman, but 
the derivations are somewhat doubtful, 

Aka-Bea Fresh water. 
Oko-Juwot They cut patterns on their bows. 
Aka-Kol Bitter or salt taste, 

I may take this opportunity of pointing out two errors in the 
names of the tribes given in the “Census Report” of r1go1. 
The name Aka-Cari is given as Aka-Chariar; the stem -ar- 
means “to talk” and is not an essential part of the tribal name; 
Aka-Cari-ar-bom means “he talks the Cari language,” The name 
Aka-Bo is given as Aka-Tabo; t’'a-Bo means “I' (am) Aka-Bo,” 
just as #’e-/erz means “I (am) Aka-Jeru,’ the prefix aka’ being 
contracted to @- after the personal pronoun ¢’=] or my, 

mae the natives themselves thus recognize and give 
names to ten distinct languages, all of them are closely related. 
These is, on the whole, not a great deal of difference between 

1 Noies on the Languages of the South Andaman Group of Tribes, pr oq. 

a 

two neighbouring languages. A man of the Aka-Jeru tribe 
could understand without any great difficulty a man speaking 
Aka-Bo, On the other hand many of the Janguages included 
two or even more distinct dialects, In the Akar-Bale tribe 
there were two dialects, one in the southern half of the 
Atchipelago, which was allied to Af#a-Bea, and the other in 
the northern half, showing affinities with A-Pucikwar, Even 
in such a small tribe as the Ahe-Cari it would scem that there 
were differences of dialect. Thus, even from the point of view 
of language, the tribe was not entirely homogeneous, 

Leaving aside the Aka-Bea, the average extent of territory 
occupied by a tribe was about 165 square miles. Of the nine 
tribes the largest, as regards area, was the Ala-Kede, with 
over 300 square miles, while the smallest was probably the 
Aka-Cari, with less than 100 square miles. Save in the case 
of the Akar-Bale tribe, which occupied the islands of Ritchie's 
Archipelago, it is difficult to find any marked geographical 
features that might be supposed to have determined the extent 
and the boundaries of the different tribes. 

The Aka-Bea tribe was in an abnormal position as there 
was no recognized boundary between them and the /grawa. 
Together, these two divisions of the Andamancse occupied an 
area of about 600 square miles, The A/a-Bea seem to have 
kept more to the coast while the Jarawa occupied the interior 
of the South Andaman and Rutland Island, 

If the estimate previously given! of the former population 
of the islands be correct, the nine tribes (leaving aside the 
Aka-Bea) would have formerly contained about 3750 persons 
of all ages, At the present time the four tribes of the 
North Andaman number altogether about 400, of whom 
about too or less are children, The other six tribes taken 
togethg: (including the almost extinct Asa-Bea) number about 
200, of whom not more than 30 are children, Mr Man esti- 
mated the numbers of the Asa-Bea tribe (called by him 
Bojig-yiji-da) in 1882 at about 400, and supposes. them to 
have numbered about tooo in 1858. [n 1901 that tribe con- 
sisted of only 37 persons, 

1 Page 18 nbove. 

~ (Besides: the. division “into tribes, and independent of it, the” 
; “Avtdashanesd recognize another division into. coast-dwellers: and 
; - forestadweller: , In the Aka-Bea language the ‘coast-dwellers are - 
called Ay-jato, "hile: the. fotest-dwellers are called Arem-taga.’ 
“ “The: ‘difference. between. them is due solely to the. difference 
fof their food ‘supply. The Ar-yoto obtain much of their food 
“from the sea. They are expert in fishing and turtle hunting, 
hey” make canoes and ‘use them not only for hunting but 
: ‘also for travelling from one camp toanother, Some. portion 
vof their-food they also’ obtain from the forest, edible: roots and 
ifruits and the. flesh of the wild pig being the, chief, On the’, 
other hand. the Evem-taga. rely solely: on the: forest and the.“ 
-inland creeks. for their food: supply.’ Their only use. for canoes 
uis in the creeks, They are entirely ignorant of such.matters’ - 
_ {a8 turtle or‘ dugong” hunting,. but. they’ are more. at. ‘home 
“than thé coast-dwellers in the forest, and are. generally more. 
“hs skilful at pig-hunting. © The advantage certainly rests. with: the 
‘coast-dwellers, . for they have both the sea -and the:. forest to. 
draw ‘upon’ for their. sustenance. ° 
Some tribes consist only of coast-dwellers, such as the Aha- 
Cart, the Akar-Bale and: perhaps the Aka-Kol.. On the other 
~hatid the Aza: Bo, although their territory includes a. part. Of. 
“thé: west: coast, are, by ‘their. occupations and. mode of. life, es 
‘..forest- dwellers, and the same seems to have..been thie | cage, of 
k the Oke J urvot, The 4-Pudcikwar, the Aka-Keite, the Aka- Sera”. 
: and’ perhaps: also. the Ada-Kora tribes | contained both | coast 
“ dwellersand. forest-dwellers, ; 
~ Each tribe: formerly consisted. of a number. of independent 

ayer a certain’ recognized “area, “NET the present 
ing ‘to. the ‘breakdown of the local: organisation,: through: the . 
lement: cof the: islands and. ee hat oe decrease. of. opt 

 glearly defined, ‘there’ ‘belng, 
members | of Pott 

‘groups are : 
rest over :which . 

A young man of the North Andaman 

A young married woman 

groups were at peace’. “There is no doubt that in the more 
favourable localities, particulaily on the coast, the countiy 
occupied by a single gioup was smaller than in places of less 
abundant food supply. It 1s probable that the fo.est-dwelling 
local gtoups occupied considerably larger areas in each case 
than the coast gioups.' Some of the coast-dwelling groups 
seem to have occupied areas of Jess than ten square miles, 

It is not easy to discover at this time exactly what number 
of persons would have been included in one local gioup, Mouat, 
who visited the islands in 1857-8, says of the natives, “They 
ate rarely or never seen living alone, several of their little huts 
being raised in the same locality, whee they dwell together 
im numbers varying between thirty and three hundred” In 
another passage he states, “They are generally divided into 
small groups, the numbers of which vary considerably, some 
not containing moe than ten individuals, while in others as 
many as two or three hundred may be found, The gieat 
majority of these groups of the natives Consist on an average 
of from thirty to fifty men, women, and children, although 
sometimes as many as thiee hundsed are found togethers” It 
is probable that, if so small a party as ten were seen, they 
weie a hunting patty spending a day or a few days away 
from the main camp, On the other hand so lage a number 
as three hundred could only be found together on the occasion 
of one pf the periodical mectings of several local gioups for 
purposes of festivity. Mouat’s statement that the groups con- 
sisted on the average of fiom thitty to fifly persons, agrees 
very well with the statements of the natives themselves, and 
may be taken as being faiily accurate. Mr Man, writing in 
1882, speaks of the Andamanese as divided into communities 
“each consisting of from twenty to fifty individuals,” and else- 
where ys that “permanent encampments vary in size and 

1 A few small arcas were not occuped at all, for example the greater pat of 
Saddle Peak in the North Andaman, which 1 coveied with dense jungle and is 
supposed by the natives to be the haunt of lagge and deadly snakes and of evil 
spitits. 

2 Monat, F J., ddventures and Researches among the Andaman Islanders, 
London, 1863, p, 313. 

3 Loc cits ps B00. 

consist of several huts, which in all are rarely inhabited by 
more than from fifty to eighty persons},” 

From the information that I was able to obtain from the 
natives themselves I came to the conclusion that an average 
local group consisted of from 40 to 50 persons of all ages, 
the raverage number of local groups to a tribe being about to. 
This would give the average extent of country occupied by each 
local group as about 16 square miles, but some groups certainly 
had a larger territory than this and some had smaller, 

Mr M. V. Postman speaks of the tribes of the southern 
part of the Great Andaman as being divided into what he 
calls “septs,” but he does not explain what he means by that 
term, He states that the Asa-Bea wete divided into seven 
septs, the A-Pudikwar into four, the Ahar-Bale into two, while 
the Aka-Kol and Okg-/uwed had no real subdivisions’, What- 
ever Mr Portman may have meant by the term sept, it is clear 
that he did not use it to denote what is here called a local 
group, but some larger subdivision of the tribe. What these 
septs seem to have been are groups consisting each of four or 
five local groups having friendly relations with one another 
and meeting together occasionally at the festival gatherings 
to be described later in the present chapter. 

There were, strictly speaking, no distinctive names for the 
local groups, A local group might be denoted by a reference 
to the district that it occupied or to one of its chief,camping 
places, Thus, in the Advar-Bale tribe, those occupying the 
island of Teb-jure were spoken of as Tedb-jeru-wa, the word 
wa meaning “people,” and the inhabitants of the east coast 
of Havelock Island were similarly denoted as Puduge-d’ar- 
mugu-wa from the name of the district that they occupied. 
In the tribes of the North Andaman the word equivalent to 
we of the South is Aofote. Some of the local groups of the 
Aka-Bo tribe were distinguished as Terant bulin holoko, Kelera 
buliu koloko, Teradthkili bulin koloko etc, from the names of 
the crecles (daft) that they occupied. In the Asa-Car? tribe 
the local group occupying the island of Zonmeuset and the 

1 Journ. Anthrop. Inst, Vol. Xu, pp. 107 and 108, 
2 Poitman, Notes on the Languages of the South Andaman Got of Tribes, p. 23. 

Phare Ul 

A man of the North Andaman and his son. (The man’s 
height is 1438 mm,, 4 feet 8inches) 

Prair lv 

A married woman of the Great Andaman wearing belts of 
Pandanus leaf and ornaments of Dentalium shell 

adjoining mainland were called Zarotelo holoko, When a man 
was asked to what part of the country he belonged he would 
generally answer by mentioning one of the chief camping 
places of his local group. Thus a man of the Tarotglo koloko 
might say that he belonged to Laropuli, this being one of 
the chief camps of that country. A man of the Teraut buliu 
holoke might similarly say that he belonged to the village of 
Caidue, 

A man or woman is gencrally regarded as belonging to 
the local group in the country of which he or she was born. 
Thete is nothing, however, to prevent a person from taking 
up his residence with any other local group if he so wishes, 
and if the members of that group are willing to welcome him. 
It would seem that there weie a fair number of such cases in 
which a man or a woman left his or her own local group to 
join another. In paiticular, when two young people belonging 
to different groups got married they might fix their residence 
either with his or with her parents, 

The local group, as stated above, was characterised as the 
land-owning group. A man might hunt over the country 
of his own group at all times, but he might not hunt over 
the country of another gioup without the peimission of the 
members of that group. Even at the present day, when the 
local organisation has largely bioken down, some of these 
hunting’ rights are still observed. I noticed a case in which 
some of the men asked and obtained permission to hunt pig 
in a certain pait from a man who was explained to be the 
owner of that part of the country, being one of the few sur- 
vivors of the local group to which it belonged, It would, in 
former times, have been an offence that might easily have led 
to a serious quarrel for the men of one group to hunt or fish 
in the Country or the waters of another group without having 
been granted permission to do so. 

Within the territory of each local group there are a number 
of recognized camping places, During the greater part of every 
year the members of the local group would be found living 
together at ane or other of these, Some of these camping- 
grounds have been in use for many centuries, as is shown by 

the heaps of refuse many feet decp, chiefly consisting of the 

shells of molluscs and the bones of animals. Such kitchen- 

middens, as they have been called, are to be found in numbers 
“all around the coasts of the islands. 

In the case of the coast-dwelling communities the camping 
sites are always close to the sea-shore or to a creek, so that 
they can be reached by canoe, In the case of those dwelling 
inland this is of course not so, In any case one of the chief 
factors determining the choice of the site is the existence of 
a supply of fresh water, This is of extreme importance in the 
case of a site to be occupied during the dry season when 
fresh water becomes scarce. 

Within their own territory the local group is what we may 
speak of as semi-nomadic. The coast-dwellers rarely reside 
continuously at the same spot for more than a few months, but 
shift from one camp to another, moved by different causes. If 
a death occurs the camp is dese:ted for several months and a 

‘new one is occupied. A change of camp often takes place at 
a change of season, some spots presenting particular advantages, 
such as shelter from the prevailing wind, or better hunting or 
fishing, at, certain times of the year, Another cause of the 

‘ abandonment of a camp by the coast-dwellers is that all refuse 

’ is thrown away close to the camp, and after a few months 
the decaying animal matter thus accumulated renders the 
spot uninhabitable, The natives seem to find it casier to 
move their camp than to clear away their refuse. The truth 
is, perhaps, that they are so accusLomed to change their camp 
from one spot to another, in order to make the best use of 
the natural resources available, that there is no necessity for 
them to take those sanitary measures that would be essential 
if they wished to remain for many months continuously at 
the same place. ,.°7 ® 

The forest~dwellers are less nomadic in their habits than 
‘ the: coast-dwellers, One of the reasons for this is that as they 
carmot convey their belongings from one place to another by 

, canoe, but must carry them overland, the moving of a camp is 
a more tiresome business with them than it is with the coast- 
dwellers, During a great part of the year the forest-dwellers 

Prvrt Vv 

A man of the Akar-Bale tribe with South Andaman’ bow and 
arrows, wearing belt and necklace of netting and Dentaliam 
shell, (Height 1494mm,, 4 feet 9 inches) 

a 

were accustomed to remain at one camp, which was thus 
the chief camp of the group. In particular they would 
spend there the whole of the rainy season. During the cool 
and hot seasons they would leave the chief camp for a few 
months, leading during that time a more nomadic life, living 
in temporary hunting camps and paying visits to their friends 
in other groups. At the opening of the 1ainy season they 
would return once more to the main camp. 

The camps of the natives of the Great Andaman may be 
distinguished as being of three kinds, Of the first kind arc 
what may be spoken of as permanent encampments. Certainly 4) 
every group of the foest-dwellers, and probably every group 
of the coast-dwellers had its permanent encampment, which 
was, so to speak, the headquarters of the group. At this spot 
there would be erected either a communal hut, or a carefully 
built village. Communal huts have in recent times fallen into 
disuse, as the natives now wander about the islands much 
more freely than was their wont. I did not see a single one 
in the Great Andaman during my visit, though I was told of 
one that was falling to ruins in the interior of the Middle 
Andaman. One such communal hut was photographed in 1895 
by M. L. Lapieque, at a spot called Lekera-d'un-tat, It was 
perhaps the last that the natives of the Great Andaman 
erected, What the communal hut wag like it is possible to 
discover both from the statements of the natives and also 
from the fact that they are still to the present day used by 
the natives of the Little Andaman and by the J/arawa, \The 
hut was roughly circular in form and might be as big as 
6o feet in diameter and 20 or 30 feet high at the centre, 
The shape was somewhat that of a bechive. Two concentric 
circles, one of tall posts near the centre and the other of 
shorter jsosts near the circumference, were connected by hori- 
zontal and sloping roof-timbers, and on these were laid and 
fastened a number of mats of palm-leaves. These mats 
reached, as a rule, as far as the ground, a small doorway 
being left on one side. 

Such communal huts, while still used in the Little Andaman 

1 The photograph is reproduced in Le Tour de Monde, 1893, P. 447 

and by the Jqrewa, and formerly used by the forest-dwellers of 
the Great Andaman, were apparently not often erected by the 
coast-dwellers of the larger island at the time the islands were 
occupied in 1858. Mr Man scems to have regarded them as 
being peculiarly characteristic of the Jarawa and the natives 
of the Little Andaman’ There is evidence, however, that 
even the coast-dwellers formerly erected such huts, for in the 
Akar-Bale tribe there are several places with names such as 
Paruy Bud and Golugma Bud, which show thal communal 
huts existed there at some time. The word dad is used to 
denote a communal hut, as compared with a village, which is 
called davai. 

A large communal hut took some little time to erect, The 
posts had to be cut and erected, this being the work of the 
men, and the palm-leaves had to be collected and then made 
into mats by the women. Once the hut was built it would 
last for several years, and if it were in fairly constant use, 
particularly if it were not abandoned in the rains, it might 
be used, with a little occasional patching, for ten years or 
even more. 

Among the coast-dwellers it was more usual to erect at 
the headquarters a semi-permanent village, A portion of 
such a village is shown in the photographs reproduced in 
Plates vi and VIL 

The village occupied a small clearing in the forest close 
to the sea-shore at a place called J/gi-depto in the country of 
the Axar-Bule tribe. A spring or soak close to the village 
provided the fresh water. The site is a favourite yne as it 

‘ig well sheltered, and is within convenient distance of good 
fishing and turtle hunting grounds. It was formerly one of 
the chief camping places of the local group known as the 
Boroin wa (Hill people). 6 
, The village was composted of eight huts, ranged round a 

» central open space, and all of them facing inwards towards 
the centre. This open space is kept clear and clean for 
dancing, and is simply the village dancing ground. Lach of 
the single huts was occupied by a family group, consisting of 

3 See Journ. Anthvop, Inst, Vol, X31, p. 7X 

ynyY MU ze jo Joos ay} 10} saavoy wyed 
TOT JO ASe]IA ayy Jo uoI0g 

JO BW PSYSIUBUN ue St IYUSII 943 UQ -9qrI] oEg-4BYY ‘ojds]- 

Vv 

PIAt 

= 

a man and his wife with their children and dependants. One 
hut was occupied by an old widower and a bachelor, 

The way the huts are built can be seen in the photographs. 
In the simplest form the hut consists of a sloping roof made 
of palm-leaves, erected on four posts, two taller ones at the 
front and two short ones at the back. A hut of this kind is 
shown in Plate vii, If more shelter is required a second 100f 
is added in such a way that the top of one overhangs the top 
of the other. In some cases a third roof may be added on 
one side. In Plates vr and vir two mats of palm-leaf are 
shown in the course of constiuction, lying on the ground. 

Huts such as these, in which the leaves are first made into 
a mat which is then attached to the tafters, will last for some 
time. Even if the village be deserted for several weeks, at any 
rate in the dry weather, very little work will be needed to make 
it habitable again when the occupants return to it. 

A second kind of camp was made when the natives did not 
intend to stay more than two to three months. Such camps 
were erected by the forest folk duiing the dry season, or at any 
time when they were compelled to Jeave their chief camp through 
the death theie of one of their number. Such a temporary camp 
is always put up in the form of a village, and never as a 
communal hut. The huts are similar to those already described, 
but are made more carelessly. The thatching leaves, instead 
of being made into mats, are simply tied in bundles on to the 
rafters. A hut of this kind will last quite well for thiee months 
or so and it can be built very 1apidly alt any place where there 
is a sufficient supply of thatching leaves. At the present 
day the natives rarely build a permanent camp for themselves, 
but are contented with temporary camps of the kind here 
described, 

A third kind of camp remains to be briefly mentioned, which | 
we may *call the hunting camp. A hunting party (which may 
include women as well as men) spending a few days away from». 
one of the main camps will erect for themselves a few huts 
or shelters consisting of nothing moe than a simple lean-to 
of leaves, 

Caves or rock shelters suitable for human occupation are 

BA, 3 

almost unknown in the Andamans. In the Archipelago there are 
one or two small rock shelters that are occasionally used by 
a hunting party away from home for a night, I was told by the 
natives that on one of the islands off the west coast of the North 
Andaman there is a rock shelter of a fair size that was formerly 
used as one of their chief camps. 

The following figure will give an idea of the Andamanese 
village and its arrangement. In hunting camps which are 
intended only to be occupied for a few days or a few weeks, this 
arrangement is not obseived, but the huts or shelters are placed 

a Cal a 
yer Ml ry 

, ‘| 
© 

Plan of Andamanese Village 

@ Huts of manied people. 
6. Bachelors’ hut. 

¢ Public cooking place. 

@ Dancing ground, 

so as to give shelter from the prevailing wind with no particular 
regard to the respective position of the different units, 

The constitution of the local group is illustrated by the 
arrangement of the village. The whole village consists of a 
number of separate huts, each hut occupied by a family. A 
family consists of a man and his wife and such of their children 
own or adopted as are not of an age to be independent. Besides 
the familics cach group necessarily contains a small number of 
unmarried men and widowers and some unmarried girls and 
widows. The unmarried men and widowers without children 
occupy a separate hut (or huts) which we may speak of as 
the bachelors’ hut, Mr Man states that the spihsters (ie, the 

Pharh Vil 

A hut in the village of Moi-lepto, showing the mode of construction 

unmarried women who are of matriageable age) and widows 
occupy a hut of their own similarly to the bachelors’, In the 
camps that I visited I did not find any such spinsters’ hut. 
What unmariied females there weie, I found attached to one 
or other of the families of the village, each one living in the 
hut of some married relative, generally the parent or foster- 
parent, 

All the huts face inwards towards an open space which is 
the dancing ground of the village, and, except in exposed 
situations, are generally entirely open in front. At some con- 
venient spot on one side of the dancing ground is to be found 
the communal cooking place of the village. This is generally 
close to the bachelors’ hut, as it is the bachelors who attend 
to such cooking as is carried on there. Besides the public, 
cooking place each family has its own fireplace in its own hut, on | 
which a fire is kept continually alight. In the village two or | 
more families may build their huts adjoining one another in such 
a way that they become for all practical purposes one hut, of 
which each family retains its own special portion, Two brothers 
will thus often make a sort of common household, 

The communal hut, in the way in which it is arranged, 
and even in the way in which it is built, is really a village with 
all the huts drawn together so that each one is joined to the one 
next to it and the roofs mget in the middle. In the centre of 
the hut there is an open space corresponding to the dancing 
ground of the village. It is even used as a dancing ground, 
thongh for this purpose it is somewhat small, It is the public 
part of the hut Around this are arranged the different families, 
each occupying its own special portion of the hut, which is 
marked off by means of short lengths of wood laid on the floor. 
The public cooking place is sometimes inside the hut, and there 
is the sgace marked off for the unmariied men, The advantage 
of the communal hut is that it affords a better protection from 
the weather; its disadvantage is that it leaves almost no room 
for dancing, 

Thus it may be seen that the arrangement of the camp shows 

1 Man, of, eit. p. 108, 

very plainly the constitution of a. local group, consisting as it 
does of a few families. Each group seems to have contained, on 
an average, about ten families, with a few unmarried males and 
females../°, : 

The Andaman Islanders depend for their subsistence entirely 
on the natural products of the sea and the forest. From the 
sea they obtain dugong, turtle (both green and hawksbill), 
an enormous variety of different sorts of fish, crustaceans (crabs, 
crayfish and prawns) and molluscs, Fish and crabs are also 
to be found in the salt-water creeks which in many places 
penetrate inland for some miles, From the forest they obtain 
the flesh of the wild pig, wild honey, and a large number of 
vegetable foods—roots, fruits, and seeds, |° 

The life of the forest folk is more simple and uniform than 
that‘of the coast people and we may therefore consider it first. 
During the rainy season, which lasts from the middle of May to 
the end of September, the local group lives at its headquarters 
camp, which, as we have seen, formerly often took the form of a 
communal hut. During this season animal food is plentiful, as the 
jungle animals are in good condition ; on the other hand there 
is not much vegetable food to be obtained. The following brief 
account will give an idea of how the day is spent in such a camp 
at that time of year. Some time after sunrise the camp begins 
to be astirx, The various members of the communily make a 
meal of any food that may have been saved from the day before, 
The men start off for the day’s hunting, At the present time 
dogs are used for pig-hunting. These dogs were obtained in the 
first instance from the Settlement of Port Blair, and their use in 
pig-hunting was learnt from the Burmese convicts, Nowadays 
every married man has at least one dog’, Before the dogs were 
obtained, hunting was a pursuit requiring a great deal more skill 
than it does al present, A hunting party consists of from two 
to five men, Each man carries his bow and two or three pig 
arrows, and one of the party carries a smouldering’ fire-brand. 
They make their way through the jungle until they find the 
fresh tracks of a pig, or follow up some of the usual pig runs 

1 In the North Andaman the times before the Settlement me spoken of as the 
time when there were no dogs, Bzbi poiye=“' Dog not.” 

A village of the Middle Andaman 

until they come upon the animal feeding. In former’ days much 
skill was required to creep noiselessly through the jungle until 
they were sufficiently near either to discharge an auirow, or, if 
the jungle were more open, to rush in upon the animal shouting 
and shoot it before it could escape. At the present day it is the 
dogs that scent opt the pig and bring it to bay, when the 
natives shoot it with their arrows. 

When a pig has been killed it may be tied up and carried Lo 
the camp on the shoulders of one of the hunters, or a fire may 
be lighted then and there and the pig eviscerated and roasted, 
A cut is made in the abdomen and the viscera removed. The 
cavity is filled with leaves, the joints of the legs are half severed 
and the carcase is placed on the fire and turned over and shifted 
until every part is evenly roasted, It is then 1emoved from the 
fire, the buint skin is scraped clean and the meat is cut up. 
Meanwhile the intestines or some of the internal organs are 
cooked and eaten by the hunters, The meat is tied up in leaves 
and is carried to the camp. If the pig be carried home whole 
the process of roasting it and cutting it up is performed in 
exactly the same way at the public cooking place of the camp, 
the meat being distributed only after it has been thus partially 
cooked, 

If the hunting patty should come across a civel cat 
(Paradoxurus) ov a monitor lizard they would endeavour to kill 
it!, but tlle main object of every hunting party is tq obtain pork. 
Snakes and even tats are killed and eaten. Birds, though 
plentiful in the islands, are not often obtained, for the density of 
the jungle and the height of the trees in which the birds conceal 
themselves, make it very difficult for the natives to shoot them 
with their bows and arrows. A man does not care to risk 
the loss of his arrow in a chance shot at a bird. The Anda- 
manese @lo not trap either birds or animals, though some of 
the birds, particularly the rail, might be very easily caught in 
traps, 

As the hunting party traverses the forest they may come 
across roots or fruits or seeds, or wild honey, and these are 
collected and carried home. In the rainy season only small 

\ They are only eaten in the iainy season. 

combs of black honey are to be found?, and these are generally 
consumed by the hunters on the spot. 

The provision of the vegetable food of the community is the 
work of the women, who must also supply the camp with 
firewood and water. While the men are away hunting the 
women, attended by the children, cut and carry the firewood, 
and either remain in the camp making baskets or nets or other 
objects, or else go into the forest to look for fruits and seeds. 
Thus by midday the camp may be quite deserted, save perhaps 
for one or two old men and women, and a few of the children. 

In the afternoon the women return with what food they have 
obtained and then the men come in with their provision, The 
camp, unless the hunters have been unsuccessful, is then busy 
with the preparation of the evening meal, which is the chief meal 
ofthe day. Ifa pig has been brought home whole it is cooked 
at the public cooking place and is then cut up. The meat 
is distributed amongst the members of the community and the 
woman of each family then proceeds to cook the family meal, 
The pork, after it has been roasted and cut up, is further cooked 
by being boiled. The family meal is prepared at the fire that 
each family has in its hut. The meal is a family one, partaken 
by a man and his wife and children. The bachelors cook and 
eat their own meal, and the unmarried women also eat by 
themselves. 

After the meal is over, darkness having by this time fallen, the 
men may spend an hour or two in dancing to the accompaniment 
ofa song sung by one of them with the help of a chorus of women. 
In that case they would probably cat another meal after the 
dance was over, Another favourite amusement for the evening 
is what may be called “yarning.” A man sits down with a few 
listeners and tells them, with few words, and with many dramatic 
gestures, how he killed a pig, The same man may gon with 
tale after tale, till, by the time he finishes he has killed twenty or 
thirty pigs. Finally the whole camp retires to rest and nothing 

1 Thee are two kinds of wild bee in the Andamans. A small species makes 
black honeycombs in hollow trees, and these may he found at any time of the year. 
A Inrger species of bee buitds white combs suspended from the underside of branches 

in tall trees, Such combs me found in abundance only in the hot season, and not at 
all in the middle of the rainy season, 

is to be seen but the dim light of the little fires burning in each 
hut or in each of the family quaiters. 

On a day when there is plenty of food left from the day 
before, or on a day of stormy weather even when food is not too 
plentiful, the men may remain in camp instead of going hunting, 
They busy themselves with making weapons and implements, 
such as bows, arrows, adzes, etc. 

On occasions when game is not very plentiful a party of 
hunters may stay away from the camp for a few days, not 
returning till they have been successful in obtaining a fair 
supply of food. The women and children and old men, with 
perhaps a few of the able bodied men also, remain at home and 
provide for themselves as well as they can, the women devoting 
their time to collecting what vegetable foods are in season. 

At the end of the rainy season there comes a brief period 
of unsettled weather, called by the natives of the North Andaman 
Kimil, and by those of the South, Gumz/ During this season 
some of the vegetable foods begin to be available, though not in 
any quantities, At this time of the year the natives are able to 
obtain and feast upon what they regard as great delicacies, 
the larvae of the cicada and of the great capricornis beetle, 
The cool season, when fruits and roots are plentiful, begins at the 
end of November, The forest dwellers leave their main encamp- 
ment during this season. Some of them go off to pay visits 
to their friends of other local groups. Such visits may last two 
or three months. Those who remain occupy temporary camps 
in convenient places. The men join the women in looking for 
roots and fruits, and do not spend so much of their time in 
hunting, Some of the men visii the main camp at intervals of a 
few days to see that it is all right. As the cool season gives 
way to the hot scason (March to May) honey begins to be 
plentifule At that time hunting for pig is almost abandoned, 
The pigs are in poor condition, and even when one is killed it is 
often left in the jungle by the natives as not being good enough 
to eat. On the other hand everyone is busy collecting honey. 
This is work in which both men and women join, though it is 
the men who climb up the trees and cut down the honeycomb, 
The natives have no means of keeping the honey for more than 

a very short time, as it rapidly ferments. While it is plentiful 
they almost live on it, supplementing it with roots and fruits and 
with fish, if they are near a creck. Towards the end of the 
hot season the fruit of the Artocarpus chaplasha, which is a 
favourite food of the natives, becomes ripe. The men and 
women, at this time, spend much of their time collecting the 
fruit, When it is collected the fruit is broken open and each of 
the seeds is sucked to obtain the juicy pulp or aril with which it 
is surrounded, and which has a very pleasant taste. The seeds are 
then partly boiled and are buried in the ground to remain there 
for a few weeks, when they will be dug up again and cooked and 
eaten. Any natives who may have been away from home on 
a visit, return before the Artocarpus comes into fruit in order 
to take their share in collecting it and providing a supply of the 
seeds for consumption in the rainy season. The natives then 
return to the headquarters camp and make any necessary repairs 
to the hut in preparation for the rainy season, which begins 
about the middle of May. 

The coast-dwellers are not quite so much influenced by the 
seasons as the forest-dwellers, They can fish and collect 
molluscs all the year round. In the rainy season they divide 
their time between hunting pig in the forest and fishing or turtle 
hunting, They do not need, however, to remain at the same 
camp during the whole of the rainy season, but after a month or 
two at one place can move to what they hope to fiid better 
hunting grounds, During the cool and hot seasons they pay 
visits to one another, In the fine weather the men often go off 
on turtle-hunting expeditions for several days, leaving the women 
and children and older men in the village, where they provide 
for themselves with vegetable food and with fish and molluscs 
from the reefs, 

It is during the fine weather that there take place the 
meetings of two or more local groups that are an important 
feature of the social life of the Andaman Islanders, These 
meetings will be described later in the present chapter. 

Besides their food, which they must find from day to day, the 
natives have need of nothing save their weapons and implements, 
Of these each person makes his own, each man making his 

+ 

own bow, arrows, adze, etc. while the wife makes her baskets, , 
nets and so on, 

‘The economic life of the local group, though in effect it 
approaches to a sort of communism, is yet based on the notion 
of private property. Land is the only thing that is owned in 
common. The hunting grounds of a local group belong 1o the 
whole group, and all the members have an equal right to hunt 
over any part of it. There exists, however, a certain private 
ownership of trees. A man of one of the local groups of the 
coast may notice in the jungle a tree suitable for a canoe, He 
will tell the others that he has noticed such a tree, describing 
it and its whereabouts. Thenceforward that tree is regarded as 
his property, and even if some years should elapse, and he has 
made no use of it, yet another man would not cut it down 
without first asking the owner to give him the tree. In a similar 
way certain men claim to possess certain Artocarpus trees, 
though how the ownership in these cases had arisen I was unable 
to determine, No one would pick the fruit off such a tree 
without the permission of the owner, and having received 
permission and gathered the fruit he would give some part of 
it to the owner of the tree. 

A pig belongs to the man whose arrow first strikes it, though 
if the arrow merely glanced off and did not remain in the wound 
it would not give any claim to ownership, A turtle or a dugong 
or big fish belongs to the man who throws the harpoon with 
which it is taken, A honeycomb belongs to the man who 
climbs the tree and cuts it down. The fish that a man shoots 
belong to him, and to a woman belong the roots she digs up, the 
seeds that she collects, the fish or prawns that she takes in 
her net or the molluscs that she brings from the reefs, Any 
weapon that a man makes belongs to him alone to do what 
he pleasgs with, and anything that a woman makes is her own 
property, A man is not free to dispose of the personal property 
of his wife without her permission, 

In the village each family erects and keeps in repair its own 
hut, and the wife provides the hut with the firewood and water 
needed. In the case of a communal hut it would seem that this 
is really an example of a possession common to the whole group, 

This is so, however, only in appearance. The hut is built by all 
the different families, but each family is regarded as owning 
a certain portion of the hut when it is finished, and it is the 
family that keeps this part of the hut in repair. 

A canoe is cut by a number of men together. From the 
outset, however, it is the property of one man, who selects 
the tree and superintends the operation of cutting it into shape. 
He is always one of the older men, and he enlists the services of 
the younger men to help him. When finished the canoe is his 
property, and he can do with it what he pleases, giving it away, 
if he wishes, and no one has any share of ownership in a canoe 
on the ground that he helped to make it. 

While all portable property is thus owned by individuals, the 
Andamanese have customs which result in an approach to com- 
munism. One of these is the custom of constantly exchanging 
presents with one another. When two fiiends meet who have 
not seen each other for some time, one of the first things they 
do is to exchange presents with one anothe. Even in the 
otdinary everyday life of the village there is a constant giving 
and receiving of presents, A younger man or woman may give 
some article to an older one without expecting or receiving any 
return, but between equals a person who gives a present always 
expects that he will reccive something of equal value in exchange. 
At the meetings that take place between neighbouring local 
groups the exchange of presents is of great importanoe, Tach 
of the visitors brings with him a number of articles that he 
distributes amongst the members of the group that he visits, 
When the visitors depait they are loaded with presents received 
from their hosts. It requires a good deal of tact on the part 
of everyone concerned to avoid the unpleasantness that may 
arise if a man thinks that he has not received things as valuable 
as he has given, or if he fancies that he has not received quite the 
same amount of attention as has been accorded to others, 

It is considered a breach of good manners ever to refuse 
the request of another. Thus if a man be asked by another 
to give him anything that he may possess, he will immediately 
do so. If the two men are equals a return of about the same 
value will have to be made. As between an older married man 

and a bachelor or a young married man, however, the younger 
would not make any request of such a nature, and if the older 
man asked the younger for anything the latter would give it 
without always expecting a return. 

Almost every object that the Andamanese possess is thus 
constantly changing hands, Even canoes may be given away, 
but it is more usual for these to be lent by the owner to his 
friends. 

It has been stated above that all food is private property and 
belongs to the man or woman who has obtained it. Every one 
who has food is expected, however, to give to those who have 
none, An older married man will reserve for himself sufficient 
for his family, and will then give the rest to his friends, A 
younger man is expected to give away the best of what he gcts 
to the older men, This is particularly the case with the bachelors, 
Should a young unmarried man kill a pig he must be content to 
see it distributed by one of the older men, all the best paits 
going to the seniors, while he and his companions must be 
satisfied with the inferior parts. The result of these customs 
is that practically all the food obtained is evenly distributed 
through the whole camp, the only inequality being that the 
younger men do not fare so well as their eldeis, Generosity is 
esteemed by the Andaman Islanders one of the highest of virtues 
and is unremittingly practised by the majority of them, 

Withih the local group there is no such thing as a division of 
labour save as between the two sexes. In the coastal groups 
every man is expected to be able to hunt pig, to harpoon turtle 
and to catch fish, and also to cut a canoe, to make bows and 
arrows and all the other objects that are made by men, It 
happens that some men are more skilful in certain pursuits than 
in others, A skilful turtle-hunter, for example, may be an 
indiffereat pig-hunter, and such a man will naturally prefer to 
devote himself to the pursuit in which he appears to most 
advantage. 

The division of labour between the sexes is fairly clearly 
marked. A man hunts and fishes, using the bow and arrow and 
the harpoon; he makes his own bows and arrows, his adze and 
knife, cuts canoes and makes rope for harpoon lines. A woman 

collects fruits and digs up roots with her digging stick; she 
catches prawns and crabs and small fish with her small fishing 
net; she provides the firewood and the water of the family and 
does the cooking (ie. the family cooking, but not the common 
cooking, which is entirely done by men); she makes all such 
objects as baskets, nets of thread, and personal ornaments either 
for herself or ficr husband, 

There is no organised government in an Andamanese village, 
The affairs of the community are tegulated entirely by the older 
men and women, The younger members of the community are 
brought up to pay respect to their elders and to submit to them 
in many ways. It has already been shown how, in the distribu- 
tion of food, the elders get the best share, When it is a question 
of shifting camp to some better hunting ground the opinion of 
the older men would weigh against that of the younger if they 
disagreed. It must not be thought, however, that the older men 
are tyrannical or selfish, I only once heard a young man 
complain of the older men getting so much the best of every- 
thing, The respect for seniority is kept alive partly by tradition 
and partly by the fact that the olde: men have had a greater 
expelience than the younger. It could probably not be 
maintained if it regularly gave rise to any tyrannical treatment 
of the younger by the elder. 

The 1espect for seniors is shown in the existence of special 
terms of address which men and women use when “speaking 
to their elders, In the languages of the North Andaman there 
are two such terms, ai or Maia, applied to men, with a meaning 
equivalent to “ Sir,” and AZin7z, applied to women, These words 
may be used cither alone or prefixed to the personal name of 
the person addressed, A younger man speaking to an older one 
whose name was Bora would address him either as Ja? (Sir), or 
as Maza Bora (Sir Bora). © 

In the tribes of the South Andaman there are exactly similar 
terms, In the Aéa-Bea tribe Maia or Maiola is used in address 
ing men and Cana or Canola in speaking to women, In Ahar- 
ale the equivalent terms are Da and Jv. Besides these terms 
there is in these tribes another, Mam, Mama or Maiola, which 
may be used in speaking to either men or women, and which 

implies a higher degree of respect than Mada or Cana. In these 
tribes also there is a special way of showing respect by adding 
the suffix -/2 to the name of the person addressed, as Bia, Biala, 
Wotto, Wotto-la, etc. 

In the legends of the Andamanese these titles are nearly 
always prefixed to the names of the legendary ancestors, as 
Maia ,utpu and Mimd Bilihu in Aka-Jeru, or Da Dubu and 
Jn Bain in Akar-Bale, The moon is similarly spoken of as 
Sir Moon (Afaa Ogar in Aka-Rea) and the sun as Lady Sun 
(Cana Bodo), 

Besides the respect for seniority there is another important 
factor in the regulation of the social life, namely the respect for 
certain personal qualities, These qualities are skill in hunting 
and in warfare, generosity and kindness, and freedom from 
bad temper. A man possessing them inevitably acquires a 
position of influence in the community. His opinion on any 
subject carries more weight than that of another even older man, 
The younger men attach themselves to him, are anxious to 
please him by giving him any presents that they can, or by 
helping him in such work as cutting a canoe, and to join him in 
hunting parties or turtle expeditions. In each local group there 
was usually to be found one man who thus by his influence could 
control and direct others. Amongst the chief men of seveial 
friendly local groups it would generally happen that one of 
them, byereason of his personal qualities, would attain to a 
position of higher rank than the others, Younge: men would be 
desirous of joining the local group to which he belonged. He 
would find himself popular and respected at the annual meetings 
of the different groups, and his influence would thus spread 
beyond the narrow limits of his own small community, 

There was no special word to denote such men and dis- 
tinguish them from others, In the languages of the North 
Andaman they were spoken of as ev-kuro = “big.” 

Such men might perhaps be spoken of as “ chiefs,” but the 
term is somewhat misleading, as it makes us think of the 
organised chieftainship of other savage races, ‘ 

The above statement is not quite in agreement with what 
has been written by Mr Man on the same subject, and what he 

says is therefore reproduced here. “Their domestic policy may 
be described as a communism modified by the authority, more or 
less nominal, of the chief. The head chief of a tribe is called 
mata ight, and the elders, or sub-chiefs, ie. those in authority 
over each community, consisting of from 20 to 50 individuals, 
maiola, The head chief, who usually resides at a permanent 
encampment, has authority over all the sub-chiefs, but his power, 
like theiis, is very limited, It is exercised mainly in organising 
meetings between the various communities belonging to his tribe, 
and in exerting influence in all questions affecting the welfare of 
his followers, It is the chief alone, as may be supposed, who 
directs the movements of a party while on hunting and fishing 
expeditions, or when migrating. It is usually through his 
intervention that disputes are settled, but he possesses no power 
to punish or enforce obedience to his wishes, it being left to 
all alike to take the law into their own hands when aggrieved. 
The aryoto and eremtaga in each tribe have their own head 
chief, who are independent the one of the other. As might 
be assumed from the results of observations made of other 
savage raccs, whose sole or chief occupation consists in hunting 
or fishing, the power of the chiefs is very limited, and not 
necessarily hereditary, though, in the event of a grown-up 
son being left who was qualified for the post, he would, in most 
instances, be selected to succeed his father in preference to 
any other individual of equal efficiency. ,At the death of a 
chief there is no difficulty in appointing a successar, there being 
always at least one who is considered his deputy or right-hand 
man. As they are usually, on these occasions, unanimous in 
their choice, no formal election takes place; however, should any 
be found to dissent, the question is decided by the wishes of the 
majority, it being always open to malcontents to transfer their 
allegiance to another chief, since there is no such thing.as forced 
submission to the authority of one who is not a general favourite, 
Social status being dependent not merely on the accident of 
relationship, but on skill in hunting, fishing, ctc, and on a 
reputation for generosily and hospitality, the chiefs and elders 
are almost invariably superior in every respect to the rest, They 
and their wives are at liberty to enjoy immunity from the 

drudgery incidental to their mode of life, all such acts being 
voluntarily performed for them by the young unmarried persons 
living under their headship!.” 

Where Mr Man speaks of the “authority” of the chiefs 
it would be better to speak of “influence.” Of authority the 
leading men have little or none, but of influence they have a 
good deal Should any one venture to oppose a popular chief 
he would find the majority of the natives, including many of his 
friends, siding against him. The words “chief” and “ authority ” 
seem to imply some soit of organised rule and procedure, and of 
this there is nothing in the Andamans. M1 Man also implies 
that in each tribe there is always one recognized headman, but 
in reality each tribe may possess two or three leading men in 
different parts of the country, cach with his own following. 
In any case a man’s influence is largely confined to his own local 
group, for it is only at the annual meetings that the men of other 
groups come in contact with him, 

The early officers of the Andamanese JIomes (before the 
time of Mr Man) established a system of chieftainship in the 
islands by selecting a few of the more trustworthy and intelligent 
men, whom they dignified with the tille of vaya, and who acted 
as the intermediaries between the Officer in Charge of the 
Andamanese and the natives, This system has been continued 
to the present day, and the natives have adopted the title raja 
for these men, having themselves no word for a chief. Wherea 
man is selected who is already respected and esteemed by the 
natives his influence is considerably increased through the 
position thus assigned to him. The natives themselves do not 
recognize that he has any authority over them, but if he be a 
man of generosity and tact, the majority will always support 
him, and his advice in any matters of moment will he readily 
followed, 

Women may occupy a position of influence similar to that of 
the men. The wife of a leading man generally exercises the 
same sort of influence over the women as her husband does over 
the men, A woman, however, would not exercise any influence 
over the men in matters connected with hunting. They do have 

1 Man, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst, Vol. x11, pi. 108. 

a good deal of influence in connection with quarrels either of 
individuals or of local groups, 

There are certain men, and possibly sometimes women, who 
have an influence over their fellows owing to their being credited 
with the possession of supernatural powers, These men, called 
in Aka-Jeru oko-junuu (iterally “one who speaks from dreams"), 
will be described in a later chapter. As they are believed to 
have command over the powers that produce and cure sickness 
everyone tries Lo be on good terms with them, avoiding giving 
them offence in any way, and seeking their favour by presents of 
food or other things, It sometimes happens that a chief (the 
leading man of a local group) is at the same time a medicine-man 
or oho-jumu, but the two positions are cntirely distinct and 
separate, and a man may be a medicine-man who possesses none 
of the qualities that are necessary for a head man. 

There does not appear to have been in the Andamans any 
such thing as the punishment of crime, We may distinguish 
two kinds of anti-social actions which are regarded by the 
natives as being wrong, The first kind are those actions which 
injure in some way a private individual, The second are those, 
which, while they do not injure any particular person, are yet 
regarded with disapproval by the society in general. 

Amongst the anti-social actions of the first kind are murder, 
or wounding, theft and adultery, and wilful damage of the 
property of another, * 

No case of one Andamanese killing another has occurred in 
1ecent years, Quarrels sometimes occur between two men of 
the same camp. A good deal of hard swearing goes on, and 
sometimes one of the men will work himself up to a high pitch 
of anger, in which he may seize his bow and discharge an arrow 
near to the one who has offended him, or may vent his ill-temper 
by destroying any property that he can lay his hands on, 
including not only that of his enemy bul also that of other 
persons and even his own, At such a display of anger the 
women and children flee into the jungle in terrer, and if the 
angry man be at all a formidable person the men occasionally 
do the same. It apparently requires more courage than the | 
natives usually possess to endeavour to allay such a storm of | 

\ 

anger. Yet I found that the slightest show of authority would " 
immediately bring such a scene to an end, A man of influence 
in his village was probably generally equal to the task of keeping 
order and preventing any serious damage from taking place, It 
was probably rare for a ‘man so far to give way to his anger 
as to kill his opponent, 4 

Such murders did, however, occasionally take singeis ' The 
murderer would, as a rule, leave the camp and hide himself 
in the jungle, where he might be joined by such of his friends 
as were ready to take his part. It was left to the relatives and 
friends of the dead man to exact vengeance if they wislicd 
and if they could. If the murderer was a man who was much 
feared it is probable that he would escape, In any case the 
anger of the Andamanese is short-lived, and if for a few months 
he could Keep out of the way of those who might seck revenge, 
it is probable that at the end of that time he,would find their 
anger cooled, 

A man who is liable to outbursts of violent anger is feared 
by his fellows, and unless he has other counterbalancing qualities, 
he is never likely to become popular, He is treated with outward 
respect, for every one is afraid of offending him, but ‘he never 
acquires the esteem of others, There is a special fickname, 
Tavenjek, in the North Andaman, to denote such a man’, m 
+ Quarrels were more likely to occur at the meetings of 
different local groups that took place in the fine weather, and 
such quarrels might occasionally end in the murder of some one, 

‘In such a case the, quarrel would be taken up by, the group 
: haar 

‘1 The natives of the Nor th Andaman were able to tell me of a few enses of murder 
which had occurred within the memory of those still living, ‘ 

Mr Por{man i in his Zistory of Our Relations with the Andamanese recortls a certain 
number éf murders which occurvetl while he was in charge of the Andamanese, One 
man, Who hadtbeen imprisoned htePort Blair for murder, committed another soon 
after his iclegse nytd was hanged, lifce that date there has been‘ne case of muidey 
ayhong the Gieat Andaman Libes," ‘Aihis i is perhaps in part due to the punishment 
with which they are now theatered by the Government, but another cause is ‘probably 
the brgak}lown of ihe ol social onganifation,wwpich has in this respect rather improved 
their morals than the qpposite, a tis Mee 

* 2 Thé pickname is applied, however, Hot coply to those who deserve it by theit 
character; but algo to others 5 for inyance, one Byam was called Zar enjek because his 
maternal uncle was a man of violent tempers oo 

BA & 

of the murdered man, and a feud would be set up between them 
and the local group to which the murderer belonged, Such was 
one of the common causes of origin of the petty warfare that 
formerly existed in the Andamans, which will be referred to 
later in the present chapter. 

Cases of theft seem to have been rare. It was left to the 
aggrieved person to take vengeance upon the thief, but if he 
killed him or seriously wounded him he would have to expect 
the possible vengeance of the relatives and friends, Adultery 
was regaided as a form of theft. I gathered that a man had the 
right to punish his wife for unfaithfulness, but if the punishment 
were too severe it would be an occasion for a quarrel with her 
relatives, It was difficult for the, aggrieved husband to punish 
the man who had offended against him. If he killed him he 
would lay himself oper to the revenge of the relatives, The 
most he could do was to vent his anger in violent words, 

Women also.occasionally quarrel with one another and swear 
forcibly at qne another, or even get so far as to destroy one 
another's belongings, or to fight with their fists or sticks, The 
‘men hesitate to interfere, and the quariel can only be stopped 
by gome woman of influence. . ‘ 

The frequent occurrence of serious quarrels is prevented both, 
by the influence of the older men and by the fear that everyone 

‘thas. of the possible vengeance of others should he in any way ! 

offend them, ,, < Lit 
* Where are a number of actions which, while they do nat 
offend any, particular person, are regarded as being anti-social, 
One of these is laziness. Every man is expected to take hig 
proper, ghare in, providing both himsélf and others with food. 
"Should, & man shirk this obligation, nothing would be said to 
him, unles$ he were a young unmatricd man, and he would still 
be givenfoad by others, but he would find himself occupying ‘a 
‘position of inferiority in the camp, and would entirel¥ lose the 
esteem of his fellows. Other qualities or actions that result 
in a similar loss of esteem are marital unfaithfulness, lack of 
respect to others and particularly to elders, meanness or niggard- 
liness, and bad temper. One man was mentioned to me as 
being a bad man because he refused to take a wife after he had 

reached the age when it is considered proper for a man to marry. 
In recent times at least one young man has refused to undergo 
the privations connected with the initiatfon ceremonies. This 
was of course a case of gross rebellion against the éustoms of the 
tribe, but there was no way of punishing him or of compelling 
him to conform, save by showing him that he was an object of 
contempt and ridicule to otheis, Probably such a refusal to 
conform to tribal customs could not have taken place before the 
British occupation of the islands, 

Another class of wrong actions consists in the breaking of 
ritual prohibitions, There are, for example, as will be shown,{n 
a later chapter, a number of actions which it is believed may 
cause bad weather, such as burning bees’-wax or killing a cicada, 
There is, however, no punishment that tan be meted tout to any 
one who does any of these things, Thé punishment, if we may 
call it so, ig a purely supernatuial one, and it strikes not only 
the offender but every one else as well. -fn thd legends of the 
Andamanese there are one or two stories related of how-oné of 
the ancestors, being angry, deliberately performed: oné of the 
forbidden actions and thus brought a slorm that destroyed many 
human beings, There are other ritual prohibitions the non» 
observance of which is supposed to bring its own punishment on, 
the offender, who, it ig believed, will be ill, . 

* The medicine-men (oko-fusmn) are credited with the power to 
work evil-magic, and by its means to make otherpeople ill, atid: 
even to kill them. A man suspected of evil magic might be 
liable to the vengeance of those who thoughthaf'they*had been 
injured by him, but though the practice was‘tegartléd as repre. 
hensible it does not seem that the society evé? Acted as whole 
to punish a man suspected of it, \ eo | 

Children are reproved for improper behavidtis, bu} hey ure 
never pupished. During their years of infancy (ey ate nich 
spoilt, not only by their parents but, by every one, During 
the period of adolescence every boy atid girl has to undergo a 
somewhat severe discipline, to be described in a later chapter, 

1 See below, Chap. iv. 

This probation, if it may bé 80 called, is enforced bya unanimous 
publis opinion, The disciplitie lasts until the man or‘wosmari is 
married and a parent, or if childless as so many now are, until 
he or she has settled down to a'pasition of respotisibility. 

Thus, though -the Andaman Jslanders had a well developed 
social conscience, that is, a system ofmoral potions as to what 
is right and wrong, there was no-sych ‘thing as the punishment 
of a crime by the society. If one person injured another it was 
left to the injured one to seek vengeance if he wished and if hoe 
dared. There were probably always some who would side with 
the criminal, their attachment to him overcoming their dis- 
approval of his actions. The only painful result of ,anti-social 
actions was the loss of the esteem of others, This in itself 
was a punishment that the Andamanese, with their great per- 
sonal vanity, would feel keenly, and it was in most instances 
sufficient to prevent such actions, For the rest, good order 
depended largely on the influence of the more prominent men 
and women. 

We have so far considered only the general regulation of 
gonduct in the local group, without giving any attention to the 
more special regulations dependent on relationships by blood 
and by marriage, In all human societies thee is a system of 
rights and duties regulating the conduct towards one another of 
persons who are related either by consanguinity or through 
marriage. In primitive societies these particular rights and 
duties occupy a position of preponderating importance, owing, 
no doubf, to the small number of persons with whom any 
single person comes into effective social contact. When a 
large proportion of the men and women with whom any person 
comes in contact are 1elated to him, it is clear that relationship 
must count for a good deal in regulating the everyday life of* 
the people, { 

Different societies have different systems of relationship. 
This means, not only that they attach different duties to particular 
relations, but also that they have different ways of reckoning the 
relationships themselves, The vast majority of primitive peoples 
have some one or other form of what is known to ethnologists 

© 

] 

as the * ‘classificatory system of "relationship'? This system is 
intimately connectéd with thé existence of the social divisions 
known as “clans. In the Andamans théte are no clans, and 
the, system of relationship is fundamentally different from all the 
classificatory systerns, °° a 

To understand the Andamanese system it is necessary to 
examine the terms by whith they denote the different kinds of 
relationship which are retognized’§ In many societies having 
the classificatoty system of relationship the terms which are 
used to denote relationship aré also used as terms of address, 
just as we use the terms “Father” and “Mother.” In the 
Andamans this is notso, There are special words that are used 
as terms of address, but these do not imply any relationship 
between the speaker and the person spoken to. In the North 
Andaman those terms are Maia ( Sir)y and Mimi ( Lady). 
These are used by younger men and women in speaking to older 
persons. For the rest, persons are addfessed freely by their 
personal names, There are no terms of address that imply any 
relationship of consanguinity between the peison speaking and 
the person whom he addresses, This is an important feature of 
the Andamanese system, distinguishing it from the systems of 
many other primitive societies. 

The following is a list of terms used to denote relationship 
in the North Andaman, There seems to be very little difference 
in this matter between the four tribes of the North (Aka-Cari, 
Aka-Kova, Aka-Bo and Aka- Jeru). 

1 The classificatory system of relationship was first studied and named by Lewis 
UL. Morgan, in Systems of Consangutnity and Affinity of the Human Family, 
Washington, Smithsonian Institution, 1871. The subject is also discussed in the 
same author's Ancient Society. Although there has been a good deal of attention 
paid to the systems of relationship of savage tribes since the time of Motgan, there is 
no general Yorke on the subject that supersedes these two books. 

® The teims used in any society to denole relationships are of inlerest to the 
ethnologist as an important means to the discovery of the relationship system (i.e. the 
system of juridical and moral institutions} existing in the same society, Without 
a thorough knowledge of the terms in use and thei exact meanings it is impossible 
to discover the rights and duties of relatives one to another. It is, however, sometimes 
forgotten that the study of terms of relationship is not an end in itself but a means to 
@ moie important study. 

\ 

aha-mai * his father 
aka-mime his mother 

ot-tire his child 

ot-otoatie his older brother 
ot-otoatue-tip his older sister 
ot-avai-culute his younger brother 

ot-avai-tulute-lep his younger sister 
ot-e-bué or e-bui his wife (her husband) 

enpota-lin his father-in-law 
e-pota-tip his mother-in-law 
ot-otone his son-in-law. 

Aka-mai and aka-mimi, The words for “father” and 
“mother” are derived from the terms of address Mata and Mimé 
by the addition in each case of the prefix aka-. By itself the 
term Maia is used by any man or woman in speaking to a man 
older than himself or herself without implying any relation 
between them beyond that of respective age. The addition of 
the prefix aka~ changes the word, giving it the meaning “the 
father of somebody.” Thus Maza Bora means “Mr Bora” or 
“Sir Bora,” if we may so translate it, but Bora aka-mai means 
“Bora’s father,” and aka-mai Bora means “his or her father 
Bora.” The Aka-Jeru equivalent for “my father” is fa-maz, 
the ? being the personal pronoun “my,” after which the prefix 
aka- is contracted to a. Similarly “thy father” is g’a-mad 
and “their father” or “their fathers” is #’a-mad The word 
aka-miné is in every respect exactly parallel to aka-sad, These 
two terms are only used when it is necessary to refer to the 
actual father or mother of anybody. For example, if a man 
be asked Adin y'a-mat bi? (Who your father is?), he will reply 
by giving the name of his own father, 

The stem waza clearly relates to the social position of the 
father of a family. A man who is a father, or while not having 
any children, is married and occupies an equivalent sqcial posi- 
tion to a father, is addressed by the term which shows his social 
position, Maia. When I call a man Jaze, I do not imply that 
he is my father nor that he is related to me at all, but only 
that he is @ father. On the other hand, the prefix aka- added 
to the stem makes a possessive form, so that aka-mai means 
“his father” and ?a-sad means “my father.” The word andned 

is exactly parallel, By itself, the stem simply shows that the 
person addressed is @ mother, while aha-mimd means “his 
mother,” 

Ot-tire, The word “child,” when there is no reference to the 
child of some particular person, is translated e-téve, -tire being 
the stem and e- the prefix’. With a change of prefix from -e 
to of-,a possessive form is made, so that o¢-éve always means 
“his or her child,” with reference to some particular person 
understood. Thus Bora ot-tive would mean “the child of Bora,” 
while Bora e-tire or e-tire Bora would mean “the child Bora.” 
The phrase fo2-t7re (my child) is used by either a man or a 
woman to denote his or her child. 

Ot-otoatue and ot-arat-tulute, 1 was unable to find in the 
languages of the North Andaman any words which could 
properly be translated “brother” or “sister.” The two words 
here given are used by the Andamanese to denote persons 
older or younger than the speaker, whether they be brothers 
and sisters or not, The derivation of o¢-otoaiue could not be 
ascertained, but the word means “he who was born before me,” 
and it is used in this sense to denote any person of the speaker's 
generation who is older than himself, If it is necessary to em- 
phasise the female sex of the person spoken of, the suffix -2 
is added, An alternative word of exactly the same meaning, is 
ot-avenpu (fem. ot-arep-tip), The word ot-avai-tulute is formed 
from the stem él or éulutn meaning “following” or “after,” 
which always takes the prefix araz-, (This prefix conveys a 
reference to position in time or space.) The stem is found in 
such phrases as tio y’arat-dulutu-bom, “1 will follow you” 
(literally zéo I, y’ thou, dedudn = after, and -dom, verbal suffix), 
and tarat-culik “afterwards” (¢-arat-dulu-ck), The prefix ot 

1 Tn the Andamanese languages a large number of words are formed fam a stem 
and a prefix, 2, of-, aka-, ava-, ab- etc. are prefixes of this kind. The function of 
the prefixes is (1) to show that the object denoted by the word is in a dependent 
relation to some other object understood, as for instance that it is part of that ollter 
object, and (2} 1o modify the reference of the stem, as for instance while ¢-¢é¢ means 
the offspring of an animal or an human being, era-fire means the offspring of n es 
or plant (the young shoots). For a description of these prefixes the rcade? may be 
ieferred to the work of Mr Portman, Notes on the Languages of the South Andarian 
Group of Tribes, . , 

added in front of the usual prefix ava?- determines the par- 
ticular use of the word as referring tg, human beings, Thus 
the word of-ava?-culute means, literally, “the or she who was 
born after me.” It is used in this sense by a man or woman 
to denote any person of the same generation who is younger 
than himself, The suffix -¢ip may be added to denote a female, 
Alternative words of the same meaning are ot-ava-Hiéu and ot- 
araela, 

These words are not, properly speaking, terms of relationship, 
but serve only to denote the respective ages of two persons, I 
did not discover any terms whatever by which a man can dis- 
tinguish his own brother or sister from any other man or woman 
of the same age. 

Ot-e-bui, The stem -bai means “to marry,” as in 9’ e-dud- 
oi= they are married. “My husband” or “my wife” is simply 
Ce-bug or Pot-e-bui, 

E-pota-ciu and e-pota-cip, The derivation of these words was 
not discovered, They are the terms by which a man distin- 
guishes his wife’s father and mother, and a woman her husband's 
father and mother. 

Ot-otone, The word and its meaning are somewhat doubtful. 
It was sometimes used by a man to denote his daughter's 
husband, and perhaps also his son’s wife. I once heard it 
applied to a younger sister’s husband, It may be compared 
with the same word as used in the South Andaman to be 
mentioned presently. 

So far as could be discovered, there are no words in the 
languages of the North Andaman for grandfather, grandmother, 
uncle, aunt, cousin, etc, The terms given above can be combined 
to describe relatives of this Icind, as 

Ta-mimt aka-mat my mother’s father 
Ot-e-bui ot-arat-tulute his wifes younger brother # 

Pot-a-maiot-arai-tulute thy fathei's younger brother 

T'ot-otoatue ot-tire my older brother’s child, 

These compound terms are not oftcn used, however, 

The terms of relationship of the Azar-Bale tribe may be 
taken as representative of the tribes of the South Andaman. 
The following list contains all the more important of them, 

. . 

‘ 

da father 
ab-alr —** father 
tn mother 

ar-bua "child 
ar-kodive ‘child (father speaking) 

ab-atet y child (mother speaking) 
mama‘ grandparent 
jat grandchild 

en-toaka-ya older brother or sister 
ar-dotot younge biother ot sister 

otont son-in-law 

oten daughter-in-law 

ab-t-ya consoit (husband or wife) 

aha-yat parent of child’s consort 

aka-bua consort’s younger biother or sister 

ep-taruo-ya step relative 

‘ ot-tat-ya relative by adoption 
aha-kuam younger ielative 
ab-Cuga oldet telative (male) 
ab-dupal alder relative (female). 

Da and 7x, Da is the common term of address used when 
speaking to an older man to whom the speaker wishes to show 
respect, A man will speak of his own father as dege da, dege 
being the personal pronoun “my” as used before a word that 
has no prefix. The term J# is the common term of address 
used in speaking to women. A man or woman will refer to his 
or her own mother as deg’ 7. The use of these two terms as 
applied to parents is very similar to the use of aha-maé and 
aka-mimi in the North Andaman, wilh the difference that in 
Akar-Bate the stem da or 7n does not take a prefix to modify 
its meaning, While the use of the terms Da and Jz as terms 
of address does not in the least imply that there is any relation- 
ship between the person speaking and the person addressed, yet 
the phrase dege da would in general be understood as referring 
to the spegker’s own father, 

Ab-air, This is a word descriptive of the relationship of a 
father to his child, I never heard a man refer to hist own father 
by this term, but it is heard in such phrases as deg’ 7x /'ab-atr 
=my mother's father. It conveys a definite notion of the physio- 
logical relation between a father and his children, and might 
be translated “he who caused me to be conceived.” There is 

probably a feminine equivalent meaning “mother,” but it was 
not noted. 

Apy-bua, av-kodive and ab-atet, The Akar-Bale word for 
“infant” is ad-Liga or ab-dareka. The latter word is the pho- 
netic equivalent of the e-cre of the Northern languages. A 
parent often speaks of his or her infant son as @’ab-duda, and 
of his infant daughter as @’ad-pal, ab-bula and ab-pal being the 
terms for “male” and “female.” The exact use of the term 
ar-bua is difficult to determine. The stem -dva may be used 
by itself without a prefix. Dege dea (my child) would refe:, 
I helieve, only to the child of the speaker. On the other hand, 
aman would use the term @’ar-dua as referring not only to his 
own child but also to the child of a brother or a sister, or even 
to a person who was not related to him at all. So far as it 
could be determined, it seems that a man or woman might 
apply this term (ar-ua) to any person of the same generation 
as his or her children, whether a relative or not. It thus means 
“a person of the same generation as my own children,” and 
describes, not relationship, but respective age. The word av- 
hodive refers to the own child of a man, and ad-atet similarly 
refers to the own child of a woman. The two words together 
are thus equivalent to the oz-¢ive of the North Andaman, the 
Akar-Bale distinguishing between the offspring of a man (ar- 
hodive) and the offspring of a woman (@d-ate?), 

Mama, The word is translated above as meaning “prand- 
parent,” but it, has a wider meaning than this, It is used as a 
term of address to convey more respect than is conveyed by the 
terms Da and Ju, and is thus used in addressing any man or 
woman who is considerably older than the speaker. With the 
personal pronoun, dege mama, it may be applied by a man or 
woman to any of his grandparents, and also to his father-in-law 
and mother-in-law, and to other senior relatives, ° 

fat. The word was explained to me by the natives as 
meaning “grandchild.” It seems to be a sort of reciprocal of 
mama, and is apparently applicable by any old man or woman 
to any child of the same generation as his or her own grand- 
children, 

1 Dege bula and dege gal mean *'my husband” and “my wife” :espectively. 

En-toaka-ya and ar-dotot. These two words are used in 
exactly the same way as the words o/-otoatvwe and ot-avat-culute 
of the North Andaman. They are not pioperly terms of re- 
lationship, but may be equally used in referring to non-relatives, 
En-toaka-ya means “he who was born before me,” and ar-dotot 
means “he who was born after me.” I was not able to discover 
any word by which a person could distinguish his own brother 
or sister from others of the same age. It is not certain, however, 
that such a word does not exist. 

Otoni and oten, These arc masculine and feminine forms of 
the same word, and are used to denote a daughter's husband 
and a son’s wife. Osont is also applied to a younger sister's 
husband, and ofex to a younger brother’s wife. The derivation 
of the words was not discovered, 

Aka-yat, This is the native name for the relationship 
subsisting between a person’s parents and his parents-in-law. 
My own mother or father is @ha-yat to my wife’s father or 
mother. 

Aka-bua, ‘The word is derived from the stem da, meaning 
“child.” It is applied by a man to the younger brothers and 
sisters of his wife, and by a woman to the younger brotheis 
and sisters of her husband. i 

Ab-i-ya, The word is translated “consort,” and means either 
husband or wife, It is derived from the verbal stem -- meaning 
“to marry” (on-d-re), ab- being the prefix, and -ya the verbal 
sumhx, 

Ep-taruo-ya, The word is used to denote a step-child, or a 
younger step-brother or sister, 

Ot-dat-ya. The word means “adopted.” “My adopted child” 
is simply expressed as a’ot-dat-ya, while “my foster father” is 
dege da ot-¢at-ya, The stem is -dat-, -ya being the verbal suffix 
and of- the prefix. 

Aka-kuam, In spite of several enquiries, I was unable to 
ascertain the significance of this word. I heard it applied on 
different occasions to a younger brother or sister, to a younger 
first cousin, and to the brothers and sisters of a wife. The only 
suitable translation would seem to be “my younger relative,” 
but it is not certain that it even implies any relationship at all, 

It is perhaps really a term denoting respective social status and 
is used by a married man to denote other married men who 
are somewhat younger than himself, and with whom he is on 
friendly terms. 

Ab-iuga and ab-éupal. These are the masculine and femi- 
nine forms of one word. Mr Portman! gives them as meaning 
“mairied man” and “married woman.” I heard them used, 
however, with the personal pronoun. Thus a man applied the 
term ad-duga to his older brother, his older sister's husband, and 
to his father's brother. In this usage these two terms seem to 
be in a sense reciprocal to aka-kuam. A younger married man 
will refer to older married men and women as his ad-éuga and 
ab-éupal, while they, will call him aka-kuam. 

In his work on the Andamanese, Mr E. H. Man gives a long 
list of terms of relationship for the Asa-Bea tribe’, It will be of 
some interest to compare the terms there given with those of the 
Akar-Bale tribe described above. 

D'ab-maiola (D'ab-mai-ola). This is translated by Mr Man 
as “father.” In Aka-Bea the term Maia is the term of address 

«corresponding to the Da of Akar-Bale and to the Mai of the 
North Andaman, The suffix -o/a, added to this and other terms 
of address serves to convey additional respect, as Mara, Mai-ola, 
Cana, Can-ola, Mama, Mam-ola, Thus ab-mat-ola corresponds 
to the aka-ma? of the Northern languages, 

Dia Maia, This is given by Mr Man as applicable to the 
following relatives:—my father’s brother, my mother’s brother, 
wmy father’s sister's husband, my mothet's sister's husband, my 
father’s fathe1’s brother’s (or sistcr’s) son, my husband’s grand- 
father, my wife's grandfather, my wife’s sistcr’s husband (if elder), 
my husband's sister’s husband (if elder). 

Dia maiola, My grandfather, my grandfather's brother, my 
grandmother’s brother, my elder sister’s husband, ’ 

It must be remembered that these terms are not properly 
terms of relationship at all. Any man who is older than the 
speaker is Maia or Afaz-ola to him, the latter implying a slightly 

0 Notes ou the Languages of the South Andaman Group of Tribes, 

2 Man, of. cli, p. 421. The ala, or the a’ before a prefix, in the words of this 
list is the pronoun “ my.” 

higher degree of respect than the former, It is probable that 
the three different terms given above are not used by the natives 
with the very precise distinctions that are drawn by Mr Man, 
It may be noted that Mr Portman writes in this connection :— 
“ Maia is an Honorific, equivalent to the English ‘Sir, and is 
used when addressing a male elder. A son calls his father ‘ Sir; 
and uses no other word in speaking to, or of, him., A pronoun 
Dia maiole, ,, 
My Father’ 

D ab-tanola, Given by Mr Man as meaning “my mother.” 
It is the feminine equivalent of @’ad-mai-ola, Cana being the 
feminine of Maza, and corresponding to the Zz of Akar-Bale and 
the Mimi of Aka- ert, 

Dia éanola, This is given as the A/a-Bea translation of the 
following :—my father’s sister, my mother's sister, my father's 
brother’s wife, my mother’s brother’s wife, my grandmother, my 
great aunt, my father’s father’s sister's daughter, my mother’s 
mother’s sister’s daughter, my husband’s grandmother, my wife’s 
grandmother, my husband’s sister (if senior and a mother), my 
elder brother’s wife (if a mother), In its formation the term is 
the feminine equivalent of dia maz-ola, while in its use it is the 
equivalent both of this term and of dia mata, This serves to 
show that there is no real precise distinction between wir mata 
and dia mat-ola, such as Mr Man’s list would scem to imply. 
Dia éan-da is not, properly speaking, a term of relationship, 
Any married woman senior to the speaker is entitled to be 
addressed as Cana or Can-ola, 

D'ab-tabil, Mr Man gives this as translating “my father, 
my step-father.” The feminine equivalent would seem to be @’ab- 
éanola, which is given for “my mother” and “my step-mother,” 
Mr Portman gives ab-tebil and ab-cana as the Aka-Bea terms 
for “married man” and “married woman’.” ‘The two words are 
the equivalents of the Akar-Bale ab-tuga and ab-cupal. 

Diar-odi-ya, This word is given by Mr Man as one of the 
equivalents for ‘my father.” It is parallel to the Ahar-Rave, 

emphasises the relationship, as: 

1 Portman, Motes on the Languages of the South Andaman Group of Tribes, 

Pr 255: 
3 Op cit, pr 100 

term ad-air, and is strictly a term of physiological relationship, 
meaning “he who caused me to be conceived.” 

D'ab-eti-ya, This is translated by Mr Man as “my mother.” 
It is the corresponding term to d’ar-odt-ya, and refers to the 
physiological relationship. 

D'ab-weji-ya or @’ab-wejert-ya, This also means “my mother,” 
and is only an alternative word for the above. The stems edz 
and wefi or wejere seem 1o be two slems meaning the same 
thing. 

Dar-odt-re or @'ar-odi-yate, Given by Mr Man as meaning 
“my son” (if over three years of age, father speaking). It is the 
equivalent of the Ahar-Bale ar-hodire. 

Dab-eti-ve, d'ab-eti-pate, d’ab-weji-re, d'ab-weji-yate, d'ab- 
wejert-re, d'ab-wejeri-yate, These are all given by Mr Man as 
translating “my son” (if over three years of age, mother speaking), 
They are equivalent to the Akar-Bale ab-atet, 

The above words seem to be derived from three stems, -od- 
-ett-, and -cvef2- (or -eveferi-), the stems -erd- and -e7?- having 
exactly the same meaning, and belonging, perhaps, to different 
dialects, The words are formed by the addition of the prefixes 
ar- and ab-, and the verbal suffixes -ya, -ve, -yate, Thus we 
have ar-odt-ya, “father,” and avr-odi-re or ar-odi-yate, “son.” 
. Similarly we have ad-eti-ya, “mother,” and ab-eti-re or ab-ett- 

yate, “son” (mother speaking), while similar equivalents are 
made from the stem -wefi-. The words given as meaning “son” 
may also be used to mean “daughter,” but when it is necessary 
to emphasise the female sex, the suflix -gaz/ (meaning “ female”) 
is added, as @’ar-odt-re-patl, a’ab-eti-re-patt, 

Dia ota and dia kata, These are given by Mr Man as 
meaning respectively “my son” and “my daughter” (if under 
three years of age, either parent speaking), Of and #aza are 
the terms for the male and female genitals, 

Dia ba, This is given by Mr Man as meaning “my daughter” 
(if over three years of age, either parent speaking) It is the 
phonetic equivalent of dege dua in Akar-Bale, 

Dia ba-lola, Given as the equivalent of:~-my grandson 
(either grandparent speaking), my brother’s grandson (male or 
female speaking), my sister's grandson (male or female speaking), 

The same phrase with the addition of -paz/, meaning “ female,” 
is given as equivalent to:—my granddaughter, my brother's 
granddaughter, and my sister’s granddaughter (male or female 
speaking). ‘ 

D'ar-ba. According to Mr Man this term is applicable by a 
male or female tg the son of a brother, a sister, a half-brother, 
a half-sister, or of a male or female first cousin. With the 
addition of ~paz/, meaning “female,” it is applicable to the 
daughter of any of the above, 

Ad en-toba-re, ad en-toba-ya, ad en-toka-re, ad en-toka-ya, 
These terms are given by Mr Man as alternative equivalents for 
“my elder brother (male or female speaking).” The stem is 
v-toba- or -toka-, with the prefix ex- and the verbal suffix -re 
or -ya. The ad is a special form of the first personal pronoun, 
generally @’, With the addition of -pai/, meaning “female,” 
the term is applicable to an elder sister. The word corre- 
sponds, both phonetically and in meaning, to the Akar-Bale 
en-toaka-ya 

D'ar-doati-ya. Given as meaning “my younger brother (male 
or female speaking).” With the addition of -pa7/, it is applied 
to a younger sister. Mr Man gives the word as being also 
applicable to a first cousin, if younger than the speaker. 

D'ar-wefi-ya or ad’ar-wejeri-ga. These are given by Mr Man 
as alternative terms for “younger brother,” and, with the addition 
of -pail, for “younger sister.” It is to be noted that the stem 
-wefi- or -wejeri- is the same that occurs in one of the terms 
for “mother,” but that the prefix is different, being in this case 
ay- instead of adb-, 

Dia mama, This is given as meaning “my wile’s brother, or 
my husband’s brother (if of equal standing),” 

Dia mam-ola, Given as the equivalent of the following — 
my husbands father, my husband’s mother, my wife's father, my 
wife’s mother, my husband’s elder brother, my wife’s brother (if 
older), my husband’s sister’s husband (if older), my wife’s sister 
(if older and a mother), my husband’s brother's wife (if older), 
my wife’s brother's wife (if older). 

Mama and Mam-ola ave terms of address in Ahka-Bea, 
Mam-ola implies a somewhat greater degree of respect than 

: 

t 

Mama, and this in its turn is more respectful than Jeai-ole 
or Maia. 

. Daka-kam. Myr Man gives this as a term applicable to the 
following relatives:—my younger brother, my younger half- 
brother. With the addition of -paéd, it is applicable to a younger 
sister or half-sister. 

Dia otontya and dia otin, The first of these terms is given 
as meaning :—my son-in-law (male or female speaking), and 
my younger sister's husband (male or female speaking), The 
second term is feminine, and is given as applicable to the 
following :—daughter-in-law, husband’s sister (if younger), hus- 
band’s brother's wife (if younger), wife’s brother's wife (if 
younger), The terms are thus equivalent, phonetically and in 
meaning, to the Azar-Bale terms ofont and ofen, 

Aka-yakat, This is given as the relationship subsisting 
between a married couple's fathers-in-law, and between their 
mothers-in-law. It is the cquivalent of the Akar-Bale word 
aka-yat. 

Daka-ba-bula and a’aka-ba-pail, The meaning of the first of 
these is given as ‘my husband’s brother (if younger),” and of the 
second as “my younger brother’s wife.” The suffixes -duda and 
-patl mean “male” and “female” respectively, The term aka-ba 
is the phonetic equivalent of the Akar-Bale word aka-dua, The 
latter seems to be applied to the younger brothers and sisters of 
a man’s wife or of a woman’s husband, and to these alone, The 
use of these terms and of the terms ofon? andl ote, as recorded 
from the Akar-Bale tribe, may be compared with the usage 
stated by Mr Man, as there is some disagreement. In the 
following table the A#a-Zea terms are given as they are found 
in Mr Man’s list, while those of the Af#ar-Bale tribe are 
given from my own information. 

Aka-Bea Akar-Bale 
Husband's younger brother @ha-ba-dula eakha-bua 

Husband's younger sister oft aka-bua 
Wife’s younger brother aha-dua 
Wife's younger sister aka-bia 
Younger brother's wife otent 
Younger sister’s husband —ofontiya otont. 

It will be observed that the Azar-Bale list is consistent and 
logical throughout, It seems probable that there is an error in 
Mr Man’s list, and that “husband’s younger sister” should be 
aka-ba-pail instead of ofin, while “younger brother’s wife” should 
be o¢én instead of aka-da-pail, This would make the Aka-Bea 
list consistent with itself and with the Azar-Bale list. 

Mr Man gives, in addition to the terms discussed above, a 
number of compound terms, which we may examine briefly, 

Diar-tabil-entoba-re, This is given as applicable to any first 
cousin or half-brother who is older than the speaker, The 
feminine form is given as @’ar-canol-a-entoba-yate. 

D'ar-tabil-entoba-re lai-ih-yate, This is applicable to the wife 
of any first cousin or half-brother, if older than the speaker, As 
lai-ik-yate means “his wife,” this is a descriptive term. There is 
a similar term ava canol a-entoba-yate (at-tk-yate for the husband 
of an older female cousin or half-sister, 

Diar-ba lai-ik-yate, This means “the wile of my e@r-da,” and 
is therefore applicable to the wife of the son of a brother or 
sister or cousin, and to the husband of a daughter of a brother 
or sister or cousin. 

There are a few other similar compounds that need not be 
given, 

In Mr Man’s list a step-son is given as eb-aden-ire, The word 
for adoption is ot-dat-ya, d’ot-cat-ya meaning “my adopted 
child” and a@’ab-mat-ot-dat-ya “my adopted father.” 

The system of terms of relationship of the Andamanese is of 
great interest as being fundamentally different from the systems 
of other uncivilized peoples, It is by no means casy to discover 
the exact usage of the different terms that are mentioned-above, 
It is, however, possible to gain a general idea, probably accurate 
in essentials, of the way in which the Andamanese languages 
express the notions of kinship. 

We may consider first the terms of address and the terms 
of relationship formed from them, The terms of address are :—~ 

Aka-Jeru Aka-Bea Akar-Bale 
Maia or Mai Da Maia Sit 
Mimi Tn Cana Lady 
soveee Mana Mata or manmola, 

. 
BA, ae; 

:The first of these is used in addressing males and the second 
in addressing females, while the third may be used either for 
males or for females and implies a higher degree of respect than 
the others, 

In all the languages of the Great Andaman a man refers 
to his own father and mother by adding a personal pronoun 
to the words meaning “Sir” and “Lady.” In Ada-Jeru a man 
speaks of his father as #a-mat, and of his mother as /a~sdnt, 
the a- being a contracted form of the prefix aka. This prefix is 
always used in this way in the Northern languages, It is not 
possible to say 40 mada, which would be the literal equivalent 
of dege da in Akar-Bale. In the Akar-Bale language the 
translation of “my father” and “my mother” is dege da and 
deg’ in, the dege being the personal pronoun “my” as used 
before a word that has no prefix. The same formation is present 
also in the 4-Pudikwar and Aka-Kol languages, For example 
in Aka-Kol “my father” is tye tao, and “my mother” dye 
in, In the Aka-Bea language, according to the information 
given by Mr Man, the word maeza (or matola) may be used 
combined with a prefix, as in d’ab-maiola=“ my father,” or 
it may be used simply with the personal pronoun as dia mata 
or dia matola. According to Mr Man these last two terms are 
applied not to a man’s own father, but to the other persons whom 
he addresses as maza, This is contradicted by Mr Portman who 
gives dia mazola as the Aka-Bea for “my father”, 

In the Aka-Bea and Akar-Bale languages (as also in 
A-Pucikwar and Aka-Kol) a man always addresses his grand- 
parent or his father-in-law or mother-in-law by the term AZama 
or Mamola, Ue is therefore able to refer to these persons by 
adding the personal pronoun to the term of address, as dege 
mama in Akar-Bale. This cannot, however, be regarded as 
properly a term denoting relationship, for a man may apply the 
term Mama to a man or woman to whom he is fot related 
at allt, 

The next kind of words that we may consider are those 
that describe the 1espective social position of two persons. Such 
are the words of-oteatue and ot-arai-culude in Ahka-Jeru, meaning 

? The natives commonly npplicd the term to me, in the fom Afam-pula, 

“he who was born before me” and “he who was born after 
me” respectively, These terms do not, strictly speaking, convey 
any idea of consanguinity, although they are commonly used 
to refer to a brother or a sister. Exactly equivalent terms are 
found in all the languages, for example the ev-doaka-ya and 
ar-dot-ot of Akar-Bale, 1 was not able to discover in dha, Jorn 
nor yet in Akar-Bale any term to denote a brother or a sister, 
In Aka-Bea, however, Mr Man records the term ar-wefi-ya or 
ar-wejeri-ya, The stem -weji- or -wejert-, as we shall shortly see, 
is a verbal stem referring to the act of biith, -ya@ is a verbal suffix, 
and the prefix ar- conveys a reference to position in space or 
time, The whole word seems to mean “ he or she who was born 
in the same womb as myself, ” and is therefore strictly a word 
meaning “brother or sister.” It is possible that similar words 
exist in Akar-Jeru and Akar-Bale, but I never came across 
them. , 

Other terms descriptive of social status are the Asar-Bale 
terms ad-cuga and ab-éupal which refer to married men and 
women particularly those older than the speaker, These also 
are not properly terms of relationship, though a man may refer 
to some of his relatives as d’ad-éuga, adding the personal 
pronoun to what is properly a word descriptive of the social 
position of the person in question, In Aka-~Bea the equivalent 
terms are ab-¢abil and ab-cana, It would seem that the term 
aka-kuam. (aka-kham in Aka-Bea) is of the same kind, being 
applicable by an older married man to a younger. At any rate 
I was unable to discover that it conveyed to the natives any 
notion of relationship. 

There are a certain number of terms that are descriptive 
of definite relationships. In the North o#-e-dei, and in Akar- 
Bale ab-i-ga ave both of them derived from verbal stems meaning 
“to marry” and are used to denote a husband or a wife. In 
the North I did not discover any term descriptive of a father or a 
mother save those derived from the terms of address. In Ahar- 
Bale and Aka-Bea there are such terms; a@d-atr in Akar-Bale 
means “ father” while the word for “ mother” was not noted ; in 
Aka-Bea a father is av-odi-ya, and a mother is ab-eti-ya. These 
words are descriptive of the physiological relation between a 

5-2 

parent and a child. A man’s adopted mother could not be his 
ab-eti-ya, for this term applies only to the woman from whose 
womb he issued, Similarly an adopted father or a step-father 
could not be aé-atr or ar-odi-ya. There are similar words 
for child, which also refer to the physiological relation of a child 
to its parent. In the North the stem -sive means “ offspring.” 
The offspring of a plant, that is the young shoots, are denoted 
by the term eva-tire, the prefix eva- serving to convey a refer- 
ence to trees and plants, The offspring of an animal or of 
a human being is e-#ve, The word ¢-¢ire means “the child of 
somebody ” without reference to any particular person as the 
parent. In the form of-five the word means “his or her child” 
with reference to some person understood, A man or woman 
cannot in strict accuracy apply the term o¢-tre to his adopted 
child, though I believe that it might be used in this loose sense 
at times, An adopted child is “he whom I have adopted” 
?ot-colo-kom. In Akar-Bale and Aka-Bea there are different 
terms for “child” according as the reference is to the child 
of a man or to that of awoman. Thus in Akar-Bale the child 
(in the physiological sense) of a father is ar-kodtre, and the child 
of a mother is ab-atet. In Aka-Bea the physiological relation of 
a father and child is denoted by the verbal stem -od?-, This 
stem takes the prefix av-. The word for father is formed by 
adding the verbal suffix -ya (ar-odi-ya), The word for child 
(father speaking) is formed by means of the verbal suffix -re 
or vate (ar-odi-re or ar-odi-pate). We may translate @'ar-odt-ga 
as meaning “he who caused me to be conceived” while 
d'ar-odi-ve or dar-odi-yate means “him whom I caused to 
be conceived,” In the same language the physiological relation 
ofa mother and a child is denoted by the stem -e##-, This stem 
takes the prefix @d-, A mother is a-ett-ya, and the child of 
a mother is ab-eti-ve or ab-ett-yaze, the verbal suffixes being used 
in a way similar to that in the case of the terms for father and 
child. In Aka-Bea there is also a stem -wefi- or -2vefer’- which 
has exactly the same meaning as -e¢/- and can be substituted for 
it in the terms meaning mother and child, as @é-qwe/t-ya = mother, 
ab-weji-ve = child, 

Other descriptive words used to denote spccific relationships 

are e-fota-ciu and e-pota-cip and ot-otone in the Northern lan- 
guages. The derivations of these words has not been ascer- 
tained, Similar terms in Ahar-Bale are ofond and oten and 
aka-yat. In this language I did not discover any word de- 
scriptive of the relationship of father-in-law or mother-in-law, 
Finally there are such terms as o¢-cat-ya (adopted) and ep-taruo-ya 
(step-relative), 

The most noteworthy feature of these terms is that it is 
impossible by means of them to deal with relationships that are 
at all distant, Thus there is no term by which a man can 
describe his grandfather. In A#ar-Bale the phrase dege mama 
might mean a grandfather, but it might equally refer to a father- 
in-law. It is true that the simple terms may be combined as 
Aka-Jeru “aka-mimi aka-mai” =“his mother’s father,” or Ahar- 
Bale “ deg’ in ?ab-atr” =“ my mother’s father,” but these com- 
pounded terms are apparently not often used by the natives, 
A second noteworthy feature is the existence of terms to denote 
physiological relationships (as opposed to merely juridical 
relationships) such as the 4#a-Bea ar-odi-ya, etc. Finally there 
is the apparent entire absence, so far as could be determined, 
of any classification of relatives such as is characteristic of the 
classificatory systems of relationship, Where there does seem 
to be some sort of approach to such classification, as in the use of 
the Afar-Bale term dege mama, we find that it is really based 
not-on rélationships of consanguinity and marriage, but on 
respective social status', 

As, in the languages of the Andamans, there are few 
words serving to denote relationship, and on the contrary a 

1 The systems of relationship of savage peoples are often very difficult to study, 
even with a thorough mastery of the native Innguage. My account of the Andamanese 
system is not perhaps complete and is theefore open to error, Since the above 
account was written I have had the opportunity of studying in Australia seveint 
examples of “ classificatory ” systems of relationship, and can now say very definitely 
that such a system presents an extreme contrast to the system of the Andamans. My 
failure fully to comprehend the Andamanese syslem was partly due to the difficulties 
of the language, in which I did not have time to become expert, and partly to the 
nature of the Andamanese terms, of which it is by no means ensy to discover the 
meaning, even with careful obscivation, 

developed system of terms denoting social status, so in the 
social organisation of the Andamans there are very few special 
duties between relatives, and the conduct of persons to one 
another is chiefly determined by their respective social positions, 
This will become evident as we procced, and it will thus be 
shown that there is a close connection between the way the 
natives denote relationships and the way in which their social 
life is affected by questions of relationship. 

We have already seen that in the Andamanese social 
organisation the family is of great importance. A family is 
constituted by a permanent union between one man and one 
woman. In one of its aspects this union is a sexual one, By 
marriage a man acquires the sole right to sexual congress with 
the woman who becomes his wife. At the same time it is the 
duty of a married man to avoid sexual relations with other 
women whether married or unmarried. Promiscuous intercourse 
between the sexes is the rule before marriage, and no harm is , 
thought of it. The love affairs of the boys and girls are carried 
on in secret, but the older members of the camp are generally 
fully aware of all that goes on. What generally happens is 
that after a time a youth forms an attachment with some girl 
and a marriage between them results from their love affair, 

It is impossible, at the present time, to discover exactly how 
the Andamanese formerly regarded infidelity on the part of 
a wife or husband. In the Great Andaman there is gfeat laxity 
in this matter at the present day. Quarrels sometimes arise 
when a husband discovers an intrigue between his wife and 
another man, but very often the husband seems to condone the 
adultery of his wife, Mr E, II, Man, writing on this subject, 
says that “conjugal fidelity till death is not the exception, but 
the rule,” and adds, “It is undoubtedly true that breaches of 
morality have occasionally taken place among a few of the 
married persons who have resided for any length of time at Port 
Blair, but this is only what might be expected from constant 
association with the Indian convict attendants at the various 
homes; justice, however, demands that in judging of their moral 
characteristics we should consider only those who have been 

' 

uninfluenced by the vices or virtues of alien races.” At the 
present time conjugal infidelity is very common and is lightly 
regarded, It is almost certain that the establishment of the 
Penal Settlement amongst them has affected their morals in this 
particular, but there does not seem to be any very satisfactory 
evidence that their former morality was quite so strict as Mr Man 
would have us believe, One piece of evidence in this matter 
is that the spread of syphilis, when it was first introduced 
amongst them seems to have been very rapid, and yet this 
was before many of the tribes had been very seriously affected 
by the Settlement. 

Besides the special sexual relation between a husband and 
wife there is a special economic relation, if we may speak of it 
as such, The two share one hut between them, or one portion 
of a*communal hut. It is the duty of the wife to provide the 
fire-wood and the water for cooking and drinking, and to cook 
the meals at the family fire. It is the duty of the husband to 
provide flesh food for himself and for his wife, while it is her 
duty to provide and prepare vegetable food. 

A marriage is not regarded as fully consummated until the 
birth of a child. Mr Man states that the survivor of a childless 
couple is not looked upon as the chief mourner. A father 
who has been away from home greets his wife first on his 
return and then greets his other relatives; but if no child has 
been borm to him a husband first greets his blood-relatives 
(father, mother, brothers, etc.) and only after that does he visit 
his wife, 

The only regulation of marriage is on the basis of relationship. 
Marriage is forbidden between near consanguinei. The exact 
tules, in this matter, if indeed there be any exact rules, are 
difficult to discover. It is quite clear that a man would not 
be permitted to marry his sister or half-sister, nor his father's or 
mother's sister, nor his brother’s or sister's daughter, The 
question is more difficult when it comes to the matter of cousins, 
In 1908 I only found one pair of first cousins who were married 
to one another, this being in the Ake-Be tribe. The husband 

1 Man, of. cif. p. 135. Ie speaks of the wives as “niodels of constancy.” 

and wife were the son and daughter of two brothers. Mr E. H. 
Man writes that “marriage is only permissible between those 
who are known to be not even distantly connected, except by 
wedlock, with each other; so inexorable, indeed is this 1ule, that 
it extends and applies equally to such as are related merely by 
the custom of adoption.” He adds that marriage between first 
cousins is forbidden, I was not able to satisfy myself on this 
point, but it seemed to me that while such a marriage as that of 
first cousins was not actually regarded as wrong, and therefore 
forbidden, it was regarded as preferable that a man should marry 
a woman not so nearly related to him, No distinction is made 
between different kinds of cousin’, 

My observations did not confirm Mr Man’s statement that 
persons related by adoption are forbidden to marry, It is 
necessary, however, to distinguish two different kinds of ddop- 
tion, When the parents of a child of less than six or seven 
years of age dle, the child is adopted into some other 
family. We may call this “orphan adoption.” As will be 
explained later, there is another custom by which children of 
over seven or eight are adopted by a married couple belonging 
to a local group other than that of the parents, and live with 
them till they come of age, The parents of the child are still 
alive and they visit him or her at frequent intervals. No bar 
to marriage is set up by this kind of adoption, An adopted 
son may marry the daughter of his foster-parents, Indeed when 
children are betrothed it is the rule for the girl to be adopted by 
the boy's parents, at any rate for atime, On the other hand it 
is quite possible that a child adopted when of tender years (as an 
orphan) would not be permitted to marry a child of his or her 
foster-parents, I was unable to satisfy myself on this point, 

There seems to be a prejudice against a woman marrying 4 
man younger than herself. Some of the women with whom 
I talked expressed strong contempt at the idea of marrying 
a man younger than themselves, Unfortunately, I neglected 

2 T collected a number of genealogies fiom the natives, but unfortunntely my own 
inexperience in the use of the genealogical method, and my consequent inability (o 
surmount the difficulties with which I met, made this branch of my investigations 
a failure. 

. 

to obtain statistics as to the frequency with which such marriages 
occur, if they occur at all. 

Beyond the prohibition of the marriage of near kin, 1 could 
not find any restriction on marriage, -A man may mary a 
woman from his own local group or from another, from his own 
or from another tribey That marriages between persons belong- 
ing to the same local group did occur in former times I was able 
to asceitain with certainty but I was not able to determine the 
proportion of such marriages to the whole number. It is pro- 
bable that the majority of marriages, or at any rate a large 
proportion, were between persons belonging to different local 
groups, 

‘Marriages are arranged by the older men and women. 
Children are sometimes betrothed by their parents while they 
are still infants; I found one such case in the North Andaman, 
and the betrothed couple, though they were yet small children, 
were spoken of as being “married.” Such betrothals are not 
very common at the present time. 

When the parents of a youth who is of suitable age to be 
married perceive that he has formed an attachment with a giil, 
they take it upon them to arrange a marriage. The matter 
is first of all talked over between the young man and his parents. 
The man’s parents do not themselves speak to the girl’s parents 
of the matter, but request some one or more of their friends 
to do so. + From the moment that the possibility of a marriage 
exists the man’s parents avoid speaking to the girl’s parents, 
Any communication between them jis carried on through a 
third person. They send presents to each other, of food and 
other objects, The recipient of such a present hastens to make 
a return of equal value. Ifthe marriage is arranged the parents 
on each side become related to one another by the relationship 
denoted in Akar-Bale by the word aka-yat. The duties implied 
by this relationship will be described later, 

When a marriage has finally been arranged an evening 
is appointed for the ceremony. In the North Andaman this is 
as follows The bride is seated on a mat at one end of the 
dancing ground, her relatives and friends sitting near her. 
Torches or heaps of resin are lighted near by, so that the 

{ 

céremony may be seen by the on-lookers, The bridegroom 
is sealed’ with his friends at the other end of the dancing ground, 
One of the older and more respected men acldresses the bride, 
telling her that she must make a good wife, must provide for 
her husband such things as it is the duty of a wife to obtain or 
make, must see that he does not run afler other women, and 
must herself remain faithful to him. He then addresses the 
bridegroom to the same effect, and taking him by the hand 
or arm, leads him to where the bride is seated and makes him 
sit down beside her. The relatives and friends weep loudly, and 
the young couple look very self-conscious and uncomfortable, 
The shyness of the young man is such that he often attempts to 
run away, but he is caught by his friends, who are prepared for 
such an attempt. After some minutes the officiating elder takes 
the arms of the bride and bridegroom and places them around 
each other’s necks, After a further interval he again approaches 
and makes the bridegroom sit on the bride’s lap} ‘They sit 
so for some minutes and the ceremony is over, The other 
members of the community generally have a dance on such 
an occasion, but in this the newly wedded pair do not join. 
A hut has already been prepared for them, and all their friends 
make them presents of useful objects with which to start house- 
keeping, They retire shyly to their new hut, while their friends 
continue dancing. The day after the ceremony the bride and 
bridegroom are decorated by their friends with white tlay, Tot 
a few days the newly married couple aie very shy of each other, 
hardly venturing to speak to or look at one another: but they 
soon settle down to their new position in the life of the community. 
During the early days of their marriage they are abundantly 
supplied with food by their friends, They are not addressed or 
spoken of by name, but if their names be A and B, the husband is 
called “the husband of B” while the wife is called “the wife 
of A.” 

In the South Andaman the ceremony is much the same as in 
the North, the only difference being that the bridegroom is led 
to where the bride is sitting and is made to sit on her lap 
straightway, remaining there for a few minutes. 

2 When a husband and wife greet one another the man sits on the Inp of the wife. 

acres 

When a husband dies his widow may marry again if she 
wishes, Asa rule I believe that it is not considered fitting ‘that 
she should take another husband before the end of her mourning 
for her former one. Mr Man says “it is not considered decorous 
that any fresh alliance should be contracted until about a year 
had elapsed from the date of bereavement.” I knew of one case, 
however, of a woman with a young child who married again only 
a fortnight or so after her husband’s death, 

Mr Man speaks of a custom “ which all but compels a bachelor 
or widower to propose to the childless widow of his elder brother 
or cousin (if she be not past her prime), while she has no choice 
beyond remaining single or accepting him ; should she have no 
younger brother-in-law (or cousin by marriage), however, she 
is free to wed whom she will, It should be added that marriage 
with a deceased wife’s younger sister is equally a matter of 
necessity on the part of a cheld/ess widower” 

I was not able to come across a case in which a man had 
actually married his elder brother's widow in recent years. The 
natives whom I questioned confirmed Mr Man’s statement, 
which, moreover, was based on at least one instance known to 
him as having occurred. It may be noted that in his description 
of this instance Mr Man says that the woman married her 
husband’s “ brother or cousin,” leaving us in doubt as to which of 
these two relatives it really was, There is an ambiguity in the 
use of therterm “younger brother,” for the Andamanese have no 
. word meaning simply “younger brother,” but only such terms as 
ot-avai-tnluce and the equivalents in other languages, which apply 
to any younger person, whether actually a brother or cousin or not, 

The recent changes in the social life of the Andamanese 
render it difficult to determine what was the former practice 
in matters of this sort, but I believe that the custom was this, 
that when a man of a local group died the older men selected 
one of the unmarried men and required him to marry the widow. 
They selected a man who was younger than the deceased, that 
is who was his ot-arat-culute, and gave the preference to an 
unmarried younger brother if there were one, or to a relative of 
the deceased, such as a father’s brother's son, 

1 Man, of: cit. p, 139, 2 Ibid. 

It may be noted that this custom may conflict with the other 
custom, previously mentioned, that a woman objects to marrying 
a man younger than herself, In the case mentioned by Mr Man 
a young man was compelled to marry a woman who was con- 
siderably his senior, 

I believe that, in connection with, or underlying this custom 
there was an objection against a widow mariying a man who 
was older than her former husband (and who would therefore be 
his of-ofoatue). I regret that I cannot speak with certainty 
on these matters. 

We may turn now to the duties'to one another of parents 
and children. During their infancy the children are in the care 
of the mother, Children are, however, such favourites with the 
Andamanese that a child is played with and petted and nursed 
not only by his own father and mother but by everyone in the 
village. A woman with an unweaned child will often give suck 
to the children of other women. Babies are not weaned till they 
are three or four years old, 

Before the children can walk, they are carried about by the 
mother, and sometimes by the father or other persons, in a’ bark 
sling (called dia in Aka-Jeru), which is shown in Plate xrVv. 
After they can walk the children generally accompany their 
mothers in their expeditions near the camp for firewood or 
vegetables, When they are not with their mothers they amuse 
themselves with games in the village or on the beaclt. All the 
children of the coast villages learn to swim when they are very 
young, in fact almost as soon as they learn to walk, and many 
of their games are conducted in the water, 

When a boy reaches the age of five or six his father makes 
him a toy bow and arrows, and sometimes a toy canoe. T'rom 
this time the boy begins to learn the occupations of men and 
begins to pick up knowledge about the animals and trees and 
fishes of his country. The girl, accompanying her mother on 
her expeditions to gather roots and seeds, or to catch fish or pick 
up molluscs on the reefs, learns what it is necessary for women 
to know, 

Until the age of about eight to ten a child lives with his 

1 Man, of, eft, p. 139. 

parents, having a place in the family hut, and a share of the 
family meal, The children are treated with extreme kindness, 
and are never punished, and hardly ever scolded. Should the 
parents die the children are adopted by friends or relatives, and 
such adopted children are treated by the foster-parents in 
exactly the same way as their own children, 

At the age of ten, or a little before, a change is often brough|: 
about in the life of a child, owing to the custom of adoption, 
Mr Man writes of this custom as follows: 

“Tt is said to be of rare occurrence to find any child above 
six or seven yeais of age residing with its parents, and this 
because it is considered a compliment and also a mark of friend- 
ship for a martied man, after paying a visit, to ask his hosts to 
allow him to adopt one of their childien, The request is usually 
complied with, and thenceforth the child’s home is with his (or 
her) foster-father; though the parents in their turn adopt the 
children of other friends, they nevertheless pay continual visits 
to their own child, and occasionally ask permission (I) to take 
him (or her) away with them for a few days. A man is entirely 
at liberty to please himself in the number of children he adopts, 
but he must treat them with kindness and consideration, and in 
every respect as his own sons and daughters, and they, on their 
pait, render him filial affection and obedience, It not unfte- 
quently happens that in course of time permission to adopt 
a foster-child is sought by a friend of the soz-disent father, and 
is at once granted (unless any exceptional circumstance should 
render it personally inconvenient), without even the formality of 
a reference to the actual parents, who are merely informed of 
the change, in order that they may be enabled to pay their 
periodical visits},” 

The above passage is quoted because Mr Man had better 
opportunities of observation in this matter than myself, At 
the present day there are not many children in the Andamans, 
and this is an obstacle in the way of this custom of adoption, 
From my own observation, however, I should put the age at 
which it is customary for children to be adopted at higher than 
six or seven. I found children of about seven or eight still 

f Man, of ci. p, 125 

living with their own parents. The usual age of adoption seemed 
to me to be from nine or ten years upwards, 

A man and his wife adopt in this way children belonging to 
a local group other than their own, The adopted child lives 
with his or her foster-parents, having a place in their hut and a 
share of their meals. From about the age of ten children of 
both sexes begin to be of service to their parents or foster- 
parents in many ways. The foster-parents treat their adopted 
children in exactly the same way that they would treat their 
own children, and the children on the other hand show the same 
regard and affection to their foster-parents that they do to their 
own parents, and assist them in every way that they can, Their 
own parents come to visit them at regular inte vals, 

The period of childhood: is brought to an end at about the 
age of puberty by certain ceremonies to be described in the 
next chapter, After the beginning of these ceremonies a boy 
ceases to live in the hut of his parents or his foster-parents, and 
must live with the young unmarried men and widowers in what 
has been called the bachelors’ hut. From this time until 
he marries, his services are constantly required by his parents or 
by his foster-parents, and he is expected to obey them and help 
them in any way he can, It is only after his marriage that he 
becomes relatively independent and free to please himself in his 
own actions, and even then he is required to provide his parents 
or his foster-parents with food, and to serve them in any way 
they may need, 

A girl, during the period between the beginning of the 
initiation ceremonies and her marriage, continues, at any rate, in 
some cases, and.in these days, to live with her parents or with 
foster-parents, Mr Man states that the unmarried women and 
girls occupy a spinsters’ hut similar to the bachelors’ hut, It is 
possible that this was the former custom. I found instances of 
an unmarried girl occupying a place in the hut of a married 
couple who made use of her services and controlled her conduct, 
regarding her in the light of a foster-daughter. On one occasion 
I found two unmarried girls occupying a separate hut adjoining 
that of a married couple, who looked after the girls who 
occupied it. 

The position of an unmarried girl is very similar to that of 
an unmarried youth, She is required to help her elders, in 
particular either her parents or her foster-parents, ie, the married 
couple under whose care she js for the time being. 

After marriage a son continues to help his parents, providing 
them with food and seeing that they are comfortable. If either 
a man or a woman lives in a local group other than that of his 
or her parents, he or she pays frequent visits to them. 

From the time that a youth or girl ceases to belong to the 
family household, his or her duties to the parents are really only 
the same in kind as the duties that every young man and 
woman owes to all the older men and women, Though there 
is no difference in kind, yet a man or woman is expected to 
show more affection and respect for his or her own parents than, 
to other persons of the same social standing, 

The only other relationship, besides that of husband and 
wife and that of parents and children, which exists inside the 
family, is that between children of the same parents, The con- 
duct of brothers to one another depends on their respective ages, 
The younger is expected to give way to the elder, while the 
latter protects and looks after the former. The relation of 
sisters to one another is similar. 

The duties of a man and woman to his or her relatives, other 
than those to parents, brothers and sisters, and even to some 
extent the, duties to these near relatives, are not distinguishable 
in kind from the duties he or she owes to other persons who are 
not relatives, Thus a young married man owes certain dutics 
to all the older married men of about the age of his father. 
These duties are the same in kind as those towards his own 
father and his foster-father, the only difference being that he 
must defer more to his own father than to other men, and must 
be more constant in his attentions to him, I could not discover 
any way in which a man distinguished, in his dealings with 
them, his father’s brother from his mother’s brother. They are 
both of them older men whom he must respect and to whom he 
must make presents of food. Similarly a father's sister is not 
distinguished, so far as 1 could discover, from a mother’s sister. 
A man treats both of them in much the same way that he treats 

his own mother, or any other woman of the same age. There 
is only a slight difference in connection with parents-in-law. A 
man would not be so familiar with his parents-in-law as he 
would with his parents or their brothers or sisters, and treats 
them with more deference and respect. This is borne out by 
the Akar-Bale custom of applying to a father-in-law or mother- 
in-law the same term of address (Afemea) that is used in speaking 
to grandparents and others to whom it is required to show 
particular deference. 

In the same way there is very little difference between the 
way a man conducts himself towards his elder brother and his 
conduct towards any other man of the same age. Brothers are 
often close comrades, putting their huts next to one another in 
the same village, joining together whenever possible in hunting 
or fishing expeditions, and so on; but a man may have a , 
comrade who is not his brother, whom he will treat in exactly 
the same way, 

The general attitude of a married man to other married men 
somewhat younger than himself is very much that towards a 
younger brother, As between men and women one special duty 
appears in this connection. A married man may not and will 
not have any close dealings with the wife of a man younger than 
himself. It is not considered fitting that he should speak to her, 
If he wished to have any communication with her, he would do 
so through some third person, It would be regarded as a wrong 
thing to do if he were ever to touch her. The only explanation 
that the natives give of this custom is by saying that a man: 
feels “shy” or “ashamed” towards his younger brother's or. 
friend’s wife. The custom is exactly the same with respect Lo | 
the wife of any younger man, whether a brother, a cousin, or 
a Stranges, 

This custom depends on the distinction between older and 
younger, A man may be on terms of familiarity with the wife 
of a man older than himself, whom he would treat much as he 
would an elder sister, 

There is one special relationship which has peculiar duties 
attaching to it, and this is the relationship between the father 
and mother of a man on the one hand and the father and 

mother of the man’s wife on the other. In the Asar-Bale 
language such persons are said to be aka-yat to one another. 
A man or a woman will not have any immediate dealings with a 
person who is his aka-ya?, He will not speak to him, and if they 
should meet or be sitting near to one another they would avoid 
looking at each other. On the other hand a man is constantly 
sending presents to his aka-yat. The natives say that two 
persons in this relation feel “shy” or “ashamed.” (There is 
only one word in Andamanese for these two English words, 
otjJete in Aka-Jeru.) The shyness begins at the moment when 
a marriage between their respective children is first discussed 
as a possibility, and lasts apparently till death, 

As throwing a little light on this peculiar relation it may be 
mentioned that a similar relation exists between two men who 
have been through either the turtle-eating ceremony or the pig- 
eating ceremony (to be described in the next chapter) on the 
same occasion, Two such men will avoid any contact with 
one another, not speaking to nor looking at each other when 
they chance to meet, but on the other hand they will be con- 
stantly giving each other presents of all kinds, sending them 
through some third person. 

The main features of the relationship system of the Andaman 
Islanders may be briefly summed up. The duties that one 
person owes to another are determined much less by their 
relation to*one another by consanguinity and marriage, than 
by their respective ages and social status. ven within the 
family, which nevertheless is of importance, the duty of a child 
to a parent is very little different from his duty to any other 
person of the same age. There is very little of any special 
customs relating to conduct towards different kinds of relatives, 
Corresponding to this we find very few terms to denote relation- 
ships and a considerable development of the terms which denote 
age and social status. Thus a man’s duties to his elder brother 
are much the same as those towards the.other men of the same 
age, and we find that there is no word for “elder brother” but 
only a term by which a man distinguishes all the men of his 
own generation older than himself from those who are younger. 

. Similarly there are no duties that a man owes to his father’s 

BA 2» 6 

brother or to his mother’s brother which he does not also owe, 
in perhaps a less degree, to other men of the same age, and there 
is no term by which he can distinguish his father’s brother from 
those others. 

If this account of the system of relationship be accurate it 
will be seen that the Andamanese society contrasts very 
strongly, in this matter, with other primitive societies, 

It remains for us only to examine the social relations: 
between the different local groups. Two neighbouring groups, 
whether of the same tribe or of different tribes, might be either 
friendly towards one another or unfriendly. Friendly relations 
were kept alive by several of the customs of the Andamanese,' 
by the intermarriage of members of different groups, by the 
adoption of children from one group to another, and by the fact 
that a man of one group might take up his residence more or, 
fess permanently with another (particularly when he married 
a woman of that group, or was adopted when a boy by one 
of the men belonging to it), All these customs served to bind 
some persons in the one group to persons in the other, and thus 
prevent the two groups from becoming entirely unfriendly to 
one another, } 

When two neighbouring local groups were friendly to one 
another communication between them was kept up by visitors 
from one group to another, and by occasional meetings of the 
whole of the two groups. e 

Hither a single person or a family might at any time pay 
a visit to another camp, staying a few days or weeks or even 
longer. A man would, however, only go visiting when he was 
sure of a welcome, Such visits were most frequent in the fine 
months of the year (December to May), As a husband and 
wife in many instances belonged to different local groups they 

1 Tt would not be safe, however, to base any arguments of importance to sociology 
on the above description of the Andamanese system of relationship alone. Although 1 
tried to learn all that I could on the subject, it is quite certain that I did not learn all 
that was lo be fearnt, and it is possible that further enquiry might have shown that I 
was mistaken in some uf my observations. The difliculty of being really sure on these 
matters is due (1) to the fact that the breaking-up of the old local organisation has 
produced many changes in their customs, and (2) to the difficulty of questioning the 
natives on matters connected with relationships when they have no words in their lan 
guage to denote any but the simplest relationships. 

would, if living with the man’s parents, pay a visit every year to 
the parents or other relatives of the wife. The parents of a child 
that had been adopted by a member of another local group 
would make a point of visiting the child when they could, 
Visitors to a camp would always take with them presents to 
be given to their hosts. A visitor was hospitably entertained, 
being given the best of the food, and joined his hosts in their 
hunting and fishing expeditions. The duty of hospitality is one 
upon which the Andamanese lay stress, 

The meetings of two or more local groups were organised: 
from time to time by the more prominent men, The time and 
place of the meeting would be fixed and invitations sent out to 
the neighbours. The visitors, men, women and children, would 
arrive at the appointed time, and would be accommodated as 
well as possible by the hosts, During the first few hours, as the 
natives themselves told me, everyone would feel a little shy 
and perhaps frightened, and it would take some time for this 
feeling to wear off. The visitors would bring with them various 
objects, such as bows, arrows, adzes, baskets, nets, red paint, 
white clay, and so on, These were given by the visitors to their 
hosts, and other presents were received in return, Although the 
natives themselves regarded the objects thus given as being 
presents, yet when a man gave a present to another he expected’ 
that he would receive something of equal value in return, and 
would be very angry if the return present did not come up to 
his expectations. A man would sometimes mention, when 
giving his present, that he would like some particular object 
in exchange, but this was the exception and not the rule, and the 
process cannot be spoken of as barter. In certain cases it 
undoubtedly served a uscful economic purpose, Thus if a local 
group had no red ochre or white clay in their own country they 
could obtain these commodities by exchange with others who 
had, In the case of a meeting between forest and coast dwellers, 
the former could obtain such things as shells, red paint made 
with turtle fat, and other objects with which they could not 
provide themselves in any other way, It was in this way also that 
the iron obtained from a wreck on one part of the coast would 
be spread over a large area. For the most part, however, as 

6—2 

each local group, and indeed each family, was able to provide 
itself with everything that it needed in the way of weapons and 
utensils, the exchange of presents did not serve the same 
purpose as trade and barter in more developed communities, 

The purpose that it did serve was a moral one, The object 
of the exchange was to produce a friendly feeling between the two 
persons concerned, and unless it did this it failed of its purpose, 
It gave great scope for the exercise of tact and courtesy. No 
one was Sree to refuse a present that was offered to him. Tach 
man and woman tricd to out-do the others in generosity. There 
was a sort of amiable rivalry as to who could give away the 
greatest number of valuable presents. 

The visitors remained with their hosts for a few days, The 
time was spent in hunting, feasting and dancing, and in the 
exchange of presents above described. The hosts made every 
effort to provide the camp with plenty of good things, The 

" guests took their share in the hunting and fishing expedi- 
tions, Every evening was spent in singing and dancing, Some 
of the men were sure to have composed new songs for such an 
occasion, 

Such meetings as these were sometimes the means of bring- 
ing to an end past quarrels between the local groups, but 
occasionally they were the cause of new quarrels, The hosts, or 
some of them, might think that they had been shabbily treated 
in the matter of presents, or the guests might complain that 
they were not well cnough entertained, It often needed a man 
of strong influence to maintain harmony in the camp. Angry 
words might lead to the rapid breaking up of a mecting, and 
even result in a feud between the two groups, 

Quartels between individuals, as we have seen, were oflen 
taken up by frlends on each side, This was particularly the 
case when ihe two opponents belonged to different local groups, 
Before the days of the settlement of the islands there often arose 
in this way petty quarrels between neighbouring local groups. In 
some instances there appear to have becn feuds of long standing ; 
in others there was a quanielj, a fight or two, and the enemies 
made peace with one another, until a fresh cause of disagreement 
should atise, F 

It does not seem that there was ever such a thing as a 
stand-up fight between two parties. The whole art of fighting 
was to come upon your enemies by surprise, kill one or two of 
them and then retreat. A local group that had some grievance 
against another would decide to make an attack. They might 
seek and obtain the aid of friends from other local groups. The 
men who were to take part in the expedition would paint them- 
selves and put on yarious ornaments and join ina dance’. They 
would then set out, either by land or by sea, in the direction of 
the encampment they meant to attack. Their weapons consisted 
of bows and arrows, and they carried no shields or other defensive 
weapons, They would not venture to attack the enemy's camp 
unless they were certain of taking it by surprise. For this reason 
such attacks were generally made either in the evening when the 
camp would be busy with the preparation of the evening meal, 
or at carly dawn, when every one would be asleep. The attack- 
ing party would rush the camp and shoot as many men as they 
could, If they met with any serious resistance or lost one of 
their own number they would immediately retire. Those 
attacked, if they were really taken by surprise, were generally 
compelled to save themselves by flight, Though the aim of the 
attacking party was to kill the men, it often happened that 
women or children were killed, The whole fight would last 
only a few minutes, ending either with the retirement of the 
attackers Wefore resistance, or the flight of those attacked into 
the jungle. A wounded enemy would be killed if found. 

Such attacks and counter-attacks might be continued for 
some years, thus establishing a feud between two neighbouring 
local groups, More usually, however, after one or two such 
fights peace would be made, In the tribes of the North 
Andaman there was a special peace-making ceremony, that 
will be described in the next chapter. All peace negotiations, 
were conducted through the women, One or two of the women 
of the one group would be sent to interview the women of the 
other group to see if they were willing to forget the past and 
make friends, It seems that it was largely the rancour of the 

1 The dance is described in the next chapter. 

women over their slain relatives that kept the feud alive, the 
men of the two parties being willing to make friends much 
more readily than the women. 

An example of a long-continued feud, which, to all appear- 
ance, has been in existence for several centuries, is that between 
the Aka-Bea and the Jarawa of the South Andaman, The 
Jarawa have the advantage over the Aa-Bea that their camps 
are situated in the dense forest and are difficult to find, while 
the camps of the Asa-Bea are mostly along the sea-coast. At 
the present day the /grawa take some precautions against being 
surprised in their camp by a hostile party. The camp is often 
placed on the top of a hill and the trees in the neighbourhood 
are cut down so that they have a good view. The paths leading 
to the camp are also cleared and made wider than is usual in 
a native path, At times it would seem that they keep sentries 
on the look-out. : 

The Aka-Bea and the /grawa were inveterate enemies. 
Whenever two parties of them met by any chance, or came 
in the neighbourhood of one another, the larger party would 
attack the other. When the Settlement of Port Blair was estab- 
lished, friendly relations were set up with the A#a-Bea, and since 
that time the hostility of the Jorawa has been directed not only 
against the friendly Andamanese (A/a-Zee, etc.) but also against 
the inhabitants of the Settlement’ 

Such a thing as fighting on a large scale seems to have been 
unknown amongst the Andamanese, In the early days of the 
Penal Settlement of Port Blair, the natives of the South Andaman 

1 In the years 1872 to 1902 Inclusive the Javawa made cight attacks on camps of 
the friendly Andamanese in different pinces, in which two of the friendly Andamanese 
men and one girl were killed and three men and one boy were wounded. There were 
also onc or two casual mectings between Jarara and friendly Andamanese. One of 
the friendlies was surprised and killed while turilc hunting in 1894. During the same 
years the Jarawa made on different occasions about twenty attacks on parties of 
convicts or on separate individuals, killing altogether 27 convicts and two police 
constables, and wounding six other convicts, In these skirmishes and in the 
expeditions to which they gave rise three Jarawa were killed and seven wounded 
on various occasions, and several times Jarawa men, women or children were eaptined 
and afterwards released. A number of convicts have at different times run away from 
the Settlement and as some of those were never after heard of they may be supposed 
fo have been killed by the Jarawa. For an official record of dealings with the. Jarawa 
see the *Clnsus Report” 190%, pp. 68—go. 

combined in large numbers to make an attack on the Settlement, 
but this seems to have been an unusual course of action in order 
to meet what was to them an altogether unusual contingency, 
their territory having been invaded by a large force of foreigners, 
Their only fights amongst themselves seem to have been the 
brief and far from bloody skirmishes described above, where 
only a handful of warriors were engaged on each side and rarely 
more than one or two were killed. Of such a thing as a war in 
which the whole of one tribe joined to fight with another tribe 
I could not find any evidence in what the natives were able to 
tell me of their former customs, * 

As showing within what narrow limits the different local 
groups held communication with one another, it may be men- 
tioned that till the year 1875 the A#a-Bea natives of Port Blair 
did not know of the existence of the A#a-Kol tribe, less than 
fifty miles distant, nor of any of the tribes further north, As 
a general rule it may be said that no man knew anything of any 
of the natives living more than twenty miles from his own part 

of the country,

In such a society as that of the Andaman Islanders it is 
possible to distinguish three different ways in which the actions 
of individuals are regulated or determined by the society. There 
are, first of all, what we may distinguish as “moral customs,” 
whereby the actions of individuals in relation to one another 
are regulated on principles of right and wrong conduct, It was 
with customs of this kind that we were concerned in the last 
chapter. Secondly, the activities by which the natives obtain 
their food and make the various objects of which they have 
need are determined by tradition. Such activities are purely 
utilitarian and they are regulated, not by commandments similar 
to those of the moral law, but by accumulated technical know- 
ledge as to the means by which a particular: object may he 
attained. These we may speak of as the “technical, customs” 
of the socicty, 

There are customs of a third kind which are distinguishable 
both from moral customs and from technical customs, Tor 
example, when a man dies, his near relatives observe certain 
mourning customs, such as covering their bodies with clay, 
Such customs are distinguished from technical customs by 
having no utilitarian purpose. They are distinguished from 
moral customs by this, that they are not immediately concerned 
with the effects of the action of one person upon another, 

It is difficult to find a satisfactory name for all the customs 
of this kind. A large number of them may be spoken of as 
“ceremonial customs,” and it is this that explains the title of 
the present chapter. 

+ 
a 

It is not pretended that this division of social customs into 
three different kinds is of any great or permanent value, and it 
is only introduced as an aid to the exposition of the customs 
of the Andamanese. It will be argued in a later chapter‘ that 
many of the customs described in the present chapter have a 
common psychological basis, 

Of any customs in connection with the birth of children 
I was able to learn very little, as no births at which I could 
be present occurred during my stay at the islands, Earlier 
writers have given very little information on this subject. 

During the latter part of the period of pregnancy, and for 
about a month after the birth of the child, the mother and father 
must observe certain restrictions, In particular there are certain 
foods that they may not eat, The statements of different in- 
formants on this matter did not quite agree with each other, 
and it seems that there were slightly different rules in different 
tribes, According to an Akar-Bale informant the man and 
woman may not eat dugong, honey and yams; they may eat 
the flesh of small but not of full-grown pigs and turtle, An 
informant of one of the Northern tribes said that the woman 
may not eat full-grown pig, Paradoxurus, turtle, dugong, the 
fish Zomar, monitor lizard, honey and yams; her husband may 
eat these things but must carcfully avoid eating certain fishes, 

The natives give two different reasons for these rules, One 
is that if these foods be eaten by the parents the child will be 
il, The other ts that the parents themselves will be il, The 
latter is the explanation most commonly offered. 

The baby is named some time before it is born, and from 
that time the parents are not addressed or spoken of by name, 
For example, if the name chosen be Rea, the father will be 
spoken of as Rea aka-mat (Rea’s father) instead of by his own 
name, The mother may be referred to as Rea dt-pet, from the 
word ‘#t-pef meaning “belly.” This practice is continued till 
some weeks after the birth, when the use of the names of the 
parents is once more resumed, 

In child-birth the woman is assisted by the matrons of the 
camp. She is seated in her hut in the village on fresh leaves, 
and a piece of wood is placed at her back for her to lean against, 

Her legs are flexed so that her knees may be clasped by her 
atms, The only manipulation is pressure cxerted on the upper 
part of the abdomen by one of the attendant women, The 
umbilical cord is severed with a knife, formerly of cane or 
bamboo, but in these days of iron, The after-birth is buried 
in the jungle. The infant is washed and then scraped with 
a Cyrena shell. After a few days he (or she) is given a coating 
of clay (od), 

If a baby dies and within a year or two the mother again 
becomes pregnant, it is said that it is the same baby born again, 
and the name of the deceased child is givén to it, Thus one 
woman had three children of the same name, the first two having 
died soon after birth. According to the native ideas this was 
really the same child born three times, It is only those who die 
in infancy that are thus reincarnated. 

In the Northern tribes it is believed that a woman can tell 
the sex of her unborn child. If she feels it on the left side it 
is a male, because men hold the bow (the typical masculine 
implement) in the left hand. If she feels it on the right side it 
is a female, because it is in her right hand that a woman holds 
her fishing net, 

A married man who is childless and desires a child will wear 
a ¢iba (sling of bark used for caiying children) round his 
shoulders when he is sitting in camp, The ¢éde and the way 
it is used for carrying children may be scen in the photograph 
in Plate xv. If a childless woman wishes to have a child she 
may catch, cook and cat a cerlain species of small frog, 

At a place called Toxmuset in the North Andaman there is 
a spot to which it is said that women may resort if they wish to 
become pregnant. On the reef at this spot there are a large 
number of stones which, according to the legend, were once 
little children. The woman who desires a child walks out on 
to the reef when the tide is low and stands upon these stones, 
It is believed that one of the baby souls will enter her body and 
become incarnate}, 

1 L could not obtain any definite legend nbout these stones, but one informant said 

that when 2i/idu got angry and destioyed the world (see Inte1, Chap, ry) the childien 
nll became stones at this place, 

In the North Andaman there is some sort of association 
between the unborn souls of babies, the green pigeon and the 
Ficus laccifera tree. The same name, Reyko, is used to denote 
both the green pigeon and also the Mews laccefera, of the fruit 
of which the pigeon is very fond. The belief of the natives is 
sometimes stated by saying that the souls of unboin childicn 
live in the reus trees, and that if a baby dies before it has been 
weaned its soul goes back to the tree. Another statement of 
the natives is that it is when the green pigeon is calling that 
the soul of a baby goes into its mother. The Ficzs is to a 
certain extent tabu. I was told that the tree must not be cut 
or damaged. Nevertheless the natives do cut the tree in order 
to obtain the bark of the aerial roots from which they prepare 
a fibre that they use for making personal ornaments, There is 
no tabu in connection with the green pigeon, which may be 
killed and eaten. 

In most primitive societies, if not in all, there ate ritual or 
ceremonial observances in connection with the change by which 
a boy or girl becomes a man or woman, The ceremonies that 
are performed to mark this change are commonly spoken of in 
ethnological literature as “initiation ceremonies,” The term is 
not perhaps the best that could be chosen, but usage has rendered 
it familiar, 

The life of an Andaman Islander is divided into three well- 
marked periods, corresponding roughly with the physiological 
periods of childhood, adolescence, and maturity. The first perlod 
lasts from birth till about the advent of puberty; the second lasts 
from puberty til] after marriage ; the third extends from marriage 
to death, 

During the period of childhood the boy or girl lives with his 
or her parents, or, in the later years of the period, with adopted 
parents, having a place in the family hut and a share in the 
family meal, A girl continues to live with her parents or 
with her adopted parents until she marries, When boys have 
finished growing, and have reached the condition of young men, 
they cease to live with their parents or adopted parents and, 
until they are married, they occupy a bachelors’ hut of their 
own, and have their own meal. 

, 

Every boy and girl hag to undeigo the operation of scarifica- 
tion. This is begun when the child is quite young, and a small 
portion of the body is operated on, The operation is repeated 
at intervals during childhood, until the whole body has been 
scarified, A small flake of quartz or glass is used, and a series 
of fine incisions are made in the skin. The usual method is to 
cover a small portion of the skin with a number of parallel rows 
of short cuts, The choice of the design (if it can be called such) 
rests entirely with the person who performs the operation, who 
is in all cases a woman, The incisions leave scars that can 
usually only be seen when close to the person. In the photo- 
graph of Plate xv a pattern of scars may be seen, In this case 
the incisions became infected and raised scars were produced, 
and it is for this reason that they are visible in the photograph. 
In ordinary cases raised scars are not produced and the scarifica- 
tion is hardly visible in a photograph. 

The only reason that the natives give for this custom is 
either that it improves the personal appearance, or else that 
it helps to make the child grow strong. 

In the case of a girl the period of childhood is brought to 
a close by a’ ceremony that takes place on the occasion of her 
first menstrual discharge. The ceremony I describe is that in 
use in the Northern tribes, but I believe that the ceremony of 
the Southern tribes is very similar. On the occurrence of the 
first menstrual discharge the girl tells her parents, who weep 
over her, She must then go and bathe in the sea for an hour 
or two by herself. After that she goes back to her parents’ hut 
or to a special shelter that is put up for the occasion, She is 
not required to go away from the camp, All ornaments are 
removed from her, only a single belt of Pandanus leaf being 
left, with an apron of daduyo leaves, Strips of Pandanus leaf are 
attached round her arms near the shoulders and round her wrists, 
and others are placed as bands crossing herchest from the shoulder 
to the waist on the opposite side, and crossing her abdomen from 
the iliac crest on the one side to the trochanter on the other, 
These are so attached that the long loose ends hang down at the 
girl's side. Bunches of leaves, either delino ( Tetranthera lancesfolia) 
or, if these be not obtainable, poramo (Myristica longifolta) are 

fastened beneath her belt before and behind. Other leaves of 
the same kind are placed for her to sit upon. The strips of 
Pandanus leaf and the bundle of leaves are visible in the 
photograph reproduced in Plate XVI 

Thus covered with leaves the girl must sit in the hut allotted 
to her, with her legs doubled up beneath her and her arms 
folded. A piece of wood or bamboo is placed at her back for 
her to lean against, as she may not lie down, If she is cramped 
she may stretch one of her legs or one of her arms, but not both 
arms or both legs at the same time, To feed herself she may 
release one of her hands, but she must not take up the food with 
her fingers ; a skewer of eainyo wood! is given her with which to 
feed herself, She may not speak nor sleep for 24 hours, Her 
wants are attended to by her parents and their friends, who sit 
near her to keep her from falling asleep. 

The girl sits thus for three days, Early every morning she 
leaves the hut to bathe for an hour in the sea. At the end 
of the three days she resumes her life in the village. For a 
month following she must bathe in the sea every morning at 
dawn. 

During the ceremony and for a short time afterwards the 
girl is not addressed or spoken of by name, but is referred to 
as Alebe or Toto. The meaning of the first word is not known, 
Toto is the name of the species of Pandanus from which women’s 
belts are made and the leaves of which are used in the ceremony. 
On the occasion of this ceremony the girl is given a new name, 
her “ flower-name,” and from this time till afler the birth of her 
first child she is never addressed or spoken of by the name 
which she had as a child, but only by the name given to her 
at this ceremony, The name given is that of a plant or tree 
which is in flower at the time, If the ceremony takes place when 
the itz is in flower she is called Ti i; if when the jerw is in flower 
she is named Jere, and so on. These names will be mentioned 
again later in the present chapter, 

1 This is the plant (nat identified) of which the leaves were, till recent times, 
warn by the women of the North Andaman to cover the ‘pudenda, In the South 
Andaman the leaves of the Afimusops littoralis are in use for this pu.pose, and the 

Northern tribes have recently given up their own custom and adopted that of 
the South, 

After this ceremony the girl is said to be aka-ndu-kolot, For 
some time afterwards she must not have her head shaved, and 
she must not use red paint or white clay. 

I was not able to learn much about the native ideas in 
connection »with the menstrual function. According to the 
account given me by one informant I gathered that the girl’s 
first menstrual discharge is supposed to be due to sexual inter- 
course. The man’s breath goes into her nose and this produces 
the discharge, It is believed that if a man were to touch a girl 
during this period, either during the ceremony or for some time 
after it, his arm would swell up. 

At every recurrence of the menstrual period a woman is 
required to abstain from eating certain foods, According to 
an Akar-Bale informant these are, in that tribe, pork, turtle, 

_ Paradoxurns, honey and yams. An Aka- Cari informant added 
to the above list dugong, monitor lizard, and the fish omar. 
If she ate any of these things at such a time she would be ill, 
This continues throughout her life till the climacteric, A men- 
struating woman is not required to leave the camp, as she is in 
many savage communities, 

From the moment of the ceremony just described the girl 
enters a new condition which is denoted in the pres 
language by the word aka-op (aka-yaba in Aka-Bea). This 
word means that the person to whom it is applied is under 
certain ritual restrictions, chiefly concerned with foods that 
may not be caten, 

In the case of a boy there is no physiological event so 
clearly marked as there is in that of a girl It rests with 
the relatives and friends to decide when the boy is to become 
aka-op, Jt would seem that in the Southern tribes there is no 
ceremony on this occasion, Among the Northern tribes the 
boy is made aka-op by means of a ceremony that consists of 
making the scars on his back that are customary in these tribes’, 

When the friends and relatives of a boy decide that he is old 
enough to have the incisions made in his back a dance is held 
in the evening, and the boy is required to dance through the 

1 Unfortunately I was not able to see this ceremony performed, and my information 
is therefore derived from the statements of the natives. 

whole night till he is tired. As soon as morning breaks he is 
made to bathe in the sea for two hours or so, He is then seated 
in some convenient place, not in a hut, The boy kneels down 
and bends forward till his elbows rest on the ground in front, 
One of the older men takes a pig-arrow and with the sharpened 
blade makes a series of cuts on the boy’s back, Each cut is 
horizontal, and they are arranged in three vertical rows, cach 
row consisting of from 20 to 30 cuts, When the cutting is 
finished the boy sits up, with a fire at his back, until the bleeding 
stops. During the operation and for a few hours following it 
the boy must remain silent. There is no treatment of the 
wounds to produce raised scars. The scars are much more 
noticeable on some men than on others. 

The boy does not receive a new name on this occasion, but 
for a few weeks his own name is dropped and he is addressed 
and spoken of as Ejido. From this time the boy is described 
as being oko-talty-kolot, this being the masculine term corre- 
sponding to aka-udu-kolot for girls. From the time the cuts 
are made on his back the boy becomes aka-op and is under 
certain restrictions as to what foods he may eat. 

When the wounds on his back are thoroughly healed similar « 

cuts are made on his chest. I found a certain number of men 

. who had no visible scars on their chests, but in the North 
Andaman every man has the three rows of scars on his back. 
Some of the women of the North Andaman have similar scars 
on their chests and a very few have them also on the back. 
These scars on women are not regularly made as part of the 
initiation ceremonies, and may be made after the woman has 
been married for some years, 

During the period that a boy or girl is aka-op he or she is 
required by the customs of the tribe to abstain from eating 
certain foods, The exact rules in this matter differ from tribe 
to tribe. More particularly there are important differences 
between the coast-dwellers on the one hand and the jungle- 
dwellers on the other. The general principle, however, is in 
all cases the samc. The boy (or girl) must abstain from all 
the chief foods of the people, and since he could not abstain 
from them all at one time without starving, he takes them in 

turn. It is in the order in which the different foods are forbidden 
that the chief differences occur. 

In the Aka-Cari tribe of the North Andaman, where all are 
coast-dwellers, the boy or girl, during the first part of the aha-op 
period must not eat turtle, dugong, porpoise, Aomar (a fish), 
hawksbill turtle, the two kinds of edible grubs (fata and dokele), 
the monitor lizard, the flying fox (Pzeropus), certain birds (perhaps 
all birds), certain shell-fish, the four varicties of mangrove seed 
(kao, cimi, kabal and kaplo), three edible roots (ino,' labo and 
mikuls), and a large number of other vegetable foods, including 
nitok, poroto (if cooked, but it may be eaten raw), 4470, coroyo, 
celet, buroy, bui, bakle, é0, datalt, and kata, A certain number 
of fishes must be added to this list. This period is brought 
toa end by the turtle-eating ceremony which will be presently 
described, After this ceremony, turtle, which is one of the chief 
foods of the Aka-Cari, may be eaten, although certain parts of 
the turtle (such as the intestinal fat) are still forbidden, and the 
youth is also allowed to cat many of the other foods previously 
forbidden, On the other hand he is now required not to eat 
pork and a number of other foods both animal and vegetable. 
During this second period certain minor ceremonies take place, 
as for instance on the first occasion on which turtle’s eggs are 
eaten. This period is brought to an end by the pig-eating 
ceremony. After that the youth is again free to cat pork, As 
turtle and pork are the two most important foods the seremonies 
and observances in connection with these occupy a position of 
greater importance, After the pig-cating ceremony the youth 

“is made free of one food after another, until some time after he 
is married he becomes free to partake of any of the foods avail- 
able. In the case of some of the more important foads, such as 
honey, dugong, porpoise, the fish homar, otc, there is a sort of 
minor ceremony. The only ceremonies of any great importance in 
this tribe are the turtle-cating and the pig-eating ceremonies, 

In the forest-dwelling communities of the North Andaman 
things are necessarily different, These people only cat such 
foods as turtle, dugong, etc. when they are visiting their friends 
on the coast, The three most important ceremonics amongst 
these people are the dyzrz-eating, the pig-cating and the 

honey-eating ceremonies, (The dyvrt is a fish that is found in 
the creeks.) According to my informants of the Asa-Zo tribe the 
foods that must be avoided during the first part of the abstention 
period are all species of fish found in inland creeks (pari, burio, 
bari, bol, kuato), the monitor lizard, sucking-pig, two species of 
snake (or-éudi and uluku-cubi), a number of vegetable foods 
and also honey, After the #yvri-eating ceremony the different 
kinds of fish mentioned may be eaten, but the youth or girl 
must then abstain from pork. 

These examples, without entering into further details, will 
suffice to show what is the nature of the aka-of period. During 
that period the youth must abstain for a certain length of time 
from each one of the more important foods of his community. 
After a certain period of abstention he is permitted to eat the 
particular food, On each occasion of thus eating a food for 
the first time after the abstention, there are certain ritual 
customs that must be observed, and these customs aie more 
important in some cases (such as pig, turtle and honey) than 
in others, In the case of some of the foods the only ritual 
observed is that the food must be given by an older man, who 
is himself free to eat it, that it must be eaten in silence, and that 
the man must be painted afterwards with clay (edz). In the 
case of pork and turtle, however, there are fairly elaborate 
ceremonies, The ceremonies are very similar in different parts 
of the islangls, The description given below applies to the coast- 
dwellers of the North Andaman, In these communities the 
period of abstention from turtle and other foods begins in the 
case of a girl at the first menstruation, and in the case of a boy 
when his back is cut. It may last only one year or several years, 
according to circumstances, and is brought to a close by the 
turtle-eating ceremony, The details of this are exactly the 
same in the case of a girl and a boy, 

When the older men decide that it is time for a boy who 
has been abstaining from turtle to be 1eleased from the restriction, 
a turtle-hunting expedition is arranged, and this is continued 
until a fair number of good tuslle are captured, The best of 
these is selected, killed, and cooked. The youth is seated in 
a hut, either that of his parents, or one placed at his disposal by 

BA 7 

a friend or one specially built. All his ornaments are removed, 
(In the case of a girl one belt of Paxdanus leaf is retained.) Ue 
is seated on leaves of the Aabiseus tilincens, or if these be not 
obtainable, on those of the AZpristica longifolia, and a bundle of 
the same leaves is placed under his folded aims so as to cover 
his belly, while another bundle is placed at his back where there 
is some sort of rest provided for him to lean against. [Te must 
sit still with folded arms and with legs stretched out in front, 
the two big toes clasping cach other. IIo sits facing towards 
the open sea, and a fire is placed near him, gencially just beyond 
his feet, 

Some man is chosen to take charge of the ceremony, This 
may be one of the older men of the community to which the 
youth belongs or a distinguished visitor, if there be any such 
present in the camp at the time, This man selects some of the 
meat and fat of the cooked turtle, placing them in a wooden 
dish. He comes to where the youth is scated, while the friends 
and relatives gather round. Taking some of the fat he rubs it 
first over the lips and then over the whole body of the youth, 
while the female relatives of the latter sit near and weep loudly, 
When the youth’s body is thoroughly covered with fat the man 
who is performing the ceremony takes some burnt oxide of iron, 
such as is used for making red paint, and rubs il over the youth’s 
whole body, except the hair of his head. He then takes a piece 
of turtle fat and places it in the youth’s mouth, feeding him thus 
with a few mouthfuls which the youth eats in silence. At this 
point the weeping of the relatives is taken up again with renewed 
vigour and then gradually comes to an end, Having fed the 
youth the man then proceeds to massage him. He first stands 
behind him and placing his hands on his shoulders presses down 
on them with all his weight. Then he seizes a roll of flesh on 
each side of the youth’s belly and shakes it up and down as 
though to shake down what has been caten. The arms are 
next massaged and the wrists and knuckles are forcibly. flexed 
so as to make the joints “crack.” The fegs are similarly 
massaged, either with the hands or with the feet, the performer 

‘Thee is no secrecy about any of the proceedings; the whole ceremony is 
performed in the village and may be witnessed by anybody. 

(in the latter case) standing on the outstretched legs of the 
youth and rolling the muscles beneath his feet. The joints 
of the toes are forcibly bent with the hand to make them “crack” 
if possible, A mixture of clay (cd) and water has been prepared 
in a wooden dish. The performer dips his hands into this and 
spatters it over the youth’s body from head to foot, either by 
holding his hands near the youth and clapping them together, 
or by jerking the clay off his fingers with a flicking motion. 
During the whole of these proceedings the youth sits passive 
and silent. 

The first part of the ceremony is now over, The food tray 
containing turtle meat and fat, cut into small pieces, is placed 
beside the youth and he is provided with a skewer of the wood 
of the Aibiscus tiliaceus, as he may not touch the meat with his 
fingers, He must sit in the same position with legs outstretched 
and arms folded and surrounded with Hzbéscus leaves, To feed 
himself he may unloose one arm, and when his legs are cramped 
he may double them up beneath him, He may not lie down 
nor speak nor sleep for 48 hours, During this period he may 
eat nothing but turtle and drink nothing but water’ The man 
in charge of the ceremony sits behind him and gives him in- 
structions as to what foods he may and what he may not eat 
after the ceremony. Some of the men and women take it in 
turn to sit beside the youth, attending to his wants and talking 
or singing so keep him awake. 

On the morning of the third day a belt and necklace are 
made of pieces of the creeper called serkodito-balo, ie, “centipede 
creeper” (Pothos scandens), and these are placed round the youth's 
waist and neck, On this day he is permitted to sleep, Either 
on the same day, or early the next morning, he has a bath in the 
sea, to remove some of the red paint and clay, and he is then 
decorated with red paint made of red ochre and turtle fat, and 
with white clay (7e/odz). The red paint is put on in stripes 
over his body, and his ears are daubed with it. The white clay 

1 In the Southern tribes In:ge stones aie placed on the youth’s thighs. 

2 In these days the natives are very fond of tea, which they obtain from the 
Andamanese Homes; dining the ceremony described abave the youth or girl is not 
permitted to drink Lea, 

7-2 

is put on in a zig-zag pattern to be described later, the lines 
of white clay alternating with those of red paint. This decora- 
tion is done by female relatives, 

Early on the morning of the fourth day, soon after daybreak, 
the whole village is astir. One of the older men takes his stand 
by the sounding-board used for marking time at dances, and the 
women sit down near him. ‘The youth comes out from his hut 
and stands in the middle of the dancing ground, and five or six 
men stand round him in a circle, cach of them facing towards 
the youth. Each of the men, including the youth, holds in each 
hand a bundle of twigs of the Hibiscus titiaceus or, if such be not 
obtainable, of the Myristica longifolia, The man at the sounding- 
board sings a song, beating time with his foot, in the usual way, 
on the sounding-boaid, and at the chorus the women join in and 
mark the time by clapping their hands on their thighs, The 
song may be on any subject and is sclected by the singer from 
his own repertory. A song referring to turtle-hunting is pre- 
ferred, During the first song the dancers stand at their positions 
on the dancing ground, lifting up their leaf bundles at short 
intervals and bringing them down against their knees, The 
singer then commences a new song or repeats the former one, 
and when the song comes to an end the youth and those with 
him begin their dance, Each dancer flexes his hips so that his 
back‘is nearly horizontal. He raises his hands to the back of 
his neck so that the two bundles of leaves in his hands rest on 
his back, With knees flexed he leaps from the ground with 
both feet, keeping time to the beating of the sounding-board, 
which is about 144 beats to the minute, At the end of every 
eight jumps or so, the dancer brings his hands forwards, down- 
wards and backwards, giving a vigorous sweep with the bundles 
of leaves, which scrape the ground at each side of his feet, 
and then brings back the bundles to their former position. 
They dance thus for 15 or 30 seconds and then pause to rest, 
The dance is repeated several times, until the youth is tired 
out, As the dance is extremely fatiguing this does not 
take long', 

"1 [believe that the dance is intended to imitate the movement of a tuitle as it 

swims through the water, 

The youth then returns to his hut and resumes his former 
position. He may now, if he wishes, talk to his friends and he 
may sleep, He must retain the bundles of Azdiscus leaves and 
the necklace and belt of Porthos leaves. The dance is sometimes 
repeated in the afternoon. It is in any case repeated on each of 
the two days following, and after that the youth resumes his 
ordinary life. For a week or two he may not touch a bow and 
arrow. The Porthos leaves are worn till they are faded and are 
then discarded, The paint on the body wears off and is not 
renewed, but his ears are kept painted with red paint. For 
some weeks the youth is supposed to be in an abnormal con- 
dition and is carefully watched by his friends, 

At the turtle-eating ceremony a new name is given to the 
youth. This name, however, never seems to be used afterwards 
either in speaking of or to the person to whom it belongs. A 
youth of the Aka-Jeru tribe whose birth name was Cop (from 
a species of tree) and whose nick-name or second name was 
Komayr (from a species of fish) had two new names given to 
him on the occasion of the turtle-eating ceremony, Cokbi-ttro 
(meaning turtle-liver) and Pélecar (high-tide), Neither of these 
names was ever used in addressing him, 

The turtle-eating ceremony is called in the Northern tribes 
either Cokbi-jo, Cokbt-kimil, o1 Kimil-jo. The woid ¢okbé means 
“turtle,” and jo means “eating.” The word &zmil is more 
difficult to-translate, With the prefix of- or er- it means “hot” 
asin T'ot-kimil-bom,“\ am hot." From the time of the com- 
mencement of the ceremony the youth or girl is said to be in 
a condition denoted by the word aka-kiml. During this time, 
ic, during the ceremony and for some months afterwards, he or 
she is not addressed or spoken of by name but is referred to as 
“ Kimil,’ the word being thus used as a term of address or a 
substitute for the personal name. A person who is in this 
condition is described as aka-himil-kolyt, (Before the ceremony 
the youth is okoe-catiy-kolot and the girl is aka-ndu-kolgt.) In the 
Aka-Bea tribe the turtle-eating ceremony is called Yadt-gumul 
or Gumul-leke, yad? being the word for “turtle” in that language, 
and /eke being the equivalent of the jo of Aka-Jeru, that is 
“eating.” A youth or girl who is passing or has recently 

passed through the ceremony is said to be aba-guanul, and 
is addressed and spoken of, not by name, but by the term 
Guma', 

In the coast-dwelling communities of the Northern tribes, 
the youth or girl who has passed through the turtle-cating 
ceremony is thereafter free to eat turtle flesh (though not the 
liver nor the intestinal fat of the ture) and a certain number 
of the other foods that were previously forbidden. On the other 
hand, he or she is now forbidden to cat pork and a number of 
other foods which previously were permitted. The period 
during which these new prohibitions are in force may last for 
a few months or for a year or cven longer. It is, however, 
generally shorter than the first period of abstention from turtle. 
It is brought to an end by a pig-eating ceremony which is 
similar in many ways to the turtle-eating ceremony already 
described. A boar must be killed if the initiate be a youth, 
or a sow if it be a girl who is to go through the ceremony, The 
youth is seated in a hut on leaves of the ce/mo ( Zetranthera) and 
the carcase of the boar is brought and pressed upon the youth's 
shoulders and back by one of the men, The girl is not treated 
in this way. The pork is then cooked and the youth is first 
anointed and then fed with some of the fat. He is then rubbed 
with red ochre, massaged and splashed with clay, just as in the 
turtle-eating ceremony. He must sit silent with arms crossed, 
and covered with Yefranthera loaves for a day and a night. 
During this time he may only eat pork, and must not touch his 
food with his hands but must use a skewer of Tetranthera wood, 
On the following day he is decorated with white clay (¢o/-od) 
and with red paint, and takes part in a dance, The dance is 
almost exactly the same as the dance on the occasion of the 
turtle-eating ceremony, the only differences being that instead 
of Hibiscus leaves those of the Tetvanthera are used, and that 
the dancer does not leap with both feet from the ground, but 
raises one foot and stamps with it. 

In the Northern tribes these are the two most important 
ceremonies. After the pig-eating ceremony the youth is free 
to eat pork and a certain number of previously forbidden foods, 

1 The meaning of the word Aim? (or gaenni) will be discussed in a Jater chapter. 

There remain a considerable number of foods, however, which he 
is still forbidden. In connection with each of these there is 
some sort of minor ceremony. The older men, when occasion 
arises, offer the youth or girl some of the forbidden food, first 
rubbing it over his or her mouth. The food is then eaten in 
silence, I only saw one such ceremony, when a man ate for 
the first time after his abstention the intestinal fat of the turtle. 
The man was about 24 years of age and had long since been 
through the chief ceremonies, and was married. The ceremony 
is perhaps more elaborate in the case of the similar first eating 
of honey, dugong and a few other foods, One after another of 
the food prohibitions is removed until the man or woman is free 
to eat anything, There is no regular order in which this takes 
place, as in each case it is determined by chance circumstances. 
The only,order that is rigorously observed is that of the two chief 
ceremonies éonnected with pork and turtle. These two are the 
principal meat,foods of the coast-dwellers, 

The above description applies strictly only to the coast- 
dwellers of the North Andaman (Aka-Cari, Aka-Jeru and Aka- 
Kora). 1 was not able to see any ceremonies performed by the 
jungle-dwellers, The old men of the Aka-Bo tribe told me that 
the period of abstention begins when a boy or girl is forbidden 
to eat the fish syuri (Plotosus sp. probably P. arab), and a certain 
number of other foods, not including pork. The first ceremony 
is the eating of the #yuri. The boy or girl is seated on leaves 
(Aibir ov tare or ra-éiva) and bundles of these are placed in his 
belt before and behind. A belt of Pandanus leaf is worn by the 
boys at this ceremony as well as by the girls, The initiate sits 
with his legs doubled up beneath him, and is fed with the fish, 
The ceremony lasts only one day. There is no special dance, 
but the initiate joins in an ordinary dance at the end of the 
ceremony, being decorated for this purpose with white clay. 
Afler this ceremony the youth must abstain from pork and 
other foods. The pig-eating ceremony, which closes this 
period of abstention, lasts altogether for three or four days, 
the initiate remaining awake for one night. The leaves used 
are the same as those of the first (fish-cating) ceremony. 
The third important ceremony of these communities is the 

honey-eating. The initiate sits cross-legged and honey is 
rubbed over his or her shoulders and chest, and he or she is 
fed with it. 

I was told by one of my informants that in the Aza-Kede 
tribe the pig-eating ceremony precedes the tuitle-eating, but 
I could not obtain reliable information about the ceremonies 
of this tribe, 

My informants of the Adar-Bale tribe, which consists of 
coast-dwelling communities only, told me that the period of 
abstention begins with turtle, honey, turtle’s eggs, yams, and 
a number of fruits and seeds, This period lasts for three or 
four years, Then comes the turtle-eating ceremony, which is 
suid to be similar in its details to that already described from 
the North Andaman, After this ceremony the initiate may not 
eat dugong, porpoise and a considerable number of fishes (in- 
cluding Zetrodon sp, Plotosus sp, Anguilla bengalensis, Trygon 
bleekari, T. siphen, Urogymnuus asperrimus, Carcharias gange- 
tcus, etc.). He must also abstain from turtle’s eggs, pig, yams, 
honey, and certain fruits (eg. Artocarpus chaplasha, Mimusops 
littoralis, Baccauren sapida, ctc.), A few months after the turtle- 
eating ceremony there is a minor ceremony of eating turtle’s 
eggs, the eggs being eaten in silence and the meal followed by 
a dance, After another period follows the ceremony of eating 
pig’s kidney-fat. Then, as opportunity occurs, the initiate cats 
dugong, honey and the other forbidden foods, one after another. 
The ceremony in each case is not claborate except in connection 
with such important foods as dugong and honey. 

Mr E. H. Man has given a description of the ceremonies of 
the Aza-Bea tribe, which shows that they are essentially similar 
to those of the North, Ie does not distinguish between the 
ceremonies of the aryofo (coast-dwellers) and those of the 
evemtaga (jungle-dwellers), Me states that the fasting period 
(aka-yaba) is divided into three parts, the first ending with the 
yadi- (turtle) gemu?, the second with the afa- (honey) gum, and 
the third with the rag-7iri- (kidney-fat of pig) gwann/. 

As I was not able to witness the honey-eating ceremony, 
T venture to reproduce below the description that Mr Man gives 
of this ceremony as it is conducted in the Aha-Zee tribe. 

“When the honey fast is to be broken a quantity of honey- 
combs, according to the number assembled, are on the appointed 
day procured: the aka-yab being placed in the midst of the 
group, the chief or other elder goes to him with a large honey- 
comb wrapped in leaves; after helping the novice to a large 
mouthful, which he does by means of a bamboo or iron knife, 
he presents the remainder to him, and then leaves him to devour 
it in silence: this he does, not, however, by the ordinary method, 
for it is an essential pait of the ceremony that he should not use 
his fingers to break off pieces, but eat it bear-fashion, by holding 
the comb up to his mouth and attacking it with his teeth and 
lips. After satisfying his present requirements, he wraps what 
is left of the comb in leaves for later consumption, The chief 
then takes another comb and anoints the youth by squeezing it 
over his head, rubbing the honey well into his body as it trickles 
down, The proceedings at this stage are interrupted by a bath, 
in order to remove all traces of the honey, which would otherwise 
be a source of considerable inconvenience by attracting ants, 
Beyond the observance of silence, and continued abstention from 
reg-jirt (pig's kidney-fat), the youth is under no special restric- 
tions, being able to eat, drink and sleep as much as he pleases, 
Early the following morning the lad decorates himself with leaves 
of a species of Afinia, called jini}, and then, in the presence of 
his friends, goes into the sea (or, if he be an eremtaga, into a 
creck) upto his waist, where, locking his thumbs together, he 
splashes as much water as possible over himself and the by- 
standers, occasionally ducking his head under the surface as 
well, This is considered a safeguard or charm against saakes, 
and the onlookers cry “go-pedike, kinig wara-jobo lotike" (Go and 
splash yourself, or Wara-jobo* will get inside you), for they 
imagine that unless they go through this splashing performance, 
this snake will by some means enter their stomachs and so cause 
death. The only difference between the sexes with respect 1o 
the afa-gumml is that with females it cannot tale place until 

1 This plant is selected because it is associated with honcy-gathering ; its bitter 
sap, being extremely obnoxious to becs, is smeared over their persons when taking 
a comb, and enables them to escape scot fice with their prize. (Note by Mr Man.) 

2 This is believed lo be the OpAtophagus elaps. {Note by Mr Man.) 

after the birth of the first child ; they are also required to abstain 
from honey during cach subsequent pregnancy ; and in their case, 
too, a chief or elder (preferably a relative) officiates, and not a 
woman” 

We may now proceed to the ritual customs connected with 
death and burial. In all the Great Andaman tribes disease and 
death are supposed to be duc to the spirits of the jungle and the 
sea, The subject will be dealt with in the next chapter, 

On the occurrence of a death the news quickly spreads 
through the camp, and all the women collect round the body 
and, sitting down, weep loudly until they arc exhausted. The 
women then retire and the men come and weep over the corpse, 
All the adult members of the community then proceed to cover 
themselves with a wash of common clay smeared evenly over 
their bodies and limbs. This clay is of the kind called od in 
Aka-Jern and og in Aka-Bea, The nearer relatives and more 
intimate friends of the deceased also plaster some of the same 
clay on their heads, 

Some of the women, generally, but not necessarily, relatives, 
remove any ornaments the dead person may have been wearing, 
shave the head and decorate the body. This decoration consists 
of lines of fine pattern in white clay alternating with bands of 
red paint, A band of red paint is placed across the upper lip 
passing from ear to ear and the cars themselves are smeared 
with the pigment. The greater the estimation in which the 
deceased person is held the greater is the care lavished upon 
this the last decoration, 

Thus decorated the body is prepared for burial. The legs 
and arms are flexed so that the knees come up under the chin 
and the fists rest against the cheeks. A Cyrena shell (or some- 
times in’ these days a steel knife) is placed in the closed hand. 
A sleeping mat is wrapped round the body, and over this a 
number of the large palm leaves known as /edo (Aka-Jern) are 
arranged and the whole is made into a bundle and tied up with 
rope, Before the ropes are all tied the relatives of the dead 
person take their last farewell by gently blowing on the face of 
the corpse, 

1 Man, of, e7t. p, 133. 

The male relatives and friends then proceed to the spot 
selected for the burial, one of them carrying the corpse slung on 
his back, If the burial place can be reached by canoe, no 
hesitation is shown in making use of a canoe for the purpose. 
There are not, so far as could be discovered, any rules as to 
which of the men shall undertake the burial, Such relatives as 
brother, father, son or husband generally take the leading part. 
The women take no part in the actual burial, There are two 
modes of disposing of the body, in a grave dug in the ground, or 
upon a platform placed in a tree. The latter is considered the 
more honourable form of burial, and is only adopted in the case 
of a man or woman dying in the prime of life. The same grave 
is not used twice, in the case of interment, though a new 
grave may be made close to an old one, The natives said that 
the same tree might be used several times for platform-burial, 
but there was no opportunity of proving this statement. There 
are not, generally speaking, any regular burying grounds, Any 
convenient spot may be chosen so long as it is at some little 
distance from the camp. It does happen, however, that certain 
spots are fairly regularly used. In the case of one burial that I 
witnessed the spot chosen was about a mile distant from the 
camp, the journey being made in a canoe, and there were already 
five or six graves at the same place. 

In the case of interment a hole is dug three or four feet in 
depth, the digging being done with an adze and a digging stick, 
and sometimes a wooden dish is used to scoop out the soil, The 
body is placed in the hole and the ropes tied round it are 
severed. The body is placed slightly on its side facing the cast, 
I asked some of the natives the reason for this orientation, and 
was told that if the custom were not observed the sun would 
not rise and the world would be left in darkness, A pillow of 
wood is placed under the head, and a log of wood at each 
side of the corpse. Sometimes some object that has been 
worn by the deceased, such as a belt or necklace, is placed in 
the grave. The soil is then replaced, all present helping. Beside 
the grave a fire is lighted and some water contained in a bamboo 
vessel or in a nautilus shell is left for the corpse. In some cases 
the bow belonging to the deceased, if it be a man, and a few 

arrows are placed on the grave, In the Aka-Caré tribe a 
harpoon and line are substituted for the bow and arrows, and 
a bamboo harpoon shaft is erected vertically in the grave near 
the right hand of the body. In the same tribe it is usual to 
suspend near the grave a bundle of the prepared fibre of 
Anadendron paniculainm such as is used for making thread. 
There are probably slight variations of custom in this respect In 
different tribes or even in different cases in the samo tribe. 

In the case of platform-burial a platform of sticks is erected 
in a tree, twelve feet or so above the ground, and the body is 
placed thereon, lying sideways facing the east. Water and fire 
are placed beneath the tree, Mr Man states that in cases of 
tree-buria} they arc careful not to select a fruit tree or one of a 
species used for the manufacture of their canoes, bows and other 
implements. Such natives as I questioned on this point said 
that this was not so and that they would use any suitable tree 
whether one that was useful or not, I was unable definitely to 
prove the point, as I did not see a single instance of tree-burial 
during my stay in the islands, A tree that is sometimes used 
for this purpose is the Jicus dacetfera, which as we have seen 
has a special connection with the spirits of new-born children, 
On the coast, mangrove trees, such as the Rhizophora or 
Bruguiera, ave said to be used. 

When the burial is completed, whether in a grave or a tree, 
plumes made of shredded palm-leaf stem hora (Aka-Jeru) ov ava 
(Aéa-Bea) are attached near the graves to the branches of trees 
or shrubs or to sticks put up for the purpose, This is done, it is 
said, to show any native, who might inadvertently approach, that 
there has been a burial at the spot, The undergrowth is cleared 
for a short distance round the grave, 

The men then return to the camp, where the women have 
been busy packing up all belongings. Plumes of shredded 
palm-leaf stem (or) are put up at the entrance to the camp, to 
show chance visitors that there has been a death. The camnp is 
then deserted, the natives moving to some other camping ground 
until the period of mourning is over, when they may, if they 
wish, return to the deserted village. No one goes near the grave 
again until the period of mourning is over. 

In the case of very young children the burial ceremony is 
different. There is no general mourning of the whole camp. 
Only the father and mother and a few other relatives weep over 
the dead body. The head of the corpse is shaved and the body 
is decorated in the same way as that of an adult. The body is 
wrapped up in palm leaves (Zicua/a), the limbs being flexed, 
The fire is then removed from its customary place and a grave 
is dug there in the floor of the hut. In this the child’s body is 
placed, the grave is filled in and the fire replaced above it. Not 
only is the camp not deserted, but there seems to be an obligation 
on the parents not to leave the place until the bones have been 
dug up, or at any rate for some weeks afte: the death, If the 
mother went away, the natives say, the baby would cry for its 
mother’s milk. This is the custom of the Northern tribes, 
Referring to the Southern tribes, Mr Man says that the baby is 
buried beneath the fireplace and the camp is then deserted, the 
mother placing beside the giave a shell containing some milk 
squeezed from her breasts. Some of my informants of the 
Southern tribes (Azar-Bale, etc.) told me however that the camp 
would not be deserted in the case of the death of an infant, thus 
contradicting Mr Man’s statement. As there was no opportunity 
of testing the point by reference to an actual case, it must be left 
as doubtful, In the Northern tribes when an older child dies 
the body is buried away from the camp, but the latter is not, at 
any rate jn all instances, deserted, though the hut in which the 
death occurred may be destroyed and a new one built a short 
distance away. It is only in the case of the death of an adult 
that the camp is abandoned, 

In connection with the burial of a baby beneath the hearth 
there is a belief that the soul of the dead baby may re-enter the 
mother and be born again, This would seem to be one of the 
reasons why the mother does not leave the camp when her baby 
dies, 

Should a person die while on a visit, he or she is buried in 
the usual way and news of the death and place of burial is sent 
to the relatives, A stranger who dies or is killed is buried 
unceremoniously or is cast into the sea, Among the Northern 
tribes the body of such a one used in former days to be disposed 

of by cutting it into pieces and burning it ona fire, The natives 
say that if this be done the ‘blood’ anc the ‘fat’ of the dead 
man go up to the sky and this removes all danger to the living 
from the dead man. The blood of persons so buint is seen in 
the sky at sunset, If a man were killed in a fight between two 
communities and his body remained with the enemy, they would 
dispose of it in this way. If the friends secured the body they 
would bury it in the usual way, It may be worthy of remark 
that this custom of burning the bodics of slain enemies is 
perhaps the real origin of the belicf that the Andamaucse are or 
were cannibals, We can well imagine that when, as must have 
often happened, sailors venturing to land on the islands have 
been killed and the survivors have seen the bodies of their 
companions cut up and placed on fires, they would readily con- 
clude that they weic witnessing a cannibal feast, There can be 
no doubt whatever that since the islands were occupied in 1858 
the inhabitants have not practised cannibalism, and there is no 
good reason to suppose that they once followed the custom and 
then abandoned it, 

The burial is conducted, if possible, on the day of the death, 
‘If it has to be deferred till the morrow all the inhabitants of the 
camp keep awake. The relatives sit round the corpse weeping 
at intervals, while some of the men take it in turn to sing songs 
during the hours of darkness. ‘This, so they say, is to keep away 
the spirits that have caused the death, and so prevent them from 
further mischicf, When a man or woman dics in the prime of 
life after a short illness the friends and relatives often break out 
in anger which they express in different ways. A man will 
shout threats and curses at the spirits that he conceives to be 
responsible for the death of his friend. He may pick up his 
bow and discharge his arrows in all directions, or in some other 
way give expression to his angry feelings. On the occasion 
of a death in one of the Adar-Bale villages the relatives 
expressed their gricf by cutting down a coconut tree that 
grew there, 

The period of mourning for near relatives—parent, adult 
child, consort, brother or sister—lasts for several months, In 
the case of a young child only the parenls mourn, ‘The essentials 

of mourning are (1) the use of clay (od#), and (2) abstention 
from certain foods, from dancing, and from the use of white clay 
(‘ef) and red paint. As stated above, every adult in the camp 
covers himself or herself with clay on the death of an adult 
member of the community, but when this wears off, or is washed 
off in the course of two or three days, it is not renewed. The 
near relatives retain this covering of clay for many weeks, 
constantly renewing it. The clay is smeared evenly dver the 
body, and is not put on in patterns, as on other occasions, The 
relatives, but not the others, plaster some of the same clay on 
their heads, A widow mourning for her husband covers her 
whole head with a thick layer of clay, renewing it from time 
to time. For a lesser degree of mouining, the custom is to 
plaster clay on the forehead only. After some weeks or months 
of mourning, the near relatives discontinue the use of clay on 
their bodies, but retain a band of clay over the forehead as 
shown in Plates 1x, X, and xVIL. 

The name of the clay thus used is odz in the Northern 
languages, and a mourner is called aka-odu, In the Aka-Bea 
language the name of the clay is ag and the term for a mourner 
is aka-og. 

During the period of mourning the name of the dead person 
is carefully avoided and no one uses it, If it is necessary to 
refer to the dead this is done by using some such phrase as “he 
who is buried by the big rock” or “he who is laid in the fig 
tree” or by mentioning the name of the place of burial. There 
is no prohibition against mentioning the name itself in other 
connections. Thus if a man were called Buio, from the name 
of a species of AZucuna, it is not necessary to avoid the word 
buio when speaking of the plant. Further if there is another 
person alive of the same name as the dead man it is not ne- 
cessary to avoid the name in referring to the living individual, 
The custom is that a dead person must not be spoken of unless 
it istabsolutely necessary, and then must not be spoken of by 
name, After the period of mourning is over the dead person 
may again be spoken of by name, 

During the period of mourning a near relative of the deceased 
is never addressed or spoken of by name. There are certain 

terms which aie used for this puipose, being terms of address 
that can be substituted for the names that are avoided. Thus 
in the Aka- Jeru language one such term is Bo/os, meaning 
“orphan,” used in addressing br speaking of a person who has 
lately lost a parent. Another term of the same language ‘is 
Ropué, applicable to one who has lost a brother or sister, After’ 
the period of mourning is over the use of the personal name of 
the mourner is resumed. 

During the period of mourning the near relatives of the 
deceased aic required by custom to abstain from dancing and 
from using red paint or white clay. The white clay here referred 
to is that called /o/ or tgl-odu in Aka-Jeru and tala-og in Aka-Boa, 
and is used for decorating the body on ceremonial occasions, 
such as that of a big dance, Further, the mourners must abstain 
from eating ceitain foods, The customs with regard to the foods 
to be avoided are different in different parts, There is however 
the univeisal rule that coast-dwellers must not cat turtle, and 
jungle-dwellers must avoid pork. Other foods that are included 
amongst those to be avoided are dugong, certain fishes such as 
that called omar in Aba-ferit, and in some parts yams and 
honey. 

The exact duration of the period of mourning is difficult to 
discover. It seems to vaty considerably in different cases, In 
all cases it must last long enough for the flesh to decay from 
the bones, The pioceedings at the end of mourning ,consist of 
(1) digging up the bones of the dead man or woman and (2) a 
dance in which all the mourners join. The bones are generally 
dug up by the men who performed the burial They cover 
themselves with clay (od) and proceed to the grave or tree and 
dig up or take down the bones and weep over them, These are 
then washed in the sca or a creek and are taken back to camp, 
Here they are reccived by the women who weep over them in 
their turn, The skull and jawbone are decorated with red paint 
and white clay, and each separately has a band of ornamental 
netting attached to it so that it may be worn around the neck, 
Additional ornament is frequently added in the form of strings 
of Dentalium or other shells. The skulls and jawbones of 
deceased relatives arc preserved for a long time, and are worn 

round the neck either in front or behind. The photograph in 
Plate XviI shows a woman wearing the skull of her deceased 
sister, Like all their other possessions these relics are lent or 
exchanged, passing from one person to another, until some- 
times a skull may be found in the possession of a man who 
does not know to whom it belonged. The other bones are 
also preserved. The limb bones are generally painted with 
red paint and white clay and are kept in the roof of the hut, 
They are not tieasured as much as the skull and jaw, and 
are often mislaid. Thus, while every camp is sure to contain 
a number of skulls and jaw-bones it is comparatively rarely 
that the limb bones are to be found. The other bones are 
made into strings, such bones as those of the hand and foot 
being used as they are, while ribs and vertebrae are broken up 
into pieces of convenient size, The bones or pieces of bone are 
attached to a length of rope by means of thread and the string 
thus produced is often ornamented with the dried yellow skin 
of the Dendrobium and with shells. The whole is covered with 
red paint, These strings of bone are worn as cures for and 
preventives of illness, If a man has a head-ache, for instance, 
he will attach one of the strings round his head, They are in 
almost constant use in every camp and every man and woman 
is sure to possess one or two, The bones are made into strings 
by the female relatives of the deceased and are theh given away 
as presente, 

In the Nosth Andaman the skull of a baby is preserved by 
enclosing it in a small basket just big enough to contain it, the 
top of the basket, which is narrower than the lower part, being 
only finished after the skull is placed inside, so that it cannot 
fall out and can only be removed by unfastening the rim of the 
basket, Mr,Man states that children’s skulls are not carried 
in baskets, except temporarily as when travelling, fishing, etc, 
but are preserved from injury by being entirely covered with 
string’, This applies only to the tribes of the South and Middle 
Andaman, 

At about the time that"the bones are recovered there takes 
place a special ceremony referred to as “taking off the clay” 

1 Man, foe. cit, ps 143+ 

“the shedding of teas” The abject of this ceremony is to 
release the mourners from the restrictions that they have had 
to observe. The ceremony tales place in the evening, and an 
occasion is chosen when there are plenty of people in the camp. 
The mounners, male and female, remove the edu clay from their 
forcheads and decorate themselves with ved paint and white clay 
in the way described in gonnection with dancing. They also 
put on whal otnaments of Landanus leaf or netting and 
Dentatium shell they, may possess ot be able to borrow. When 
all the members of the camp‘are assembled around the dancing 
ground, one of the male mourners takes his stand at the soundine- 
boaid and sings a song. This song does nat refer in any way 
to the dead man or wothan; it is just an ordinary song of 
hunting or canoe-cutting or any other subject, though It may 
have been specially camposed for the occasion, Those women 
who are not in mourning sit near the singer and take up the 
chorus, When thesong is fairly started the mourners, male and 
female, bogin to dance, There is ngthing special about the 
dance, which is éxactly like any other dance, After dancing 
for 4 short lime the mourners scat thomsclves at one end of the 
dancing ground and their friends begin to weep and wall. 
Everybody present joins id the lamentation until thoy are tired, 
The mourners then’ rise and again date, After a time the 
women retire and seat therhsglves with fhe chorus, but ‘the nen 
cotitinue the dance (in'which they are jotned by the ether men 
present), till they are. tired, which often means till near dhwn, 
Afler this ceremony the mourners aré fred, to ‘eat any pf the 
foods up till then forbidden, and are free once more to use ted 
paint and white clay and to fale” their pat in all dances and 
other festivities ' 

It has been seen froin the preceding descriptions that the 
Andamanése, haye a number of ritual customs, relating to food. 
There are certain Occasions in the life of every individual when 
he or she,must abstain from eating’ certain foods. A person 
mourniig for the death of a relative is subjected to restrictions 
of this kidd, and so ara the parents of a new-born child for 
a short ‘period béfore and after the birth, A womat must 
not eat tertain things when she is mens{ruating. Restrictlons 

as to diet are imposed by custom on all persons who are ill, 
The most important restrictions, hawever, are those imposed on 
every boy dnd git during the period of adolescence, During 
this period of life, as we have Sect, the inftlate is required 
to abstain for ya longer or shorier period from all the most 
important foods of the Andamanese. 

Mr Man states that “every Andamanesc man or woman 
is prohibited all through life from cating some one (or more) 
fish of aninial! in most cases the forbidden dainty is one which 
in childhdod was dbserved (or imagined) by the mother to 
occasion sothe functional derangement; when of antage to 
understand it the ¢ircumstance is explained, and’ cause and 
effect being clearly tlemonstrated, the individual in question 
thenceforth considers thal particular meat his paz-2vd, and avoids 
it carefully, In cases where no evil consequences have resulted 
fiom partaking .of any kind of food, the fortunate person is 
privileged to select his own Jet-tid, and is of course shrewd 
enotigh to decide upon some fish, such‘as shark or skate, which 
is Jittle relished, and to abstain from which consequently entails 
no exercise of self-ctenial?,” 

Although I‘made repeated enquiries | amongst the natives of 
“poth the: North and the ‘South ‘Andaman I was not able to 
confirm, this observation of Mr Man, Tt ia quite true, that if 
a certain food is observed to disagtee with’ a chile he or she 
‘ia taught? to avoid that food for the rest of life, but it ig nol 
necessay for neyery potson to ‘have samg'farbidden food, Many 
men told me that’ they wete mnder No /shch prohibition! and 
might eat any food they liked, apart from the restrigtlons on 
special occasions. Qn a,minor point ft thay be foted that skate 
and even shark are not by any means 8p litule relished as the 
statement of Mr Man would injply. The liver of skates and rays, 
and even the liver of sharks is rather regarded | ag & delicacy, 

T noticed on several occasions that men would not eat certain 
foods when they, were away fom their own part of the islands, 

a , 

“ ‘ 

* Man, of cfs ps 38. Mi Man adds in a note dat it is belleved dit Cadagnt 
would gumsh Reverdly any person who might be guilty of enting hig yaerud, ether by 
eausing his skin lo peel of (watnyade) or by turalng his hah wlote and faying him 
alive.” On Pudge see Inter, Chaps. 1 and a. 

8 2 

Thus one man of the North Andaman told me that he would not 
cat dugong when he was with me in the South Andaman. 
Another said that though he would eat the fish omar when he 
was at home, he would not eat it when he was in a strange place, as 
at the Settlement of Port Blair, for fear that it would make him ill, 

In the North Andaman I was told that when a dugong 
is caught and the people feast on it they do not leave the 
camp till some hours after the meat is all finished, cither to 
go fishing or hunting. The reason they give for this is that the 
spirits of the jungle and the sea may smell them, attracted by 
the odour of the food they have eaten and may cause them to be 
il. They therefore remain in the camp and cat up all the dugong 
and do nol venture out till they begin to feel hungry and must 
go in search of food, I believe that the same custam is observed 
in the South Andaman also, 

A few other customs connected with food may be mentioned 
here. There is only one way in which a tuitle may be killed’. 
It must be laid on its back with its head pointing towards 
the open sea, and a skewer of wood is then thrust through 
the eye-socket into the brain. The natives say that if a turtle 
were killed in any other way than this, the meat would be “ bad,” 
ie, uneatable, 

Turtle meat may only be cooked on a fire of the wood of the 
Hibiscus tiliacens. 

A. pig is killed as it runs, without ceremony, but there is 
one special way in which it must be cut up, The pig is first 
disembowelled, and the joints of the legs are severed, The 
abdominal cavity is thén filled with leaves, of which only certain 
special kinds are used. It is placed on a fire and roasted whole, 
and is then cut up. Should the carease be cut up by any other 
than the traditional method, the natives belicve that the meat 
would be “bad,” and they would not eat it. ‘ 

A. number of beliefs relating to vegetable foods will be 
mentioned in the next chapter, ? 

In several of the ceremonies described in this chapter it 
will be noticed that the weeping. of relatives and friends occurs 

2 Turtle are captured allve by menns of barpoons, and may be kept allye several 
days before they are killed and eaten, 

as an essential part of the ceremony, ‘The female relatives 
of a youth or girl who is being initiated’ come and weep over 
him or her at the turtle-eating ceremony. Their friends weep 
over, or with, the mourners at the dance at the end of mourning. 
The friends of a bride and bridegroom weep over them when they 
are married, The friends and relatives weep over a corpse before 
it is buried and over the bones when they are recovered, In 
all cases it is real weeping. The man or woman sits down 
and wails or howls, and the tears stream down his or her 
face. On one occasion I asked the natives to show how it 
was done and two or three of them sat down and were 
immediately weeping real tears al my request, The weeping in 
this way is really a ceremony or rite, When two fiiends or 
relatives meet who have been separated’ from one another for 
a few weeks or longer, they greet gach other by sitting down, 
one on the lap of tlie other, with their arms around each other's 
necks, and weeping and wailing for two or three minutes till they 
are tired, Two brothers grect each other in this way, and so do 
father and son, mother and son, tnotber and daughter, and 
husband and wife. When husband and wife meet, it is the man 
who sits on the lap of the woman. When two friends part from 
one another, one of them lifts up the hand of the other towards 
his mouth and gently blows on it. 

Reference has already been made in this chapter Lo a number 
of custonis relating to personal names, It will be useful to bring 
together the scattered references, and give a general account 
of the whole matter, 

every Andaman Islander has a personal name that is given 
to him or her before birth, and which we may speak of as 
the birth-name. As soon as a woman, realises that she is 
pregnant, she and her husband begin to think of a name for the 
child, The name is selected by the parents, but the suggestions 
of their friends and relatives are always considered, It is 
regaided as a compliment to name the child after some man 
or woman, Sometinies ‘a man may request the parents that 
the child shall be, named after him, and such a request is rarely, 
if ever, refused. The names given before birth are of course 
applicable to both sexes, there being no difference between 

; 

the names of men and those of women. ‘There are a considerable 
number of names in common use, but some of them are more 
popular at a given time and place than others. It therefore 
happens that there are several persons, both men and women, 
bearing the same name. . 

Each of the names in common use has a meaning, but it 
is not always easy to obtain an adequate and accurate explana- 
tlon of the meaning from the natives themselves, In a certain 
number the derivation is obvious, Many names are the names 
of objects such as trees, fish or other animals, or even such 
objects as rope or mats. A few examples from the North Anda- 
man are :— 

Buio —- Mucuna sp, a plant with edible beans. 
Bol » Hibiscus tiliaceus, 

Cop a tree with edible nuts. 

XK ‘oumo Dioscorea sp. 

Cokbi — turtle. 

Maro honey. 

Meo a stone, 

Ceo a knife, 

Baut the oriole. 

In the case of a number of names it is not possible to 
discover with certainty the derivation, and the statements of the 
natives regarding them do not always agree. Such names in 
the North Andaman, with their meanings as slated by the 
natives, are :-— 

Kea — one who turns in his sleep. 

Beito one who wrestles, 

Life one who comes and goes, 

Kifer? one who walks backwards and forwards. 
Nini one who catches hold, 

Some time after a child is born it is given a nick-name, 
Nick-names may be given at any time of life, and some persons , 
may have several nick-names given to them at different times. 
New nick-names are from time to time invented, but there are 

‘ } Mr M. V, Portman gives a list of personal names in tise In the Sonth Andaman 
in his Notes qn the Langhages of the South Andaman Group of Tribes, p. 70, The 
derivations of many of the names as there given, ave, however, of doubtful accuracy. 

a certain number of recognized names from which a choice 
is usually made, A few examples from the North Andaman 
are i 

Ra-Pot-beté pig's hniv. 

Renya-cope much baggage, or many possessions, 

Paito-tomo the wood (literally flesh) of the Stersdia (Poffo) tree. 

Lat-tet spirit blood. 

Turemo rope. 

Remutol 0 piece of iron, 

Cohbi-diro turtle liver, 

Tarenfeh — angry. 

During childhood boys and girls are addressed by either 
the birth-name or the nick-name. 

When a girl reaches the age of puberty she receives a new 
name. This is one of a limited number of names, cach of which 
is the name of a tree or plant, ‘The name given to the girl 
is that of the tree or plant that is in flower at the time of her 
first. menstruation, 

There is a succession of trees and plants flowering one after 
another throughout the year, The natives describe the different 
parts of the year by reference to the plants in flower at the time. 
The plants selected as typical of the different seasons all have 
flowers from which the native bees make honey, Tach of them 
has a distinctive scent and gives to the honey made from it 
a distinctive flavour. ‘The flower-names are given below in Ada~ 
Bea and Aka- ern, 

Aka-Boa  Ala-Jeru 
Cilipa Celi “From the middle of November to the middle of 

February. ’ 
Moda Mukul 
Ore, ., Okor 
Jidga From the middle of February to the middle of 
Yere erie May, in order. 
Pataka, Bote oes 
Balya Pullin 
Hecke Re 

Engara — Cokaro } From, the mighdle of May to the end of August. 

Carapa Carap 
Cenra Zorgh? September, October and the first half af November. 
Yulu file ' 

’ 

From the time that a girl receives her flower-name her birth- 
name and nick-name fall entirely out of use, No one would 
address an unmarried girl by any name except the flower-naime. 
This continues until some time after the girl is married, Properly 
speaking a woman should be known by her flower-name from 
the advent of puberty until after the birth of her first child. In 
these days of childless women the flower-name drops oul of use 
after a few yeais of married life, After the birth of her first 
child the woman is known by her birth-name or by a nick-name, 
Thus a woman who was nained beford-her birth Kada (from 
habal, a species of mangrove) was called by that name until 
puberty ; thereafter she was called fii (her flower-name) until 
the birth of her fist child; after this event she is again called 
Kaba, and no one would think of addiessing her as Ji, A 
woman named Z/e (lightning) at birth was known by this name 
until puberty, and thereafter was called Agtek, When I knew 
her she had been maniied for three years or so, but had not had 
a child. A fewof the younger men and women addressed her as 
Ele, but the older people still called her Refeh. If she should 
bear a child, the name Zotes would fall entirely out of use and she 
would be known as &/e by both her juniors and her seniors. 

In the case of a boy there is nothing corresponding to the 
flower-names of girls. He ¢dntinues to be known by his birth- 
name and his nick-name from the time he Is born until he dies, 
During adolescence a youth has to pass through certain core- 
monics of initiation as described in the present chapter, At the 
turtle-cating ceremony the youth is glven a ifew name, of the 
nature of a nick-name, The name given in this way {s never 
used either in addressing the youth or in speaking of him, It is 
possible that he also receives a new name on the occasion of the 
pig-eating ceremony, but of this I am not sure. Though girls 
pass through the same ceremonies as boys, I did not discover 
whether or not they, also are given ngw names on these 
occasions, 

Names are used freely in speaking of and to one another, 
An older petson always speaks of or to the younger ono by the 
name alone. When a younger person is speaking to an older 
one it is customary and polite to use one of the terms of address, 

Prati IN 

Woman decorated with odu clay 

PLATT X 

Woman decorated with odu clay 

either’ by itself, or prefixed to the name of the person spoken to, 
as Mata Buto, Mimi Kaba, otc. A native generally hesitates to 
tell his own name, and if asked the question “What is your 
name?” often asks a bystander to give the required information. 
There is, however, no hesitation about mentioning the name of 
any other person, except under cerlain special conditions. 

Thee are certain occasions when the name of a man or 
woman is temporarily avoided. After the death of a relative 
and during the period of, mourning, a mourner’s name is not 
mentioned, cither in speaking to him or of lim, There are a 
few terms that may be used instead. One who has lost a parent 
is addressed as Rofvh,,ohg who ‘has lost a brother or sister as 
Ropué, For a short time before apd afler the birth of a child 
the names of the father and mother are not mentioned, A bride 
and bridegroom are not addressed or spoken of by name for a 
short period after their marriage, though if their names be A and 
B there seems to be no harm in referring to A as “the husband 
of B,” or to Bas “the wife of A.” During the initiation cere- 
monies through which every boy and girl must pass, the name of 
the initiate is avoided, Thus on the occasion of the turtle-eating 
ceremony or the pig-eating ceremony, during the few days the 
ceremony lasts and for a few weeks afterwards, the youth or girl 
is never addressed or spoken of by name, but is refered to ay 
Kimil, During the ceremony thal takes place on the occa- 
sion of the adyent pf puberty, and for some weeks after, a girl 
is not spoken of or to either by her birth-name or her flower 
name, but is called Zoro, When a boy, in the Northery tribes, 
has the scars made on his back, which show him to be no longer 
a child, his name is avoided for a few weeks and he is called 
Ehdo, : , 

The name of a dead man or woman /s not mentioned during 
the period of mourning, which lasts for some months afer the 
death, 

Iti the preceding portions of the chapter reference haa been 
made several times to the ornamentation of the body with clay 
and pigment. In the Great Andaman three different substances 
are used for painting the body. These are (1) a common clay 
of which different specimens are gray, yellow or pink, called od 

in Aka-Jeru and og in Aka-Rea} (2) a fine white pipe-clay which 
is rarer than the common tlay and is more highly prized, called 
tel oy tobadu in Aka. Seru and fala-ug in lha-Bea; (3) a red 
pigment made by mixing ‘burnt oxide of fron with animal or 
vegetable fat or oil, called sapip in Aka-feru and hoiob in 
Aka-Bea, 

The common clay (edz) is used in three different ways, 
After the death, of a relative @ man or woman smears himself 
all over with this clay and plasters it on his head, From this 
custom a person who is moumning for a dead rélative is called 
akarodu in Aka-Jere or aha-og ih Aka-Bea. The same clay ts 
used at a’certain stage of the initiation epremonies, as described 
above, being spattered over the initiate in the turtle-eating and 
pig-eating ceremonies, The third and most common use of this 
clay is to decorate the bodies of met and women with patterns 
called (in Aka-Jeru) eva-puli, These patterns are always made 
by the women, who decorate each other and their male relatives, 
The clay is mixed with qater: in a wooden dish or a shell and 
the mixture is applied to the body with the'fingets. ‘There is 
an dlmost indefinite variety in the patterns employed, although 
there are a certain number of what may be called usual designs. 
Each woman vies with others in her endeavours lo produce 
som novelty of detail!’ in‘her designs, and a successful innovation 
is immediately copied by others. I was,able to wiitch tho rise 
and development and ultimate disappearance of “ fashions” in 
this gonnection in one of the camps of the North Andaman, 

The design is made in one of two ways. It may, in some 
cases, be formed by painting with the finger on the body, that is 
by tracing white (or gray) lines on a black stirface. A design of 
this kind is shown on the back of the man on the right in the 
photograph of Plate x1 On the other vhand, an equally 
common method is to cover a part of the body with an even 
smear, of clay and then Lo serape It away cither with the fingers 
or with a small fish-bone or with a little instrument mide of 
small strips of bamboo, so as to leave a design of black lines 
where the skin shows through the smeared clay. Two not very 
striking designs of this kind arc shown in Plates 1x and x, 
As a rule the designs are more or less symmetrical, the right 

MATL XT 

Three men and a young woman decorated with odu clay 

aiid’ ‘the Jeft sides of the body being treated alike, but in.a few 
cases. different patterns are rhade on the two sides, and_I have 
‘geen a man with: one side of his body painted and the other not, 
The painting “may cover the whole of the-body and limbs with 
the exception of the hands and feet, ot it may be confined to the 
front and back ‘of-the trunk, or. it may be on: the. front only, 
The fiice is often painted, the designs being made with greater’ 
care-than those on the body. : . 

These patterns aré.made in the aiferncya steed! tlie: men. 
return from their ay’ 8 Hunting, and aver either just before: or 
just’after a meal! v4 

Ifa man be adked what pattern he is ilnted with, he ‘replies 
by mentioning the food that-he has just eaten, A man who has 
been eating turtle will say ;that the painting on. his body’ is” 
Cokbi-lera-puli, tuttle pattern, “while if hehas been eating pork 
he will. cal}.it rat erapuli, pig pattern, There is not, however, 
a sttict uniformity in. the use of particular patterns In connection 
with Special foods, “When the whole camp has been feasting on 
turtle’ many. different and (apparently) unrelated designs are to 
be seen on the bodies of: the men and women, I did not find it 
possible, even after a study. of the matter, to distinguish by 
means of the desigti a man who has been eating turtle from: one 

',who has been eating: pork, “There is one baat ge or group of | 

closely related designs, that scemed to be based on the spattérn 
of the plates on a.turtle’s carapace; . A pattern of this distinctive 
kind was never, so far as my experience went, used except after 
eating turtle: Other patterns, however, which ‘were used after 
eating turtle, did pot seem to me to-be related in any way: to 
what I may call, the specific turtle pattern, In some of. the 
patterns: used. after eating pork I notleed a tendency; to make 
use of vertical lines or bands: on.-thd back and chest, There 
may be a connection hare with the longitudinal markings on 
the ba¢k-of .the .wild pig. oy pe 2 

Of special patterns I was only able ta discover two, One of § 
these is called. Aémél-t'era-puli and is only used to paint a person 
who is aka-kimil, te, who. has’ just. been through one of the 
initiation ceremonies.’ This pattern is shown on the back of 
a man ‘in the photograph reproduced as Plate x1 (the second: 

< 

figure from the left), Another special pattern is called fo¢o-dgra- 
puli (Pandanus pattern), and is used, I believe, to decorate a girl 
after the ceremony at her first menstruation. 

The fine white clay called to/-ede in Ake-Joru is used in 
a different way and on different occasions, When it is used to 
ornament the body it is always applied i in one customary pattern. 
The name of this pattern in Aka-Jeru is or-dubi-dera-bat, from 
the name of a species of snake, o-evd7, Ixactly the same name 
is used in d-Pudthwar, wara-dupi-lar-par. Myr Man gives the 
Aka-Bea name as Jobo-tartaya, from jobo the name for snake in 
general, A man decorated with this “snake pattern,” as it may 
be called, is shown in Plate x11, and a pattern of the same kind 
is shown on the head of the man in Plate xf. The pattern 
is built up of zig-zag lines, They are made by talking a little of 
the clay mixed with water between the thumb and first finger; by 
a movement of the thumb the space between the nail and the skin 
of the finger is filled with the clay, and the end of the finger fs 
then applied to the skin so that it leaves a short and fine line of 
clay. A zig-zag line is thus built up of short lines each a finger's 
breadth in length, A second line is then added, not parailel to 
the first, but opposed to it, so that the two lines together form 
a row of lozenges. A third and sometimes a fourth or fifth line 
are similarly added, As shown in Plate xtt the lines of pattern 
are cariied down the front of the body, down the sides of the 
arms, and down the front of the legs, and they ave similarly 
worked on the back of the bocly, and the back of the legs. ‘The 
face also is decorated. These patterns are made by the women. 
It is one of the duties of a wife tardecorate her husband in this 
way when occasion requires, 

The only reason that the natives give for ornamenting them- 
selves in this way is that it makes them “look well,” On the 
occasion of a big dance many of the performers are thus 
ornamented. This is always so at the dances held when two 
or more local groups meet together, There are cértaln special 
occasions, already mentioned in this chapter, when the use of 
the “snake pattern” is requirecl by custom. One of these is the 
dance at the end of mourning, During the period of mourning 
the mourners are forbidden to make use of this form of decoration. 

PrAle XI 

A young man decorated with white clay in 
readiness for a dance 

A man with a pattern of white clay on his face 

“The same pattern is used to decorate a bride and bridegroom 
after their marriage, In the initiation ceremonies the youth or 
girl is decorated in this way before the dances at the turtle 
cating and pig-eating ceremonies, The same pattern is also 
made on a corpse before burial. 

In all these cases the whole body is decorated. On less 
ceremonial occasions, such as an ordinary dance when there 
are no visitors of importance in the camp, a man frequently has 
his face alone decorated wilh white clay, as in the photograph 
of Plate xI11. 

The third kind of material used for painting the body is red 
paint, This is applicd in two different ways, When a man or 
woman is ill he or she is generally to be scen with some part of 
his body smeared with red paint. Tor colds and coughs the 
chest and neck are painted. In fevers red paint is smeared on 
the upper lip, Besides the medical use of red paint, if we may 
call it so, there is a ceremonial use, the pigment being used in 
combination with white clay, lines of red paint being applied 
to the body between the lines of clay of the snake pattern, It 
is used in this way to decorate the body of a dead person for 
burial, and on céremonial occasions such as the dance al the end 
of mourning and the dances in connection with the initiation 
ceremonies, 

Most of the ornaments worn at various times by the Andaman 
Islanders have a ceremonial or a magical purpose, The only 
things worn by men that can be considered to have, a utilitarian 
value are the belt of rope and the neeklet of string, ‘The belt 
may be a plain piece of rope, or it may be ornamented with the 
yellow skin of a species of Dendrobium, Itscrves asa receptacle 
in which the natives carry such things as adzes, fish, roots, or 
even arrows, It is the one object that is constantly worn by 
men. The: string necklet is simply a length of thin string 
tied round the neck. It serves as a means of carrying a knife 
and skewer, The knife, in former days made of a slip of cane, 
but in these times from a piece of scrap iron, is attached to a 
skewer of Areca wood by a short length of rope or stout string. 
By sliding either the knife or the skewer under the necklet 
at the back of the neck the double implement hangs securely in 

a position where it is not likely to get lost when running through 
the jungle, and where it is immediately accessible when wanted, 
The necklet also serves as a means of carrying beeswax, which 
fs in constant use amongst the natives, a small ball of the 
wax being attached to one of the ends, of the string of which the 
necklet is made. 

As a rule, in everyday: life, the men wear only a belt, or 
a belt and necklace, Those natives who visit the Settlement of 
Port Blair have been required by the European officers to wear 
a strip of cloth over the genitals, It has new become the rule‘ 
to wear such a loin cloth whénever they are in the neighbouthood 
of a European, This, however, is a modern custom, and in 
former'times the men went freely with no covering whatever, as 
do the inhabitants of the Little Andaman at the prasent time, 
As showing the extent to which the natives have been influenced 
in this matter by outside opinion, it may be mentioned that 
at the present day many of the younger men, particularly 
those who have ,been brought up at Port Blair, regard it as 

very immodest to be scen without some covering over the 
genitals, =, ' 

‘On ceremonial occasions, such as the dance at the end of 
mourning, or a big dance-meeting, the men put on a number 
of ornaments, A common costume on such occasions consists 
of a belt, necklace, bracelets, and garters of netting and Dealinm 
shell, A belt and* necklace of this kind are to abe seen in 
Plate v, and garters aie worn by the wontan In Plate 1x, 
An alternative costume for men consists of a set of ornaments of 
Pandanus \eaf (belt, chaplet, bracelets and garters), decorated 
with Dentattum ang other shells, Garters of this kind are shown 
in Plate xin. 

Other objects are worn by the natives for magical purposes, 
Chief amongst these are the strings made of human bones which 

+ are worn to prevent and cure sickness, The bones ate attached 
to a length of rope, and thig is generally decorated with shells or 
with Dendrobium skin, ‘These strings of bones are worn most 
commonly as chaplets, necklaces or belts, but they may also 
be made into garters and bracelets. The bones of animals, such 
as pig, tuitle, dugong, ete., are Lreated in exactly the same way 

Pravii NIV 

A woman with her child 

PrAtl XV 

é “ts 

ae 2 ee Pdi.” cin NT hd 

A young maimed woman, showing pattern scaiified 
on body and arms 

» 

as human bones, and ornaments made of them are commonly 
worn, 

There ave a number of other ornaments that are commonly 
worn, not only on ceremonial occasions, which, unlike the strings 
of human bones, do not obviously have a magical purpose. 
Such are necklaces made of various kinds of shells, and of 
mangrove seeds, At the present time the natives obtain beads 
ftom Port Blair and make ornaments of these, 

The ordinary costume of the women is different from that 
of the men, Every woman and girl wears at least one belt 
of Pandanus \eaf, There is one kind of belt that is always worn 
by married women and which may not be worn by unmariied 
girls, There is another kind of belt that may only be worn 
by unmartied girls, The women of the Southern tribes wear 
a bundle of leaves of the Mmasops littoralis laid one over 
another suspended from the front of the belt so.as to cover 
the pudenda, In the Northern tribes it was formerly the custom 
for the women to wear a similar apron of the leaves of a plant 
called dazupo, and over this they also wore a tassel of shredded 
palm-leaf stem (4or0). Within recent years the Northern tribes 
have given up their own custom in this matter and have adopted 
the custom of the Southern tribes, 

Women often wear round the neck a piece of string similar to 
that worn by the men, but as they do not carry knives it does 
hot serve the same purpose, It is more usual for ad woman 
to wear a necklace of some sort, Nowadays they are rather 
fond of necklaces of beads which they obtain from the SetUlement 
at Port Blair. + In former times different kinds of shells were 
used, such as the Dentalinin octogonum. 

With the exception that men wear the belt, of rope, and. 
women wear the belt of Paxdanus leaf and the apron of Idaves, 
there is no difference between the ornaments worn by men and 
by women, On the occasion of a dance or other ceremony 
4 woman may wear any of the objects describe! as being worn 
by men on such occasions, They also wear in the same way 
stings of human or animal bones, 

One object which would seem to have a purely utilitarian 
purpose is the sling used for carying children (called in Aka- 

Jorn fda), This object, however, seems to have its ceremonial 
uses also, In one of the initiation coremonias that I saw, the 
man who was officiating wore such a sling round his shoulders 
during the ceremony. 

In the earlier parts of this chapter reference has been made 
several times to the dance of the Andaman Islanders, For the 
natives the dance is both a means of enjoyment and also a 
ceremony. The period of mourning for the dead is brought 
to a close -by a dance, in which all the mourners join, Ag will 
be shown later, a dance was generally held before a fight, in 
former times when fights occurred. The ceremony by which 
two hostile local groups made peace with one another was a 
dance, Py 
In the initiation ceremonies there are special dances, which 
have already been described, in connection with the pig-cating 
and turtle-eating ceremonies, With the exception of these 
special dances, and the peacc-making dance to be described 
later, there is only one Ikind of dance in any given tribe, Thus 
the dance at the end of mourning, or before setting out on an 
attack on enemies, is in all essentials exactly the same as the 
dance in which the natives indulge when the day's hunting 
has been successful and the evening is fine. 

The time for dancing, except in connection with certain 
ceremonies, is at night, after the evening meal. The dance takes 
place on the open ground in the centre of the village. This 
js swept clean by the women and the younger men. One or two 
fires are lighted, and little heaps of resin are placed in convenient 
situations to provide lights, ‘These have to he replenished from 
time to time as the dance proceeds, Near one end of the 
dancing ground is placed a sounding-board, upon which it is the 
duty of one man to beat time with his foot, A sounding-board 
is a piece of wood somewhat of tha shape of a large shiold, 
cut from the hard Prerecarpus ree, One is shown in Plate Vi 
Behind the sounding-board, or a little to one side of -it, the 
women, who form the chorus, sit in a row, with their legs 
stretched out in front of them, facing the dancing-ground, The 
men who intend to dance sit or stand round the edge of the 
space reserved for the dance, 

ao ie 

bi ea 

A girl during the ceremony at puberty, decorated with 
strips of Pandanus leal 

Pratik \VE 

A woman wearing clay on her forchead as a sign of mourning 

When all is ready a man who has volunteered to sing the 
first song takes his stand at the sounding-board, and sings his 
song through. When he reaches the chorus the women take 
it up and repeat it ‘afte: him, and as they do so cach woman 
marks time by clapping her hands on the hollow formed by her 
thighs, the logs being crossed one over the other at the ankle, 
The singer continues to sing; thus leading the chorus, and at the 
same time marks the time of the song by beating on the 
sounding-board with his foot. As soon as the chorus begins the 
dancers begin to dance. The step of cach dancer is the same, 
but there is very little attempt to form a figme, When the 
singer and the chorus get tired, the singing ccases, bul the man 
at the sounding-board continues to matk time for the dancers, 
The singer tepeats his song several times, and he may sing 
several songs, cach iepeated several times, When he gets tired 
he is relieved by anothe: man. In a dance that lasts for any 
time, one singer succeeds another, and the singing’antl dancing 
are kept up continuously, sometimes for five or sex hours 

The above desciiption applies to all the tiibes of the Great 
Andaman, but there are some differences between the four tribes 
of the North Andaman, and the tribes of the Middle and Sowh 
Andaman. 

In the North’ Andaman the song is sung through once from 
beginning to end ‘by the singer, and is then iepeated three or 
‘four times by the chorus, In the South Andaman cach song 
cotisists of one'verse and a refrain, if we may speaks of them thus, 
The singer sings the verse and the refrain, and then the refrain 
only is repeated an indefinite number of times by the chorus, 

In the dance of the Southern tribes, cach dancer dances 
alternately on the right foot o1 on the left. When dancing on the 
right foot the first movement isa slight hop with the right foot, then 
the left foot is raised.and brought down with a backward scrape 
along the ground, then another hop on the right foot, These 
three movements, which occupy the time of two beats of the 
song, are repeated until the right leg is tired, and the dancer 
ther changes the movenient to a hop with the left foot, followed 
by a scrape with the right and another hop with the Jef, The 
time of the movement fs ‘as follows, the upper ling being the 

BAL 9 

rhythm of the dance, while the lower line shows the beats of the 
song, which is marked on the sounding-board and by the 

clapping of the women, 
ARI NPS SSI oS 
rhe oe 

(cue: soe 

The body of the dancer is bent slightly forward from the hips, 
the legs being flexed at the knees and the back being curved 
well inwards. There are several ways of holding the hands and 
arms, one of the commonest being to hold the arms outstretched 
in front on a level with the shoulders, while the thumb and 
forefinger of one hand are interlocked with those of the other, 
When a man does not wish to cease altogether from dancing 
but desires to have a short rest, he marks the time by raising 
each heel alternately from the ground. As a man dances he 
remains in one spot for a short time, and then, still continuing 
the same step, moves for a yard or two around the circle of 
the dancing ground. Every now and then a dancer is to be seen 
trotting from one position to another across the dancing ground, 
abandoning the step of the dance, but still keeping time to 
the song, 

The Northern tribes have now adopted the same kind of 
dance as the tribes of the South, but formerly their dance 
was slightly different. There was a little more attempt at 
forming a figure, the dancers moving for the most part in a 
circle, some in one direction‘ and others in the other, ‘The 
step was as follows: a step forward with the right foot, a hop on 
the right foot, a scrape with the left, then another hop with 
the right, a step forward with the left foot, a hop with the 
left, a scrape with the right and a hop with the left, The rhythm 
is as follows :— + 

or 

Jad] Jd 
ae g tae 

The lower line shows the beats on the sounding-board. 
Some of the dancers occasionally break into the regular 
Southern step. A dancer sometimes changes from the usual 

step to another called /a2, in which each foot is alternately struck 
on the ground and scraped backwards, Other slight variations 
of the movement may be introduced, ‘ 

In both the Southern and the Northern dance each dancer 
pleases himself as to the direction in which he moves, and 
the step that he adopts at any given moment. All the dancers, 
however independently of one another they dance, keep strict 
time to the music, 

Women do not, as a rule, join in the ordinary dances held in 
the evening. Their share in the entertainment consists of 
forming the chorus. When they do dance, as they do on certain 
occasions, such as the dance at the end of mourning, their step is 
different from that of the men. In the Southern tribes the 
female dancer stands at one spot with knees flexed and lifts her 
heels alternately from the ground in time to the music, thus 
producing a slight swaying or swinging motion of the hips. 
After dancing thus at one spot for a few moments, she moves 
forward a few steps to a new position, keeping time to the music 
in all her movements, and then repeats the same performance, 
The arms are swung in time to the dance, or clse are held before 
the breast with one wrist crossed over the other, 

In the Northern tribes the common dance of the women is a 
sort of modification of that of the men. ‘A woman advances 
across the ground in regular time, but at every third step 
she gives a peculiar little hop which has something of the effect 
of a bobbing curtsey. The time is as follows :—~ 

lor lyr lor 

JJ dod 2 

a Bal 
land r standing for left and right foot, and the accent indicating 
the hop or curtsey, lEvery now and then a dancer stops and 
rematns at one spot, alternately scraping each foot backwards, 
holding her knees flexed, and swinging both arms together, 

The ordinary dance of the Andamanese, as described above, 
must always be accompanied by a song, and the purpose of every 
song is to serve as the accompaniment toa dance. Iivery man 

9-2 

‘ 

t 
composes his own songs, No oné would ever sing (at a dance) 
a song composed by any other person, There are no traditional 
songs, Women occasionally compose songs, but Innever heard 
a woman sing at a dance except in the chorus, 

Every man composes songs, and the boys begin to practise 
themselves in the ait of composition when they are still young. 
A man composes his song as he cuts a canoe ‘or'a bow or as 
he paddles a canoe, singing’ it over, sofily to himself, until 
he is satisfied with it, He then awaits an opportunity to sing it 
in public, and for, this he has to wait for a dance, Before 
the dance he takes care to teach the chorus to one or two of 
his female relatives so that they can lead'the chorus of women, 
He sings his song, and if it is successful he repeats it several 
times, and thereafter it becomes part of’ his ‘repertory, for 
every man of any age has a repertory of songs that he is , 
prepared to repeat at any time. If the song is not successful, if 
the chorus and dancers do not like it, the composer abandons it 
and does not repeat it. Some men are recoghjzed as being more 

-,Skilful song-makers than others, aa 

The songs all deal with everyday subjects such as hunting or 
‘cutting a canoe, The important thing about a song is not its 
Sense, but its sound, i.e, its rhythm and melody, A translation 
‘of an Akar-Bale song, which is quite typical, is “ Pade, the son of 
Mam Golat, wants to know when I am going to finish my canoe, 
He comes every day, That is why I make haste, to get it 
launched as soon as possible.” Another on the same subject 
runs: “Knots are very hard to cut with an adze, They blunt 
the edge of the adze, How hard I am working cutting these 
knots.” The singer here refers to the cutting of a canoe, A 
number of songs in the hative languages with translations, are 
given by Mr Portman’. To these the reader may refer for 
further information, 4 

According to the statements of the ‘natives it was formerly 
the custom to have a dance before setting out fo a’fight. There 
was no special«war-dahce, the warriors joining in an ordinary 
dance such as hag just been described, Those who intended 

1 Portman, Wores on thé Languages of the South Andaman Group of Tithes, 
Pp. 166—188, r. . 

TIN¥S S.19}S1S Joy Supwsm pus 

to take’ part in the attack om their enemies, ie, all the able- 
bodied adult males, decorated themselves with red paint and 
white clay, and put on ornaments of Pandanus leaf or netting 
and shells, Each man held in:his hands‘ or placed in his belt or 
head-dress plumes of shredded Zetranthera wood (called de/mo in 
Aka-Jeru, uf in Aka-Bea), These plumes of shredded wood are 
now often‘worn of varried in an ordinary dance, hut I believe 
that in former times they were the ‘distitictive sign of 3 ‘war. 
dance To make them, a short length of the wood is taken 
(generally a piece of an old broken pig-arrow) and the wood 
is carefully shredded with a Cyrena shell, care being taken 
not to break any of the longitudinal fibres, «One end Js then tied 
with a piece of string or fibre, Similar pluines are made from 
Pandanus wood, and are carried or worn in a similar ‘manner. 

When the attacking party set out from thely village each man 
wears a plume of shredded Zetranthera wood thrust into the 
back of his belt, ‘They rub'their bows with the shredded wood, 
and say that this has the effect of making thelr own bows shoot 
well and those of their enemies shoot badly, ; 

If a man kills another in a fight between two villages, of 
in a private quarrel, he leaves his village and goes to live by 
himself in the jungle, where he must stay for some weeks, or 
even months. His wife, and one or two of his fritnds may 
livé with ‘him or visit him and attond to his wants, Tor some 
weeks the homicide must observe a rigorous taby, Te must not 
handle'a bow ov arrow. He must not feed hithself ot touch any 
food with Itis hands, but must be fed by his wife or a friend, He 
must keep his neck ad upper lip coveréd with red paint, and 
must wear plumes'of shredded Zetranthera'wood (elmoy in his 
belt before and behind, and in his heclklace at the back of hts 
neck, If he breaks any of thest rules it is attpposed that the 
spirit of the man he has killed will cause him te be ill. At 
the end of a few weeks the homicide undergoes a sort of purifica- 
tion ceremony. His hands are first rubbed with white clay 
(tal-odu) and then with red paint. After this he may wash 
his hands and may then feed himself with his hands and may 
handle bows afd arrows, He retains the plumes of shredded 
wood for a year’ or so, j 

In the North Andaman, and possibly in the South also, there 
was a ceremony by which two hostile local groups made peace 
with one another, When the two groups have agreed to make 
friends and bring their quarrel to an end, arrangements are made 
for this ceremony. The arrangements are made through the 
women of the two parties, A day is fixed for the ceremony, 
which takes place in the country of the group that made the 
last attack, In the village of this group the dancing ground 
is prepared, and across it is exected what is ealled a horo-cop, 
Posts are put up in g line, to the tops of these is attached a 
length of strong cane, and from the cane are suspended bundles 
of shredded palm-leaf (4ove). The appearance of this con- 
struction may be seen from the photograph reproduced in 
Plate xIx. The women of the camp keep a look-out for the 
approach of the visitors. When they are known to be near 
the camp, the women sit down on ong side of the dancing ground, 
and the men take up positions in front of the decorated cane, 
Each man stands with his back against the hovo-cop, with his 
arms stretched out sideways along the top of it, sNond of therh 
has any weapons. 

The visitors, who are, if we may so put it, the forgiving party, 
while the home party are those who have committed the last 
act of hostility, advance into the camp dancing, the step being 
that of the ordinary dance. The women of thé home party 
matk the time of the dance by clapping their hands on their 
thighs. I was told that the visitors carry théjr weapons with 
them, but when the dance was performed at my request the 
dancers were without weapons, The visitors dance forward in 
front of the men standing at the sore-cop, and then, still dancing 
all the time, pass backwards and forwards between the standing 
men, bending their heads as they pass beneath the suspended 
cane, The dancers make threatening gestures at the men 
standing at the Zoro-dop, and every now and then break into 
a shrill shout, The men at the #oro stand silent and moticnless, 
and are éxpected to show no sign of fear, 

After they have been dancing thus for a little time, the 
leader of the dancers approaches the man at one end of the oro 
and, taking him by the shoulders from the front, leaps vigorously 

Prau XIX 

The peace-making dance of the North Andaman 

up and down to the time of the dance, thus giving the man 
he holds a good shaking. The Icader then passcs on to the next 
man in the row while another of the dancers goes through 
the same performance with the first man, This is continued 
until each of the dancers has “shaken” each of the standing 
men, The dancers then pass under the 4oro and shake their 
enemies in the same manner from the back. After a little 
more dancing the dancers retire, and the women of the visiting 
group come forwajd and dance in much the same way that 
the men have ‘done, each woman giving each of the men of 
the other group a good shaking. 

When the women have been through their dance the two. 
parties of men and women sit down and weep together, 

The two groups remain camped together‘ for a few days, 
spending the time in hunting and dancing together. Presents 
are exchanged, as at the ordinary mectings of different groups. 
The men of the two gioups exchange bows with one another,

Oy HE satan Islanders believe in, the existence of a class 
of supernatural beings) which I propose to denoté by the term 
“spirits.” /Thé native name for these spirits is Jaz, /ao or yay in 
the languages of the North and Middle Andaman, and danga in 
the South Andaman. While all spirits are denoted together by 
the term daz or éauga, there are ceitain special classes of spirits. 
There are, for instance, spirits that haunt the jungles of the 
islands, These are called in the North Andaman 7?%-mihu Lau, 
from the word #i-miku meaning the forest, or more accurately 
“Jand.” ‘(The ohly land known to the Andamanese is covered 
with forest.) In Aa-Bea the name for these jungle spirits is 
Event Causa, the word evem being the equivalent in that language 
of the Northern é-siéku, In the North Andaman the 7%-miku 
Lau are often called Bido Ted Lau, ie, spirits of the Calamus 
leaf, dido being the name of the Calamus tigrinus, This cane is 
armed with strong thorns, and in some parts of the jungle forms 
absolutely impenetiable thickets. The hatives say that the 
‘spirits haunt these thickets, and hence their name, 

, oThere ate other spirits that live in the sea, Although these 
: may be included undér the term Law or Cauge; when, it is used ’ 
in a genéral sense, yet there is a special namé for the sea spirits, 
Furua i in the Noith Andaman, and Jumewin in Aka-Bea, The 
Sure are beings of the same nature as the 7?-mifu Lau, with 
the difference that they live in the séa, while the latter live in 
the forest, ‘ ‘3 
A® the South “Andaman the natives also speak of another 
class of spirits who live in the sky and are cajléd AZgrwa or 
Morowin, . : 

* When an Andamanese man or woman dies he or she becomes 
a spirit, ie, a Laz or Cauga,) The bones of a dead person, which 
are dug up after the flesh has decayed, are called Lax ied in the 
North Andaman, fof being the word for “bone.” The skull is 
Lau fer-éo, from the word gr-do meaning “head.” Exactly 
similar terms are in use in Aéd-Bea, the bones of a dead man 
being called Cauga ta (spirit bones), 

The Andamanese iclate legends, to be desctibed in the next 
chapter, which concern the doings of mythical ancestors, As all 
Andamanese, when they dic, become Zaz, these ancestors are of 
course included under that tcim. They are often distinguished 
from the spirits of persons recently dead by being denoted as 
Lau #er-kuro, fiom the word er-kuro meaning “big,” and applied 
to human beings to denote importance of social position, Just 
as a man who occupies a prominent position in his tribe is 
called a “big” man (gr-Auro), so the ancestors of the Anda- 
manese legends are called “big” spirits. The Afa-Jea use a 
similar term, Canga tabaya, Lo distinguish the ancestors from the 
spirits of ordinary persons, ‘ 

The name Zaz or Canga is also applied by the Andamanese 
to the natives of India and Burma whom they set in the Penal 
Settlement of Port Blair, The Asa-/eru name for the Penal 
Settlement is Law-t'ara-nyz, literally “the village of the spirits.” 
At the present time the term Law or Cauga is not applied to 
Europeans; who are generally spoken of in the North Anda- 
man by the Hindustani word “sahib.” Natives of the North 
Andaman told me that in former times (befére, 1875) they 
applied the term Zaw to Europeans also not distinguishing them 
from other light-skinned aliens. The necessity for distinguishing 
between Asiatics, such as natives of India, and Europeang, has 
only arisen since they have come to have dealings with the Penal 
Settlement, ‘* a8 BO 

The term Lax is not applied by the Afdamanese to aliens of 
their 6wh tace, Nor would it be Applied, I believe, to men of 
other black races such as the African negro. I showed the 
natives phbtographs ef Semang from the Malay Peninsula and 
also of natives af Africa and New Guinea, and in all cases they 
called them Jarawa, thal being the term applied by the Great, 

Andaman tribes to the natives of the Little Andaman. On the 
other hand they called Polynesians Lax. 

For many centuries the Andaman Islanders have been 
accustomed to see light-skinned men visit their shores in ships, 
Europeans, natives from the coasts of India, Burma and Malaya, 
and occasionally perhaps Chinese, To these aliens they gave 
the name of Laz, apparently regarding them as visitors from the 
only other world they knew of, the world of spirits’. The clothes 
that these “spirits” wore they called Law of-fulu, the word ot-juln 
meaning “cold.” 

The spirits of the forest and the sea are belicved to be 
generally invisible, but there are tales of men and women who 
have seen them, and their personal appearance is sometimes 
described. The descriptions vary considerably from one in- 
formant to another, One of the commonest’ statements is that 
they are light or white skinned, (The Andamanese vocabulary 
does not allow of any distinction between white and a light gray 
or a light shade of colour.) One man, however, said that the 
forest spirits are black (or dark), while the sea spirits are while 
(or light), I was told several times that the spirits have long 
hair and beards (the Andamanese having, as a rule, no beard, and 
their hair, being frizzy, never growing to any length), Their arms 
and legs are said to be abnormally long, while they have only 
small bodies, Though there is no uniformity in the way in which 
the natives describe the spirits of the jungle and the sea, there is a 
notable tendency to associate them with the grotasque, the ugly, 
and the fearful. There is a common belief that the spirits, both 
of the jungle and of the sea, carry about with them lights, which 
several men and women claim to have seen, 

In reply to the question as to how the spirits of the forest 
and the sea originated, the natives all agree in saying that they 
are the spirits of dead men and women, 

The jungle spirits live in a village (or villages) in the forest. 
There is a belief that mortals wandering by themselves ‘in the 
jungle have been captured by the spirits, Should the captive 

7 A similar custom is found in many savage tribes, Thus in many parts of 

Australia the aborigines call white men by the same name that they apply to the 
Spirits of the dead. ‘ 

show any fear, my informants said, the spirits would kill him, but 
if he were brave they would take him to their village, detaining 
him for a time, and then releasing him to return to his friends. 
A man to whom such an adventure has happened will be 
endowed for the rest of his life with power to perform magic. 
He will pay occasional visits to his friends the spirits, The 
natives told me of one such man who diced not many years ago. 
At irregular intervals he used to wander off into the jungle by 
himself and remain absent for a few hours, sometimes for a day 
or two, He returned to the village after such an absence Jooking 
strange and’ wearing ornaments of shredded palm-leaf (4ore) 
which he claimed had been placed upon him by the spirits. , 

Save for persons who have made friends with them, and have 
thereby become endowed with magical powers, all contact with 
the spirits of the jungle and the sea, or with the spirit of a 
dead man, is dangerous, “The spirits are believed to be the 
cause of all sickness and of all deaths resulting from sickness, 
As a man wanders in the jungle or by the sca, the spirits come 
invisibly and strike him, whereupon he falls ill, and may dic, 
A man or woman’ is more likely to be attacked by the spirits 
if he or she is alone, and it is therefore always betler to be in 
company when away from the village. The spirits rarely venture 
into the village itself, though they may prowl round it, particu 
larly at night. They are more dangerous at night than during 
the day. * . 

¢Thore are many objects that are believed to have the power 
of keeping spirits at a distance, and thus of preserving, human 
beings from the danger of sickness, Amongst the most im- 
portant of these are fire, arrows, human bones, becs'-wax, and 
red paint, A man or a woman leaving a hut to go only a few 
yards at night will always carry a fire-brand as a protection 
against spirltg that may be prowling in‘the neighbourhood, If 
the night be dark a torch is carried in addition to the fire-stick, 

The Andamanese will never whistle at night, as they believe 
that the noise of whistling would attract spirits, On the other 
hand they believe that singing will keep the spirits away, 

The spirits that haunt the woods and waters of a man's own 
home are regarded as being Jess dangerous to him than those of 

a country in which he is a stranger. A man of. the Aha-Cari 
tribe who was with me in Rutland Island had a cold on his 
chest, He asked me for permission, to return to his own 
country, explaining that the spirits of Rutland Island were, so 
to speak, at enmity with him, and that if he stayed longer he 
would be seriously ill, and perhaps die, while on the other hand, 
the spirits of his own country were friendly towards him, and 
oncg he was amongst them he would quickly recover. 

“@Qhere is a belief that the spirits feed on the flesh of dead 
men and women, The jungle spirits eat those who are buried 
on land, and the /urza devour those who are drowned or other- 
wise lost in the sea) 

Mr Man’s account of the spirits of the jungle and sea con- 
tains an important error, which needs to be pointed out, He 
writes as though there were only one Zvem Cauga (jungle spirit) 
and only one Yuruwin (sea spirit), whereas each of these names 
is the name not of a single individual but of a class of super- 
natural beings of which there is an indefinite number, The 
following is Mr Man’s account: —Zvem-canga-la, the “evil spirit of 
the woods, has a numerous progeny by his wife Cana Baigi-lola, 
who remains‘ at home with her daughters and younger children, 
while her husbatid and grown up sons roam about the jungles 
with a lighted torch attached to their left legs, in order that the 
former may injure any unhappy wights who may meet them 
unprotected, and in the dark; he generally makes his victims ill, 
or kills them by wounding them internally with invisjble arrows, 
and if he is successful in causing death, it js supposed that they 
feast upon the raw flesh.” “As regards /uruwin, the evil spirit 
of the sea, they say that he too is invisible, and lives in the sea 
with his wife and children, who help him to devour the bodies of 
those who are drowned or buried at sea; fish constitute the 
staple of his food, but he also occasionally, by way of variety, 
attacks the aborigines he finds fishing on the shores or by the 
creeks, The weapon he uses is a spear, and persons who are 
seized with cramp or,any sudden illness, on returning from, or 
while on the water are said to have been ‘speared’ by /urwawén, 
He has various submarine residences, and boats for travelling 
under the surface of the sea, while he carries with him a net, in 

which he places all the Victims, human or piscine, he may 
succeed in capturing?” 

Mr Portman correctly translates the word /uruwin as 
meaning “the spirits of the sea” using the plural and not the 
singular’, 

Further references to the Andamanese beliefs about the spirits 
will be found later in the chapter. It is necessary at this point 
to consider an entirely different class of beings, 

The Andaman Islanders personify the phenomena of nature 
with which they are acquainted, such a$ the sun and the moon, 
Before relating in detail what could he learnt about their beliefs 
on these matters, it is necessary to call attention to one feature 
of these beliefs, Different statements, not only of different 
informants, but, even of the same informant, are often quite 
contradictory. For example, it is sometimes said that lightning 
is a person, and at other times it is said that lightning is a fire- 
brand thrown across the sky by a mythical being named BeJibu, 
These two statements, which to all logical thinking are incom- 
patible, are both given, and apparently both equally believed, by 
the same person, Many examples of such contradictions will be 
found in what follows, and it is important to point out their 
existence beforchand, 

About the sun and moon, the most usual statement ja all the 
tribes is that tht sun is the wife of the moon and the stars are 
their children, In the North Andaman the moon js Maia Dula 
(Aka-Cart), or Maia Civikli (Aka-Jorn), the sun is Mtn Dix 
and their children the slars are Catlo, the larger ones, and Kata 
the smaller, Caz/o is the name of a species of finely marked 
beetle, and Aatad is the name of the common fire-fly, Individual 
stars or constellations are not recognized y’* i 

Another version from the same tribes istthat the moon (Dla) 
is female, and has a husband named Ma/a Tok, while the sun 
(Diu or Torodin) is male, 

It the Aka-Jeru tribe there is a belicf that the moon (Mata 
Cirtk) can, when he wishes, tur himsclf into a pig, and come 
down to earth and feed on the Abings! thal the pigs eat, There 

1 Man, of, cf, its 158, 189. * 
9 Portman, Noses on the Languages, ate, Pp. 183. 

isa legend that on one occasion the moon thus turned himself 
into a pig and came down to earth to eat the éwe/ fruit, A man 
named Maia Coinyop met the moon (in the form of a pig) in the 
forest, and shot him with an arrow. C7ri#/i (the moon) took out 
his knife and killed the unfortunate Cornyog, cutting off his head, 
which he left behind, and taking the body up to the sky where 
he ate it 

In the A-Pudizwar tribe the most common statement is that 
the moon (Pwéz) is male and that the sun (Pro) is his wife, A 
different statement from the same tribe is that the moon is 
female and is the wife of a being named Tomo, Tomo scems to 
be to some extent identified with the sun, Thus one informant 
said that it is Zomo who sends the fine weather, and that it is he 
who sends the daylight every day. Where Zomo lives, in the 
sky, it is always day and is always fine. When the natives die 
their spirits go up to the sky and live with Zomo. - We shall see 
in the next chapter that, according to some of the legends, Tomo 
is the first ancestor of the Andamanese. 

Yet another version is that the moon was made by Too out 
of opalescent stone, and it is Zoo who, in some way, regulates 
its passage across the sky. 

A belief about the moon which is found in all the tribes, both 
of the North and the South, is that he will be very angry if there 
is any fire, or any bright light, visible when he rises in the 
evening shortly after sundown, At such times the natives are 
careful to cover up their fires so that they only smoulder without 
flame. Mr Man refers to this custom, “From fear of dis« 
pleasing Zaza Ogar (Mr Moon), during the first few evenings of 
the third quarter, when he rises after sundown, they preserve 
silence, cease from any work on which they may be engaged— 
even halting should they be travelling—and almost extinguishing 
any light or fire that may be burning. This is owing to the 
belief that he is jealous of attention being distracted to other 
objects than himself at such a time, or of any other light being 
employed than that which he had been graciously pleased to 
afford so abundantly. By the time the. moon has ascended a 
few degrees, however, they restore their fires and resume their 
former occupations, a8 they consider that they have sufficiently 

al 

i‘ 

complied with Maia Ogar's wishes and requiiements, The 
glowing aspect of the full moon on its first appearance above the 
horizon is supposed to indicate that Zaza Ogar is enraged at 
finding some persons neglecting lo observe these conciliatory 
measures; there is also an idea that, if he be greatly annoyed, 
he will punish them by withdrawing or diminishing the light of 
his countenance!” 

As regards the waxing and waning of the, moon, Mr Man 
says that these are explained by the Asa-Bea “by saying that 
they are occasioned by ‘his’ applying a coating of cloud to his 
person by degrees, after the manner of their own use of dofod 
(red paint) and ¢ada-og (white clay) and then gradually wiping 
it off.” In the Asa-Kede tribe the natives say that as Afaia 
Cirike (Sir Moon) goes across the sky, his tongue hangs out 
of his mouth, sometimes more, sometimes less, and that it is 
the tongue that is visible, that gives the light, I did not hear 
any explanation of the waxing and waning of the moon in 
the tribes of the North Andaman, In these tribes the new 
moon is called Dyula e-tive, ic. the “baby moon,” the word 
e-tive denoting the young offspring of an animal or a human 
being. 

With regard to a lunar eclipse Mr Man writes that “in case 
Maia Ogar should he so ill-advised as permanently to withhold 
his light or render himself in other ways still more disagreeable, 
whenever the moon is eclipsed some persons al once seize their 
bows and twang them as rapidly as possible, thereby producing 
a rattling sound as if discharging a large number of arrows, while 
others commence at once sharpening their vaéa (arrows) Of 
course this hostile demonstration is never lost upon the moon, 
who does not venture to hurt those who show themselves ready 
to give him so uncomfortable a reception, Their immunity from 
harm on these odcasions has given rise to some joking at the 
expense of the luminary in question, fur, during the continuance 
of the eclipse, they shout in inviting tones to the hidden orb 
as follows:—Ogar, laden balak ban lebe y'idoati! doati! doati! 
(O Moon, I will give you the seed of the dalek! show yourself | 
appear! appear!) This is said derisively, for, although these 

1 Man, af. cf, p. 152. 9 Ibid. ». 160. 

seeds are largely consumed by the pigs, the aborigines do not 
consider them fit for food',” 

It may be noted that the invitation to the moon to eat dalak 
seeds is not perhaps derisive, but may be connected with the 
belief that the moon can turn himself into a pig in order to feed 
on the things that pigs eat. : 

There was no eclipse of the moon during my stay in the 
islands, The natives of the North Ardaman-told me that on 
such an occasion they frighten the moon into showing himself 
again by lighting the end of a bamboo arrow-shaft, and shooting 
it from a bow in the direction of the moon, Another custom of 
which they told me is to take plumes of shredded Tetranthera 
wood (ée/mo or wf) and blow on them towards the moon, 

Mr Man states that “a solar eclipse alarms them tog much to 
allow of their indulging in jests or threats, &c.: during the time 
it lasts they all remain silent and motionless, as if i in momentary 
expectation of some calamity?” ' 

There are several different accounts in the North Andaman 
of the phenomena of day and night. The night is often per- 
sonified and is called Mim Bat (Lady Night). One version is 
that it is she who makes the night while MZada Torodiu makes 
the day, Dz is the name of the sun, and ¢ovo-diz really means 
“the full sun” and refers to the middle part of the day when the 
sun is well up in the sky. 

Another Northern version is that the daylight is, made by a 
being named Yantodttatmo who lives in the sky, He shuts 
up the day under a stone every evening and lets it out every 
morning. Of Tautebdtatme I was told that he is sometimes to 
be seen in the evening sky, but I was not able to discover to: : 
what natural phenomenon reference was made, yI was also 
unable to discover the meaning of the name, whith is a com-' 
poufhd, ‘aw being the sky. *, 

‘Still another version from the same tibet is-that it is a belie 
named Maia Cara who makes the daylight! Cae seems to be 
theequivalent of the Zomo of the A-Pudikwar and other Southern 
tribes, He is sometimes said to have been, the’ first ancestor, and 
sometimes the creator, of the Andamanese: He lives in the sky, 

1 Man, op cif. p, 160. & BLbid, p. 161. 

Another belief about the night connects it with the spirits, 
The Lax (spirits) in the sky, wrap up the night in a cloth or 
mat, When they unroll the cloth it becomes dark, The natives 
of the North Andaman formerly called cloth /aw-otjulu, from a 
stem -ju/e meaning “cold.” They were only acquainted with 
cloth through seeing it used by the aliens who visited their shores, 
and whom they called spirits (Zaz). 

In the North Andaman thunder and lightning are commonly 
personified, The lightning is Z/e or Af, and the thunder is 
Korude ov Korule. Some of the natives spoke of Afzm?e Ele 
(female) and others of Mata Ele (male), He lives in the sky, 
which is regarded as being made of stone (or rock) and is called 
tau-meo (the sky-stone), The lightning is due to his shaking 
his foot, One rather obscure statement was to the effect that 
Ele spends most of his time asleep or lying down and doing 
nothing, When the weather gets bad Lavo (a being that I 
could not identify), comes and worries Z¢e and wakes him up., 
Then EZ gets angry and shakes his leg, This is the lightning. 

Thunder (Korude) also lives in the sky. It is said that he 
makes the thunder by means of a large round stone, One 
account is that he rolls the stone about over the sky. Another 
is that le makes ihe stone hot, and this produces the thunder, 

An entirely different explanation of thunder and lightning, 
which is found in all the tribes, is that they are made by two 
beings named Zarai and Bilin, to be described later on in this 
chapter: 

I never heard the rain (jeder) spoken of as a person in the 
same way as thunder and lightning, One explanation of rain is 
that the sky-stone (¢av-meo) gets cold, and this turns the mist 
(mittde) into vain, Another is that in the sky there is a large 
hollow or podl, which gets filled with water and then overflows, 
Still another version is that the rain is made by a being (or 
beings) named, Ca/édy, who seems to be female and lives in the 
sky, | could nof obiain any satisfactory information about her, 

Ty all parts of the islands the tainbow is believed lo have 
some connection “with the spirits of the jungle or of the seq" 
One very common statement is that it is a bridge of cane that 
stretches between this world and the world of departed spirits, 

BA’ bes] 

It is along the rainbow that the spirits travel ‘when they visit the 
‘earth, It is necessary to correct a statement by Mr Portman on 
this matter. In ¢onnection with the Azka-Bea word for the 
rainbow, prdga-l'ar-cauga, he says “The root nage (a rainbow) 
must not be confounded with the root pidga ‘a cane’ or 
‘rattan’ The Andamanese have certain legends regarding the 
uses of the rainbow, and these have been hitherto understood 
as referring to ‘canes’ Pidga-l’ar-tauga means ‘the rainbow ° 
(bridge) by whith the spirits (cross)".” Mr Portman is in error. 
The word pidga means “cane” and the whole word means “the 
cane of the spirits.” It is the whole word that is the name of 
the rainbow, and’ not the word g/dga. An exactly similar com- 
‘pound name for the rainbow exists in each of the languages of 
the Great Andaman, The name of the particular species of 
large cane varies, being pédga in Aka-Bea, peta in A -Pudikwar, 
pirin Aka- ~Jeru, and so on, Apart from the fact that the natives 
themselves say that the rainbow is a “cane, Mr Portman 
would have us believe that in each of the different languages 
there are two exactly similar words, different ‘in the different 
languages, one of which means “cane” and the other “rainbow,” 
while there is no connection between the wor ds. Thus Asa-Bea 
would have piaga meaning “a kind of cane” and pidga meaning 
“a rainbow.” Aka-Jeru would have gir meaning “cane” and pir 
meaning “rainbow.” 

The rainbow is generally regarded as an evil gmen, being 
believed to be a precursor of sickness, One Aka-Térn statement 
is that it is made by a being called Teey and that when it 
appears somebody will be ill. 

‘The only explanation of the tides that I heard was to the, 
effect that they are caused by a fish, a species of 71 etrodon, 
called dolno in Aka- Jern and pt in Aka-Kede, which drinks up 
‘the water and then lets it out again, 

' The Andaman Islands are occasionally visited by earth- 
quakes. An Aka-Kede account of how earthquakes are.caused 
is that , when a man dies he goes to the spirit world which is 
beneath the earth. The spirits hold a ceremony, My informant 
spoke of the ceremony as K#mil, which is the ‘name of the 

4 Portman, Notes on the Languages of the South Andaman, p. “5308. 

initiation ceremonies, At this ceremony they have a dance 
similar to the peace-making dance described, in the last chapter, 
but instead of erecting a screen such as is used i in that ceremony, 
they make use of the rainbow. As they shake the rainbow in, , 
dancing this causes earthquakes, The ceremony which newly- 
‘arrived spirits have to undergo in the world after death is a 
_ poroto kimi, ie, the initiate eats poreto (Caryota sobolifera), 

Among the most important of the Andamanese beliefs are 
_those relating to the weather and the seasons, These are under 
the control of two beings named Bititu, Bitik or Puduga, ‘and 
Tavai, Teriya, or Daria. There are a certain number of points 
in which the statements of one informant may’ differ from those 
of another in connection with these two mythical beings, but there 
are also a certain number of points on which there is absolute 
unanimity in all the tribes of the Great Andaman. 

‘The first belief in which there is cntire unanimity is*that of 
the connection: of Bitikw and Tavad with the two chief winds 
that are known in the Andamans, 2i/i#u lives in the north. 
east and is connected with the north-east monsoon, Tarai lives 
in the south-west and is connected with the south-west monsoon, 
The connection is shown in the names of these winds, which are 

as follows :—~ 

Language N. FE. Wind S.W, Wind 
Aka-Cari, Aka-Bo, Aha-Kova, Aha-Jeru Milihie bolo Lara bolo 
Oho-Juwor, Aig Kol and A-Pucikwar Bilihs to Turiya 
Ahar-Bale wy Puluga tac Daria 
AkaDBea Puluga ta Derive 

In the Northern tribes the word dgto means “wind.” Bidiku 
‘deo must be translated “the Bike wind,” and Tara dgte is 
similarly “the Zaraz wind.” It would be incorrect to translate 
the name Biliku boto as “the wind of Bivihu,” for this would 
be rendered in Aka-Jeru by Biliku ito boto. In A-Pudihtwar the’ 
south-west wind is called Zeriya simply, the name of the mythical 
being connected with the wind being used as the name of the 
wind, itself, just as is the case with the name Z/e (lightning), On 

. the other hand the north-east wind is called not Bik but Bisih 
ze, The same thing occurs also in sa Akar-Bale and Aha-Bea 

languages, 
10—~2 

Mr Portman translates the Aka-Bea term Puliga ta as 
“God's wind,” and he adds, in explanation, “Px/uga za means 
‘God's wind, and the reason for the name is not known, Some 
vague ideas regarding the direction of God's dwelling in the sky 
are the probable origin of the term'.” As regards the translation 
of the Andamanese name Puluga by the English “God” more 
will be said later, Leaving that aside, it is important to note 
that Pudyga ta does not mean “ Puluga’s wind.” . The word for 
wind in Aka-Bea is given by Mr Portman himself as zwz/-ya, 
and the Afar-Bale and A-Pudikwar equivalents are poal-ya and 
pote, being forms of the same stem as the Northern dg¢o. The 
translation of “Paduga’s wind” in A-Pucikwar would be Bikk 
ive pote, but this is not a phrase that the natives ever use, It 
is not possible to translate “ Paduge’s wind” accurately in Ahar- 
Bale, Puluga poat-ya would mean “ Puluga blowing” the -7a 
being a verbal ending. In any case Bilth to, and Puluga toa are 
not to be translated as meaning “Puduga's wind.” 

It may be observed, in reference to Mr Portman’s statement, 
that the notions of the Andamanese as to the direction of the 
dwelling of Pu/uga in the sky are very far from vague, The 
natives all agree that Puduga or Biliku lives in the direction 
from which the north-east wind blows, really N.N.E. This is 
‘shown in geographical names, For example the side of Havelock 
Island that face’ north-east is called Puduga-/'ar-mugy, meaning 
“thé side that faces Puduga,” fom ar-mugu meaning, “front” or 
“face.” 

There are two matters, then, on which there is absolute 
unanimity in all the tribes of the Great Andaman, one being the 
connection of Bidihe (or Puduga) with the Horth-edst’ and of 
Tarai {or Deria) with the south-west, and the other being the 
confection of these two beings with the winds that blow from 
these two opposite points of the compass, 

‘ The connection of these two beings with winds is shown 

in another way in the 4-Pudikwar tribe, where the winds are 

. divided into two divisions. One division contains only the 

south-west wind, which is of extreme regularity, and blows 

steadily for about five months in every year. This wind is 
1 Portman, Notes on the Languages of the South Andaman, p. 314 

called Zeriya, The other division contains all the other winds, 
and they are collectively denoted by the term 277i, They are 
distinguished by names, as Jila Bilik (the east Rilih, from Fila, 
east) Kgico Bilik (the west Bilih), Metepur Bilik, Coltatum Bitih, 
Rartear Bilik, and Kotéor-toy Bitik, Uere we find the name Bik 
used not as the name of a single person, but as a common 
name for a class of beings who are the winds personified, The 
same use of the term is found also in the A#ea-Ko/ tribe, 

Even in the Asar-Bale tribe something of the same kind is 
found. One Akar-Bale man said that Puduga has two brothers, 
Fila Puluga (Bast Puluga) and Koaito Puluga (West Puluga); 
the one sends all the easterly winds and the other all the 
westerly ones. 

In the Andamans the year is divided into tvo nearly equal 
portions. During the season of the south-west monsoon, which 
lasts from May to September, the wind blows steadily’ from the 
south-west, This is the rainy season, Violent storms never or 
only very rarely occur during the season of the south-west wind, 
From December to March the wind blows mostly from the 
N.N.E,, occasionally changing to E.N.E. or N,V, In the periods 
at the change of the monsoon (from N.E. to S.W. in April and 
May, and from S.W, to N.E. in October and November) the 
wind is variable, and may blow al times from E.S.1, of W.N.W. 

The south-west wind (properly speaking W.S.W,) is icenejfied, 
as we have seen with Zaraé (Deria), Although Bilitu (Z 4 
is specially connected with the north-cast wind, yet all the winds 
other than the south-west are commonly supposed to be sent 
by Betiku. Thus we have seen that in the A-ld7hwar tribe the 
different whntds are named, each of them (with the exception of 
the south-west) being a Bi/ih. ‘ 

It cofhes about, in this way, that the year’ is divided into 
two portions, once of which is specially connected with Ai/ku 
(Pulugas, while the other is specially connected with Zaral 
(Deria). These two seasons are not quite of equal length, ‘The 
Taraé season lasts only while the south-west monsoon is blowing, 
which, in af average year, is between four and five months, 
The other even months are connected with Avidy and are 
divided intg three portions, (1) the stormy scason of October 

and November, (2) 7 ‘the cold: season of December 1, February, 
and (3) the hot season of March and April,’ 

; There are many points relating to Bikiku and L arad about 
which there is no general agreement amongst the tribés,'or, ‘in 
some cases, even within the same tribe, In the’ North Andaman 
Biliku is regarded as female, and is called A272 - Bitiku, while . 
Tara@ is male and is called Maza Tarai, ‘This is so in ‘all BY 

four tribes, Aka-Cart, Aka-Bo, Aka-Kora and ‘Afa- afer te 
statement that is frequently made by the natives of‘ these are 
is that Tarai and Béliku ave husband and wife. ‘While this is, 
the most common statement, there are, however, other versions 
of the matter. In order to show the lack of uniformity in state- 
ments about Bi/zkw and Tarad in the Northern tribes I reproduce , 
a few extracts from my note-books written down exactly as they 
were given to me. i' 

(1) Bétiku is the wife of Tarad and they have a child named 
Perjido. (This statement was made to me a great many times 
in the North Andaman, and may be regarded as the most usual 
form of the beljef) 

. (2) Biliku is the wife of Tarai, Their children are the sun 
apd mobn, (Heard only once.) 

(3) The husband of Biliku is Perfido and her children are 
Totaimo, Mite (cicada) and Tarai. 

(4) "Bilikebis unmarried, but she has a son Penféido, and her 
other children are Torei, Cclene, Cotgt, and Cere, These four 
are the names of birds, 

(5) ,Biliku is the wife of Zarat, Their children are Z rardt, 
Taka, Cotot, Pornatoko, Kelil, Copcura, Benye, Biratkoro, Cereo, 
Milidu, Bobelo, Kolo, These are all names of bird’, 

(6) Bitike has a husband Zoro7' (a bird). Tara? has a wife 

Kelil (a bird), : 
+ In the Aka-Kede tribe the most common statement, at any 
fate in the northern part of the tribe, is that Bitka is female, 
and that Tevai is male. One Aka-Kede man, from the southern 
part of the tribe said that Bika was male, 

In the Asa-Kol and A-Pucikwar ‘tribes, Bilik is generally < 
‘spoken of as being male, and Teriya is also male, Other 
versions from, these tribes are as follows:— 

)s Bitih. is female and Tertya is her husband. Their 
children are the wirids; Coltatum Bilik, Metepur Bilik, and iis 
Bl arpa: Bilike * 

(2) There fs a male Biik ‘and a female Bilik, who are 
husband and ‘wile, Their children ait Kgiter-ray Bitih, Kaito 
Bilik, fila Bilih, WMetepur Bilih, Rariear Bilth, and Teriya, These‘ 
‘are the winds, yok 
- @) ‘Bilik i is male, His wife ‘is Jv Caria, and their children’ 
are Kao (prawn) and Morua (the sky), » 

Ta the Akay-Bale tribe the most usual statement is that’ both 
Puluga and Daria are male, and this was apparently also the 
common belief of the Aa-Bea, 

In the North Andaman the name J7/éu is also the word for 
« spider,” but no meaning (save as the name of the mythical 
being) was discovered for the name Zarai, In the’ Sotth and 
Middle: Andaman no meaning was discovered, cither “for the 
name Bik. or Pudvga, or for the name Zerdya or Derta, 
Although this book does not deal with the Litthe Andaman, it 
is worth while to mention that there also the natives believe in 
a mythical person who lives in the north-east and sends the 
storms, This being is female and is named Oluga, The 
monitor lizard is also called é/vga in the language of the Little 
Andaman. It is obvious, however, that the names #¢diku, 
Puluga, Oluga are all of them different forms of the sate’ word, 

As weehave already seen, it is Béiidve and Tarai who send 
the winds. Zerad sends the south-west wind, which btfngs the 
rain, Bihke sends the other winds which bring either fine 
weather, or, at times, violent storms, One Akar-Bale account 
of the matter (literally translated as told to me) is as follows, 
“Once upon a time Pulyga and Daria were great friends, but 
they quarrelled. Paluga said that he,was the bigger (more 
important), ,Daria said that he was, So now they are always 
guarrelling, Pudwga sends the wind for one period, Then 
Davia sends his wind.” 

According to the statement of an Akar-Bale man, Puluga 
makes the ‘windsby fanning with a very‘large Awar-toy leaf, 

Rain and, thunder and lightning that tome with the sojith. . 
west wind dre believed to be due to 7% cardi. Storms that come” ‘ 

during the season connected with Bi#ku are made by Bishu and 
are due to her anger. When a big storm comes the natives say 
“ Bikiku is angry.” ‘Lightytag is explained as being a fire-brand 
thrown by Biliku feross the sky when she is angry, and thunder 
is said to be her voice growling: Another explanation of 
lightning is that it is a pearl-shell, called de in the North Anda- 
man, thrown by Bit, the bright flash of the mother-of-pearl 
being seen as it crosses the sky. Still another statement from 
the North Andaman is that Biéu makes the lightning by 
striking a pearl-shell (de) against a stone, 

Although B7#éu is generally mentioned when a native is 
asked about lightning, yet Zara also wields the lightning and 
the thunder, On one occasion when I was talking to a native I 
referred to the thunder and lightning that were at the moment 
coming up from the south-west, making a remark to the effect 
that Biku was getting angry about something, and was cor- 
rected by him with “No, that is Zaraz,” 

There are a certain number of actions that are believed by 
the natives to arouse the anger of Biku (Puluga), and thereby 
cause storms, There are three of these that are of importance, 

(1) Burning or melting bees’-wax. 

(2) Killing a cicada, or making a noise, particularly a noise 
of cutting or banging wood, during the time that the cicada is 
“singing” in the morning and evening. 

(3) The use of certain arti¢les of food, of which the chief 
are the seeds of the Hxtada scandens, the pith of the Canyota 
sobolifera, two species of Déoscorea (yam), and certain edible 
roots, of which may be mentioned those called in Ada-Jeru labo, 
mikuln, jt and lotto. 

In this matter there is an entire unanimity of belief in all the 
tribes of the Great Andaman, All the natives agree in saying 
that any of .these three actions causes the anger of Bivtkw or 
Puluga and so brings bad weather, 

The natives do, as a matter of fact, melt all the bee’’-wax 
they obtain, jn order to purify il, and render it suitable for use 
in the various ways in which they employ it. Also they do 
make, use of all the planis mentioned under (3) whenever they 
are in season, They give various explanations of this variance 

between their precepts and their actions, Some of ‘my in- 
formants said that though these ‘actions may bring rain and 
storms, yet they would rather submit’ to the bad weather than go 
without some of their most prized’ vegetable foods, Others 
again say that there is always a chance” that AiZdku may not 
notice that the plants have Ween disturbed} particularly if no 
fragments are left lying about the camp, and if, when taking the 
roots, the creepers are not disturbed, Another statement is that 
it is really only during the season of slorms, called the Ail 
season in Aka-/erv, that it is dangerous to cat these foods, that 
is, during the months of October and November, After this 
season has passed there is no longer any danger of violent 
storms and the foods in question may be freely eaten, Never- 
theless the natives do eat these foods in the months of October 
and November. 

Mr Man records the native beliefs about bees’-wax and the 
plants in question. “There is an idea current that if during the 
first half of the rainy season they eat the Caryata sobolifera, or 
pluck or eat the seeds of the Antada pursa'tha, or’ gather yams 
or other edible roots, another deluge would be the consequence, 
for Puluga is supposed to require these for his own consumption 
at that period of the year; the restriction, however does not 
extend to the fallen seeds of the Zutada purswtha, which may 
be collected and eaten at any time with impunity, Another of 
the offences visited by Puduga with storms is the burning of 
bee’s wax, the smell of which is said to be peculiarly obnoxious 
tohim, Owing to this belief it is a common practice sceretly to 
burn wax when a persou against whom they bear ill-will is 
engaged in fishing, hunting, or the like, the object being to spoil 
his sport and cause him as much discomfort as possible; henge 
arises the saying amongst them, when suddenly overtaken hy a 
storm, that some one must be burning wax)” re 

It must be noted that it is not only the “burning,” but also 
the mélting of bees’-wax that angers Pu/uga, As regards the 
plants mentioned by Mr Man none of these is available for 
food during the early part of the rainy season, At that time the 
yams are not formed, the pith of the Ceryora palm is not ripe 

1 Many of. cif pf. 153, 15g 

and is uneatable, and the only available seeds of the Hutada 
would be those of the last season that had nét fallen from the 
pods or that had Jain on the ground without having germinated, 
Thus the prohibition as stated by Mr Man amounts to nothing. 
The subject will be discussed in a later chapter.“ It may be 
remarked, however, that it is a fact easily to be observed that 
the natives do regard the gathering of these vegetable foods 
during the latet portion of the rainy season and during the first 
part of the cool season (ie. from October to December), as 
being an action that may offend Biiiku, I was myself able to 
observe this on several occasions, as when once, at the very end 
of the rainy season, J, not then knowing the belief, asked a 
native to cut for me one of the pods of the Hxzada as a botanical 
specimen, whereupon the native, after fulfilling my request, 
explained to me that there would probably be a storm next day 
as the result of our action, 

In all the tribes of the Great Andaman I found a beller that 
Biliku or Puluga will be angry if anybody makes a noise, 
particularly a noise of chopping, breaking or bargingwood, 
during the time the cicada is singing. The cicada “siriys” as 
the natives call it, during the short interval between dawn and 
sunrise, and during that between sunset and darkness, It is at 
these times that no noise may be made, The Andamanese do 
observe this custom, and refrain from making any noise at such 
times. For instance, if a man were singing, he would cease until 
the cicada were silent again, In all the tribes I found that this 
prohibition was connected in the minds of the natives with 
Puluga, the reason of the custom being always explained to me 
by saying that any breach of it would infallibly bring bad 
weather. In the North Andaman the cicada (méée) is commonly 
spoken of as the “child” of Bitéku, Bifiku ot-tire, 

Mr Man refers to this custom. In one place he says that the 
first parents of the Andamanese were told by Pu/uga “that, 
“though they were to work in the wet months, they must ‘not do 
so after sundown, because by doing so they would worry the 
butu, which are under Prduga's special protection. Any noise, 
such as working (Zope) with an adze, would cause the detu’s 
head to ache, and that would be a serious matter. During the 

cold and dry & Seasons work may be carried on day and night, as 
the duzz is then seldom seen, and cannot be disturbed \” 

The due here mentioned is the cicada. The prohibition is 
not, however, as Mr Man says, against working, but against 
making a noise. Nor does the prohibition against noise extend 
to the whole night, but only to the short interval -hetween 
sunset and darkness, for it is during this interval that the cicada 
is singing. As soon as the cicada is silent you may make as 
much noise as you please. 

Another reference by Mr Man to the same custom is as 
follows : “Between dawn and sunrise they will do no work, save 
what is noiseléss, lest the sun should be offended and cause an 
eclipse, storm, or other misfortune to overlake them, If, there- 
fore, they have occasion to start on a journey or hunting expedi- 
tion at so early an hour, they proceed as quietly as possible, and 
refrain from the practice, observed at other times of the day, of 
testing the strength of their bow-strings, as the snapping noise 
causéd thereby is one of those to which the sun objects %” 

‘This is really the same prohibition as that already mentioned, 
against ‘making a noise when the cicada is singing, The interest- 
ing point, which will be discussed in a later chapter, is that 
Mr: Man’s informant associated the prohibition not with Puduga, 
but with the sun, All the natives with whom I talked on the 
matter said that they would make no noise at such a time for 
fear of offeyding the cicada, and therefore Puduga or Betiiu, and 
so bringing a storm, 

As tegards the prohibition against killing the cicada, this 
seems to refer only to the imago, So far as I was able to 
observe, the natives do carefully avoid killing the cicada in its 
full-grown form. On the other hand the grub of the cicada is 
regularly killed and eaten, being regarded as a delicacy, It is 
only eaten during the months of October and November, 

In connection with the cicada, and with the weather, there is, 
a rite ‘which was described to me, but which I did not sed’ 

performed, According to the account given of this rite, which 

is called “killing the cicada,” its purpose is to produce fine 

weather. It takes place in December, at the end of the season 
1 Man, af, cif. p. 165. 9 Lbid, i 183s 

during which they eat the grub, When the time agreed upon 
for the performance of the ceremony arrives, all the members of 
the community are careful to be in the camp before sunset, As 
soon as the sun sets and the cicada begin their shrill ery, all the 
men, women and children present begin to make as much noise 
as they possibly can, by banging on the sounding-board, striking’ 
the ground with bamboos, beating pieces of wood together, or 
hammering on the sides of canocs, while al the same time shout- 
ing. They continue the noise, which cntirely drowns that of the 
cicada, until after darkness has fallen, The rite may be per- 
formed, I believe, two or more times, on successive evenings, 
My informant explained the rite by saying that the natives have 
been eating the cicada, and the rite is intended to “kill” those 
that are left, After the rite the cicada disappears and is not 
seen or heard for some weeks, and there follow four months of 
fine weather with little rain, 

The beliefs relating to bees’-wax, to the various edible roots, 
and tothe cicada, are the same in all the Great Andaman tribes, 
and are by far the most important of those connected with 
Bitiku. In the North Andaman Bi#ku is supposed to be angry 
if any one kills a d/h (spider) a reo (a species of insect making 
a noise like a cicada, during the daytime, which I often heard, 
but never saw), or a datlo (a species of beetle), There is also a 
bird, which I was not able to identify, called sored, which 
belongs to Bivikv and may not be killed. . 

In the A-Pucikwar tribe it is said that:two species of fish, 
called wvakoro and Hwat belong to Bilik and may not be killed, 
A mollusc, called zowa, also belongs to 874, and is for that 
reason never eaten, A bird called Bilih-/’ar-dala (probably the 
same bird that is called ¢gve¢ in the North Andaman) may not 
be killed, ‘ 

In the -Akar-Bale tribe I was told that two kinds of wood, 
bukura and worago, must not be used for firewood, for fear of 
offending Px/uga, to whom they belong. Sukura is a species of 
Diospyros (ebony). 

The only punishment that Bifiku ever inflicts on human 
beings when she is angry with them for any reason, is to send 
violent storms. The way to stop a storm seems to be to frighten 

Bilikiw. One means of doing this is to throw the leaves of the 
Mimusops littoradis in the fire, These leaves explode with the 
heating of the juices and make a crackling or popping noise, 
which it is said that Biltku dislikes, I belicve, however, that if 
any one were thus to burn Mémusops leaves during fine weather, 
it would: Be regarded as likely to cause a storm, The most 
efficacious means of slopping a storm is to do some of the 
things that Bivikw most dislikes. ‘To burn bees’-wax, or to go 
into the jungle and damage or destroy the creepers that belong 
to her, these are the heroic remedies against Hr/zAu's anger. 

The question of the Andamanese belicfs about storms is 
complicated by the fact that although all storms are said to be 
made by Puluga or Biliku, yet there is an alternative and 
contradictory belief that storms are made by the spirits of the 
sea (/urua). It is said that if a piece of the Anadendvon pani- 
culatum creeper were Lo be burnt there would be a great cyclone, 
but this appears to be associated, not with A/ekz, but with the 
spirits of the sea. It will be shown later that there is a special 
connection between the Jurua and this plant. The belief that a 
storm will arise if turtle fat be allowed to burn in the fire seems 
also to be connected with the /vrxa and not with Biiku, The 
same is probably the case with a belief that rain will come if a 
Ficus laccifera tree be damaged. 

Some of the methods used to stop storms are also probably 
connected with the spirits and not with Bidiku, One such 
method is to go into the sca and swish arrows about in the 
water. One ofo-fuame (medicine-man) of the North Andaman is 
reputed to have stopped a big cyclone by taking a few picccs of 
Anadendyon paniculatun and crushing them, and then diving 
into the sea and placing the crushed creeper under a stone, An 
oko-jumu who died while I was in the islands is supposed to 
have been able to stop a storm by similarly placing leaves and 
twigs of the Ficus /accifora (reyho) under a rock in the sea, . 4» 

To complete the account of this part of the Andamanese 
beliefs it is necessary to quote what Mr Man writes about the 
tribes of the South Andaman,” Mr Man describes Pu/uga asa 
“Supreme Being” and says that some of the beliefs of the 
Andamanese relating to him “approximate closely to the true 

t 
faith concerning the Deity.” Mr Portman, following Mr Man, 
in this as in many other matters, translates the name Pudyga by 
the English word “God.” Mr Man’s statements are as follows :-—~ 

“ Of Puluga they say that— 

“I, Though His appearance is like fire, yet He is (nowadays) 
invisible. “ 

“TT, He was never born and is immortal. 

“JII, By him the world and all objects, animate and inani- 
mate were created, excepting only the powers of evil. 

“TV. He is regarded as omniscient while il is day, knowing 
even the thoughts of their hearts. 

“VY. He is angered by the commission of certain sins, while 
to those in pain or distress he is pitiful, and sometimes deigns to 
afford relief. 

“VI, He is the Judge from whom each soul receives its 
sentence after death, and to some extent, the hope of escape 
from the torments of Jereg-lar-mugu is said to affect their 
course of action in the present life. 

“ Puluga is believed to live in a large stone house in the sky, 
with a wife whom he created for himself: she is green in appear- 
ance and has two names, Cana Aulola (Mother Fresh-water 
Shrimp), and Cena Palak (Mother Eel); by her he has a large 
family, all, except the eldest, being girls; these last, known as 
morowin (sky spirits or angels), are said to be black in appear- 
ance, and, with their mother, amuse themselves fram time to 
time by throwjng fish and prawns into the streams and sca for 
the use of the inhabitants of the world. Pa/uga's son is called 
Pijtor: he is regarded as a sort of archangel, and is alone per- 
mitted to live with his father, whose orders it is his duty to make 
known to the szorowen. 

“Puduga is said to eat and drink, and, during the dry months 
of the year, to pass much of his time in sleep, as is proved by 
his voice (thunder) being rarely heard at that season; he is the 
source whence they receive all their supplies of animals} birds, 
and turtles ; when they anger him he comes out of his house 
and blows, and growls, and hurls burning faggots at them—in 
other words, visits their offences with violent thunderstorms and 
heavy squalls; except for this purpose he seldom leaves home, 

unless it be during the rains, when he descends to earth ,to 
provide himself with certain kinds of food; how often this, 
happens they do not know since, nowadays, he is invisible.” 

Mr Man’s comparison between the Andamanese belief in 
Phiuga and the Christian belief in a God, will be discussed ina 
Jater chapter when we come to deal with the interpretation of the 
Andamanese beliefs, It is to be noted that Mr Man does not 
make any reference to Deria (Tarai), nor does he mention the 
association of Pu/uga with the north-east. 

As regards the personal appearance of Puduga, the state- 
ments of different informants are not in agreement. One 
A-Puéikwar man described Bivik as being very big, about the 
height of one of the posts of my hut (which was eighteen feet), 
white-skinned like a European, having a long beard, and carry- 
ing a bow of the Jarawa type. 

The legends connecting Pw/uga with the creation of the 
world will be given in the next chapter. 

I am not able to confirm Mr Man’s statement thal Pa/uga is 
omniscient, and in fact there are some customs of the natives 
that are in contradiction with any such belief. When they dig 
up yams (which belong to Puduga) they take the tuber and 
replace the “crown” with the attached stem in the ground, and 
explain this by saying that if they do so Puduga will not notice 
that the yam has been taken, Whenever they do any of the 
things that displease x/uga, they seem to belicve that there is a 
possibility that Pu/uga may not discover what has been done. It 
may be noted that there is no means of distinguishing in 
Andamanese between “all” and “a great deal.” Thus a state- 
ment the Pu/uga knows “everything” may be equally well 
translated “ Px/uga knows a great deal,” Between these two 
statements there is no difference for the Andamanese, but there 
isa great difference for us, and for this reason the use of the 
word “omniscient” is misleading, 

Mr Man says that Puduga “is angered by the commission of 
certain sins.” In this connection it is necessary to refer to 
another passage’ in Mr Man’s work. “That they are not 
entirely devoid of moral consciousness may, I think, in some 

1 Man, of. eff, p. 157+ 

"measure, be demonstrated by the fact of their possessing a 
word, yvb-da, signifying sin or wrong-doing, which is used in 
connection with falsehood, theft, grave assault, murder, adultery, 
and-—burning wax (!), which deeds are believed to anger 
Puluga-la, the Creator.” Although I made very careful and 
repeated enquiries, | was unable to mect with a single native 
who believed that such actions as the murder-of one man by 
another, ov adultery, aroused the anger of Pu/uga, The only 
actions at which Puduga is angry are those purcly ritual offences, 
such as burning or melting wax, killing a cicada, digging up’ 
yams, etc., which have already been mentioned. oe 

The Andamanese beliefs connected with the life after death 
will be described later in the present chapter, 

As regards the “stone house” in which Pu/uga is said to 
live, this really means, I believe,a cave. In the North Andaman 
Biliku is frequently spoken of as living in a cave (era-poy). 
Also, it may be recalled, the sky is generally regarded as consist- 
ing of stone or rock, and it is in the sky the Pau/yga lives, * 

The son of Puluga, mentioned by Mr Man, Péjcor, is a being 
about whom I was able to learn very little. In the North 
Andaman the same being is named Per}ido, and is said to be the 
son of Biliku. The Morowzn, whom Mr Man describes as the 
daughters of Pu/uga, are sky spirits, The most usual belief in the 
South Andaman is that there are both male and female Morowin, * 
They are beings of somewhat the same nature as the jungle 
spirits and the sea spirits. An Ahar-Bale informéht told me, 
“The Morua are sky spirits. They eat only pork and nothing?’ 
else, They are angry if pork is roasted, and make the people 
ill, They used to live in the big daja (Szerculia) trees, but now 
they live in the sky.” 

In this connection it may be mentioned that there is a belief 
throughout the Andamans that it is dangerous to roast pork, In 
the North Andaman the natives commonly say that the spirits 
of the jungle are angry if pork be roasted, and may be attracted 
to the spot and cause the natives to be ill, An ‘Ahar-Bale 
belief, connecting the danger with the spirits of the sky has just 
been mentioned. Mr Man’s version of the matter is as follows :— 

1 Man, of. cif, pe 112. 

‘ 

. there is a company of evil spirits who are called ¢o/, and who 
are. much dreaded, They are believed to be descendants of 
Maia Col’ who lived in antediluvian times, They generally’ 
punish those who offend them by baking or roasting pig's flesh, 
the smell'of which is particularly obnoxious to them, as it is also 
to Puluga, who thetefore, often assists them i in discovering the 

delinquent ; the same risk does not attend boxing pork, which 

the olfactory nerves of the fastidious ¢o/ are not keen enough to 
detect. While the Andamanese say that theyare liable to be struck 
by Erem-dauga-la or Juruwin at any time or in any* place, the do/ 
strike those only who offend them, and that during the day 
while they are stationary, this being necessitated by the distance: 
from the earth of their abode, whence they hurl their darts ; 
an invisiblg spear is the weapon they always use, and this is 
thrown with unerring aim at the head of their victims, and is 
invariably fatal. As these demons are considered especially 
darfgerous on the hottest days, they are apparently held 
accountable for the deaths from sunstroke which happen from 
time to time 1” 

It may beremarked that Co/ is the name of a apecies of 
bird one the racket-tailed drongo), which is named from 
its call—do/, ¢o/, dol I did not hear the name used to denote 
what, Mr Man calls demons, except in so far as the birds them. 
selves are supposed to have supernatural powers, ‘There is, 
perpaps, some sort of connection between tho ¢o/ (the birds, that 
js) and the sky-spirits, Morowin or AZorua, but I was not able to 
satisfy myself; on the point, The connection of them both with 
Pulygiai is still more obscure. 

Another belief in connection with pigs is that any person who 
cuts up a pig badly is liable to be punished. Mr Man states, on 
this subject, “ Pzduga never himself puts dny one to death, but 
he objects so strongly to seeing a pig badly quartered and 
carved that he invariably points out those who offend him in this 
respect to a clags ofsmalevolent spirits called Co/, one of whom 
forthwith despatches the unfortunate individual *.” 

I was not able to find any evidence that Puduga is beljeved 
to be angry if a pig is badly quartered. From the natives-with 

1 Man, af. if p. 189. 9 fbid, p, 158) 

' 

B AL 123 

. 

whom I talked on the subject I 1eceived two different statements. 
One was to the effect that if a pig is badly cut up the meat will 
be bad and anyone who eats it will be ill. The other was that 
if'a ple is badly cut up the spirits of the jungle will be angry 
and ‘will punish the offender, In neither case was there any 
reference to Puluga or Bilihu. 

Invgeneral it may be said that the natives believe that the 
only punishment that Puduga or Biléku ever sends against those 
who offend him or her in any way is bad weather, and I did not 
myself meet with any exception to this rule. 

One other observation by Mr Man may be mentioned, He 
says, “ When they see a dark cloud approaching at a time when 
rain would prove very inconvenient, as when hunting, travelling, 
ete, they advise Pu/uga to divert its course by shouting ‘ Wara-' 

Jobo kopke, kopke, kopke’ (Wara-Jobo will bite, bite, bite (you)). 
If in spite of this a shower falls they imagine that Puluga is 
‘undeterred by their warning +.” 

“Kuis:clear from the above discussion of the matter that there 
is not any complete agreement in the beliefs conceining Puluga 
(Biliku) even in any one tribe of the Andamans, There are 
many different statements about this being which cannot be 
made consistent with one another without doing violence to the 
evidence, At the same time, amid all the differences and 
inconsistencies there are a ceitain number of points about which 
there is a general agreement throughout the whole ef the tribes 
of the Great Andaman. One of these is the connection of 
Puluga and Daria with the weather, with the two chief winds, 
and with the points of the compass from which these winds 
blow. The other is the belief that certain actions, such as 
melting bees’-wax, digging up yams, etc, are disliked by 
Puluga, and are punished by him (or her) with stormy weather, 
On these matters there is entire agreement amongst the 
natives of all the tribes, and they are to the natives them- 
selves by far the most important part of the beliefs concerning 
Puluga, 

We have seen that the Andamanese believe in two different 
kinds of what may be called, for want of a better term, super- 

1 Man, of. crt. p. 183+ 

natural beings, In the first snes there are the spirits; the Lew 
or Cauga, and the Jurna, inhabiting the forest arid the sca 
respectively, These are all associated by the natives ‘with 
ghosts, ie, with the spirits of dead men and women. In the 
second place there are other beings connected with the suri and 
moon, lightning and thunder and the monsoons (Hiihn and 
Tarai), These are all associated with the phenomena of nature, 
There are many points of contact between these two classes of 
beings. Thus there are two altcrnative explanations of bad 
weather, one that it is due Lo the spirits (particularly the spirits. 
of the sea), the other that it is due to the anger of Blihu. This 
is a point that will be referred to again in a later chapter... 

It is possible that there are beliefs in other supernatural 
beings who are neither spirits of the dead noi connected with 
natural phenomena, The only being of such a nature that, 
I was able to discover anything about is one called Mia or 
Mila. “This is the name of an evil being who is supposed ta live 
in hollow Péerocarpus trees, When he smells human beings 
near his tree he comes out and kills them with his knife. I 
found this belief in the A-Pudihewar tribe, but was not able to 
find any trace of a similar belief in the North Andaman, though 
of course I cannot say that it docs not exist there, Mr Man 
mentions this same being. “This spirit Vi/a is supposed to live 
in ant-hills, and to have neither wife nor child; he is not 
regarded as such a malevolent personage as Zrem-canga-la, and, 
though he is always armed with a knife, he rarely injures human 
beings with it, or when he does so, it is not in order to feed upon 
their bodies, for he is said to cat earth only” Mr Man adds, in 
a footnote that “cases have been cited of persons who have 
been found stabbed, whose deaths have been attributed to Wz/a: 
the possibility of the individuals in question having been 
murdered is scouted,” 

The version given by Mr Man is not quite in agreement with 
the information given to me, but I was unfortunately not able to 
learn anything more about the nature of Vila. 

As throwing some additional light on the way in which the 
Andamanese think of the supernatural beings that have been 
1 Man, of. cit. pe 189+ 

U2 

mentioned above, 1 add here a brief destription of a sort of 
dramatic or pantongimic dance that I ‘witnedsed in the North 
Andaman. Many savage tribes in different parts of the world 
are in the habit of performing dances or pantomimes in which 
the performer represents a supernatural being. In the Andamans 
there are no 1egular performances of this kind. The solitary one 
that I witnessed was entirely exceptional. 

The performer was a man named Kolo, This man, accord- 

ing to the statements of the natives, had, at one time of his life, 
died and come back to life again, Owing to this fact he was 
endowed with special magical powers, and had some reputation 
as a magician or medicine-man (oko-fimu). During the time 
that he was dead (probably a few hours of unconsciousness), he, 
is supposed to have visited the world of spirits, and while there 
he saw many things and learnt much about the spirits. Among 
other things he witnessed a dance in which the spirits and other 
supernatural beings took part. All these things he was able to 
remember when he returned to life. 
« The performance was given one afternoon on the ordinary 
dancing ground of the village. The performer sat on his 
haunches in a hut at one end of the dancing ground. Thrust 
into the back of his belt he wore a bunch of leaves sticking out 
somewhat after the manner of a cock’s tail, but he had no other 
ornament. The spectators, consisting of men, women and 
children, were seated round the edge of the danoing ground, 
which had been swept clean, On one side sat a few women who 
acted aschorus, There was no sounding-board. 

The perfoimer began to sing a song, composed on the model 
of the songs of the South Andaman (with a short refrain) which 
has how for some years been adopted by the Northern tribes in 
preference to their own. As he finished the song the women of 
the chorus took up the refrain, repeating it over and over again, 
‘and marking time by clapping their hands on their thighs, The 
performer came out of his hut and performed a dance, At a 
signal from hith the chorus ceased and he returned to his hut, 
‘In this Way he sang several songs, repeating each one several 
times, and performed a number of short dances, In nearly 
every case the step of the dance was some simple modification 

y 

of the step in'common use at aii ordinary dance, Thus in one 
dance he danced very violently and pretghded to hurt his lege 
‘ through the violence of his dancing, making angry signs to the 
chorus to stop their clapping, of which, of course, they took no 
notice. In another dance he stopped at short intervals anc 
violently scratched his sides and then doubled himself up wilh 
laughter. In yet another, he danced with the step of the 
women’s dance, covering his face with his hands and pretending 
to be very bashful. In still another he stood on tiptoe on the 
right foot and stamped with his left foot in time to the chorus 
of women, In some of the dances he walked round the open 
space within the circle of spectators, sometimes in a crouchingr 
attitude, and at other times in other attitudes, All thee 
dances aroused great amusement amongst the spectators It 
was unfortunately impossible for me to understand them all 
or to obtain an adequate explanation of them either at the 
time or later, 

Of the songs that were sung one was “The tide has gone 
down over the reef. I walk round the world, There is great 
wind and rain,” ; 

Some of these dances I was able to understand even without 
explanation. One of them repiesented Bike. The performer 
held in his right hand a shell,and as he danced grotesqudy 
round the open space he looked fiercely at the spectators and 
threatened, to throw the shell at them. Many of the women 
and children could not prevent themselves from starting back~+ 
wards when he thus threatened them, but thelr fears were 
immediatly dispelled in laughter, The shell was not a pearl-shell 
(62) but a Cyvena shell (bun), but I believe that this was because 
there wag no pearl-shell available, The representation of Bilitiee 
was thus reduced to a single gesture, that of threatening’ i 
natives with her pearl-shell (lightning). 

Another dance represented the jungle spirits (Bedo-ted Lat). 
In this he first hid himself behind a screen of digo haves 
(Calanus tigrinus) that had been prepared, singing a, song, The 
leaves represented a clump of the Calamus palm such as is 
supposed to be the favourite haunt of the jungle spirits. After 
having sung for some time behind his screen of leaves, hg cage 

out with a bow and arrow in his hand, and as he danced in front 
of the spectators he pretended to shoot at them. 

In another dance he represented 4, the lightning, He 
sat on a stone that had been placed in the middle of the open 
space, swinging his arms to the time of the chorus, and every 
now and then shaking his leg. 

This observation is an important one in several ways, 
Although I asked the man to repeat it, in order that I might 
make fuller notes and obtain explanations of many obscure 
points, and although he grudgingly said that he would, yet he 
did not do so. He was, moreover, very reserved over the matter, 
and not very willing to talk about his own performance. 

I believe that the performance was an entirely exceptional 
affair, I never at any other time either saw or heard of one 

+ mari or even several men, giving a dance for the amusement of 
others, I think that the whole thing was entirely the invention 
of the performer. He had given the same performance, or 
one very similar, at least once before the occasion on which 
T saw it. 

We may now turn to the Andamanese beliefs relating to the 
soul and the life after death. 

The vital principle is at different times identified by the 
Andamanese with the pulse, the breath, with the blood and with 
the fat, particularly the kidney-fat. Thus the body of a slain 
enemy is burnt so that the blood and fat may be consumed in 
smoke and ascend to the sky where they will no longer be a 
danger to those who have slain him, 

The nearest approach to our notion of a soul that the natives 
possess is their belief concerning the double or reflection seen in 
a mirror. In the Northern tribes the word of-jumnulo means 
“ reHection,” and also .“ shadow,” and is also nowadays applied to 
a photograph, The word of-/usnw,in the same languages, means 
“a dream” or “to dream,” We may perhaps translate the 
word o¢-jzmulo as meaning “soul.” In the Aka-Bea language 
otyolo is “ reflection,” while there is a different word, at-diya or 
ot-lere, for “ shadow,” and rieither of the words has any connec- 
tion with the word “dream”, which is taraba, Mr Man trans- 
lates the word of. wee as “soul.” 

The fact that the words for dream and reflection, double 
or shadow are from the same root in the Nouthern languages 
is of interest, Dreams are sometimes explained by saying that 
the sleeper’s double (o¢-juzulo) has left his body and is wander- 
ing elsewhere, Dreams are regarded as being veridical, or at any 
rate, as having importance, One man told me how, in a dream 
the night before, his ot-jum/o had travelled from where we wae 
,to his own country and had there seen the death of the baby of 
a woman of his own tribe, He was fully convinced that the 
baby must really have diced, 

,An Andamanese will never, or only with the very grealost 
reluctance, awaken another from sleep, Oncexplanation of this 
that was given to me was that the of-jusulo or double of the 
sleeper may be wandering far from his body, and to waken him 
suddgnly might cause him to be ill, 

#The principle on which dreams are interpreted is a very 
simple one, All unpleasant dreams are bac, all pleasant ones 
are good. The natives believe that sickness is often caused by 
dreams, A man in the carly stages of an attack of fever, for 
instance, may have a bad dream. When the fever develops he 
explains it as due to the dream, If a man has a painful-dream 
he will often not venture out of the camp the following day, but 
will stay at home until the effect has worn off, The natives 
believe that they can communicate in dreams with the spirits, 
but the power to do this regularly is the privilege of certain 

" special infdlyiduals, known as ofo-Juenn (dreamers). EHowever, an 
ordinary incividual may occasionally have dreams of this Kind, 

I found that any attempt to study the dreams of suth a 
people as the Andamanese is made very difficult by the fact that 
it Is never possible to tell how far the orfginal dream has heen 
arranged and altered by the waking imagination. So far as my 
observations went the majority of dredms are either visual or 
motor, or both, Further reference to dreams will be made later 
in connection with magic. 

When a man or woman dics the double (or as some of the 
natives explain it, the breath) leaves the body and becomes a 
spirit (den or davga). By death a man ceases to cxist as a man, 
and begins a new existence as a spirit, 

Whenever I asked the natives whence came the spirits of the 
jungle and the sea I 1eceived the answer that they are the spirits 
of dead men and women. On the other hand, when I put in 
another form what might seem to be the same question, and 
asked what became of a man’s spirit after his death, I received 
many different and inconsistent answers, As il would take too 
much space to transcribe every answei that I received to this 
question, a number of typical ones are selected, Any attempt 
to reconcile the statements of different men or of the same 
men on different occasions can only produce a false impression 
of the real condition of the native beliefs, and therefore the 
statements are kept separate, and each one is given as it was 
taken down, 

The first is from the Northein tribes. Exactly similar state- 

"ments were made to me by men of several tribes. “When a 

man dies he becomes a Law and wanders about the jungle. At 
first he keeps near the grave or the place where he died} ‘but 
after a while he finds that is no good, and so he goes to live 
with the other spirits, If he is drowned he becomes a /wrua.” 
A second account, varying from the above in only one particular, 
is also from one of the Northen tribes (Aha-Cari). “When a 
man’ dies he becomes a Lau or a Jurua and lives with the other 
spirits, If he be a jungle-dweller he becomes a Law and lives in 
the jungle. If he be a coast-dweller he becomes a Jurwa and 
lives in the sea, All the Aza-Card become /weva when they 
die, The spirit stays in his own country. The spirits Gf a man's 
own countty (whether Law or Jurua) are friendly to him, but 
those of another country are dangerous and will make him ill.” , 
, An entirely different statement frequently made to me by * 
men of the Northern tribes is that when a man dies the, spirit 
(Laz) cither immediately, or after the lapse of some time, goes to 
another world that lies ‘under this one and is called AZaramthu, 
This world of spirits is said to be just like the actual world, with 
forest and sea, and all the familiar animal and vegetable species, 

’ The inhabitants spend their time just as the Andamanese do on 

earth, hunting, fishing and dancing, ’ 
Still another statement that is commonly made in the North 
‘is that the spirits of the dead go to live in the sky. Two such 

sod 

statements are as follows: “When a man dies his ofjumulo 
(double) goes up to the sky and becomes a Law (spirit)” “A 
man’s spirit wanders in the jungle till the flesh has rotted from 
the bones, and then goes away to the sky.” Other statements 

were very similar to these two, 
Turning now to the Southern tribes, one informant of the 

A-Pudikwar tribe gave me the following account: “When a 
man or woman dies the spirit goes away to the east or north-east 
and goes over the edge of the world, remaining in a place called 
Lan-Puy-ciy (Spirit's House) where there is a large but in a 
jungle similar to that on earth, There they live just as men do 
on garth, hunting and fishing, and so on. Beyond the home of 
the spirits is Puta-koida, the home of the sun and moon. The 
rainbow is the path by which the spirits come to visit their 
friends on earth, which they do in dreams. The rainbow is 
made of canes (? a cane)” 

Another version from the same tribe was to the effect that 
after death the spirits of the dead go to live in the sky witha 
mythical being named Tomo. This Tomo, according to some of 
the legends, was the first ancestor of the Andamanese. By one 
of my best informants he was identified to some extent wilh the 
sun, and consequently with light and with fine weather, This 
man stated that in the world of the spirits it is never night as 
Tomo is always there. The spirits always have plenty of pork 
and turtle, and spend their time dancing and enjoying them- 
selves, 

One old man of the 4-Pudcikwar tribe, who had some reputa- 
tion'as a medicine-man, said that the spirits of meclicine-men 
lived apart from the spirits of ordinary men and women, and are 
called not Lau but Bik, He told me how he had been visited in 

wa. dream by Byifo Bilis, that is by the spirit of one Budo who had, 
when he lived, been a great medicine-man, and who, now that he 
was dead, had become a Biék, as distinguished from an ordinary 
Lan, It is the Bitik who control the weather, They can also 
cause or cure sickness in living men, The edo mentioned 
above was alive when my informant was a young man. 

In the Akar-Bale tribe one man told me that the breath 
(ig-pett).of a dying person goes up to the sly anc becomes 

\ 

a spirit. Another belief of the same tribe is that the spirits of 
the dead’ go to Jereg- Lar-mugn, which is under the carth. 
From the same tribe comes the following account: “When a 

, man or woman dies, the spirit first of all goes southward to the 
country of the A#a-Bea, and then returns to Gudua-l'ar-boy in 
Kuaito-buy (in the Akar-Bale country), It then goes to Jila- 
buaro in fila (East Island) and from there to Kere-tvaur. The 
inhabitants of the Jast-named place are warned of the approach 
of the spirit by the cries of the birds zao (Eudynamts hanorata, 
Indian koel or brain-fever bird) and d¢ (Australian goggle- 
eyed plover). At one time the people of Luy-fauar used to 
catch the spirits in big nets made for the purpose,, They were 
taught to do this by a wise woman named Jz Golat. The spirits 
try to run away, but they get caught at the place called Guamo- 
deber, The people then throw them into the sea, and they (the 
spirits) then go to Cauga- Luy-jiya (Spirit's Home) and remain 
there,” The above is given exactly as it was translated to me 
by an Akar-Bale man who knew English and who acted as my 
interpreter on the occasion. There is much in it that I do not 
understand and that my questions failed to elucidate, It is 
given as an example of the nature of some of the more obscure 
of the Andamanese beliefs, To understand fully many of their 
statements on this and other matters would need a more com- 
plete Inidwledge of the language than I possessed, and a longer 
time than I was able to give. 

The various examples given above are sufficient to show the 
general nature of the Andamanese beliefs, In every tribe there 
are alternative and inconsistent beliefs as to the place where 
spirits go, which by different accounts is in the sky, beneath the 
earth, out to the east where the sun and moon take their rise, or 
in the jungle and sea of their own country, One thing is clear, 
that the Andamanese ideas on the subject are floating and 
lacking in precision, There is no fixity or unanimity of belief 
amongst them, . 

To these various accounts from the natives themselves, must 
be added the description of the beliefs of the A#a-Zea tribe as 
recorded by Mr Man. This may best be given in the writer's 
own words, “The world, exclusive of the sea, is declared to be 

flat and to rest on an immense palm-tree (Carpota sobolifera) 
called davata, which stands in the midst of a jungle comprising 
the whole area under the earth. This jungle, éeztan (Hades) is 
a gloomy place, for, though visited in turn by the sun and moon, 
it can, in consequence of its situation, be only partially lighted: 
it is hither the spirits (¢euga) of the departed are sent by Puluga 
to await the Resurrection. 

“No change takes place in daéax in respect to growth or age; 
all remain as they were at the time of their departure from the 
earth, and the adults are represented as engaged in hunting, 
after a manner peculiar to disembodied spirits, In order to 
furnish them with sport the spirits of animals andl birds are also 
sent to dadéa, but as there is no sea there, the davga of fish and 
turtle remain in their native element and are preyed upon by 
Juruwin, The spirits auga) and souls (o¢-yolo) of all children 
who dié before they cease to be entirely dependent on their 
parents (ie. under six years of age) go to éaifan, and are placed 
under a raw tree (Ficus laccifer@) on the fruit of which they 
subsist, As none can quit dartax who have once entered, they 
support their storics regarding it by a tradition that in ages long 
past an oko-patad was favoured in a dream with a vision of the 
regions and of the pursuits of the disembodied spirits. 

“Between the earth and the eastern sky there stretches an 
invisible cane bridge (A¢dga-Par-dauga) which steadies the former 
and conngcts it with jercg (paradise); over this bridge the souls 
(0#-polo) of the departed pass into paradise, or to Jereg-Par-mugn, 
which is situated below it: this latter place might be described 
as purgatory, for it is a place of punishment for those who have 
been guilty of heinous sins, such as murder. Like Dante, they 
depict it as very cold, and therefore a most undesirable region 
for mortals to inhabit. From all this it will be gathered that 
these despised savages believe in a future state, in the resurrec- 
tion, and in the threefold constitution of man. 

“Tn serious illness the sufferer's spirit (¢auga) is said to be 
hovering between this world and Hades, but does not remain 
permanently in the latter place until some time after death, 
during which interval it haunts the abode of the deceased and 
the spot where the remains have been deposited. In dreams 

‘ 

it is the soul which, having taken its depaiture through the 
nostrils, sees or is engaged in the manner represented to the 
sleeper, 

“The Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their 
reflections (in any mirror) as their souls, The colour of the soul 
is said to be red, and that of the spirit black, and, though 
invisible to human eyes, they parlake of the form of the person 
to whom they belong. Evil emanates from the soul, and all good 
from the spirit ; at the resurrection they will be re-united and 
live permanently on the new earth, for the souls of the wicked 
will then have been reformed by the punishments inflicted on 
them during their residence in jereg-/’ar-mugu. 

“The future life will be but a 1epetition of the present, but all - 
will then remain in the prime of life, sickness and death will be 
anknown, and there will be no more marrying or giving in 
marriage, The animals, birds, and fish will also re-appear in the 
new world in their present form. 

“ This blissful state will be inaugurated by a great earthquake, 
which, occurring by Pauduga's command, will break the Ardga- 
?ar-cauga and cause the earth to turn over: all alive at the time 
will perish, exchanging places with their deceased ancestors},” 

This account given by Mr Man, must, I think, be received 
with great caution. To one who has talked to the Andamanese on 
these subjects it seems probable that Mr Man has here combined 
into a single consistent version, a number of independent 
statements, which, as the natives believe them, are not parts of 
an organised doctrine, but are separate from and often incon- 
sistent with each other. Added to this there is the fact that 
Mr Man has so written down the native beliefs as to bring out 
the greatest possible degree of resemblance to the Christian 
mythology, This is clear from his use of the words Hades, 
paradise, etc. Allowance must therefore be made for the fact 
that Mr Man evidently found some pleasure in tracing analogies 
between the mythology of the Andamanese and the Christian 
doctrines, 

Owing to the importance attaching to all Mr Man’s state- 
ments it is necessary to examine critically the account tran- 

1 Man, of. cit. p. 01. - 

scribed above. We may begin with what is said of the doctrine 
of the threefold nature of man. By this it would seem to be, 
meant that man is regarded as composed of body, soul and 
spirit, It is quite certain that the Andamanese mean different 
things by the words of-yolo (reflection) here translated “soul,” 
and dauga translated “spirit.” The difference is this, that a man, 
while he is still alive, Zas a“double” or “soul” if the latter 
word be preferred, while when he is dead he decomes a spirit. 
Thus the spirit is not a part of a man while he is alive. The 
word édanga (or /az) is simply the name of a particular class of 
beings which includes all dead men and women, The bones of 
a man become “ spirit-bones” (¢arga-ta) when he dics, just as he 
becomes a spirit, To compare the Andamanese belief with the 
Christian doctrine that each man possesses, while he is alive, 
both a soul and a spirit, these being different things, *is therefore 
misleading. For this reason it is perhaps unfoitunate to trans- 
late the Andamanese canuga as meaning spirit, but there does not 
seem 1o be any other convenient English word, 

Mr Man’s account would seem to imply that the native 
belief is that at death the soul (reflection) of a man goes to one 
place (Jereg or Jereg-l'ar-mugu) while his spirit goes elsewhere 
(to Cattan), In the case of children however, Mr Man makes a 
difference, for both the souls and spirits of children go to Cattan, 
Mr Man compares Cartan to Hades, Jereg to paradise and JSereg- 
far-mugu to purgatory, 

I do not think that the Andamanese have any such compli« 
eated doctrine as this. It scems to me almost certain that 
Mr Man has received from the natives several different state- 
ments, similar to some of those given earlier, and that he has — 
combined and reconciled them as well as he could. Some of his 
informants, apparently, described the world after death as being 
beneath the earth, and gave the name of it as Cattan', Other 
informants seem to have spoken of Jereg or Jereg-Par-mugi. 1 
think ‘it improbable that any one native should have stated, as 
Mr Man's account would seem to imply, that the sov/ of a dead 

4 TF could not obtain any information about the word that Mr Mati gives ns edattan, 
Some men of the South Andaman whom I questioned did not seem to recognize the 
word, éxeapt ag their way-of pronouncing the Urdu word shaitan=dovil, 

: 
man goes to one place, while the man himself (now a spirit) goes 
somewhere else, Mr Man’s description of Cactan cortesponds 
almost exactly to the descriptions given to me by the Akar-Bale 
and A-Puctkwar of Jereg- 'ar-mugnh, and to the descriptions 
of Maramiku given by the Northern tribes, If Caitan be really 
an Afka-Bea word, it would seem to be only another name for 
Jereg-lar-mugu. 

One of the most important points in Mr Man’s statement is 
that while the souls of good men go to paradise as he puts it, the 
souls of bad men are condemned to torture in purgatory’. In 
my own enquiries I did not come across any definite belief of this 
nature, but Iam not prepared to deny its existence, All that I 
can say is that I did not find any evidence whatever that good 
men and bad men (in any meanings in which those words could 
be used by the natives) receive different treatment after death. 
In talking to men of the Akar-Bale and A-Pucikwar tribes I did 
not hear of /ereg as a distinct place from Jereg-l’ar-mugu. The 
latter name is of course a compound, from ar-mugu = front, and 
might mean either “the Place fronting or facing Jereg” or “the 
place Jereg, fconting us.” 

’ Mr Man states that the souls and spirits of young children go 
to Cattan where they subsist on the fruit of a raw tree (Ftous 
laccifera). In the North Andaman I found a belief that the 
souls of children, before they are born, live in the Ficus trees, but 
these are the real trees on earth that are in question, and not a 
mythical tree in the next world. It is commonly believed that 
if a baby dies the soul enters the mother again and is born a 
second time. It is possible that what Mr Man relates as to 
the souls of children after death living in a Meus tree in Caitan 
may really refer to real fig trees on earth, 

As regards the resurrection spoken of by Mr Man, I was also 
so unfortunate as to obtain no information. As will be shown 
ina later chapter, there are several myths of the world coming’ 
to an end and starting afresh, and these myths are generally 

1 In the Census Report’ roar, p.‘62, Sir Richard Temple writes, ‘“The Anda« 
manese have an idea that the ‘soul’ will go under the earth by an aerial bridge after 
death, but there is no heaven nor hell nor any idea of a corporeal resurrection in a 

religious sense,” 

' 
associated with Puduga or Biliku. All the versions that I heard, 
however, referred to the past and not to the future’, 

The Andamanese speak of unconsciousness as “death,” and 

* regard a person who has been unconscious for some time as 
having been dead and returned to life again, I was once told 
that an old man in the village was “dead” and found him ina 
state of coma from which he recovered and lived for several days, 
There are stories of persons having returned to life even after 
they have been buried. One such tale was told me in the North 
Andaman. A. man died and was buried. As his friends and 
relatives, after packing up their belongings, were leaving the 
camp in their canoes, the man’s voice was heard calling. His 
wife and mother turned back and met him and took him in their 
canoe. He lived for some time after this and then he died and 
was buried again. Again the same thing happened, the dead 
man re-appearing just as they were setting off in their canoes 
from the camp that they were deserting on account of his death, 
Tinally the man died a third time, When he was buried this 
time the men dug a very decp hole some distance from the 
camp, and then hurried back lo the camp and hastily gathered 
up their belongings and left it, Nothing more was seen of 
the dead man, but when, after the lapse of some months, they 
went to dig up the bones, they found the mat and leaves and 
rope in which the corpse had been bound, but there were 
no bones. . 

Amongst the coast-dwellers of the North Andaman I found 
a belief that the soul of a dying man goes out with the ebbing 
tide, 

There arc, amongst the Andamanese, certain individuals who 
are distinguished from their fellows by the supposed possession 
of supernatural powers, These specially favoured persons 

1 It may be noted that in the Andamanese Inngunges there is no future tense of 
the verb, and it is often very difficult to know whether a speaker is referring to the 
present or to the future. lurther, although there is a past lense, 2 native often uses 
the present tense in a narrative relating to the past, so thal a statement relating to the 
past and one relating to the ftture may have exactly the same grammatical form, 
Mr Elits, writing in the Journal of the Philological society (1882) from information 
supplied hy Mr Man, gives a verbal suffix «ngaée denoting the future in the fta-Hea 

language. Mr Portman points out that this is an error, (Notes on the Languages of 
the South Andaman, p. 88.) 

a ‘ 

correspond, to some degree, with the medicine-men, magicians 
or shamans of other primitive societies, The name for these 
medicine-men in the North Andaman is oko-jumu, meaning 
literally “dreamer” or “one who speaks from dreams” from a stem 
«Jumu the primary meaning of which refers to the phenomena 
of dreams. In Aka-Bea the corresponding term is oko-paiad, 
and according to Mr Man, this term also means “dreamer,” 
Mr Portman, however, gives tavaba as the Aka-Bea word for 
‘dream ” ‘or “to dream.” 
Avcording to a statement by Mr Man, only men can possess 
‘’. the powers that entitle them to be regarded as oko-paiad', The 
natives whomi [ questioned told me that a woman may possess 
the same powers, though it is more usual for men to become 
famous in this way than women, There is no very clear dividing 
line between those who are oko-jusmu or oko-paiad and those who 
are not; one person may possess the powers in only a slight 
degree, so as scarcely to differentiate him from others, while 
another may be much more highly gifted. 
At the present time it is no longer possible to obtain full and 
satisfactory information on this subject. Most of the old 
oko-fumu and oko-paiad are now dead. Amongst the younger 
men there are a few who pretend to the position, but the recent 
intercourse with foreigners has produced a degree of scepticism 
in such matters that makes it difficult or nearly impossible to 
obtain any reliable information as to the former beliefs from any 
but the very old men, To this difficulty must be added that in 
talking,to some of the very few old men who could have given 
more valuable information I had to make use of an interpreter, 
and though they might have been willing to confide to the some 
of the secrets of their profession they would not do so before a 
‘ younger man of their-own race, 
® The powers of a dreamer, supernatural as they are, can 
énly be acquired by supernatural means, through contact in one 
way or another with the spirits (ie. the Laz or Cauga), One way 
of coming info contact with the spirits is by death, If a man 
should, as the natives put it, die and then come back to life again, 
é 
1 Man, of. cét, pr 96. 

he is, by that adventure, endowed with the power that makes a 
medicine-man, One man of the A4a-Kora tribe was pointed out 
to me as having obtained his powers in this way. It would seem 
that during a serious illness he was unconscious for some twelve 
hours or so, and his friends thought that he was dead. A 
medicine-eman whom I met with in the 4-Pudikwar tribe was 
said to have died and come to life again three times. Another 
man, whom I did not meet, was described to me as a great 
oko-jumu, and from the description given it seemed to me that 
he was subject to epileptic fits. As against this, however, 
Mr Man states that “epilepsy is a recognised form of malady, 
but the fits are not regarded in a superstitious light,” 

Another way in which a man can acquire magical powers is 
by direct communication with the spirits. A man who died a 
few years ago was believed by the natives to have once met with 
some spirits in the jungle, and to have acquired in this way the 
powers of an oko-jumu. He used to go off into the jungle by 
himself at intervals and hold communication with the spirits 
with whom he had made friends. From such a visit he had 
returned with his head decorated with shredded palm-leaf fibre 
(4gr0) which had, so he said, been placed on him by the spirits, 
This man had a reputation as a powerful ofo-fem. 

In a less degree the powers of an ofo-jume may be ob- 
tained through dreams, It is believed that certain men have 
the power of communicating with the spirits in dreams, and such 
men are oko-jumu. If aman or boy experiences dreams that are 
in any way extraordinary, particularly if, in his dreams he sees 
spirits, either the spirits of dead persons known to him when 
alive, or spirits of the forest or the sea, he may acquire in time 
the reputation of a medicine-man. 

Aman may claim some degree of magical power, and yet 
his claims may not be recognized by others, Kach ofo-jumu 
has to make his own reputation, and to sustain it when made, 
This he can only do by demonstrating his power to others. 
Once this reputation is his, he not only receives the respect of 
others but also makes a considerable personal profit. Every one 
is anxious to be on good terms with one who is believed to 

1 Man, op, cit, p. 830 ‘ 

By Ae 12 

have extraordinary powers. Hence a man who is an acknowledged 
oko-jumu is sure to receive a good share of the game caught by 
others, and presents of all kinds from those who seek his good- 
will. 

As the name implies, and in whatever way his power may have 
been obtained, an ofo-jemze is privileged to dream in a way that 
less favoured persons do not. In his dreams he can communicate 
with the spirits of the dead. In dreams, also, so the natives say, 
he is able to cause the illness of an enemy or to cure that of a 
friend, 

By his communication with the spirits, in dreams, or in 
waking life, the ofo-jumu acquires magical knowledge that he is 
able to turn to account in curing illness and in preventing bad 
weather. When a person is ill the ofo-fumu is often consulted 
as to the best means of treating the patient. His treatment 
is often limited to the recommendation, or the application, of 
some one or other of the recognized remedies. He may under- 
take to dispel the spirits that are supposed to be the cause 
of the disease, which he does by addressing them and conjuring 
them to go away, or by the use of one or other of the substances 
and objects that are believed to have the power of keeping 
spirits at a distance. Sometimes the ofo-jumu will promise 
to cure the patient by mcans of dreams, It is believed that in 
his dreams he can communicate with the spirits and can 
persuade them to help him to cure ‘the sick person, 

Besides their power of causing or curing sickness, the 
oko-jumu are credited with being able to control the weather, 
As has been shown, the Andamanese believe that the weather is 
under the control of two beings named Bitiku and Tarat. There 
is, however, an alternative and contradictory belief, which is also 
held, that the weather is controlled by the spirits, and particularly 
by those of the sea, The means taken by magicians or others 
to prevent bad weather can be divided into two kinds according 
as they are directed against Biltku or Tarad, or against the 
spirits of the sea, As an example of the very simple rites 
which are performed for this purpose, two cases may be quoted, 
One of the ofo-jumu of the Northern tribes, now dead, once 
stopped a very violent storm by crushing between two stones 

a piece of the Anadendron paniculatum and diving with it into 
the sea where he placed it under a rock on the reef, A more 
recent example is very similar, A man still living, named Jive 
Pileéar, who was, in a way, the successor of the man formerly 
mentioned, is said to have stopped a violent storm by using the 
Jeaves and bark of the Meus Jaccifera in the sane way, that is 
by crushing them and placing them under a rock in the sea, 
In both these cases it would seem that the rite was directed 
not against Béku and Tarai, but against the Jurua, 

Apart from his power to communicate directly with the 
Spirits, the ofo-fumu owes his position to a superior knowledge 
of the magical properties of common substances and objects. 
This knowledge he is supposed to obtain from the spirits, 
However, a lesser degree of knowledge on such matters is 
possessed by everybody. Thus in the treatment of sickness 
there are a number of magical remedies of which anyone can 
make use without consulting an oko-jumn, 

A complete enumeration of all the things that are believed 
to possess magical properties is, of course, not possible, but the 
following notes refer to all the most important. 

We may consider first of all the magical properties of 
mineral substances, One of the most important of these is red 
ochre, Yellow ochre, which is found in pockets in many parts 
of the islands, is collected and burnt, when it turns red, and the 
powder so obtained is cither used by itself or is made into a 
paint with pig or turtle fat. The powder is mixed with water and 
taken internally, Red paint is applied to the throat and chest 
for coughs and colds and sore throats, and round the car for 
ear-ache, When a man feels unwell he often smears red paint 
on his upper lip just below his nostrils, In this way, the natives 
say, the “smell” of the paint cures his sickness, The paint is 
sometimes used as a dressing for wounds or centipede bites. Its 
use for ornamenting the body on ceremonial occasions has 
already been noted in the last chapter. 

In the North Andaman a soft red stone is found, called te/ar, 
This is used as a substitute for red paint. It is rubbed on the 
body, or itis powdered and the powder is mixed with water and 
taken internally, 

12-2 

White clay (zé-odu in Afha-Jeru) ig sometimes used medi~ 
cinally, both externally and internally. The commoner clay 
(odu in Aka- jeri) is plastered on sores, and has the effect of 
keeping off flies, if it does nothing else, 

An olive-coloured earth (called cudya in Akd-Bea), found in 
certain springs, is prized as a remedy. It is mixed with water 
and taken internally as a general remedy for all sorts of com- 
plaints. 

Turning now to the magical properties of vegetable sub- 
stances, there are a large number of these, and some of them 
have not been botanically identified. 

The Anadendron paniculatum is a plant from which the 
Andamanese obtain a valuable fibre, which they use for their 
bow-strings, and for thread with which to make their arrows and 
harpoons. A number of magical properties are attributed to this 
plant. Rheumatism is supposed to be due to the “smell” of the 
plant getting into the system when the fibre is being prepared, 
The “smell” of the green plant, or of the fibre until it has been 
thoroughly dried for some days, is believed to frighten away 
turtle. A man who has been preparing the fibre would not 
dream of joining a turtle-hunting expedition, for his presence in 
the canoe would be sufficient to drive away all the turtle. .A 
turtle-hunting expedition would be a failure if a piece of the 
green creeper were in the canoe, A man who has been 
handling the plant may not cook turtle, for the meat would be 
“bad,” ie, uneatable. The same thing would happen if turtle 
meat accidentally came in contact with a piece of the plant. 
All this applies only to the green creeper, and not to the fibre 
after it has been properly prepared and dried. The fibre itself 
is used for binding the heads of turtle-harpoons, so it is evidently 
regarded as harmless, 

If a piece of the Anadendron creeper were burnt in the fire 
the natives believe that it would drive all the turtle away from 
the neighbourhood, or, according to another statement, that 
there would be a great storm. 

So far we have considered the properties of the plant only in 

1 In preparing the fibre, the skin or bark of the young shoots of the plant is torn 
off in strips and these are placed on the thigh and scraped with a Cyvena shell. 

so far as they?make it dangerous to handle. It has other and 
beneficial propérties, It is said that a man swimming in waters 
infested with sharks would be safe from them if he had a piece 
of the Avadendron creeper with him, in his belt or necklace. 
The creeper is also supposed to preserve anyone who carries it 
from the attacks of the sea spirits ( Furi). 

The Azdiscus ¢éliacens is a small tree from which the natives 
obtain the fibre which they make into rope, used now for harpoon 
lines and in former times for turtle-nets. The leaves of this 
tree are believed to have the power of keeping away the spirits 
of the sea. They have no efficacy, however, against the spirits 
of the forest. Leaves of the Hibiscus tiliaceus are used in the 
turtle-eating ceremony described in the last chapter, For cooking 
turtle the only wood that may be used is the Azécsews, If any 
other wood were used the meat would not be good, In this 
connection it is necessary to point out an error in the statements 
of Mr Man. He says that the wood of the @/aéa must never be 
used for cooking turtle, though it may be used for cooking pig, 
and that Pxduga is angry if this commandment is not observed 
and sends either the sun or moon to punish the offender’, There 
is evidently an error here. The a/ada is the Hibiscus téliacens, 
Mr Man identifies it with the AZélochia velutina, but this is an 
error, Now the custom in connection with the Aizdisews (alaba) 
is not that it may not be used for cooking turtle, but that no 
other kind of wood must be used. It is difficult to sec how 
Mr Man fell into the error, unless he mistook a statement re- 
garding the yelba (Anadendron paniculatum) for a statement 
relating to alaba (Hibiscus tifiaceus). We have just seen that 
if the Axadendron comes in contact with turtle meat the meat 
will be bad, and that if it is burnt there will be a storm, 

Another plant that provides fibre for+thread is the Guetwm 
dude, There is a belief that the green creeper of this plant will 
drive away turtle, if a piece of it be taken in a canoe, 

Magical properties are attributed to the Miss laccifera tree, 
These trees are believed to be the home of the yet unborn souls 
of children, I was told in the North Andaman that if a tree of 

1 Man, of. eff, pp. 153 and 173. 

the species were cut there would be a storm, The bark of the 
aerial roots of the tree affords a fibre used in the Little Anda- 
man for bow-strings, but only used in the Great Andaman for 
making personal ornaments. It is possible that some magical 
properties are attributed to the ornaments made from this 
fibre. 

The Péerocarpus dalbergioides is one of the most striking 
trees of the Andamans. It has a very hard red wood, from 
which the natives make their sounding-boards. There is an 
obscure belief in the 4-Pudczkwar tribe (and possibly also in 
other tribes) that it is dangerous to look at the tree when it is 
in flower. I was twice told a story of how some people were 
affected by looking at the flowers, and either went mad or died. 
On one occasion my interpreter translated the words of my 
informant by saying “They saw the flowers, and went giddy, 
and they all went to hell (Jereg-lar-mugu). Men must be care- 
ful when the tree is in flower, not to look at it too long, In the 
North Andaman I was told that string games (jépre) must not 
be played when the Prevocarpus tree is in flower, They may be 
indulged in with safety at any other time of the year. (String 
games, according to one statement, were invented by the Law, 
while another account attributes the invention to the crab,) 

The Tetranthera lancefolia is a small tree from which the 
natives obtain the wood for the shafts of their pig arrows, The 
leaves of this tree are believed to have the power to keep away 
the spirits of the forest, They are used in the pig-eating 
ceremony described in the last chapter. The wood is shredded 
and made inte plumes, and these plumes are believed to have: 
magical properties. They are worn by a man who has killed 
another, and are believed to protect him from the vengeance of 
the spirit of the dead man. 

A common remedy for sickness of different kinds is a small 
tree called guvgnta in Aka-Bea, which Mr Man identifies as being 
Trigonostemon longifolius. The leaves of this tree are’ made 
into a bed for the patient to lie upon. They are also crushed’ 
and rubbed over the patient's body, or he is made to inhale the 
odour of the crushed leaves, The natives say that it is the 
“smell” of the plant that possesses medical properties, The 

“smell” will drive away turtle, and leaves should therefore not be 
taken in a canoe, A man who has been handling the leaves 
would not go turtle-hunting. 

Another remedy is a species of Ainia, The leaves and 
stems of this plant are chewed and the juice swallowed for 
certain ailments, The plant is also used when taking honey, 
A man takes some of the Jeaves in his mouth and chews them 
well. Before taking the honeycomb he sprays the saliva from 
his mouth over and around it. He may also rub the chewed 
leaves over his body. The natives say that in this way they are 
able to prevent the bees from stinging them, 

Magical properties are attributed to a number of plants that 
have not been botanically identified. Thus the leaves of a small 
tree called ¢ave in Aka-eru are crushed and moistened with 
water and rubbed over the body as a remedy for illness, A strip 
of bark from the same tree is tied round the chest of a man with 
a pain in his chest, The bark of two trees called (in Aka-Jeri) 
zp and dara is crushed and moistened and rubbed over a sick 
man’s body, The leaves of a plant called gare are crushed with 
water and the infusion is drunk by persons suffering from 
diarrhoea and abdominal pains, A creeper called ovotd? is 
crushed and tied round a limb in cases of snake-bite, The 
seeds of the Zwtada scandens are heated in the fire and applied 
(while hot) to such wounds as that from the tusk of a boar, 

There are a certain number of trees and plants about which 
the natives say that any person cutting them will become blind, 
The names of four of these in Aka-Jeru are Jin, burnt, dey, and 
meet, 

We may turn now to animals and animal substances, 
Magical properties are attributed to bees’-wax, particularly to 
black bees’-wax, In a case of pleurisy, black bees’-wax was 
heated until it was soft, and then smeared over the man’s 
chest. Bees’-wax is believed to keep away the spirits of the 
forest.’ 

If a man be bitten by a snake and the snake be killed it is 
skinned and the inner surface of the skin is applied to the 
wound, 

A hiccough is supposed to be the result of inadvertently 
swallowing a tree lizard, whose call rather resembles the sound 
of a person hiccoughing. 

The condition popularly called “pins and needles” or de- 

- scribed as an arm or leg “going to sleep” is believed by the 
Andamanese to be due to the bite ofa rat. If a man wakes up 
in the night with one of his limbs benumbed in this way, he 
believes that a rat has bitten him while he slept. 

The Andamanese say that the bite of a civet-cat (Para- 
doxurus) will produce cramp. I was once told that if a man 
eats the flesh of the civet-cat and then goes into the water he 
will become “lame.” This means, I think, that he will have 
cramp, and so will be unable to swim, 

The flesh and particularly the fat of the flying fox (Pzerapus) 
is believed to be a remedy for rheumatism. An old man who 
was suffering from this ailment once asked me to shoot for him 
some of these bats, which he cooked and ate, 

If turtle-fat be permitted to burn in the fire there will be a 
storm. 

‘Mention has already been made of the magical value attri- 
buted to human bones. They are esteemed as a means of 
driving away spirits, and therefore of curing or preventing 
sickness, A human jaw-bone was hanging in my hut in such 
a position that it could swing in the wind. The natives attri- 
buted to this the illness from which I and several of them were 
suffering at the time, and asked me to put the bone away ina 
basket, where it could not move, 

Bones of animals are made into ornaments in the same way 
as human bones, and magical properties of a similar kind seem 
to be attributed to them. 

Of other objects, possessing magical properties the most 
important is fire. Fire is believed to have the power of keeping 
away spirits of the sea and of the forest, A fire is always kept 
alight beside a sick man or woman. For dysentery ~stones 
are heated in a fire and the patient is required to defecate on to 
these. 

In conclusion, mention must be made of one favourite remedy 

of the Andamanese, namely scarification. The part of the body 
that is the seat of pain is scarified, as the forehead for headaches, 
the cheek for toothache. A number of very small incisions are 
made in the skin close together, with a sharp flake of quartz or 
glass. The incisions are just deep enough to gut through the 
skin and cause a little blood to ooze out, but not so deep as to 
produce a flow of blood. The operation is the work of women. 
It is probably more frequently used than any other remedy except 
ved paint and human bones.

Tur Andamanese have a number of stories which are told 
to the younger people by their elders and relate to the doings 
of their ancestors in a time long ago. Some of these stories are 
recorded in the present chapter. A difficulty in the way of giving 
any clear and readable account of them is the fact that there are 
many slightly different versions of one and the same legend, To 
some extent the variations are local, each tribe, and even each 
portion of a tribe having its own set of legendary stories, Besides 
these local variations there are also individual variations. ‘Two. 
men of the same tribe may relate what is substantially the same 
story, yet each chooses his own words and gestures, and to some 
extent they may even arrange the incidents differently, 

In the last chapter it was mentioned that there are certain 
individuals, known as ofo-jumu in the North Andaman and 
oko-patad in the South, who are believed to have special know- 
ledge as to the spirits and as to the magical efficacy of remedies 
for sickness, It is these ofo-Jun also who are the authorities 
on the legendary lore of the Andamanese, In the case of 
magical remedies there is a certain common stock of beliefs 
as to the efficacy to be attributed to different substances, such 
as leaves of different plants, and on the basis of these beliefs 
the oke-fumu elaborates the remedies that he uses in particular 
cases. Each oko-jumu, however, prides himself on being, to 
some extent, original. An example of this hds been already 
mentioned. When a great storm arose an oko-fumu of one of 
the Northern tribes succeeded in stopping it (in the belief of 

the natives) by placing a piece of the crushed stem of the 
Anadendron creeper under a particular stone in the sea, On 
a later occasion another storm arose, and the successor of the 
first-mentioned ofo-jumu was appealed to that he might exert 
his powers. He did not simply imitale his predecessor, but he 
placed a piece of crushed bark and twigs of the Jcus lacctfera 
in the sea under a different stone. In very much the same way 
there is a common stock of beliefs as to the events that took 
place in the time of the ancestors, but each ofe-frinu builds up 
on this basis his own particular set of legends, so that it is 
rarely that two of them tell the same story in the same way, 
An oko-jumu may obtain for himself a reputation by relating 
legends of the ancestors in a vivid and amusing way. Such 
a man would be able to invent new stories by combining to- 
gether in his own way some of the traditional incidents. The 
desire on the part of each oke-fume to be original and so to 
enhance his own reputation is a fertile source of variation in 
the legends. 

This lack of traditional form, which is a very important 
characteristic of the Andamanese mythology, may be com- 
pared with their lack of traditional songs, Just as every man 
composes his own songs, so, within certain limits, every oho-femu 
relates in his own way the legends of his tribe. But whereas 
every man is a composer of songs, only a certain number are 
regarded as having authority to speak on the legends, 

Underlying the legends of any tribe there are a certain 
number of beliefs or representations with which every native 
is familiar, It is on the basis of these that the oke-femu 
elaborates his own doctrine, if we may call it so, which he 
hands on to his followers, who in turn may become oko-Jumu 
and produce further slight modifications, of their own. Thus 
the legends are continually being changed, though in any one 
generation the changes introduced are slight, and it would take 
a long ‘time for important changes in belief to be brought about, 
There is evidence, however, that a succession of leading men 
in the A-Pudcikwar tribe have succeeded in introducing a new 
doctrine as to the weather, making 222 the name of a class 
of beings instead of the name of a single being, and that this 

doctrine, while it has not entiely ousted the former beliefs, has 
yet succeeded in gaining currency not only in the A-Pudikwar 
tribe, but also in the A#a-Koi and Of0- Juwoi tribes, 

At the present time it is only possible to recover a small 
pait of the many different legends with their variants, The 
introduction of many new interests into the lives of the natives, 
through the European settlement and the many changes it has 
produced, has caused the ancient legends to be neglected. Most 
of the old ofo-fumu have died without leaving any followers to 
take their place. Many of the legends recorded here are merely 
what some of the men not specially skilled in legendary lore can 
remember of the stories told them in former days by oko-fumu 
who are now dead. 

One feature of the legends that must be pointed out is 
their unsystematic nature. The same informant may give, on 
different occasions, two entirely different versions of such a 
thing as the origin of fire, or the beginning of the human race, 
The Andamanese, to all appearance, regard each little story as 
independent, and do not consciously compare one with another, 
They thus seem to be entirely unconscious of what are obvious 
contradictions to the student of the legends, It is necessary 
to emphasise the fragmentary and unsystematic nature of the 
Andaman mythology because Mr Man, in his work on the 
Andamanese, has brought together a number of legends from 
the tribes of the South Andaman and has combined them 
into a continuous and fairly consistent narrative, and has thus, 
undoubtedly not intentionally, given a wrong impression to the 
reader of what the natue of the disconnected stories really 
is. While each of the stories included in Mr Man’s account 
is derived directly from the natives, it would seem certain 
that the arrangement, of them into a more or less consistent 
narrative is due to Mr Man, 

In recording the legends in this chapter, only the English 
translation is given. In some cases the legends were translated 
on the spot and written down in English. In other cases they 
were written down in the native language and then translated, 
When I was recording the legends I very frequently had to 
ask what was meant by a particular statement, the meaning of 

which might be quite clear to a native, but which was obscure 
to one not accustomed to thinking in the same way as the 
natives, In some cases I could obtain no satisfactory explana- 
tion, and such legends are given in this chapter in as nearly as 
possible an exact literal translation of the original. In other 
cases the explanations given by the natives have been incor- 
porated in the translation itself. 

In order to give the reader a fair iclea of the nature of the 
legends as they are told, one is here given in the native language 
(Aka-Cari) with a word-for-word translation. 

A Maia Dik ijokoduko; o honmo ted injuktertoia,; 

Sir Prawn makes fire; yan leaf catches fire; 

honmo ted bt tkterbte kete utjoko; utjokobiho ; 

yam leaf is dry; that one it burns; he makes a fire; 

Maia Dik ubenoba; Maia Toteno emato; ujokil nektebalo ; 

Sir Prawn slept; Sir Kingfisher takes ; he fire with he 
runs away 

Maia Totemo jokobiko; Maia Totemo tajeo ubiko,s 

Sir Kingfisher makes a fire; Sir Kingfisher fish (food) cooks; 

upetil ubeno; Maia Mite jukitchalo uemato, 

his belly in he sleeps; Sir Dove uns away taking, 

The above translation is hardly comprehensible without a 
little explanation. The word Yoho means “something burns,” 
the word #éi#o means “he cooks (by roasting)” The com- 
pound ¢jokodikto may mean either “he makes a fire and cooks 
something at it” or it may simply mean “he makes up a fire 
(by adding firewood),” The word djohoduko has a quite different 
meaning, “to produce fire” The derivation of rujubterioia is 
uncertain, as I am not sure of the proper use of er-tora; it ts 
translated on the basis of the explanation given me by the 
man who told the story. The word chéerbie is descriptive of 
the dfyness of dead leaves. 

A free translation would be as follows: “It was Sir Prawn 
who first produced or obtained fire. Some yam leaves, being 
shrivelled and dry by reason of the hot weather, caught fire 
and burnt, The prawn made a fire with some firewood and 

went to sleep, The kingfisher stole fire and 1an away with it, 
He made a fire and cooked some fish. When he had filled his 
belly he went to sleep. The dove stole fire from the kingfisher 
and ran away.” It is implied that it was the dove who gave 
the fire to the ancestors of the Andamanese. 

Versions of legends of the origin of fire are given by 
Mr Portman, in each of the languages of the Southein group 
of tribes}, 

All the legends relate to events that aie supposed to have 
happened in the past, and deal with the doings of the ancestors 
of the Andamanese. In the North Andaman the ancestors ate 
sometimes called Zau /'er-kuvo, i.e. the big spirits, “big” being 
used in the sense of our woid “chief” Another term for them 
is N’a-mai-koloko, from 2 or nio  they, aka-mai  father, and 
holoko = people, so that the phiase literally means “the father 
people,” or the ancestors, In the South Andaman the ancestois 
are sometimes called Cauga tabay ya, which is the equivalent of 
Lau t’er-kuro. Myr Man seems to have misunderstood the exact 
meaning of this term, He writes: “Lad? Lora-lola, the chief of 
the survivors from the Deluge’, gave, at his death, the name 
of Cauga tabaya to their descendants.......The Cauga tabaya are 
described as fine tall men with large beards, and they aie said 
to have been long lived, but, in other 1espects and in their mode 
of living they did not differ from the present inhabitants, The 
name scems to have been borne till comparatively regent. times, 
as a few still living are said to remember having seen the last 
of the so-called Cauga tabayas.” 

Mr Man has evidently not realised that the term dauga 
cannot be applied to any living Andamanese, but may be 
applied to every dead one. The Cauga are the spirits of dead 
natives, and new Cauga are continually coming into existence 
by death, Any peison who is of such importance when alive 
as to form the subject of legends or stories after his death may 
be distinguished (after his death only) as a Cauga tabay ya.’ The 
name may thus be applied to the purely mythical ancestors 
of the legends, and also to the spirits of men recently dead 

1 Portman, Wotes on the Languages, ete. p. 97: 
® The legend will be given later. 3 Man, af, cit. p. 169. 

whose memory is preserved owing to fame acquired in some 
way when they were alive, It is thus possible that some of 
the natives with whom Mr Man formerly conversed are now 
Cauga tabaya, ie, big spirits, having been “big men” when they 
were alive, 

Another name sometimes used in the South Andaman to 
denote the ancestois is Zomo-/a', This wo1d, however, is 
sometimes used in the singular to denote the mythical first 
man. Its use is thus simila: to that of the name B24k in 
the A-Pudikwar tribe, which is used both as the name of 
a single mythical being and also as the name of a class 
of beings, Only the early ancestors of the Andamanese, 
ie, those about whom the legends are related, can be called 
Tomo-la, 

Among the ancestors who appear in the legends there aie 
a few who bear names that are used as personal names of 
men and women at the present time, and who appear in the 
Jegends simply as men and women. The laiger number of 
the ancestors, however, bear names that aic those of species 
of animals, In each case the ancestor is identified with the 
species which bears the same name, Yet others of the 
mythical ancestors have names that are neither personal names 
at the present day, nor names of animals, It may pe.haps be 
supposed that in all such cases the name has some sort of 
meaning, but in many instances it was not found possible to 
discover the meaning with certainty. 

When speaking of the ancestors, the natives generally add 
to the name the appropriate title, These titles are, in the North 
Andaman J@aia (Sir) and Aid (Lady), in Akar-Bale Da (Sir) 
and Jz (Lady), and in Aka-Bea AZa¢a and Cana, 

There are legends as to the origin ,of mankind, ie, of 
their own race, for they did not recognize, until recently, the 
existence of any men of other races than thelr own, calling 
aliens Law (spirits), There is, however, no unanimity in their 
beliefs as to how mankind originated, even in any one tribe. 
An Afka-Bo legend is as follows: 

1 ‘The sullix -/e 18 added to personal names and to terms of address in order to 
express respect. 

“The first man was Suton. He was born inside the joint 
of a big bamboo, just like a bird in an egg* The bamboo split 
and he came out. He was a little child. When it rained he 
made a small hut for himself and lived in it. He made little 
bows and arrows. As he grew bigger he made bigger huts, and 
bigger bows and arrows, One day he found a lump of quaitz 
and with it he scarified himself. /#/pu was lonely, living all 
by himself, He took some clay (4g) from a nest of the white 
ants and moulded it into the shape of a woman. She became 
alive and became his wife. She was called Kot, They lived 
together at Zeraut-buliu, Afterwards Jwipu made other people 
out of clay. These were the ancestors. /uépu taught them 
how to make canoes and bows and arrows, and how to hunt 
and fish. His wife taught the women how to make baskets 
and nets and mats and belts, and how to use clay for making 
patterns on the body.” ; 

The same story was told me by Aka-/Jeru men, the only 
difference being that they gave the name of the place where 
Jutpu Nived differently, mentioning a spot in the Aha-Jeru 
country, 

From the Aka-feru 1 also obtained what is really another , 
version of the same legend, though the name of the first ancestor 
is given differently. “The first man came out of the buttress 
of a poito (Sterculia) tree, and was called Podtotobut (Sterculia 
buttress), He had no wife, so he cohabited with an ant’s nest 
(Aad) and thus obtained a large number of children, These 
were the first Andamanese, and Poédotobut taught them all 
their arts and customs. Pezdotodut lived at Boray Buliu (in 
Aka-j ere country),” 

The association between the origin of the Andamanese 
and an ant’s nest (4e/) is retained in another legend, told 
by an Aka-jeru man. “ Tarai (the south-west monsoon) was 
the first man. His wife was Koz, They lived at Tarai-era- 

1 The name scems to mean “alone.’* ‘ 

2 The giant bamboo does not grow in the Andamans, but pieces of it are often 
drifted ashore, having come from the coast of Burma. The natives pick up these 
drift-wood bamboos and make buckets of them. It 1s possible that the bamboo fiom 
which the first man was born was just such s piece drifted up fiom the sea. 
Unfortunately I neglected to enquire on this point when taking down the legend. 

poy’. Their children were Zaz (the sky), Boto (wind), Périié 
(storm), and A? (the foam on a rough sea).” 

An entirely different legend, of which, however, I could not 
obtain a detailed version, is also found in the Ada~/eru tribe, 
This is to the effect that the first living being was Maia 
Cara. He made the earth, and caused it to be peopled with 
inhabitants, He also made the sun and moon, In the last 
chapter Cara was mentioned as a mythical being associated 
with the sun, with daylight and with fine weather. One of my 
informants of the Asa-/eru tribe said that Cara had a wife 
named Vidz (a common personal name), and that his children 
were Ceo (lenife), Zvo (water), Lofo, and Luk, It is Maia Cara, 
according to one commonly received account, who makes the 
daylight every day. | 

I could not obtain any Aka-Kede legend as to the origin of 
mankind, One informant of that tribe said that it was Bika 
(the north-east monsoon) who made the world and the first men 
and women, but he could give me no detailed legend, 

In the Afa-Kol and A-Pudikwar tribes there are several 
versions of a legend that makes the monitor lizard (Vavanus 
satuator) the progenitor of the Andaman race, In all the ver~ 
sions there is no mention of how the lizard himself originated. 
The following was told me by an Afa-Ke/ man. “When 
Ta Pett (Sir Monitor Lizard) was aka-got (i.e. unmarried, but 
having completed the initiation eciemonies), he went into the 
jungle to hunt pig, He climbed up a Dipterocarpus tree, and 
got stuck there’. Beyan (civet-cat, Paradoxurus) found him 
there, stuck in the tree, She released him and helped him to 
get down, The two got married. Their children were the 
Tomo-la (i.e, the ancestors),” 

Another legend telling how the monitor lizard obtained a wife 
was related to me on more than one occasion by A-Pucéhwar 
men, “The first of the ancestors (7omo-/a) was Ta Petie (Sir 
Monitor Lizard), He lived at Zomo-la-tog. At first he had 

} The meaning of the name is ‘tthe cave of Zara’; I believe that this is the 
name of a spot in the Ada-Jeru country. 

9 The meaning of the name was not discovered, : 

5 The lizaid was caught in some way by his genital organs, but I was unable to 
understand the story completely, 

BA. 13 

no wife. One day, when he was out fishing, he found a piece 
of black wood of the kind called Ae/otat (Diospyros sp.). He 
found it in the creek, and brought it to his hut, where he put 
it,on the little platform over the fire. He sat down by the 
fire and set to work over an arrow that he was making. As 
he bent over his work he did not see what was happening, By 
and by he heard some one laugh, and looked up. Then he 
saw that the piece of wood had tutned into a woman. He 
got up and took her down from the platform. She sat down 
with him and became his wife. They had a son named Pot 
(a species of small bird, possibly a woodpecker), and afterwards 
many other children. They lived together for a long time at 
Tomo-la-iog. One day Ta Petie went fishing and was drowned 
in the creek, He turned into a hava-duku.” 

There is some doubt about the translation of the word 
kara-duku, Jt is an Aka-Bea word, although it was used as 
given ahove, by an A-Pudikwar man, Mr Man translates it 
“cachalot.”. Mr Portman says that Aara-duku is “crocodile,” 
but that the cachalot, the proper name of which is dzriga-ca, is 
also sometimes called fava-duku*. The only authority for the 
existence of crocodiles in the Andamans is the statement of 

“ Mr Portman, who says that the natives killed one in the Middle 
Andaman and* brought the bones to him, Although I was in 
many of the creeks of the Andamans at different times I never 
saw a crocodile, and none of the other officers of the Settlement, 
who have repeatedly explored a large part of the islands, ever 
seems to have seen one, so that the one recor ded by Mr Portman 
may possibly have been a single one that had come oversea from 
the mainland of Asia. 

Another 4-Pudikwar account of the origin of the first woman 

Kolotat, is as follows; “At first there were no women, only meh, , 

A man called Xo/otat came to live in the A-Pudikwar country, 
Ta,Peiie (Sir Monitor Lizard) caught him and cut off his genitals 
arid made him into a woman. She became his wife: Their 
children were the first of the ancestors ( Zomo-a).” 

This is the small platform of sticks placed near o1 above the fire, on which the 
natives keep their food, and on which they often place objects that they desire to gry. 
2 Notes on the Languages, ete. p, 227. 

Another account given by members of the A-Pudcikwar 
tribe is that the first man was Tomo, or Tomo-la. One version 
that I heard is that Tomo made the world and peopled it with 
the ancestors, He made the moon (P#éi) who is his wife, 
Tomo and his wife invented all the arts of the Andamanese and ‘ 
taught them to the ancestors, After his death Zomo went to 
live in the sky, where he now is. It is Zomo who sends the 
fine weather, while Bz/## sends the bad weather, In the world 
where Zoo now lives it is always daylight and is always fine, 
When men die their spirits go up to the sky and live with 
Tomo. The man who gave me this version said that he did 
not know how Zosmo originated, but was quite sure that he was 
not made by Bik. Tomo came first and Bik came afterwards, 
The Andamanese are all the children of Zozo', : 

In disagreement with this story, another man of the same 
tribe said that Zoo was made by Bilikh, He (ie, Tomo) 
had a wife Mzta (Dove), and they were the ancestors of the 
Andamanese, Yet another informant said: “Za Tomo was 
the first man. He made bows and arrows and canoes, IlIis 
canoes were made of the wood of the Pandanus tree, Mita 
(Dove) was his wife. It was she who fist made nets and 
baskets and discovered the uses of red paint and white clay.” 
When J asked how Zomo and his wife originated my informant 
replied that he did not know, 

A spegies of bird (perhaps a woodpecker), called /g¢ in 
A-Putikwar and Koto in Aka-Kol, is often said to have been 
the son of Zomo. I was once told that Xezo was the first 
of the Andamanese, from whom they are all descended, and 
that his wife was ta, Another informant said that Pere 
(Monitor Lizard) was the first man and Jféa was his wife, 
while still another stated that Za M¢ta (Sir Dove) was 
the progenitor of the race, making the dove male instead of 
female, These different versions will give some idea of the 

} When an old man of the 4-Puctkwar tribe was giving me the information 
repeated above, an Andamanese man was with us who had been brought up as 
a Christian and had some knowledge of the doctrines of that faith. Ie explained to 
me that ‘Jomo is the equivalent of the Christian God. This man belonged to the 
Abkar-Bale tribe, : ; 7 

13-2 

contradictory nature of the statements of the Andamanese, All 
of them come fem only two tribes, the A-Pudikwar and the 
Aka-Kol, 

From the A#ar-Bale tribe I obtained the following legend, 
“Puluga made the first of the ancestors, He made one man 
and one woman called Myedi and Jrap. He gave them fire, 
and taught them how to hunt and fish, and how to make bows 
and arrows and baskets and nets. The place where they lived 
is called Jvap because they lived there*.” 

Another Akar-Bale version is that the first man was Da 
Duku (Sir Monitor Lizard), and that his wife was Jn Bain 
(Lady Civet-cat), 

Mr E. H, Man, in his account of the South Andaman, says 
that there are a few discrepancies in their accounts of the 
creation and origin of the human species, but in the main 
features all the natives with whom he spoke are agreed. The 
world was created by Pxduga, who then made a man named 
Lomo, the first of the human race. Zomo was black, like the 
present Andamanese, but was much taller and bearded. Puluga 
showed him the various fruit-trees in the jungle, which then 
existed only at Wora-emi,a spot in the country of the A-~Pucikewar 
tribe, The wife of Zomo was Cana Elewadi (Lady Crab), and 
as to her origin there are different legends, According to some, 
Puluga created her after he had taught Zomo how to sustain 
life; others say that Zomo saw her swimming near, his home 
and called to her, whereupon she landed and lived with him; 
while a third story represents her as coming pregnant to 
Kyd Island, where she gave birth to several male and female 
children, who subsequently became the progenitors of the 
present race, Zomo had two sons and two daughters by 
Cana Elewad?; the -names of the former were Béyo-/a and 
Boro-la, and of the latter Rze-/a and Cormi-la, 

A story that tells how Zomo came to his end states that 

1 These names are common personal names among the aborigines of the present 
day. Mr Portman derives Myali from nam-da, the name of a tree, and /rap from 
pira-da meaning ‘“sdattered,’ but these derivations are far from being authenticated. 
(Portman, Notes on the Languages of the South Andaman Group of Tribes, p. 70.) 

4 The plage called Jraf is at the north end of Havelock Island. 

one day, while hunting, he fell into the creek called Vara-tig.jig 
and was drowned. He was at once transformed into a /ara- 
duku (which Mr Man translates as “cachalot”), Cana Elewadt, 
ignorant of the accident that had befallen her husband, went in 
a canoe with some of her grandchildren to ascertain the cause of , 
his continued absence; on secing them, Kavra-duhu upset thelr 
skiff and drowned his wife and most of her companions. She 
became a small crab, of a description still named after her, 
elewadi, and the others were transformed into lizards (duh). 
Anothe? version of this story is that, wearied with an unsuc- 
cessful day's hunting, Jomo went to the shore, where he found 
a didi (Pinna) shell-fish ; while playing with it, it fastened on 
him, and he was unable to free himself until a dean (Para- 
doxurus) seized the dédi and liberated him at the expense of 
one of his members. Shortly after this he saw his wife and 
some of their children coming after him in a canoe; unwilling 
that they should become aware of the misfortune that had 
befallen him he upset the canoe, drowning its occupants and 
himself, He then became hara-duku, and the others dk, which 
are now plentiful in the jungles’, 

In some of the preceding legends reference is made to 
Bitiku ov Puluga. There is a very general belief, in all parts 
“of the islands, that in the time of the ancestors, Bilsku or 
Puluga \ived on earth, Each tribe has at least one spot in 
its territory that is pointed out as the place where Bi/ihu (or 
Puluga) lived. In some tribes there are three or four such 
places, each of which is claimed as the original home of Bilihy 
by the people living in the neighbourhood, In many cases the 
name of the spot contains a reference to the legend, as Pu/uga 
Pod-barai} (the village of Puluga) in Akar-Bale or Bilikn era-poy 
(the cave of Biviku) in the North Andaman, Fe 

I was able to obtain a few legends relating to the time when 
Biliku lived on earth, though there were probably many more 
that I'was not fortunate enough to hear, ! 

The following is an Afa-Jeru legend : , 

“In the time of the ancestors Biliky lived at Arkol, One 
day the people caught a turtle and brought it to the camp. 

4 1 Mah, op cit, ps 164. ? 

Bilthy’ was »sitting there, They asked her if she would eat, 
some of it. Sle said’ No They put the meat in the roof 
of the hut and went away. When they had gone Biliku ate 
the whole turtle, Then she went to sleep, The people came 
back and found the turtle gone. They said ‘Bi#tku has eaten 
jit? They left the camp and all went to Tedi-céro, ‘They left 
Biliku asleep. Some of the people went to hunt for turtle, 
Their canoe passed near Ar-fol, Biliku saw the people in the 
canoe, She called to them and asked to be taken with them. 
The people refused saying ‘You ate up all the turtle’ Bedku 
had a round stone and several de shells (pearl shells), She 
threw the shells at the people in the canoe, The first shell 
did not hit them but came back and fell at her feet; and so 
also with the second, Then B:éiku got very angry and threw 
a third time. The shell struck the canoe and killed all the 
people in it, The canoe and its occupants became a reef of 
rocks that is still there, The other people at Zedé-iro called 
across to Biliku saying ‘Come over here’ She answered ‘Very 
well! I am coming.’ She took the stone that she had and 
put it in the sea, and it floated. She got on to ,it to cross 
over, When she had got half way across Biviku and her stone 
sank in the sea, They became two big rocks that are there 
still.” This legend refers to the west coast of the North 
Andaman. ‘The pearl shells that Bi/su throws seem to be 
lightning, and the round stone the one that she rollg about to 
make thunder, 

A few other statements about Bidiku and Tarai fiom the 
four tribes of the North Andaman are given below just ag 
they were taken down in my note-books, 

(1) “Bitiku lived at Pura-’va-poy in the time of the an- 
cestors, Her husband was Perjide and her children Zofatmo, 
Mite (cicada) and Tarai, She made the sun and the moon. 

‘It was she who first invented all the things that are now 
made and used by women, such as baskets, nets, etc., ‘and it 
as ghe who discovered fire, and who first discovered the 
use of edible roots such as Aonmo and sino (two species of 
Dioscovea).” 
(2) “Biliku used to: live at Caura, She had a husband 
, . 

Tarat and a son Perjido, and a daughter Mite, She used to 
live only on certain vegetable foods, Ygito, pata, but, co, kanmo 
and ¢mino and athers. It was Biliku who made the peig (the 
forest, ¢#-wtku), She began at Caura” 

(3) “Biliku lived at Ar-Kol in the time of the, Sacadtork: 
Her husband was Tarai and their children were “the birds,. 
Toro, Taka, Cotot, Pornatoho, Kelil, Mite, Coptura, Benye, 
Birathoro, Cereo, Milidu, Bobelo, Kolo, and Teo.” (Aka. ert) 

(4) “Biliku lived at Poroket. She was unmarried. She 
had a son Perfido, and her other children were TZorod, Celene, 
Corot and Core’, (These four are the names of birds.) It was 
Perjide who invented all the aits of the Andamanese such as 
their bows and arrows, etc.” (Aka-Bo?.) 

(5) “Bikku used to live at Peé-meo with her husband Jorg 
(a bird), She used to eat /to, and when anyone else ate that 
root she was angry, Tara? lived at Caroy ya with his wife Keltt 
(a bird). He ate only mikulu.” (Aka-Kora) 

(6) “Tarai has very long legs and a short body. He used 
to live on a small island beyond Interview Island, which is now 
submerged. When Zarai goes to sleep he breathes very heavily 
and this makes the wind.” 

The next is an Aka-Kede legend, “In the days of the 
ancestors Bilika lived at Purum-at-cape in the Aka-Kede 
countiy, with her husband Porgkui One day Porokul was 
out hunting, He returned with a pig that he had killed and 
came to the creek on the other side of which was his home 
(Cott-ter-bult Buliz), Laden as he was with the pig he could 
not swim across the creek, itika was sleeping, but her 
children were playing near and saw their father on the other 
side of the creek. They ran and told their mother that their 
father was coming but could not cross the creek, Jilika went 
and lay down on one bank of the creek and stretched out her 
leg so that it reached the other bank. /grekud walked across 
her leg and so reached home.” 

While it is clear from this legend that Bilika was of f Super 
human size, the same was also true of her husband, if we may 
judge from another legend. “Porekul made for himself a bow 
(of the large southern pattern), with which to,shoot pig, At 

this time the sky was low down near the earth, only just above 
the tops of the trees. ‘When Parekh! had finished his bow he 
lifted it upright. The top of it struck the sky and lifted it up 
to its present position where it has remained ever since,” 

In another legend from another part of the Ata-Kede tribe 
Bilika is spoken of as being male, “Bi/ika lived at Peroy-et-to 
with his wife Ize, They had a child. The ancestors ate 
Bilika’s food, lotto and hata and other plants, B2/éka was very 
angry. Ue used to smell their mouths to see if they had eaten 
his food. When he found a man or woman who had done so 
he would cut his throat. The ancestors were very angry with 
. Bilika, because he killed the men and women when they ate his 
foods, They all came together and killed Besa and his wife 
Mite. Maia Burio (a species of fish) took the child (of Bidika) 
away to the noith-east.” 

Owing to my lack of knowledge of the Aka-Kede language 
there are some points of the above legend that remain obscure, 
I think that the child of Bitita is also named Biltka, and that 
it is he (or she) who now lives in the north-east and sends the 
storms. The plants (loco, kata, etc.), called here the “food” of 
Bilika, are those mentioned in the last chapter as specially 
belonging to Bika, who is angry when the natives eat them, 
As regards the name, Mie, of Bitika’s wife, I do not know 
whether this is the name of the bronze-winged dove, or of the 
cicada, In some of the Andamanese languages the names of 
these two, are very similar, the only difference being a very 
glight one in the way of pronouncing the two vowcls, F 
1x The A-Pudcikwar people who live on the east coast of 
Baratang Island say that in the beginning the ancestors lived 
at a place called Wota-entz, and Biltk lived opposite to them 
across thé strait at a place called Zo/-/'oko-tima, In a rock 
at Wota-emi there is a large peculiarly shaped hollow, This is 
said to be where 27/2 used to sit when he was on earth. 

1 An Akar-Bale legend is as follows. “In the days of the 
ancestors Puluga lived at /#a off the east coast of Henry 
Lawrence Island and the ancestors lived at Puluga Pod-baraiy 
he village of Puduga) on ‘the main island just opposite to 
ta, Puluga was always getting angry with the ancestors, 

because they dug up yams and ate dakan (Hutada scandens) 
and darata (Caryota sobolifera). When he was angry he used 
to destroy their huts and property. So the people sent him out 
of the world, saying ‘We do not want you here, You are always 
angry with us.” x/uga went away to the north-east.” 

It is worth while to note that Silai is north-cast from Puluga 
Lod-baraij, just as Tol-l’oko-tima is north-east from Wota-emi, 
In both cases there is a narrow strait between the place where 
the ancestors lived and the home of Pulaga or Bitih. 

There are a number of different legends that relate how the 
ancestors first obtained fire’, In many of these legends there is 
a reference to Biftku or Puluga, A common statement in the 
North Andaman is that “Fire was stolen from Biliku by Mada 
Tivitmo (Sir Kingfisher)” Some of the legends give further 
details. An Aka-Cari legend is as follows: 

“ Biliku had a red stone and a pearl shell (de). She struck 
them together and obtained fire, She collected firewood and 
made a fire, She went to sleep, ite (the bronze-winged dove) 
came and stole fire, He made a fire for himsclf. He gave fire 
to all the people in the village. Afterwards fire was given to 
all the places, Each village had its own.” 

The next is an Ada-/eru version. 

“In the days of the ancestors they had no fire. Bidéku had 
fire. While Bitthy slept Maia Liréitmo (Sir Kingfisher) came 
and stole, fire. As he was taking the fire Bi/iku awoke and saw 
him, Liréitimo swallowed the fire, Biliku took a pearl shell (de) 
and threw it at Lerdstmo and cut off his head. The fire came, 
out (of his neck). The ancestors got the fire. Livtitno becamg 
a bird,” 4 

The next is also, I believe, an Aha-/ern story, “Mata 
Tiritmo (Sir Kingfisher) lived at Tolepar Buruin, * He had nb 
fire. When he caught fish he had no fire with which td cook 
it, He went to the place where Cokdura (heron) lived. There 
was nd fire there. Zirztizo took some rotten wood of the pi#% 

1 Until the settlement of Europeans on the islands the Andamanese had no 
knowledge of any means of producing fire, It is necessary to remember this to 
understand some of their legends which relate how in the time of the ancestors the 
fire was very nearly Jost in a heayy starm, 

tree and hit it on a rock, and thus made fire. He gave fire to 
Coktura. Cokdura gave fire to Totemo (a species of kingfisher). 
Totemo gave it to all the others. 

A slightly different and less detailed version of the same 
story is as follows: 

“Tivitmo made fire, Totemo stole fire (from Tiritimo) and 
gave it to Mido (Rail), Maite gave fire to all the people,” 

The next version, which was taken down in Aha-Jeru, I did 
not fully understand, 

“Some one shot an arrow. The arrow hit the hill of fire. 
Tirit (a species of kingfisher) found the arrow. It was on 
fire. He took the fire to his camp. He would not give fire 
to any one. The others asked him. They went to their 
homes, At night they came to Zivi%’s hut and stole fire, 
They went away, each to his own place.” 

There is a certain amount of obscurity about two other 
versions, which are given in a translation as nearly literal as 
possible, “Mata Dik (Sir Prawn) made fire. Some onmo 
(yam) leaves caught fire, being dry. Mata Dik made a fire, 
Mata Dik slept, Mata Totemo (Sir Kingfisher) stole fire and 
ran away, Maia Totemo made a fire. He cooked fish, When 
he had eaten, he slept. Maia Mite (Sir Dove) stole fire (from 
Totemo) and ran away. 

The other is as follows, “Piridé got fire from a stone, He 
threw fire at Bilika. It set some Ayumo (yam) leavgs on fire, 
Corolo (Parrot) got fire (from the burning leaves), He gave it 
to, the ancestors,” 

These two legends were taken down in Aka-Cari, but they 
are perhaps really Aka-Kora or Aka-/eru stories, I have the 
word piviét in my notes as meaning a storm, but the translation 
is doubtful. 

The next is an Aka-Kede version of what is the most wide- 
spread of the legends, 

“The ancestors had no fire. 27/ka had fire. The ancestors 
tried to steal fire from Bittka, Livtit (Kingfisher) went one 
night while Sika was sleeping and stole fire, Bika awoke 
and saw him going away with the fire, She threw a pearl shell 
(4a) at him, which cut off his wings and his tail, Livtit dived 

into the water and swam with the fire to Bez’ra-kudu and gave 
it to Tepe. Tepe gave fire to Mite (the bronze-winged dove). 
Mite gave it to the others'.” 

An Aka-Kede legend of the origin of the sun may con- 
veniently be given in this place, as it is connected with the 
possession of fire by Bilika, “Bilika made fire of perm wood, 
One day, when she was very angry, she started throwing fire 
about, One large fire-brand she threw into the sky, and there 
t became the sun,” This legend explains the name of the 
place Purum-at-dape, at which Bilika is said to have lived when 
on earth. Pzrun is the name of a tree, not identified; a# means 
either “fire” or “fire-wood,” and cage means a village or a hut, 
The whole word therefore means “Purvi fire village,” 

I did not obtain any legend of the origin of fire from the 
Oko-fuwot and Afka-Kol tribes, but a version from each of 
these tribes has been given by Mr Portman, A translation of 
Mr Portman’s Okg-/uwod story is as follows’ “Mym djrit® 
stole a fire-brand from Kuro-t’on-mika while Bilik was sleeping. 
He gave the brand to the late Zed, who then made fire at 
Karat-tatak-emt.” 

Mr Portman’s Aka-Ko/ story is somewhat obscure, “Bik 
was sleeping at Yo/-d'oko-tima, Luratut (Kingfisher) took away 
fire to Oko-emt. Kolotat went to Min-igy-ta (taking with him 
fire from Oko-emi). At Min-toy-ta the fire went out. Kglotat 
broke up the charred firewood and made fire again (by blowing 
up the embers). They (the people there) became alive. Owing 
to the fire they became alive, The ancestors (/ayd/) thus got 
fire at Miz-toy-te village.” 

From the A-Pudikwar tribe I only obtained one version of 
the fire legend, “When the ancestors lived at Wota-euti, Bilik 
lived at To/-/'oko-tima across the strait, In those days the 
ancestors had no fire. z/ik took some wood of the tree 
called erat and broke it and made fire for himself. Laratut 
(Kingfisher) came to Tg/-/’oho-tima while Bidik was sleeping and 
stole some fire, 2idik awoke and saw Luraiud, He (Bie) took 

1 T understood that Lirt, by the loss of his wings and tall, became a man, 

2 Portman, loc, cid, 
5 Mone is # title indicating respect, and Miri# ts the imperial pigeon. 

up a lighted brand and threw it at Lwratet, It hit him in the 
back of the neck and burnt him. Zwratut gave the fire to the 
people at Wota-emi. Bilik was very angry about this and went 
away to live in the sky.” 

The kingfisher of the story (Aécedo beavani?) has a patch 
of bright red feathers on its neck, This is where it was burnt 
by the brand thrown by Bitzh, 

Mr Portman gives a slightly different version from the game 
tribe, “Bi/zk was sleeping at 7o/-l'oko-tima. Luratut went to 
bring fire, He caught hold of the fire, and in doing so burnt 
Bitik, Bilik awoke and seized some fire. He hit Luvatut with 
the fire Then he hit Zaréa/ (a fish) with the fire. Calter 
(another species of kingfisher) caught hold of the fire. He gave 
it to the ancestors at Wota-emz. The ancestors made fires,” 

From the Azar-Bale tribe I obtained the following legend : 
“The people had no fire, Dzm-dord (a fish) went and fetched 
fire from Jereg-l'ar-mugu (the place of departed spirits), He 
came back and threw the fire at the people and burnt them, 
and marked them all. The people ran into the sea and became 
fishes, Diw-deri went to shoot them with his bow and arrows, 
and he also became a fish.” This story is supposed to account 
for the bright colouring of certain species of fish. 

Mr Portman gives a somewhat similar version from the 
game tribe*, Dim-dora (a fish), a very long time ago, at 
Keri-l'oy-tower, was bringing fire from Puluga's platform (fire- 
place), He, taking the fire, burnt everybody with it. Bolub 
and Zarker and Bitidau fell into the sea and became fishes. 
They took the fire to Rokwa-/ar-toya village and made fires 
there.” 

Another Ahar-Bale legend is that fire was given to the first 
ancestors (Da Duku and Jn Bain) by Puluga. Still another is 
that fire was obtained by the ancestors from Aga, the skink 
(Mabuia tyteri). The mist that is often seen hanging over the 
jungle in small patches, after rain or at dawn, is said to’ be the 
smoke of Aga’s fire. An island in the Archipelago is called 
Aga l'ed-baray, Aga's village. 

1 Portman, Zac, ctt, 9 Jbid. 

Mr Portman gives an Aka-Bea legend, which, however, 
relates that the events took place at Wota-emd in the A- 
Putikwar country? 

“ Puluga was asleep atTol-l oko-tima, Luvatut came, stealing 
fire, The fire burnt Pxduga. Puluga awoke. Puluga seized 
some fire. Taking the fire he burnt Luvadut with it. Luratut 
took the fire. He burnt Zar-éeker (another kind of kingfisher) 
with it in Wota-em? village, The ancestors lit fires, They (the 
ancestors) were the Zomo-a.” 

Mr Man gives three different versions of legends as to the 
origin of fire, According to the first of these, Puduga, after he 
had made the first man, Zome, gave him fire and taught him 
its use, Pxdyga obtained fire by stacking in allernate layers 
two kinds of wood known as cgr and der, and then bidding the 
sun to come and sit on or near the pile until she ignited it, 
after which she returned to her place in the sky’) The second 
version is that Pu/uga came to Tomo with a spirit named Lad? 
Puya Ablola to instruct Tomo, who at his direction, prepared 
a pyre and then struck it, on which the fire was kindled and 
Puya Ablola proceeded to teach him how to cook food’, This 
legend contains an obvious contradiction, Lat? Puya Ablola, as 
is shown by the name itself (Lad? =the late), is the name of 
some one who is supposed to have lived and died and so 
become a spitit, Yet at the same time Tomo is supposed to 
have been the first of the Andamanese, Thore is the possi- 
bility, however, that this inconsistency is due not to the natives 
themselves, but to Mr Man’s transcription. It is possible that 
the legend is that fire was discovered and was given to the 
ancestors' (the Zoo) by a person who, being dead, is now 
Lati1Puga Ablola, but who was then alive and one of the 
ancestors (Zone) themselves, 

A. third legend about fire given by Mr’ Man is associated by 
him with another legend about a flood that once overwhelmed 
the ancestors, According to Mr Man’s version the fires were 
all extinguished by the flood, so that the few survivors were left 
without fire, “At this juncture one of their recently deceased 

1 Portman, doc, cit. 3 Man, of. ctf. p. 164, 3 Ibid. 

friends appeared in their midst in the form of a bird named 
Luraiut, Seeing their distress he flew up to Moro, the sky, 
where he discovered Puluga seated beside his fire; he there- 
upon seized and attempted to carry away in hia‘beak a burning 
log, but the heat, or weight, or both, rendered the task im- 
possible, and the blazing brand fell on Pega, who, incensed 
with pain, hurled it at the intruder; happily for those con- 
cerned, the missile missed its mark and fell near the very 
spot where the survivors were deploring their condition, As 
Luraiut alighted in their midst at the same moment, he 
gained the full credit for having removed the chief cause of 
their distress)” 

“We may now consider a group of legends that relate how 
a great catastrophe overwhelmed the ancestors, In many of 
the versions the legend relates how the ancestors were trans- 
formed into animals. Some of the legends are connected 
with Bitku or Peuluga and others are connected with the first 
discovery of fire, Beginning with the North Andaman, the 
following is, I believe, an Aka- Sern version. ~ “M22 Cara once 
broke some firewood in the evening (while the cicada was 
singing). A great storm came and killed many people, who 
were turned into fishes and birds. The water rose up till it 
covered the trees, AZijnt Cara and Mimi Kota took the fire 
and went up the hill to the cave at Yaram, They carried the 
fire undet a cooking-pot. They kept the fire alight iy the cave, 
until the storm was over." ‘ 

Another Aéa-Jeru legend was taken down hurriedly and the. 
full details were not obtained. “The people made a noise in 
the evening when AZtze (the cicada) was singing, Jive went 
to see her mother Ditku. Her mother saw her eyes and 
face, She looked bad. Her eyes were red (with weeping), 
Biliku was very angty. There was a big storm and heavy 
rain. Biliky threw her pearl shells (lightning), She went,mad. 
She destroyed the whole world. Bite went up to live’in the 
sky. The earth was bare (literally, empty), One day Bildkn 
dropped a Dipterocarpus seed from the sky, Out of this all the 
different kinds of tree grew, and the earth was again covered with 

1 Man, op. eit, ps 167. 

forest.” There was more of the legend, which I was unable at 
the time to understand, and which I did not hear again, My 
informant added “It was on this occasion that Maia Taolu 
saved the fire,” ‘ 

An Aka-Cari legend relates how the birds and beasts and 
fishes arose. “Mata Dik (Sir Prawn) once got angry and threw 
fire at the people (the ancestors), They all turned into birds 
and fishes, The birds flew {fto the jungle. The fishes jumped 
into the sea, Jaia Dik? himself became a large prawn which 
is still called by the same name.” In connection with this 
legend it must be remembered that it was Mata Dik, according 
to one legend, who first discovered the use of fire, One version F 
of the story said that he made fire by striking a piece of pardyo 
wood. Then he threw the burning wood about amongst the 
ancestors and they turned into birds and fishes, 

An Afka-feru version is very similar, “The people were all 
asleep. Maia Kolo (Sir Sea-eagle) came and threw fire amongst 
them. They awoke in a fright and all ran in different direc- 
tions. Some ran into the sea and became fishes and turtle; 
others ran into the jungle and became birds,” 

The Aka-Kede version of the catastrophe that overtook the 
ancestors is as follows. “It was at the place called Czet, The 
people collected a lot of honey, They refused to give any to 
Kopo-tera-wat (a pid, not identified) The latter got very 
angry, and in the evening, when the cicade were singing he 
made a great noise and disturbed their song. Then there arose 
a great storm, and it rained very heavily, and the sea rose 
over the land, It rose very rapidly till only the top of a big 
Dipterocarpus tree showed above the water. The people took 
refuge in the branches of this tree, Jima Mite (Lady Dove) 
managed to rescue some fire and keep it alight under a cooking 
pot. The waters at length subsided, ‘Then the people did 
not know how to get down from the tree, Mima Caramt-lebeh 
made a long piece of string and with this she lowered the people 

1 Dik was one of the ancestors, Ile was 2 glant and was so big that he could go 
inio the deepest water and never needed a canoe, Fie used to shoot dugong and 
porpoise with his bow and arrow. (The natives shoot small fish with 9 bow and 
arrows, but large fish and dugong and porpoise they take with harpoons.) 

safely to the ground.” The darami-debek, which was not identified, 
is a species of bird that lives, so thé natives say, only at the top 
of the very tallest trees of the forest. 

An Aka-Kol version of the same legend is as follows: “At 
first there were no birds in the jungle and no fish in the sea. 
The ancestors were playing one evening and making a noise 
while the peti (cicada) was singing, Then Bivk got angry and 
sent a great cyclone. All the people were turned into birds 
and fishes and turtles and jungle beasts,” 

There is an A-Puéikwar legend that, in the days of the 
‘ancestors, there was a big cyclone. There was a flood ats 
Wota-emt and the water rose up over the trees. Some of the 
ancestors climbed up into a big Dipzerocarpus tree and remained 
there till the waters had subsided. I was not able to hear any 
more detailed version of the legend. 

«The following legend explaining how the ancestors were 

turned into animals was told me by an A-Pudikwar man, but 
it is probably really of Akar-Bale origin, 
+ "Tt was in the days of the ancestors, Za Kolwg¢ (Sir 
Tree-lizard) went over to a big meeting at Ted-juru (in the 
Archipelago). There was a lot of dancing. Kg/ogt decided 
to give a big dancing party of his own, He invited everybody 
and they all came to his place. g/wot danced a great deal, 
He began to get wild. All the people were afraid, because he 
was very strong, They caught hold of him by the arms. Aydeor 
got very angry. He threw the people fiom him. “He threw 
them so violently that some fell in the sea and became fishes 
and turtle, Others fell on different islands and became birds and 
animals, No one could hold Ko/wet, At last Berep (a species 
of crab) caught hold of his arm and would not let go, And thus 
Berep stopped him, Before this there had been no birds in the 
jungles nor any fish in the sea.” 

A more complete version of this story was obtained from 
the Akar-Bale tribe. “Da Tighul (Sir Dugong) took all the 
“people to dance at Kwaito, In Bain (Lady Civet-cat) told 

aie Kwekgl (Sir Tree-lizard) that people were coming from 
™ Lav-mugn to dance and that Da Karami‘ would quarrel with 
1 Karam? is the name of a bird that was not identified, 

him. Da Kwokg replied ‘Oh! 1 don't care, I can fight all 

those people easily enough?’ All the people came together for 

the dance and Karami quarrelled with Kwehel, The latter got 
very angry. The people were afraid, Tigdu/ (Dugong) caught 
hold of Kwokol by the arm. Kwekel threw him from him with 
such force that Zégdud fell into the sea and became a dugong. 
Then Koturag-boa caught hold of Kwekel and Kwok! threw 
him into the jungle. zeke? threw all the people into the 
sea or into the jungle and they became birds and beasts and 
fishes. No one could hold him. Da Kvzwoked went away to 
Teb-juru, The people told Da Berag (Sir Crab) what had 
happened at Kwazto and how no one could hold Da Kwok. 
Dé Berag went after him to 7eb-juru. Da Kwoekgl had covered 
himself with Aodod (ved paint). Da Berag pretended that he 
wanted some paint to put on his upper lip, saying that he was 
sick. There was no more red paint in the place, so Da Kwekgl 
said ‘You had better come and take some off me! Da RBerag’ 
put his nose to Kwekel’s arm as though to get some paint, and , 
bit deeply into Kwekol’s shoulder, Kzwekel could not get loose, 
and so he died. The people at Zebjuru attacked Da Berag 
and beat him, They could not kill him, because his skin was 
too hard, so they threw him into the sca, When Kroghel's 
mother, Kegya, came and found her son dead she was very 
angry, She wept for a long time. Then she went into the 
jungle and cut the plant déw/ which belongs to /Puduga, 

Puluga was angry because the ¢y/w/ was cut and sent a big 
storm which killed egya and all the other people in that 

place,” 

Mr Man records another version of this legend. 

“To explain the origin of certain fish, they say that one day 
before the Deluge, Maca Ko/wot went to yisit an encampment 
of the Tomo/a situated in the Archipelago. While engaged in 
his song the women, through inattention to his instructions, 
marred the effect of the chorus, so, to punish them, he seized 

1 Koturag-boa is the Akar-Bale name for a huge legendary animal. 

2 When a man has killed another, eithet in a personal or a tribal quariel, he has 
to observe several customs of which one is to keep himself painted with red paint for 
several weeks. . 

BA, 14 

his bow, whereupon the whole party in tertor’fled in all direc- 
tions ; some escaping into the sea were changed into dugongs, ' 
porpoises, sharks, and various other fish which till’ then had 
‘ not been seen},” 

Mr Man gives still another version of the same story. “One 
day, at the commencement of the rainy season, a ¢omola named 
Berebi came to visit Keleot's mother, Cana Erep, with thé express 
intention of seeing her son, of whom he was extremely jealous. 
When he appeared Beredi treacherously bit him in the arm, but 
his teeth became fixed in the flesh and he was therefore unable 
to detach himself from his victim, whose friends promptly 
avenged his murder, and disposed of the corpses by throwing ' 
them into the sea. (Ke/we?, after death, was transformed into a 
species of tree-lizard, which is still named after him, and Berebé 
became a fish called Koyo, which is armed with a row of 
poisonous barbs in its back.) The bereaved mother, in her rage, 
grief and despair, committed various acts, against which Z ome 
had been warned by Puiuga, and while so doing incited others 
to follow her example by the following words :— 

@, 2, é, dia ra-gumul 2ab-dala, 
e, ¢, ¢, yul kaja pif pugathen, 
e, &, ¢, yul coaken toatken, 

e, &, ¢, yl boarato aga-kolaken, 
@, ¢, &, yul gono boayken, 

4, ¢, & yud toy coara boayken, 
6 e, & wig arlot prlaifoken. 

The translation of which is :— 

e, e, ¢ (sobbing)—My grown-up handsome son, 
7 ” Buin the wax, 
‘ Grind the seed of the takan (Entada), 
is » Destroy the darata (Caryota), 
a » > Dig up the govo (yam), 
i n Dig up the dat? (yam), 
. ” Destroy everything.” 

” > 

Thereupon Pxluga was exceeding wroth, and sent the flood, 
that which destroyed all living things with the exception of two 
men and two women, } 

Man, op. cif, p. 171. 

. 

“This tradition i is preserved i in the following lines -— 

" Keladoat tbajt lar tora, 
Ra-gumul ab-gorga en ig-boadt 
Ra-gumul le liga hoarna 
Ra-guinul ab-gorka 

Toala arbo eb dagan toarpo. 

* 

The meaning of which is :— 

Bring the boat to the beach 
I will see your fine grown-up son, 
The giown-up son who threw the youths (into the sea) 

The fine grown-up son, 
My adze ts iusty, I will stam my lips with his blood. 

In this, as in all their songs and chants, a good deal is left to 
the imagination, but from their explanations which have been 
given by the aborigines, the following appear to afford some light 
on the subject :—Bereb:, being jealous of the renown Ko/wet had 
won for himself by his numerous accomplishments and great 
strength, took advantage of meeting him and his mother one day 
on the water to ask them to let him enter their boat. On thei 
complying with his request, he provided himself with a rusty 
adze and hone, remarking on the rusty condition of the former ; 
then taking Ko/vet by the arm he sniffed it from the wrist to the 
shoulder as if admiring the development of the muscles; while 
doing so he muttered the threat of staining his lips with blood, 
which he shot tly after fulfilled in the manner already described!” 

As the songs given in this legend are in the Adar-Bale 
language’ (Southern dialect), it is probable that the legend is 
an Akar-Bale one, It is really another version of the legend 
already given. 

Another Akar-Bale story tells how the first ancestors Duku, 
the monitor lizard, and, Barz the civet-cat, managed to keep the 
fire alight when a flood overwhelmed them, “One day in the time 
of the ancestors there came a great storm, and the water rose 
over the land. The rain put out the fires, Da Duku (Sir 
Monitor Lizard) took a smouldering log and tried to climb upa 
tree with it. He could not climb with the fire in his hand, His 
wife Jn Bain (Isady Civet-cat) took the fire from him and took it 

2 Man, op. cit. ppi 167—169. 

up to the top of a hill and there kept it alight till the rain stopped 
and the water went away. The hill is called Bain (ttdapa 
(Bain’s fire) to the present day.” The hill is a rather steep-sided 
hill of no great height in Havelock Island. 

Mr Portman? connects the story of the flood with the story 
of the dispersion of the ancestors over the islands, Referring to 
the names of the tribes he says, “The Andamanese state that 
these names were given to the different tribes by Mata Tomo-la 
when they were dispersed after a cataclysm. They have a 
tradition that this group of tribes was once all one tribe, and 
that the Andaman Islands were much farger than at present. 
Some great cataclysm occurred during which part of the islands 
subsided and many aborigines were drowned, the remainder 
being separated into different territories as at present by the 
orders of Maia Tomo-la, apparently the chief at that time of the 
collected tribe. (The above is of course a matter-of-fact version 
of the fanciful and impossible legends of the Andamanese.)” 

The dispersion legend in the South Andaman js connected 
with the name of the A-Puctkwar tribe, The name (of which 
the Aka-Bea equivalent is Aka-Bojig-yab) means “those who talk 

' the original language,” it being believed that the A-Pudihwar 
language was the one originally spoken by the ancestors, 

The only version of the dispersion legend that I heard was 
from the Aka-Kede tribe, It was to the effect that Bivika once 
seized all the ancestors and put them in a netted bag (such as 
the natives use for carrying small objects of various kinds). She 
(or he) took them out a few at a time and put them in different 
parts of the country, where their descendants have been ever 
since, 

Mr Man speaks of a legend of how the tribes came to be 
dispersed over the islands, From his account it would scem 

‘that there were two different dispersions, one before the Deluge, 
and a second after it. Myr Man’s account is as follows, “ Z'omo 
lived to a great age, but even before his death his offspring ‘became 
so numerous that their home could no longer accommodate 
them. At Putuga’s bidding they were furnished with all 
necessary Weapons, implements, and fire, and then scattered in 
1 Notes on the Languages, ete, pr 27+ 

pairs all over the country. When this exodus occurred Puluga 
provided each party with a distinct dialect, It would almost 
seem that, without straining the legend to suit facts, we might 
discern in this a faint echo of the Biblical account of the confusion 
of tongues and dispersion at Babel!,” 

“ Consequent on the disappearance of Tomo and his wife, the 
duties of headship over the community at MWota-eni devolved on 
one of their grandchildren, named Ko/zvg?, who was distinguished 
by being the first to spear and catch turtles, The /omo/a remained 
on the islands long after Zozzo’s transformation, but after Kafzwee's 
death, according to one legend, they grew disobedient, and as 
Puluga ceased to visit them, became more and more remiss in 
their observance of the commands given at the creation. At last 
Puluga's anger burst forth, and, without any warning, he sent a 
great flood that covered the whole land, and destroyed all living, 
Four persons (two men, Lora-lola and Poi-lo/a, ancl two women, 
Ka-lola and Rima-lola), who happened to be in a canoe when the 
catastrophe occurred, were able to effect an escape, When the 
waters subsided, they found themselves near Wota-eui, where 
they landed and discovered that every living thing on earth had 
perished; but Prdugea re-created the animals, birds, etc.4” 

“When, for the second time in their history, their numbers 
had increased to so great an extent that it became impossible for 
them to remain together in one spot, an exodus, similar to the 
first, took place ; each par' ty being furnished with fire and every 
other essential, started in a different direction, and on setUing 
down adopted a new and distinct dialect. ‘hey each received a 
tribal name, and from them have sprung the various tribes still 
existing on the islands’” 

In the Southern tribes there is a legend to account for the 
origin of night, The following version was obtained from the 
A-Putikwar tribe. “In the carly days ofthe world, in the time 
of the ancestors, there was no night; it was always day. Zz 
Petie (Sir Monitor Lizard) went into the jungle lo dig up yams. 
He found some yams, He also found some resin (ze), and a 
cicada (voto). He brought them to the camp of the ancestors at 

1 Man, of c#t, p, 166, Q Did. 
5 Man, of, ed, ps 169. 

Wota-emt. He sat down and the people came round him. Za 
Petie took the cicada and rubbed it between his hands and 
crushed it, As he did this the cicada uttered its cry, Then the 
day went away and it was dark, Jt remained dark for several 
days. The ancestors came together and tried to get back the 
day. They made torches of resin, and danced and sang songs, 
First Kotare (a bird) sang a song, but he could not get back the 
daylight, Then Buz (a beetle?) sang, but the day would not 
come, Then Pecergl (the bulbul, Otocompsia cmeria) sang, and 

. after him Koo (a bird), but both in vain, Then Xgyore (a species 

of ant) sang a song and morning came, After that, day and 
night followed one another alternately.” 

A similar legend was obtained from the Akar-Bale tribe. 
"Da Teyat lived at Golugma Bud. He went fishing one day 
and got only one small fish of the kind called ¢elau (Giyphidodon 
sordidus?). He turned to go home, and as he went he shot his 
arrows before him into the jungle’ Then he went after his 
arrows to find them again, As he went he spoke to the fruits of 
the jungle, asking them their names, In those days the ances- 
tors did not know the names of the fruits and trees, First he 
asked the putam, and then the gwéuba, and then the éak#, but 
none of them replied to him, Then he found his first arrow, It 
was stuck fast in a big yam (govo). He took the arrow and said 
to the yam ‘What is your name?’ At first the yam did not 
answer, Teyat turned to go away. He had gone a few steps 
when the yam called him back, saying ‘My name’ is gono! 
Teyat replied ‘Oh! I did not know, Why did not you say so 
before?’ He dug up the yam, which was a very big one, He 
went off to look for his second arrow. As he went he spoke to 
the stones of the jungle, asking their names, but none of them 
replied, Then he found his second arrow fixed in a large lump 
of resin (dug) He took the arrow, and as he was going away 

1 This is the name of some creatme that I did not identify, pahaps a kind gf spider. 

2 An Andaman Islander will often, when walking along the shove, shoot his. 
arrows befoie him, cither aiming at some abject, or trying to send each one as far as 
possible. I have never scen them do this in the yungle, for they might easily lose the 
arrows. 

® The Andamanese classify resin as a “stone” although they know its vegetable 
origin, 

ae 

the resin called him back, saying “Here! my name is éeg'; you 
can take me along with you’ So Zeya took the resin, Then 
: Teyat found a cicada (rita), and he took that also. When Zeyat 
got to the hut (4vd), everyone came to look at the things he had 
brought. He showed them the yam. He told them its name’ 
and showed them how to cook it, This was the first time that 
the ancestors ate goo. Then Teyat took in his hand the cicada 
and squashed it between his palms, As he killed it the cicada 
uttered its cry and the whole world became dark, When the 
people saw that it was dark they tried to bring back the daylight. 
Teyat took some of the resin and made torches. He taught the 
people how to dance and sing. When Da Koyoro (Sir Ant) sang 
a song the day came back, After that the day and night came 
alternately,” 

Mr Man records a different version of this story. 

“The manner in which the world was illuminated at the 
beginning is not clearly to be ascertained from their legends, for 
one story states that the sun and moon were subsequently 
created at Zomo’s request, as he found that, under the then 
existing circumstances, it was impossible to catch fish by night 
or to hunt by day; while, in direct disagreement with this, 
another story tells us that night was a punishment brought upon 
mankind by certain individuals who angered Piduga by killing a 
caterpillar. The tale informs us that the sun, one day, burned 
so fiercely as to cause great distress. Two women named Cana 
Limi and Cana Jarayud, became exceedingly irritable, and 
while in this unhappy frame of mind they discovered a caterpillar 
(gurug) and a certain plant called w/ra. By way of venting 
their spleen, one crushed the helpless grub, and the other 
destroyed the plant. These wanton acts so displeased Puduga 
that he determined to punish them, and to teach them to ap- 
preciate the privilege of daylight, which they had hitherto 
uninterruptedly enjoyed. He accordingly visited the earth with 
a long*continued darkness, which caused every one much incon- 
venience and distress, At last their chief, Maza Xekwot, to whom 
reference has already been made, hit upon a happy expedient of 
inducing Puluga to restore the former state of things by trying 
to assure him that they were quite unconcerned, and could enjoy 

G 

themselves in spite of light being withheld from them. To 
accomplish this, he invented the custom of dancing and singing, 
the result of which was that Pa/uga, finding that they had 
frustrated his ‘intention, granted, as a first concession alternate 
periods of day and night, and subsequently, moved by the 
difficulties often occasioned by the latter, created the moon to 
mitigate their troubles, It is in this way that they account for 
the same word being used to denote a caterpillar and night.” 

From the Akar-Bale tribe I obtained a legend about the 
origin of death, No other version of the same legend was 
obtained, 

“AL Joyo-l ‘ar-boy lived In Katwadi with her sons Yaranurud 
and Toau% Varamurud went to hunt pig for his mother, but 
was unsuccessful, When he came home his mother brought him 
some pork that was in the hut. As he took his knife from the 
back of his neck to cut the meat with it, he cut himself’, Then 
his mother knew that he was dead. She said to him ‘You are 
dead now.' You had better go away. We do not want you here 
any more,’ She took him up and carricd him into the jungle 
and buried him, returning home. Very soon Yaramurud returned. 
His mother exclaimed ‘Oh! I thought you had gone’ He 
replied ‘Mother, I did not die, Why did you bury me?’ But 
she knew he was dead, so she took him and buried him again. 
He came back again, This happened three times, Then 
Kalwadi took him into the jungle to a big dvmla tree (Pisonta 
excedsa), in which there was a big hole, She kicked the tree 
with her foot and said ‘You go in there’ Vavamurud went 
inside, ‘Well! Have you gone?’ his mother asked. He 
answered ‘Yes!’ ‘Tell me how the spirits (deuga) talk’ she 
asked him, and he replied ‘Zo #44? Then his mother knew 
that he was with the spirits, and said ‘Oh! my child, you are 

1 Man, of. ci, p. 173. 
2 Katwad is a small crab, yaramured ts the crow pheasant (Cents opus gndaman- 
ensis), ynd fear is the hawksbill turtle, 

Knives are generally carried slipped into a string that is ied round the neck, the 
knife, with a skewer of sharpened wood that is attached to il, hanging at the back of 
the neck, where it is casily accessible and not likely to get lost, 

4 I could obtain no explanation of the phrase, or word, 2 4iz, My informant 
only said '* That is the'way the spirits talk."” 

finished now. You will never come back again. After a few 
days Yavamurud came back (as a spirit) to see his brother Zoau,'. 
Toau was busy building a hut. When Yaramurud saw him he 
killed him. Before this there had been no death. But Jz 
Kalwadi told the people, saying ‘You see what has happened ; 
well, we shall all of us die like this, like these two have done’.” 

There is a widespread legend to account for the origin of 
creeks and islands. The following is an A-Pyéthwar version. 

“ At first there was only one big island with the sea all round 
it. There were no small islands and no creeks. Xeyoro (a species 
of ant) made a turtle net and went fishing, He caught a very 
big fish of the kind called 4o70-y7t#-¢au in his net, and dived down 
and attached a rope to its tail. The fish got very angry and made 
furious plunges to get away, striking the land in its struggles, 
and each time knocking off a bit of the land or making a 
long split. This is the origin of the smafler islands and the 
creeks,” , 

Mr Man records the same legend, but says it was Tomo who 
caught the fish. In an Akar-Bale version it was Da Pecerol 
who caught the fish (Aoroyadi), Peéeral is the bulbul (Ozocompsia 
emeria). Ihave the name £oroyadi in my notes as being Sphy- 
vaena acutipinnis, but the identification is a doubtful one, In the 
Aka-Kede tribe there is a version in which it is stated that one 
of the ancestors captured a fish called ¢alefo, This does not 
seem to be the same species of fish as that called Loro-yiti-cau or 
korogad? in the South. In the North Andaman the legend is 
that Perjido, the son of Biliku, shot a large eel (d0/) with, an 
arrow, and in its endeavours to get free from the arrow the eel 
wriggled about till it made all the creeks. 

In the Southern tribes there is a legend that relates ed the 
pig first got its senses, A version from the A-Pudtkwar tribe is 
as follows, ; 

" Ta Mita (Sir Dove) went into the jungle and found a lot of 
pigs. ‘They did not 1un away when he came because they had 
no eyes to see him, no ears to hear, and no nostrils with whichto + 
smell, They had no mouths. J@Z%a made mouths for them 
and gave them tusks which he made of debur wood. ,He made 

1 Man, of. eft. p 165, 

eyes and ears and nostrils in their heads and taught them how 
to grunt and how to sneeze}.” 

Another version from the same tribe is as follows. 

“At first the pigs had neither nose nor ears nor eyes. They 
used to stand about at Wofa-emé when the ancestors lived there, 
The people ate a great many of them, They were such a 
nuisance that Mia (Dove), the wife of Zoo, thought of a plan 
to get them out of the way. She bored holes in their heads, 
two for eyes, two for ears, and two for nostrils, The pigs ran off 
into the forest where they have been ever since.” 

I did not obtain any version of this legend from the Northern 
tribes, The Asa-Kede have a different legend about the pigs, 

“ At first there were no pigs. One of the ancestors, Mid 
Cay (Lady Civet-cat), invented a new game, and made the 
ancestors run on all fours and grunt. Those playing were turned 
into pigs, and went to live in the jungle. Jim: Cau became a 
civet-cat (¢au).” 

In the North Andaman there is a legend connected with the 
pig which explains the origin of the dugong. 

“ Perfido was the first man to catch a pig, He went into the 
forest and found a pig. Per7ido was hungry. He caught the pig 
and took it home, The pig had no eyes nor ears nor mouth, 
Perjido did not disembowel the pig, nor did he sever the joints 
of its legs) He made a fire and put the pig on it, The pig swelled 

-up in the heat of the fire and burst. This made holes in the pig’s 
head, two for ears, two for eyes, two for nostrils, The pig per- 
ceived that it was being burnt. It jumped up from the fire and 
ranaway, Perfido threw a kgdo (Licuala) leaf at it. The pig ran 
into the sea and became a dugong. The leaf became its flipper.” 

In the Aza-Cari tribe there is a legend describing the origin 
of turtles, 

“At first there was only one big turtle. He came to the 
camp of the Aka-Cart people and called them, saying ‘Bring 
your canoes and catch me’ They got into their canoes and 

1 The sneezing (the word is translated literally) is a sort of whistling noise that (he 
wild pigs make when they suspect danger, 

4 "The Andamanese always disembowel a pig and sever the joints of its legs before 
they place it on a fire. 

followed the turtle, They could not catch him, The turtle 
swam away and the canoes followed. When the canoes were 
far from land the big turtle came and upset the canoes. The 
men were all turned into turtles of the same kind and size as 
those that are seen now. The canoes (and the big turtle?) were 
turned into a reef.” 

In the South Andaman it is supposed that the custom of 
scarifying the skin was invented by the first ancestor of the 
Andamanese, the monitor lizard. An Akar-Bale version of the 
story is as follows. 

“ Duku (Monitor Lizard) lived with his wife Ban (Civet-cat), 
Duku said ‘Iam going to scarify myself’ His wife tried to 
dissuade him. He would not listen to her, He went into the 
jungle and found a piece of ‘g/va (quartz) and scarified himself 
all over, His wife was very angry and asked him why he had 
done it, Duku replied ‘I look very well like this, and you will 
see, all the other people will do the same’.” 

Mr Man gives a version of the same legend, 

“ Maia Duku, who appears to be identical with Tomo, is said 
to have been the first to tattoo himself. One day, while out on a 
fishing expedition, he shot an arrow; missing its object it struck 
a hard substance which proved to be a piece of iron, the first ever 
found, With it Dudu made an arrow-head and tattooed himself, 
after which he sang the ditty :— 

Toy ma lir pireya? ioy yitiken! toy yitthen? 
toy ma lir pireya? toy yitihen 

the interpretation of which is ’ 

‘What can now strike me? 
I am tattooed, I am tattooed!’ etc. (Da capo)!” 

It would seem that Mr Man, or else his informant, ‘was not~ 
very clear about the details of the legend. * In the South Anda- 
man scarification is never performed with an arrow-head, nor 
with any instrument of iron, but with a flake of quartz or glass, 
It is only in the North and Middle Andaman that an arrow-head 
is used for such a purpose, and even then it is only so used to 
make the big scars on the back and chest, the ordinary scarifica~ 

1 Man, of. cté. p. 170 

: 

tion being performed with a flake of stone or glass. The legend 
is certainly a Southern one, and the song given is in the Aka-Bea 
language, The accuracy of the transcription of the legend 
therefore seems very doubtful. 

Yams and honey, being two of the most important foods of 
the Andaman Islanders, are the subject of several legends, A 
common belief about yams is that they were made, or their 
qualities weie first discovered, by Bitéku or Puluga. We have 
already seen that there is a special connection between Bidiku 
(or Puluga) and the yams and other edible roots. There are 
also other legends, however, on the same subject. An account 
of the first discovery of the yam called gowo is contained in the 
Akar-Bale legend of the origin of night, already given’, 

In the North Andaman the following tale is told about the 
discovery of one kind of yam, 

“ Maia Dik (Sir Prawn) discovered homo (Dioscorea sp,), He 
was very hungry and went to look for something to eat, He 
found a very large Aezmo. There was only one denmo, Hecooked 
it in the fire and ate as much as he could, He dashed the 
remainder on a rock, and the fragments scattered everywhere and 
grew into fresh plants, After this there were plenty of kowmo 
everywhere,” 

A legend is also told in the North Andaman about the first 
discovery of another kind of yam, 

“ Maia Pulimu (Sir Fly) and Maia Motto (Sir Rail) went to 
hunt pig. They killed one pig. There was nothing to tie up 
the pig (to carry it home), AZata Putinn went to look for a 
creeper (with which to tie up the pig), He caught hold of a 
creeper and pulled it and found it was a weno (Dioscorea sp.). 
Maia Pulimu was a long time away. Maia Moito went and 
found some creeper for himself and tied up the pig and carried 
ithome, When Maia Pudimu came back he found that Mata 
Moito had gone and taken the pig, He followed him and went 
home, He showed the ancestors how to cook and eat mzno,” 

I believe that there is a fuller version of this legend, which I 
was unable, however, to obtain, Another of my informants told 
me the story as follows, 

1 Page 214. 

: 

“ Mimi Moito (Lady Rail) had a son Pudinu (Fly). Pulimu 
found a mizo in the forest and brought it to his mother. They 
roasted it in the fire.” 

Mr Man gives a story from the South Andaman, 

“Another of their antediluvian ancestors was famous for 
propagating yams. This was Maia Bumroag, who in shooting 
an arrow, struck the cieeper belonging to the favourite variety 
called goxo; his curiosity being excited he dug up the tool, 
and tasted it: the result being satisfactory, he informed his 
friends of his discovery, and they all feasted upon it; when they 
had had sufficient, he scattered the remains in different directions; 
this apparent waste so angered his mother that, on pretence of 
shaving him, she split his head open with a flint, After his death 
it was found that the act for which he had suffered had tended to 
the spread of the plant which is now plentiful.” 

In the North Andaman it is supposed that honey was 
discovered by Perjido the son of Biliku. 

“ Perjido was the first to eat honey. One day he went to 
shoot fish, He saw a nyuri (Plotosus sp.), The xyuri disappeared 
amongst the roots of the mangrove trees. /Perjido was looking 
for the fish, There was a honeycomb in a mangrove tree. 
Perjido saw its reflection in the water, He took some fire and 
tried to get the honey out of the water’. The water put out the 
fire, He could not get the honey. He went home and told his 
mother what he had been doing. She went with him aitd 
saw the honey. ‘What a fool you are’ she said, ‘don't you see 
that it is in the trees,’ Perjido took some fire and smoked out 
the bees and took the honey. After that Perjido used to go and 
collect honey. He ate it all himself’ He did not tell the others 
(the ancestors) about it. ata Porudi (Sir Frog) found out that 
Perjido was getting honey and eating it,, He went in to the 
forest to look for some, He found five or six combs, He ate 
them all and brought none home to his children. Beret (a 
smaller‘species of frog) was the child of Parvati. One day Beret 
said to his father ‘Bring us some honey. The children went 
with their father and showed him the combs in the trees, 

+ Man, of, ett. p. 170. 
3 In taking a honeycomb the natives often drive away the bees with fire or smoke, 

, 
Porubt went up the tree, and each time he ate the honey in the 
tree and did not bring any of it down for his children, Then 
Beret saw another honeycomb in a vety tall tree, He pointed 
it out to his father. Porvdd went up to get it. Beret cut the 
creeper up which his father had climbed’, Poruéd wrapped up the 
honeycomb to bring it down, Beret said ‘Father, this creeper 
is bad. How will you come down?’ Porudi replicd ‘How can 
it be bad, when I have just climbed up it?’ Berg made some 
sharp stakes of ¢g (Areca) wood, and put them round the tree, 
Porubi jumped (or fell) from the tree on to the stakes and was 
killed. Beret took the honey and ran away home.” 

In the Aéa-Cari tribe there is another legend connected 
with the frog (#g71b2) which may conveniently be given here, 

“The ancestors were at enmity with Maza Porubi. They 
went to kill him, They shot him with their arrows, but they 
could not kill him, Zaca Porudi caught hold of them all in his 
arms, and jumped into the sea, He jumped from the hil! called 
Cauanara. Fe found a big round stone (boulder) and put the 
people under it and left them there, All the people turned into 
stone, and may be seen there now. The next night some more 
of the people went to hunt turtle near Maia Porudi’s place, 
They caught a tuitle and shouted’ Maza Porudi heard them 
shouting. ‘They are coming again to kill me, he said, While 
they were catching turtle he threw a round stone at them, The 
stone sank the canoe, The canoe and the people jn it were 
turned to stone.” 

A story in which there is a connection between honey and a* 
toad is given by Mr Man, 

" Another curious fable is told to account for a drought from 
which their early ancestors suffered: it relates that once upon a 
time, in the dry season, a woodpecker discovered a black honey- 
comb in the hollow of a tree; while regaling himself on this 
dainty he observed a toad eyeing him wistfully from below, so he 
invited him to join in the feast; the toad gladly accepted; where- 
upon the woodpecker lowered a crecper, giving instructions to 

1 In climbing a tall tree the Andamanese choose a stout cane or other creeper 

depending from one of the branches of the tree, and climb up it. 
2 ‘The natives express their joy at a success in hunting by shouting, 

‘ 

his guest to fasten his bucket (dakar) thereto, and then to seat 
himself in it, so that he might be drawn up. The toad complied 
with the directions and the woodpecker proceeded to haul him 
up; but just when he had brought him near the comb he 
mischievously let go the creeper, and his confiding and expectant 
guest experienced an unpleasant fall. The trick so exasperated 
him that he at once repaired to the streams far and near in the 
island and drained them, the result of which was that great 
distress was occasioned to all the birds, as well as to the rest of 
the animate creation. The success of his revenge so delighted 
the toad that, to show his satisfaction, and to add to the 
annoyance of his enemies, he thoughtlessly began to dance, 
whereupon all the water flowed from him, and the drought soon 
terminated+,” 

One of the incidents of the North Andaman story of the frog 
(Porubi) and his son (Bere?) appears in a different story from the 
South and Middle Andaman, The following is an Aka-Kol 
version of this legend, 

“Ta Mita (Sir Dove) and Ta Koto (a species of small bird) 

- went hunting together and got a great number of pigs. Za Kato 
told 7a Mita to get some canes to tie up all the pigs, As soon 
as Za Mita had gone to look for the cane, Za Koo went up a 
big Dipterocarpus tree, taking half the pigs with him, He came 
down and took the rest of the pigs. He stayed up in the tree 
with the pigs. When 7 J¢ta came back he found that the pigs 
had disappeared. He was very angry and went home. As there 

was nothing to eat, Mita and his two children, Cada and Coda 
(two species of fish) went fishing, Xg¢o was still up the tree, 
He was cooking the pigs up there, JZ¢ta and his children passed 
under the tree and some burning resin® fell on them, In this way 
they discovered that Kgzo was in the tree, Aféza planned to 
punish Xgeo, He cut a great number of sharp stakes of Areca 
wood and fixed them all round the tree, pointing upwards, Koto 
wasasléep, A@¢¢a made the tree sink into the ground. As soon 
as it was low enough he took some water and threw it into the 

1 Man, of. cit. p. 173. 
a ‘The narrator said “resin.” The Differocarpus lee docs nol produce resin, but 
a sort of oil, The marks on the two fishes owe their origin to this incident. 

ear of the sleeping Kozo, who awoke in a fright and jumped from 
the tree, He was impaled on the stakes of wood and so died,” 

Another version of the same tale was obtained from the 
Akar-Bale tribe, 

“ Da Buinu (a species of bird) went hunting pig with Da 
Berakwe (another species of bird), and they got a large number 
of pigs. Then Berakwe said to Bumz ‘We want some cane to 
tie up all these pigs. You go and get it’? When Bam had 
gone Berakwe climbed up into a big Dzpterocarpus tree, taking 
all the pigs with him, except one very small one which he left 
behind, When Sum came back with the cane he found only 
one small pig, and he was very angry. He went home with the 
pig. Bumnu’s wife Vakoy (a species of fish) said ‘I am very 
hungry, We will go and get some fish by night’ At night 
Vakoy went out to get some fish and she passed under the tree 
where Berakwe was cooking his pigs. Some burning :esin fell 
on her and burnt her. She looked up and saw Berakewe and said 
‘Oh! there you are; you stole all my husband's pigs’ She 
went home and told Buu, In the morning Bum got up very 
early and cut a number of pointed stakes of Areca (dam) wood, 
and fixed them all round the tree where Berakwe was, with the 
sharp points upwards. Then Bum made the tree sink gradually 
into the ground. Berakwe fell from the tree on to the stakes 
and so was killed, Bm and his wife got the pigs.” 

Mr Man records a version of the same story. 

“The legend regarding the origin of the evil spirits’ known as 
Col is as follows :—Their ancestor, Mata Col, one day stole a pig 
which had been captured by Mata Kolwot, and climbed up into 
a gurjon-tree with his prize. Now Mata Kolwet was remarkable 
for his gieat strength, and being enraged, determined to revenge 
himself; he thereupon planted a number of spikes afl round the 
tree in which the thief had taken refuge, and then proceeded to 
force it into the ground. On finding that if he remained where 
he was, he must inevitably be buried alive, Maia Col sprang off 
the tree, and thereby met a more terrible fate, for he was impaled 
on the spikes, and perished miserably. His disembodied spirit 
did not pass to Caitan (Hades), but took up its abode on the 
invisible bridge, where, by Puluga's orders, numbers of his 

descendants were sent to join him, in the form of black birds 
with long tails'.” 

In reference to this version it may be noted that the Col are 
not “spirits” if that word is used to translate the native term 
éauga or lau, Col is the name of a species of bird, which I 
believe is the racket-tailed drongo, These birds, though according 
to Mr Man they live on the rainbow, are to be seen every day in 
the jungle, and may be heard calling ¢g/! dod / col / 

Throughout the Great Andaman there is a belief in a huge 
animal that haunts the jungles, or that haunted them in the days 
of the ancestors. In the North Andaman this beast is called 
Sirmu, In the days of the ancestors it is supposed to have lived 
at Ulibi-tay, where it attacked and killed any men and women 
who came in its way. No detailed legend about the Jirmu was 
obtained, 

In the Ahar-Bale language Kocurag-boa is the name of the 
same or a similar monster. In the 4-Pxdcdkwar language it is 
called Uéu. This is the name applied to two rocks of limestone 
which are situated about two or three miles south of Wota-emi, 
one being in a mangrove swamp, and the other some little way 
out in the sea, The following legend is told about these rocks, 

“In the early days of the Andamanese, Za Peéze (Sir Monitor 
Lizard), the first ancestor, went into the jungle and found a dott 
tree, up which he climbed to eat the fruit. The other people 
(who lived with him at Wota-emz') came and found him, and Ta 
Petie threw down some of the fruit to them, which they ate, The 
people began to bully Pete to make him throw down more of 
the fruit, Pezte got angry and said ‘If you bully me like that I 
will call the Uéz, and they will kill you all,’ The people only 
laughed at him, Pete called the Udy, calling ‘Dire! dire’ 
The Udu came, one male and one female. They caught all the 
people and ate them. Only Petie they did not eat because he 
was up in the high tree. The U¢e went off to cross the strait to 
Tol-t'oko-téma, They had eaten so much that they were very 
heavy and stuck in the sand and mud at the edge of the man- 
grove swamp. When Pete came down from the tree he found 
all the people gone. He said ‘Hallo! the Uéw must have eaten 

1 Man, af. c#/ p. 173+ 
BA, 15 

them all’? He went to look. He found the Uéu stuék fast at 
the edge of the mangrove swamp, so that they could not move. 
He cut open their bellies and all the people came out, for the Uéw 
had swallowed them whole. The Uéz are there to this day,” 

When elephants were first introduced into the Andamans for 
the use of the Forest Department, they were named Ue by the 
natives, and have ever since retained that name. Similarly the 
natives of the Northern tribes call them /¢rnzz. 

In the Akar-Ba/le tribe there is a legend to account for 
the origin of a rock standing in the sea at a place called ' 
Kwaito-bur. 

“Ra-gumul Kwokel went fishing with his bow and ar:ows in 
the sea. Ilis bow and arrows and he himself were turned into 
stone, and may be seen there to the present day.” 

Kwoekol is the common tree-lizard. Ra-gumul is the term 
applied to a youth or girl who has just passed through the pig- 
eating ceremony described in Chap, 1. A youth is not permitted 
to handle a bow for some days after the ceremony in question, 
A version of the same legend is recorded by Mr Man, 

“The story 1egarding certain Zomola who failed to observe 
the rules for neophytes, states that, on the day after they broke 
their fast of reg-jird (Ikidney-fat of pig), they left the encampment 
without giving notice of their intention to thei: friends, and the 
result was that, when they were missed and searched for, it was 
found that they had gone to the shore to fish, and had there met 
a sad fate; the body of one was discovered adhering to a latge 
boulder, and turned into stone, while the other, likewise in a 
stale of petiifaction, was standing eiect beside it’” 

A reef on the east side of Ritchic’s Archipelago is said to’ 
have originated as follows. 

“ The people of KwarZo went to /i/a to hunt turtle, taking two 
canoes, While they were away their wives made up a big fire 
in the evening at Kzvaido, The hunters and their canoes were 
turned to stone, and formed the reefs that are now thefe,” 

J believe that the explanation of this story is the belief that 
the moon is angry when a bright fire is visible at the time when 
he rises in the evening shortly after sunset*, 

1 Man, of. cf. p. 169. 3 Vide stepr a, pr 149 

There seems to be a legend relating to a large snake 
called gv-c#d¢ in the North Andaman, but I was not able 
to obtajn' a detailed version. The following was told me in 
Aka-Jeru, 

“ At Dalamio, in the time of the ancestors, there used to bea 
big snake of the kind called gv-¢wbz. He used to catch men and 
women when they were gathering honey, and kill them and eat 
them.” 

An Akar-Bade version is a little fuller. 

“There was a man named Biéa who went to look for honey 
in the jungle. He saw a big snake (wara-jodo) and from its neck 
was hanging a honeycomb, The snake was as big as a tree, 
‘Why don’t you make your honey in the trees?’ Beda said to 
the bees. He went home and called several of the men. They 
took their bows and arrows, They found the snake, and shot it 
with a great many arrows, They could not kill the snake, which 
ran away and was never seen again,” 

An Akar-Bale story relates how the first murder came to 

ass, 

“ Da Ko (Sir Crow) was the first of the Andamanese, He 
lived at Kared-car-buaro with his wife Jx Mud (Lady Dove). 
He had a friend, Badg:-beria (Hawk), Badgi-beria had no wife 
and was jealous of Da Ko and wanted to get his wife. When Da 
Ko knew this he was very angiy. He went into the jungle and 
hid himself, By and by he saw Badg?-beria and Mud coming 
along the path together. He took his bow and arrows and 
killed them.” 

Another Akar-Bale story about the dove is as follows, 

“Mud and Kulal were cooking pig and got very hot. They 
went to bathe and were turned into birds,” 

Mud is the bronze-winged dove, Chalcophaps indica, and 
kulad is the teal, Nettium albigulare. 

In the North Andaman there are tales about the sea-eagle 
(4glo). One is to the effect that at first he used Agd0 (Licuala) 
leaves to fly with, This was before he had wings of his own, 
Another story is as follows, , 

“Maia Kolo (Sir Sea-eagle) lived at Cona in Taw-'ra-miku, 
He had a hut in the top of a derghtato tree. He was unmarried, 

1S—2 

When the men went fishing he used to steal their wives, He 
would only take good-looking gitls, He would call out to 
a girl to come and catch hold of his foot, saying ‘I have 
a fish for you,’ If an old or ugly woman came, he would 
say ‘No! not you; go away.’ When a young woman came 
and caught hold of his foot he flew away with her to his hut in 
the tree.”

THE present chapter is devoted to an attempt to interpret 
some of the beliefs and customs of the Andaman Islanders, as 
they have been described in the earlier part of this work, By 
the interpretation of a custom is meant the discovery, not of its 
origin, but of its meaning. The system of beliefs and customs 
that exists to-day in the Andamans is the result of a long 
process of evolution. To seek the origin of these customs, as 
the word origin is here used, is to seek to know the details of the 
historical process by which they have come into existence, In 
the absence of all historical records, the most that we could do 
would be to attempt to make a hypothetical reconstruction of 
the past, which, in the present state of ethnological science, would 
be of very doubtful utility’, 

It is otherwise with the meaning of these customs, Every 
custom and belief of a primitive society plays some determinate 
part in the social life of the community, just as every organ of a 
living body plays some part in the general life of the organism, 
The mass of institutions, customs and beliefs forms a single whole 
or system that determines the life of the society, and the life of a 
society is not less real, or less subject to natural laws, than the 

1 The making of such hypothetical reconstructions of the past has been regarded 
by a number of writers as the principal if not the sole task of ethnology, My own 
view is that such studies can never be of any great scientific value, Although, within 
narrow limits, particularly when the method is applied to the facts of language and. 
material culture, it is possible to reach conclusions of some degree of probability, yet 
by their very nature all such hypotheses are incapable of verification. Moreovei, the 
purpose of scientific studies is to discover general laws, and hypotheses as to events in 
the past of which we have and can have no certain knowledge will not provide suit 
able material from which to draw generalisations. 

life of an organism. To continue the analogy, the study of the 
meaning of savage customs is a sort of social physiology, and is 
to be distinguished from the study of origins, or changes of 
custom in just the same way that animal physiology is distin- 
guished from the biology that deals with the origin of species, 
the causes of variation, and the general laws of evolution. i 

The problems that this chapter presents are therefore not 
historical but psychological or sociological. We have to explain 
why it is that the Andamanese think and act in certain ways. 
The explanation of each single custom is provided by showing 
what is its relation to the other customs of the Andamanese and 
to their general system of ideas and sentiments, 

Thus the subject of the present chapter is not in any way 
affected by questions of the historical origin of the customs with 
which it deals, but is concerned only with those customs as 
they exist at the present day. Nor are we conceined with the 
comparison of the customs of the Andamancse with those of 
other savage races, Such comparisons are not only valueless for 
our purpose, but might be misleading. To draw any valid con- 
clusion from the comparison of two apparently similar customs 
in two different societies, we must be sure that they are really 
similar, and to do this we need to know the true meaning of each 
of them considered by itself. The true comparative method 
consists of the comparison, not of one isolated custom of one 
society with a similar custom of another, but of the whole system 
of institutions, customs and beliefs of one society with that of 
another, In a word, what we need to compare is not institutions 
but soclal systems or types, 

It is often urged that in ethnology description and interpre- 
tation should be most carefully separated. So far as this means 
that the facts observed by the ethnologist should be recorded 
free from all bias of interpretation, the necessity cannot be too 
often or too strongly urged. If, however, it is meant to imply 
that efforts at interpretation are to be excluded from works of 
descriptive ethnology, there is much to be said against such an 
opinion. In trying to interpret the institutions of a primitive 
society the field ethnologist has a great advantage over those 
who know the facts only at second hand. However exact and 

detailed the description of a primitive people may be, there re- 
mains much that cannot be put into such'a description, Living, ag 
he must, in daily contact with the people he is studying, the field 
ethnologist comes gradually to “understand” them, if we may 
use the term. He acquires a series of multitudinous impressions, 
each slight and often vague, that guide him in his dealings with 
them. The better the observer the more accurate will be his 
general impression of the mental peculiarities of the race, This 
general impression it is impossible to analyse, and so to record 
and convey to others, Vet it may be of the greatest service 
when it comes to interpreting the beliefs and practices of a 
primitive society. If it does not give any positive aid towards a 
correct interpretation, it at least prevents erio1s into which it is 
only too easy for those to fall who have not the same immediate 
knowledge of the people and their ways. Indeed it may be 
urged, with some reason, that attempts to interpret the beliefs of 
savages without any first-hand knowledge of the people whose 
beliefs are in question, are at the best unsatisfactory and open 
to many possibilities of error. 

The present position of ethnological studies may wel) be 
regarded as anomalous, Many of the observers engaged in 
recording the customs of primitive people are very imperfectly 
acquainted with modern theories of sociology. One result of 
this is that they often neglect to record anything concerning 
matters that are of fundamental importance for the theorist) 
On the other hand those engaged in elaborating hypotheses do 
not, as a rule, observe for themselves ihe facts to be explained, 
but have to rely on what are in many cases imperfect documents, 
being thus unwittingly led into errors that might havé been 
avoided. In this science, as in others, if progress is to be made, 
the elaboration of hypotheses and the observation and classifica~ 
tion of facts must be carried on as interdépendent paits of one 
process, and no advantage, but rather great disadvantage, results 
from the false division of labour whereby theorists and observers, 

1 It may be worth while to mention that the interpretation of Andamanese customs 
given in this chapter was not worked ont until after I had left the islands. Ind it 
been otherwise I should have made careful enquiries into subjects which, as it was, 
escaped my notice. 

work independently and without systematic cooperation. The 
most urgent need of ethnology at the present time is a series of 
investigations of the kind here attempted, in which the observa- 
tion and the analysis and interpretation of the institutions of 
some one primitive people are carried on together by the ethno- 
logist working in the field. 

It is clear that such studies need to be based on a scientific 
and carefully elaborated method, Unfortunately ethnologists 
are not yet agreed as to the methods of their science. The 
question of method is therefore, at the present time, of the 
@reatest importance, and for this reason I have tried, in the 
present chapter, to present the argument in such a way that the 
various steps of the analysis shall be immediately apparent, so 
that the reader may be able not only to judge the value of the 
conclusions, but also to form a clear idea of the psychological 
methods by which they are reached, 

Any attempt to explain or interpret the particular beliefs and 
customs of a savage people is necessarily based on some general 
psychological hypothesis as to the real nature of the phenomena 
to be explained. The sound rule of method is therefore to 
formulate clearly and explicitly the working hypothesis on which 
the interpretation is based, It is only in this way that its value 
can be properly tested, 

The hypothesis that seems to be most usually adopted by 
English writers on anthropology is that the beliefs of savage 
peoples are duc to attempts on the part of primitive man to 
explain to himself the phenomena of life and nature, The 
student of human customs, examining his own mind, finds that 
one of the motives most constantly present in his consciousness 
is the desire to understand, to explain—in other words what we 
call scientific curiosity. He concludes that this motive is equally 
insistent in the mind of primitive man. Thus he supposes that 
primitive man, wishing to explain the phenomena of death and 
of sleep and dreams, framed a hypothesis that every man 
possesses a soul or spiritual double’, The hypothesis, once 
formulated, is supposed to have been accepted and believed 

2 Tylor, Primitive Culture, 3, 384. 

because it satisfied this need of comprehension. On this view the 
‘belief in a soul (animism) is exactly similar in character to the 
scientific belief in atoms, let us say. The same general hypo- 
thesis appears in the explanation of totemism as having arisen 
as a theory invented by primitive man in order to explain the 
phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth’, 

On this hypothesis the beliefs are primary, arising first merely 
as beliefs and then acquiring the power 1o influence action and 
so giving rise to all sorts of ceremonies and customs. Thus these 
customs are only to be explained by showing that they depend 
on particular beliefs, This hypothesis, which we may call the 
intellectualist hypothesis, has never, so far as I am aware, been 
very clearly formulated or defended, but it does seem to underlie 
many of the explanations of the customs of primitive man to be 
found in works on ethnology. , 

A second hypothesis explains the beliefs of primitive man as 
being due to emotions of surprise and terror’, or of awe and 
wonder® aroused by the contemplation of the phenomena of 
nature, 

Both these hypotheses may be held together, one being 
used to explain some primitive beliefs and the other to explain 
others’ 

Doubtless there are other psychological hypothcses under- 
lying the many attempts that have been made to explain the 
customs of primitive peoples, but these two seem to be the most 
important’ and the most widespread, They are mentioned here, 
not in order to criticise them, but in order to contrast them with 
the hypothesis to be formulated in the present chapter’, 

Stated as briefly as possible the working hypothesis here 
adopted is as follows, (1) A society depends for its existence on 
the presence in the minds of its members of a certain system of 

1 Frazer, Zofemism and Hxogamy, iV. 

4 Max Muller, Physical Religion, p. 119. 

3 Mar&tt, Dureshold of Religion. 

4 McDougall, /utroduction to Soctal Psychology, Chap. xttt, seems to combine the 
two hypotheses. 

® For a criticism of the hypotheses of animism and naturism as explanations of 
primitive religion see Durkheim, Les ormes Eldmentaires de la Vie Religieuse, 

Book 1, chapters 2 and 3. 

sentiments! by which the conduct of the individual is regulated 
in conformity with the needs of the society. (2) Every feature 
of the social system itself and every event or object that in any 
way affects the well-being or the cohesion of the society becomes 
an object of this system of sentiments. (3) In human society 
the sentiments in question are not innate but are developed in 
the individual by the action of the socicty upon him. (4) The 
ceremonial customs of a society are a means by which the senti- 
ments in question are given collective expression on appropriate 
occasions, (5) The ceremonial (ic, collective) expression of any 
sentiment serves both to maintain it at the requisite degree of 
intensity in the mind of the individual and to transmit it from 
one generation to another, Without such expression the senti- 
ments involved could not exist. 

Using the term “social function” to denote the effects of an 
institution (custom or belief) in so far as they concern the society 
and its solidarity or cohesion, the hypothesis of this chapter may 
be more briefly resumed in the statement that the social function 
of the ceremonial customs of the Andaman Islanders is to main- 
tain and to transmit from one generation to another the 
emotional dispositions on which the socicty (as it is constituted) 
depends for its existence, 

The present chapter contains an attempt to apply this 
hypothesis to the ceremonial customs of the Andaman Islanders, 
An attempt will be made to show that there is a correspondence 
between the customs and belicfs of the AndamaneSe and a 
certain system of social sentiments, and that there is also a. 
correspondence between these sentiments and the manner in 
which the society is constituted, It is an attempt to discover 
necessary connections between the different characters of a 
society as they exist in the present. No attempt will be made 
to discover or imagine the historical process by which these 
customs have come into existence, 

For the clearer understanding of the argument it is necessary 
to draw attention to a few rules of method that will be observed. 
(1) In explaining any given custom it is necessary to take 

1 Sentiment,—an organised system of emotional tendencies centred about some 
object. 

' 

into account the explanation given by the natives themselves, 
Although these explanations are not of the same kind as the 
scientific explanations that are the objects of our search yet they 
are of great importance as data, Like the civilised man of 
Western Europe the savage of the Andamans seeks to rationalise 
his behaviour; being impelled to certain actions by mental dis. 
positions of whose origin and real nature he is unaware, he seeks 
to formulate reasons for his conduct, or even if he does not so 
when left to himself he is compelled to when the enquiring 
ethnologist attacks him with questions, Such a reason as is 
produced by this process of rationalisation is rarely if ever 
identical with the psychological cause of the action that it 
justifies, yet it will nearly always help us in our search for the 
cause, At any rate the reason given as explaining an action is so 
intimately connected with the action itself that we cannot regard 
any hypothesis as to the meaning of a custom as being satis- 
factory unless it explains not only the custom but also the 
reasons that the natives give for following it. (2) The assump- 
tion is made that when the same or a similar custom is practised 
on different occasions it has the same or a similar meaning in 
all of them, For example, there are different occasions on which 
a personal name is avoided; it is assumed that there is some- 
thing in common to all these occasions and that the meaning of 
the custom is to be discovered by ascertaining what that common 
element is. (3) It is assumed that when different customs are 
practised together on one and the same occasion there is a 
common element in the customs, This rule is the inverse of the 
last. As an example may be mentioned the different customs 
observed by mourners, which may be assumed to be all related 
to one another, The discovery of what is common to them all 
will explain the meaning of each. (4) I have avoided, as being 
misleading as well as unnecessary, any comparison of Anda~ 
manese customs with similar customs of other races, Only in 
one or two instances have I broken this rule, and in those 
I believe I am justified by special considerations. 

We can conveniently begin by considering the Andamanese 
marriage ceremony, which is one of the simplest and most easily 
understood. The main feature of it is that the bride and bride- 

groom are required publicly to embrace each other, In the 
North Andaman the embrace is made gradually, by stages as it 
were, each stage being more intimate than the preceding. At 
first the two sit side by side, then their arms are placed around 
each other, and finally the bridegroom is made to sit on the 
bride's lap? 

Everywhere in human life the embrace is employed as an 
expression of such feelings as love, affection, friendship, ie. of 
feelings of attachment between persons. There is no need to 
enquire into the psycho-physical basis of this expression. It is 
probably intimately related io the nursing of the infant by the 
mother, and is certainly very closely connected with the develop- 
ment of the sex instinct. It is sufficient for our purpose to 
satisfy ourselves that the embrace in all its forms does always 
express feelings of one generic kind. Nor is it necessary for us 
to consider the peculiar form of the Andamanese embrace, in 
which one person sits down and extends his or her legs, while 
the other person sits on the lap so formed and the two wrap 
their arms round one another's necks and shoulders. 

The meaning of the marriage ceremony is readily seen, By 
marriage the man and woman are brought into a special and 
intimate relation to one another; they are, as we say, united, 
The social union is symbolised or expressed by the physical 
union of the embrace, The ceremony brings vividly to the minds 
of the young couple and also to those of the spectatorg the con- 
sciousness that the two are entering upon a new social relation 
of which the essential feature is the affection in which they must 
hold one another. 

The rite has two aspects according as we regard it from the 
standpoint of the witnesses or from that of the couple them- 
selves, The witnesses, by their presence, give their sanction to 
the union that is thus enacted before them. The man who 
conducts the ceremony is merely the active representative of 
the community ; in what he does and says he acts as a deputy 
and not as a private individual, Thus the ceremony serves to 
make it clear that the marriage is a matier which concerns not 
only those who are entering into it, but the whole community, 

2 See p. 73 above. 

. 

and its occasional performance serves to keep alive this sentiment 
with regard to marriage in general, The existence of the senti- 
ment is shown in the reprobation felt and often expressed at an 
irregular marriage, in which the couple unite without a ceremony; 
such a union showing a contemptuous or careless thrusting aside 
of an important social principle. 

For the witnesses, then, the ceremony serves to awaken to 
activity and to express this sentiment; but it also serves as a 
recognition on their part of the change of status of the marrying 
pair, It makes them realise that henceforward the young couple 
must be treated no longer as children but as responsible adults, 
and it is thus the occasion of a change of sentiment towards 
those whose social position is being changed. For in the society 
of the Andamans there is a very marked division between 
married and unmarried persons in the way in which they are 
regarded by others, and in respect of their place in the com- 
munity. 

The married couple are made to realise, in a different way 
and with a much greater intensity of feeling, these same two 
things; first, that their union in marriage is a matter that 
concerns the whole community, and second, that they are 
entering a new condition, with new privileges but also with new 
duties and obligations, For them, indeed, the ceremony is a 
sort of ordeal from which they would only too gladly escape, 
and which, by the powerful emotions it evokes in them very 
vividly inipresses upon them what their marriage means, 

The wedding gifts that are bestowed upon the young couple 
are an expression of the general good-will towards them, The 
giving of presents is a common method of expressing friendship 
in the Andamans, Thus when two friends meet after separation, 
the first thing they do after having embraced and wept together, 
is to give one another presents, In most instances the giving is 
reciprocal, and is therefore really an exchange. If a present be 
given as a sign of good-will the giver expects to receive a 
present of about equal value in return, The reason for this is 
obvious; the one has expressed his good-will towards the other, 
and if the feeling is reciprocated a return present must be given 
in order to express it, So also it would be an insult to refuse a 

present offered, for to do so would be equivalent to rejecting the 
good-will it represents. At marriage the giving is one-sided, no 
return being expected, for it is an expression not of personal 
friendship on the part of the givers, but of the general social 
good-will and approval. It is for this reason that it is the duty 
of everybody who is piesent to make some gift to the newly- 
married pair. 

In another simple ceremony, the peace-making ceremony of 
the North Andaman}, the meaning is again casily discovered ; 
the symbolism of the dance being indced at once obvious to a 
witness, though perhaps not quite so obvious from the description 
given, The dancers are divided into two parties. The actions of 
the one party throughout are expressions of their aggressive 
feelings towards the other, This is clear enough in the shouting, 
the threatening gestures, and the way in which each member of 
the “attacking” party gives a good shaking to each member of 
the other party. On the other side what is expressed may be 
described as complete passivity; the performers stand quite still 
throughout the whole dance, taking care Lo show neither fear 
nor resentment at the treatment to which they have to submit, 
Thus those of the one side give collective expression to their 
collective anger, which is thereby appeased. The others, by 
passively submitting to this, humbling themselves before the just 
wrath of their enemies, expiate their wrongs, Anger appeased 
dies down; wrongs expiated are forgiven and forgotten; the 
enmity is at an end, 

The screen of fibre against which the passive participants in 
the ceremony stand has a peculiar symbolic meaning that will 
be explained later in the chapter. The only other elements of 
the ceremony are the weeping together, which will be dealt with 
very soon, and the exchange of weapons, which is simply a 
special form of the rite of exchanging presents as an expression 
of good-will, The special form is particularly appropriate as it 
would seem to ensure at least some months of friendship, for 
you cannot go out to fight a man with his weapons while he 
has yours, 

The purpose of the ceremony is clearly to produce a change 

2 Page 134. 

in the feelings of the two parties towards one another, feelings 
of enmity being replaced through it by feelings of friendship and 
solidarity. It depends for its effect on the fact that anger and 
similar aggressive feelings may be appeased by being freely 
expressed, Its social function is to restore the condition of 
solidarity between two local groups that has been destroyed by 
some act of offence. 

The marriage ceremony and the peace-making dance both 
afford examples of the custom which the Andamanese have of 
weeping together under certain circumstances, The principal 
occasions of this ceremonial weeping are as follows: (1) when 
two friends or relatives meet after having been for some time 
parted, they embrace each other and weep together; (2) at the 
peace-making ceremony the two parties of former enemies weep 
together, embracing each other; (3) at the end of the period of 
mourning the friends of the mourners (who have not themselves 
been mourning) weep with the latter; (4) after a death the 
relatives and friends embrace the corpse and weep over it; 
(5) when the bones of a dead man or woman are recovered from 
the grave they are wept over; (6) on the occasion of a marriage 
the relatives of each weep over the bride and bridegroom ; (7) at 
various stages of the initiation ceremonies the female relatives 
, of a youth or girl weep over him or her, 

First of all it is necessary to note that not in any of the 
above-mentioned instances is the weeping simply a spontancous 
expression of feeling, It is always a rite the proper performance 
of which is demanded by custom. (As mentioned in an earlier 
chapter, the Andamanese are able to sit down and shed tears at 
will.) Nor can we explain the weeping as being an expression 
of sorrow, It is true that some of the occasions are such as to 
produce sorrowful feelings (4 and 5, for example), but there are 
others on which there would seem to be no reason for sorrow 
but rather for joy, The Andamanese do weep from sorrow and 
spontaneously, A child cries when he is scolded or hurt; a 
widow weeps thinking of her recently dead husband. Men rarely 
weep spontaneously for any reason, though they shed tears 
abundantly when taking part in the rite. The weeping on the 
occasions enumerated is therefore not a spontaneous expression 

of individual emotion but is an example of what I have called 
ceremonial customs. In certain circumstances men and women 
are required by custom to embrace one another and weep, and 
if they neglected to do so it would be an offence condemned by 
all right-thinking persons. 

According to the postulate of method laid down at the 
beginning of the chapter we have to seek such an explanation 
of this custom as will account for all the different occasions on 
which the rite is performed, since we must assume that one and 
the same rite has the same meaning in whatever circum. 
stances it may take place, It must be noted, however, that 
there are two varieties of the rite. In the first three instances 
enumerated above the rite is reciprocal, ie, two persons or two 
distinct groups of persons weep together and embrace each 
other, both parties to the rite being active. In the other four 
instances it is one-sided; a person or group of persons weeps 
over another person (or the relics of a person) who has only a 
passive part in the ceremony, Any explanation, to be satis- 
factory, must take account of the difference between these two 
varicties, 

I would explain the rite as being an expression of that feeling 
of attachment between persons which is of such importance in 
the almost domestic life of the Andaman society, In other words _ 
the purpose of the rite is to affirm the cxistence of a social bond 
between two or more persons. 

There are two elements in the ceremony, the emBrace and 
the weeping. We have already secn that the embrace is an 
expression, in the Andamans as elsewhere, of the feeling of 
attachment, ie. the feeling of which love, friendship, affection 
are varieties, Turning to the second element of the ceremony, 
we are accustomed to think of weeping as more particularly an 
expression of sorrow. We are familiar, however, with tears of 
joy, and I have myself observed tears that were the result neither 
of joy nor of sorrow but of a sudden overwhelming feeling of 
affection. I believe that we may describe weeping as being a 
means by which the mind obtains relief from a condition of 
emotional tension, and that it is because such conditions of 
tension are most common in feelings of grief and pain that 

. 

weeping comes to be associated with painful feelings. It is 
impossible here to discuss this subject, and I am therefore com- 
pelled to assume without proof this proposition on which my 
explanation of the rite is based?, My own conclusion, based on 
careful observation, is that in this rite the weeping is an expres- 
sion of what has been called the tender emotion’ Without, 
doubt, on some of the occasions of the rite, as when wecping 
over a dead friend, the participants ate suffering a painful emotion, 
but this is evidently not so on all occasions. It is true, however, 
as I shall show, that on every occasion of the rite there is a 
condition of emotional tension due to the sudden calling into 
activity of the sentiment of personal attachment. 

When two friends or relatives meet after having been sepa- 
rated, the social relation between them that has been interrupted 
is about to be renewed. This social relation implies or depends 
upon the existence of a specific bond of solidarity between them. 
The weeping rite (together with the subsequent exchange of 
presents) is the affirmation of this bond, The rite, which, it must 
be remembered, is obligatory, compels the two participants to 
act as though they felt certain emotions, and thereby does, to 
some extent, produce those emotions in them. When the two 
friends meet their first feeling seems to be one of shyness mingled 
with pleasure at seeing each other again. This is according to 
the statements of the natives as well as my own observation, 
Now this shyness (the Andamanese use the same word as they 
do for “ shame’ ’) is itself a condition of emotional tension, which 
has to be relieved in some way. The embrace awakens to full 
activity that feeling of affection or friendship that has been 
dormant and which it is the business of the rite to renew. The 
weeping gives relief to the emotional tension just noted, and 
also reinforces the effect of the embrace, This it does owing to 
the fact that a strong feeling of personal attachment is always 
produced when two persons join together in sharing and simul- 

1 In a felv words the psycho-physical theory here assumed is thal weeping is n 
substitute for moto. activity when the kinetic system of tho body {motor centres, 
thyroid, suprarenals,. elc.) is stimulated but no effective netion in direct response to 
the stimulus is possible at the moment, When a sentiment ts stimulated and action « 
to which it might lead ts frustiated, the resultant emotional state is usually | painful, 
and hence weeping is commonly associated with painful states, 

2 McDougall, Social Psychology. 

BA 16 

taneously expressing one and the same cmotion’, The little 
ceremony thus serves to dispel the initial feeling of shyness and 
to reinstate the condition of intimacy and affection that oxisted 
before the scparation. 

In the peace-making ceremony the purpose of the whole rite 
is to abolish a condition of enmity and replace it by one of 
friendship. The once friendly relations between the two groups 
have been interrupted by a longer or shorter period of antagonism, 
We have seen that the effect of the dance is to dispel the 
wrath of the one group by giving it free expression, The weeping 
that follows is the renewal of the friendship. The rite is here 
exactly parallel to that on the meeting of two friends, except 
that not two individuals but two groups are concerned, and that 
owing to the number of persons involved the emotional condition 
is one of much greater intensity’. Here therefore also we see 
that the rite is an affirmation of solidarity or social union, in 
this instance between the groups, and that the rule is in its 
nature such as to make the participants feel that they are bound 
to each other by ties of friendship. 

We now come to a more difficult example of the :ite, that at 
the end of mourning. It will be shown later in the chapter that 
during the period of mourning the mourners are cut off fiom 
the ordinary life of the community, By reason of the ties that 
still bind them to the dead person they are placed, as it were, 
outside the society and the bonds that unite them to, their group 
are temporarily loosened, At the end of the mourning period 
they re-enter the society and take up once more their place in 
the social life, Their return to the community is the occasion en 
which they and their friends weep together. In this instance also, 
therefore, the rite may be explained as having for its purpose the 
renewal of the social relations that have been interrupted, This 
explanation will seem more convincing when we have considered 
in detail the customs of mourning. If it be accepted, then it 

2 Active sympathy, tho habitual sharing of joyful and painful emotions, is of the 
utmost importance in the formation of sentiments of personal attachment, 

It is a commonplace of psychology that 2 collective emotion, ie one felt and 
egpressed at the same moment by a number of persons, is felt much more intensely 
than an unshared emotion of the same kind. 

may be seen that in the first three instances of the rite of 
weeping (those in which the action is reciprocal) we have con- 
ditions in which social relations that have been interrupted 
are about to be renewed, and the rite serves as a ceremony of 
aggregation, 

Let us now consider the second variety of the rite, and first 
of all its meaning as part of the ceremony of marriage, By 
marriage the social bonds that have to that time united the bride 
and bridegroom to their respective relatives, particularly their 
female relatives such as mother, mother’s sister, father’s sister 
and adopted mother, are modified. The unmarried youth or girl 
is in a position of dependence upon his or her older relatives, and 
by the marriage this dependence is partly abolished. Whereas 
the principal duties of the bride were formerly those towards her 
mother and older female relatives, henceforth her chief duties in 
life will be towards her husband. The position of the bridegroom 
is similar, and it must be noted that his social relations with his 
male relatives are less affected by his marriage than those with 
his female relatives, Yet, though the ties that have bound the 
bride and bridegroom to their relatives are about to be modified 
or partially destroyed by the new ties of marriage with its new 
duties and rights they will still continue to exist in a weakened 
and changed condition, The rite of weeping is the expression of 
this, It serves to make real (by feeling), in those taking part in 
it, the presence of the social ties that are being modified. 

When the mother of the bride or bridegroom weeps at a 
marriage she feels that her son or daughter is being taken from 
her care, She has the sorrow of a partial separation and she 
consoles herself by expressing in the rite her continued feeling of 
tenderness and affection towards him in the new condition that 
he is entering upon, For her the chief result af the rite is to make 
her feel that her child is still an object of her affection, still bound 
to her by close ties, in spite of the fact that he or she is being 
taken from her care, 

Exactly the same explanation holds with regard to the weeping 
at the initiation ceremonies. By these ceremonies the youth (or 
girl) is gradually withdrawn from a condition of dependence on 

his mother and older female relatives and is made an independent 

member of the community. The initiation is a long process that 
is only completed by marriage. At every stage of the lengthy 
ceremonies therefore, the social ties that unite the initiate to these 
relatives are modified or weakened, and the rite of weeping is the 
means by which the significance of the change is impressed upon 
those taking part in it, For the mother the weeping expresses 
her resignation at her necessary loss, and acts as a consolation by 
making her feel that her son is still hers, though now being with- 
drawn from her care. For the boy the rite has a different meaning, 
He realises that he is no longer merely a child, dependent upon 
his mother, but is now entering upon manhood, His former feel- 
ings towards his mother must he modified, That he is being 
separated from her is, for him, the most important aspect of the 
matter, and therefore while she weeps he must give no sign of 
tenderness in return but must sit passive and silent. So also in 
the marriage ceremony, the rite serves to impress upon the young 
man and woman that they are, by reason of the new ties that 
they are forming with one another, severing their tics with their 
families, 

When a person dies the social bonds that unite him to the 
survivors are profoundly modified. They are not in an instant 
utterly destroyed, as we shall see better when we deal with the 
funeral and mourning customs, for the friends and relatives still 
feel towards the dead person that affection in which they held 
him when alive, and this has now become a sourge of deep 
grief. It is this affection still binding them to him that they 
express in the rite of weeping over the corpse, Here rite and 
natural expression of emotion coincide, but it must be noted 
that the weeping is obligatory, a matter of duty. In this instance, 
then, the rite is similar to that at marriage and initiation, The 
man is by death cut off from the society to which he belonged, 
and from association with his friends, but the latter still feel 
towards him that attachment that bound them together while he 
lived, and it is this attachment that they express when they 
embrace the lifeless corpse and weep over it, 

There remains only one more instance of the rite to be con- 
sidered. When the period of mourning for a dead person is over 
and the bones are recovered the modification in the relations 

between the dead and the living, which begins at death, and is, 
as we shall see, cafried out by the mourning customs and cere- 
monies, is finally accomplished. The dead person is now entirely 
cut off from the world of the living, save that his bones are to be 
treasured as relics and amulets. The weeping over the bones 
must be taken, I think, as a rite of aggregation whereby the 
bones as representative of the dead person (all that is left of him) 
are received back into the society henceforth to fill a special 
place in the social life. It really constitutes a renewal of social 
relations with the dead person, after a period during which all 
active social relations have been interrupted owing to the danger 
in all contact between the living and the dead. By the rite the 
affection that was once felt towards the dead person is revived 
and is now directed to the skeletal relics of the man or woman 
that once was their object. If this explanation seem unsatis- 
factory, I would ask the reader to suspend his judgment until 
the funeral customs of the Andamans have been discussed, and 
then to return to this point. 

The proffered explanation of the rite of weeping should now 
be plain, I regard it as being the affirmation of a bond of social 
solidarity between those taking part in it, and as producing in 
them a realisation of that bond by arousing the sentiment of 
attachment. In some instances the rite therefore serves to renew 
social relations when they have been interrupted, and in such 
instances the rite is reciprocal, In others it serves to show the 
continued existence of the social bond when it is being weakened 
or modified, as by marriage, initiation or death, In all instances 
we may say that the purpose of the rite is to bring about a new 
state of the affective dispositions that regulate the conduct of 
persons to one another, cither by reviving sentiments that have 
Jain dormant, or producing a recognition of a change in the con- 
dition of personal relations. 

The study of these simple ceremonies has shown us several 
things of importance, (1) In every instance the ceremony is the 
expression of an affective state of mind shared by two or more 
persons, Thus the weeping rite expresses feelings of solidarity, 
the exchange of presents expresses good-will. (2) But the cere- 
monies are not spontaneous expressions of feeling; they are all 

customary actions to which the sentiment of obligation attaches, 
which it is the duty of persons to perform on certain definite 
occasions. It is the duty of everyone in a community to give 
presents at a wedding; itis the duty of relatives to weep together 
when they meet. (3) In every instance the ceremony is to be ex- 
plained by reference to fundamental laws regulating the affective 
life of human beings, It is not our business here to analyse these 
phenomena but only to satisfy ourselves that they are real. That 
weeping is an outlet for emotional excitement, that the free ex- 
pression of aggressive feelings causcs them to die out instead of 
smouldering on, that an embrace is an expression of feelings of 
attachment between persons: these are the psychological gene- 
ralisations upon which are based the explanations given above 
of various ceremonies of the Andamanesc, (4) Finally, we have 
seen that each of the ceremonies serves to renew or to modify 
in the minds of those taking part in it some one or more of the 
social sentiments. The peace-making ccremony is a method by 
which feelings of enmity are exchanged for feelings of friendship. 
The marriage rite serves to arouse in the minds of the marrying 
pair a sense of their obligations as married folk, and to bring 
about in the minds of the witnesses a change of feeling towards 
the young people such as should properly accompany their change 
of social status. The weeping and exchange of presents when 
friendscome together isa means of renewing their feelings of attach- 
ment to one another, The weeping at marriage, at initiation, and 
on the occasion of a death is a reaction of defence or compensation 
when feclings of solidarity are attacked by a partial breaking of 
the social ties that bind persons to one another, 

In the ceremonial life of the Andamans some part is played by 
dancing, and it will be convenient to consider next the meaning 
and function of the dance, It is necessary, however, to deal very 
briefly with this subfect and omit much that would have to be 
included in an exhaustive study. Thus the ordinary Andaman 
dance may be looked upon as a form of play ; it also shows us 
the beginnings of the arts of dancing, music and poetry; and 
therefore in any study pretending to completeness it would be 
necessary to discuss the difficult problem of the relation between 
art, play and ceremonial in social life, a subject of too wide a 

scope to be handled in such an essay as this, For our, prevent 
purpose we are concerned with the dance only as a form of socidl 
ceremonial, “ 

If an Andaman Islander is asked why he dances he gives ‘an 
answer that amounts to saying that he,ddes ga because he enjoys 
it, Dancing is therefore in general a means of enjoyment. It 
is frequently a rejoicing, The Andaman Islanders dance after a 
successful day of hunting; they do not dance if their day has 
been one of disappointment. 

Pleasurable mental excitement finds its natural expression 
in bodily activity, as we see most plainly in young children 
and in some animals, And in its turn mere muscular activity 
is itself a source of pleasure, The individual shouts and jumps 
for joy; the society turns the jump into a dance, the shout into 
a song, 

The essential character of all dancing is that it is rhythmical, 
and it is fairly evident that the primary function of this rhythmi- 
cal nature of the dance is to enable a number of persons to 
join in the same actions and perform them as one body, In the 
Andamans at any rate it is clear that the spectacular dance (such 
as the performance described on page 164) is a Jate development 
out of the common dance. And it is probable that the history of 
the dance is everywhere the same, that it began as a common 
dance in which all present take some active part, and from this 
first form (still surviving in our ball-room dances) arose the 
spectacular dance in which one or more dancers perform before 
spectators who take no patt themselves. 

In the Andamans the song is an accompaniment of the dance, 
The dancing and singing and the marking of the rhythm by 
clapping and by stamping on the sounding-board are all parts 
of the one common action in which all join and which for con- 
venience is here spoken of as the dance, It is probable that here 
again the Andamanese practice shows us the earliest stage in 
the development of the song, that song and music at first had no 
independent existence but together with dancing formed one 
activity, It is reasonable to suppose that the song first came 
into general use in human society because it provides a means 
by which a number of persons can utter the same Series of sounds 

é 

together and as with one voice, this being made possible by the 
fixed rhythm and the fixed pitch of the whole song and of each 
part of it (Le. by melody). Once the art of song was in existence 
its further development was doubtless largely dependent upon 
the esthetic pleasure that it is able to give, But in the Anda- 
mans the esthetic pleasuie that the natives get from their simple 
and monotonous songs seems to me of quite secondary import- 
ance as compared with the value of the song as a ‘joint social 
activity, 

The movements of the ordinary Great Andaman dance do 
not seem to me to be in themselves expressive, or at any rata 
they are not obviously mimetic like the movements of the «lances 
of many primitive folk, Their function seems to be to bring into 
activity as many of the muscles of the body as possiblé. The 
bending of the body at the hips and of the legs at the knees, 
with the slightly backward poise of the head and the common 
position of the arms held in line with the shoulders with the 
elbows crooked and the thumb and first finger of each hand 
clasping those of the other, produce a condition of tension of a 
great number of the muscles of'the trunk and limbs, The attitude 
is one in which all the main joints of the body arc between 
complete flexion and complete extension so that there is approxi- 
mately; an equal tension in the opposing groups of flexor and 
extensdr muscles, Thus the whole body of the dancer is full of 
active forces balanced one against another, resulting in a con. 
dition of flexibility and alertness without strain, 7 

While the dance thus brings into play the whole muscular 
system of the dancer it also requires the activity of the two chief 
senses, that of sight to guide the dancer in his movements 
amongst the others and that of hearing to enable him to keep 
time .with the music. Thus the dancer is in a condition in 
which ‘all the bodily and mental activities are harmoniously 
directed to one end, 

Finally, in order to understand the function of the Anda- 
manese dance it must be noted that every adult member of the 
community takes some part in it, All the able-bodied men join 
in the dance itself; all the women join in the chorus, If anyone 
through ill-health or old age is unable to take any active part, 

he or she is at least necessarily a spectator, for the dance takes 
place in the centre of the village in the open space towards which 
the huts usually face’ 

The Andamanese dance (with its accompanying song) may 
therefore be described as an activity in which, by virtue of the 
effects of rhythm and melody, all the members of a community 
are able harmoniously to cooperate and act in unity; which 
requires on ‘the part of the dancer a continual condition of ten- 
sion free fiom strain; and which produces in those taking part 
in it a high degree of pleasure, We must now proceed to examine 
very briefly the chief effects on the mental condition of those 
taking part?, 

First let us consider some of the effects of rhythm, Any 
markéd:rhythm exercises over those submitted to its influence a 
constraint, impelling them to yield to it and to permit it to direct 
and régulate the movements of the body and even those of the 
mind, If one does not yield to this constraining influence it 
produces a state of restlessness that may become matkedly un- 
pleasant, One who yields himself utterly to it,as does the dancer 
when he joins in the dance, still continues to feel the constraint, 
but so far from being unpleasant it now produces a pleasure of 
a quite distinct quality, The first point for us to note therefore 
is that through the effect of rhythm the dance affords an experi- 
ence of a constraint or force of a peculiar kind acting upon the 
individual and inducing in him when he yields himself to it a 
pleasure of self-surrender, The peculiarity of the force in question 
is that it seems to act upon the individual both from without 
(sincé it is the sight of his friends dancing and the sound of thes‘ 
singing and marking time that occasions it), and also from within 
(since the impulse to yield himself to the constraining any Hhte 
comes from his own organism). 

A second effect of the rhythm of the dance is due to the 
well-known fact that a series of actions performed rhythmically 

‘Tt will be shown Inter in the chapter that when individuals are excluded from 
participation in the dance it 1s because they are in a condition of partial exclusion 
from the common life, 

2 ‘The psychology of dancing offers a wide field for study that has as yet, so fai as 

I know, been barely touched, The following brief notes are therefore necessarily 
incomplete and somewhat tinsatisfactory. 

produces very much less fatigue than actions not rhythmical 
requiring the same expenditure of muscular energy. So the 
dancer feels that in and through the dance he obtains such an 
increase of his personal energy that he is able to accomplish 
strenuous exertions with a minimum of fatigue. This effect of 
rhythm js reinforced by the excitement produced by the rapid 
movements of the dancers, the loud sounds of the song and 
clapping and sounding-board, and intensified, as all collective 
states of emotion are intensified, by reason of being collective ; 
with the result that the Andaman Islanders are able to continue 
their strenuous dancing through many hours of the night! 
There is yet a third most important effect of rhythm, Recent 
psychology shows that what are called the esthetic emotions are 
largely dependent upon motor images. We call a form beautiful 
when, through the movements of the eye in following it, we feel 
it as movement, and as movement of a particular kind which we 
can only describe at present by using such a word as ‘harmonious,’ 
Similarly our esthetic appreciation of music seems to be largely 
defendent on our feeling the music as movement, the sounds 
appealing not to the ear only but to stored-up unconscious 
motor memories. With regard to dancing, our pleasure in 
watching the graceful, rhythmical and harmonious movements 
of the dancer is an esthetic pleasure of similar nature to that 
obtained from the contemplation of beautiful shapes or listening 
to music, But when the individual is himself dancing it docs not 
seem quite fitting to call his pleasure esthetic. Yet the danco, 
even the simple dance of the Andamans, does make, in the dancer 
himself, partly by the effect of rhythm, partly by the effect of 
the harmonious and balanced tension of the muscles, a direct 
appeal to that motor sense to which the contemplation of beauti- 
ful forms and movements makes only an indirect appeal, In other 
words the dancer actually feels within himself that harmonious 
action of balanced and directed forces which, in the contempla- 
tion of a beautiful form we feel as though it were in the object 
at which we look, Hence such dancing as that of the Andaman 

1 I have known a dance to be continued for seven or cight hours, cach dancer 
taking only short periods of rest; and it must be remembered that the Andamanese 
dance is more strenuous than our ball-room dances, 

Islanders may be looked upon as an early step in the training of 
the esthetic sense, and to recognize all that the dance means we 
must make allowance for this fact that the mental state of the 
dancer is closely related to the mental state that we call esthetic 
enjoyment, 

Let us now consider the effects of the dance as a social or 
collective activity, First, the dance affords an opportunity for 
the individual to exhibit before others his skill and agility and 
so to gratify his personal vanity. It is very easy to observe the 
action of this harmless vanity in the dancers, and particularly in 
the man who takes the place at the sounding-board and acts as 
soloist or leader of the chorus. The dancer seeks to feel, and 
does feel, that he is the object of the approbation and admiration 
of his friends, His self-regarding sentiments are pleasantly 
stimulated, so that he becomes conscious, in a state of self-satis- 
faction and elation, of his own personal value, This stimulation 
of the self-regarding sentiment is an important factor in the total 
effect produced by the dance, 

Secondly, the dance, at the same time that it stimulates 
pleasantly the self-regarding sentiment, also affects the sentiments 
of the dancer towards his fellows. The pleasure that the dancer 
feels irradiates itself over everything around him and he is filled 
with geniality and good-will towards his companions. The 
sharing with others of an intense pleasure, or rather the sharing 
in a collective expression of pleasure, must ever incline us to 
such expansive feelings. It is certainly a readily observable fact 
that in the Andamans the dance does produce a condition of 
warm good-fellowship in those taking part in it, There is no 
need to enquire more closely into the mental mechanisms by 
which this is brought about. 

The Andaman dance, then, is a complete activity of the 
whole community, in which every able-bodied adult takes some 
part, and is also an activity in which, so far as the dancer him- 
self is concerned, the whole personality is involved, by the inner- 
vation of all the muscles of the body, by the concentration of 
attention required, and by its action on the personal sentiments. 
In the dance the individual submits to the action upon him of 
the community; he is constrained, by the immediate effect of 

rhythm as well as by custom, to join in, and he is required to 
conform in his own actions and movements to the needs of the 
common activity. The surrender of the individual to this con- 
straint or obligation is not felt as painful, but on the contrary as 
highly pleasurable, As the dancer loses himself in the dance, as 
he becomes absorbed in the unified community, he reaches a 
state of clation in which he feels himself filled with energy or 
force immensely beyond his ordinary state, and so finds himself 
able to perform prodigies of exertion, This statc of intoxication, 
as it might almost be called, is accompanied bya pleasant stimu- 
lation of the self-regarding sentiment, so that the dancer comes 
to feel a great increase in his personal force and value. And at 
the same time, finding himself in complete and ecstatic harmony 
with all the fellow-members of his community, experiences a 
great increase in his feelings of amity and attachment towards 
them. é 

In this way the dance praduces a condition in which the 
unity, harmony and concord of the community are at a maximum, 
and in which they are intensely felt by every member. It is to 
produce this condition, I would maintain, that is the primary 
social function of the dance, The well-being, or indeed the 
existence, of the society depends on the unity and harmony that 
obtain in it, and the dance, by making that unity intensely felt, 
isa meansof maintaining it, For the dance affords an opportunity 
for the direct action of the community upon the individual, and 
we have seen that il exercises in the individual those sentiments 
by which the social harmony is maintained, 

It was formerly the custom, I was told, always lo haye a 
dance before setting out to a fight, The reason for this should 
now be clear, When a group engages in a fight with another it 
is to revenge some injury that has been done to the whole grotip, - 
The group is to act as a group and not merely as a collection of 
individuals, and it is therefore necessary that the group should 
be conscious of its unity and solidarity. Now we have séen that 
the chief function of the dance is to arouse in the mind of every 
individual a sense of the unity of the socia] group of which he is 
a member, and its function before setting out to a fight is there- 
fore apparent. A secondary effect of the dance before a fight is 

to intensify the collective anger against the hostile group, and 
thereby and in other ways to produce a state of excitement and 
elation which has an important influence on the fighting quality 
of the Andaman warrior. 

An important feature of the social life of the Andamans in 
former times was the dance-meetings that were regularly held and 
at which two or more local groups met together for a few days, 
Each local group lived for the greater part of the year compara- 
tively isolated from others, What little solidarity there was 
between neighbouring groups therefore tended to become 
weakened. Social relations between two groups were for the 
most part only kept up by visits of individuals from one group 
to another, but such visits did not constitute a relation between 
group and group, The function of the dance-meetings was 
therefore to bring the two groups into contact and renew the 
social relations between them and in that way to maintain the 
solidarity between them. Those meetings, apart from the pro- 
vision of the necessary food, were entirely devoted* to the 
exchange of presents and to dancing, the two or more parties of 
men and women joining together every night in a dance. We 
have already seen that the exchange of presents is a means of 
expressing solidarity or mutual good-will, It is now clear that 
the dance serves to unite the two or more groups into one body, 
and to make that unity felt by every individual, so creating for 
a few days a condition of close solidarity. The effects of the 
meeting would gradually wear out as months went by, and 
therefore it was necessary to repeat the meeting at suitable 
intervals, 

Thus it appears that not only the ordinary dance, but also 
the war-dance, and the dance-meetings owe their place in the life 
of the Andaman Islanders to the fact that dancing is a means 
of uniting individuals into a harmonious whole and at the same 
time making them actually and intensely experience their 
relation to that unity of which they are the members. The 
special dances at initiation ceremonies and on other occasions 
will be dealt with later in the chapter,on the basis of the general 
explanation given above. 

On the occasion of a dance, particularly if it be a dance of 

some importance, such as a war-dance, or a dance of two groups 
together, the dancers decorate themselves by putting on various 
ornaments and by painting their bodies with red paint and white 
clay. The explanation of the dance cannot therefore be regarded 
as complete till we have considered the meaning of this personal 
adornment connected with it. 

If the Andaman Islander be asked why he adorns himself 
for the dance, his reply is invariably that he wishes to look well, 
to improve his personal appearance, In other words his conscious 
motive is personal vanity. 

One of the features of the dance, and a not unimportant one, 
is that it offers an opportunity for the gratification of personal 
vanity, The dancer, painted, and hung over with ornaments, 
becomes pleasantly conscious of himself, of his own skill and 

. agility, and of his striking or at least satisfactory appearance, and 

so he becomes also conscious of his relation to others, of their 
admiration, actual or possible, and of the approval and good-will 
that go with admiration. In brief, the ornamented dancer is 
pleasantly conscious of his own personal value, We may there- 
fore say that the most important function of any such ador ning 
of the body is to express or mark the personal value of the 
decorated individual. 

This explanation only applies to certain bodily ornaments 
and to, certain ways of painting the body, It applies to the 
painting of white clay, with or without red paint, that is adopted 
at dances and on other ceremonial occasions, It applies to such 
personal ornaments as those made of netling and Demtalium 
shell which constitute what may be called the ceremonial costume 
of the Andamanese, It is of these that the natives say that they 
use them in order to lool well. 

The occasions on which such personal decoration {s used are 
strictly defined by custom. In other words the society dictates 
to the individual when and how he shall be permitted to express 
his own personal value, It is obvious that personal vanity is of 
great importance in directing the conduct of the individual in his 
dealings with his fellows, and much more amongst a primitive 
people such as the Andamanese than amongst ourselves, and it is 
therefore necessary that,the society should have some means of 

controlling the sentiment and directing it towards social ends, 
We have seen that the dance is the expression of the unity and 
harmony of the society, and by permitting at the dance the free 
expréssion of personal vanity the society ensures that the indi~ 
vidual shall learn to feel, even if only subconsciously, that his 
personal value depends upon the harmony between himself and 
his fellows, 

The bride and bridegroom are painted with white clay, and 
wear ornaments of Dental shell on the day following their 
marriage, We have seen that marriage involves a change of 
Social status, and we may say that it gives an increased social, 
value to the married pair, the social position of a married man 
or woman being of greater importance and dignity than that of 
a bachelor or spinster. They are, after marriage, the objects of 
higher regard on the part of their fellows than they were before, 
It is therefore appropriate that the personal value of the bride 
and bridegroom should be expressed so that both they them- 
selves and their fellows should have their attention drawn to it, 
and this is clearly the function of the painting and ornaments, | 

After the completion of any of the more important of the 
initiation ceremonies, such as the eating of turtle, the initiate is 
painted with white clay and red paint and wears ornaments of 
Denialium shell. This is exactly parallel to the painting of the 
bride and bridegroom. The initiate, by reason of the ceremony 
he has been through, has acquired new dignity and import- 
ance, and by having fulfilled the requirements of custom has 
deserved the approval of his fellows. The decoration of his body 
after the ceremony is thus the expression of his increas¢d social 
value, 

A corpse, before burial, is decorated in the same manner as 
the body of a dancer, This, we'may take it, is the means by 
which the surviving relatives and friends express their regard for 
the dead, ie. their sense of his value, We need not suppose that 
they Believe the dead man to be conscious of what they are 
doing. It is to satisfy themselves that they decorate the corpse, 
not to satisfy the spirit, When a man is painted he feels that he 
has the regard.and good-will of his fellows, and those who see 
him, at any tate in the instance of a bridegroom or initiate, 

* 

wealise that he has deserved their regard. So, to express their 
regard for the dead man they paint the inanimate body. Hence 
it is that sthe greater the esteem in which the dead man or 
woman is held, the greater is the care bestowed on the last 
painting, « a ‘ 

We may conclude therefore that the painting of the body 
with white clay and the wearing of ornaments of Dentalinmn 
shell is a rite or ceremony by which the value of the individual 
to the society is expressed on appropriate occasions, We shall 
find confirmation of this later in the chapter. ' 

Before passing on to consider the meaning of other methods 
of decorating the body there is one matter that is worthy of 
mention. It is often assumed or stated that both personal orna- 
ment and dancing, amongst uncivilised peoples, arc connected 
with sexual emotion, It is, of course, extremely difficult to dis- 
Prove a statement of this soit. So far as the Andamanese are 
concerned I was unable to find any trace whatever of a definitely 
sexual element in either their dances or their personal adorn- 
ment. It may be recalled that both men and women wear 
exactly the same ornaments on ceremonial occasions, and this 
is to some extent evidence that such have no sexual value, It 
is possible that some observers might see in the dance of the 
women (which is only performed on rare occasions) a suggestion 
of something of a sexual nature. I was unable to find that the 
natives themselves consider that there is anything suggestive of 
sex in either the dance of the men or that of the women. If it 
were true that the most important feature of the dance was that 
it appealed in some way to sexual feclings it is difficult to see 
how we are to explain the different occasions on which dancing 
takes place, as before a fight, at the end of mourning, ete. 
whereas these are adequately accounted for by the hypothesis 
that the dance is a méthod of expressing the unity and harmony 
‘Of the society, Similarly the explanation of personal ornament 
as being connected with sexual feeling would fail to account 
for the otcasions on which it is regarded as obligatory. There 
‘is therefore, I belicve, no special connection between the dancing 
and jpersdnal ornament of the Andamanese and sexual feel- 
ing. It would still be possible to hold that there is a general 

connection of great importance between the affective dispositions 
underlying these and other customs and the complex affective 
. disposition that we call the sex instinct? The nature of that 
connection, important as ‘it is, lies patside the scope of this 
work, ‘ 

T remarked above that the explanation wae IT have given of 
the meaning of personal ornament does not apply to all the 
objects that the Andaman Islanders wear on their body, but 
only to certain of them. If an Andaman Islander be asked why’, 
he paints himself with white clay, or why he wears a belt or 
necklace of Den¢alium shell he replies that he does so in order 
to look well; but if he be asked why he wears a string of human 
bones round his head or neck or waist, he gives quite a different 
answer, to the effect that he does so in order to protect himself 
from dangers of a special kind, According to circumstances he 
will say either that he is wearing the bones to cure himself of 
illness, or else that he wears them as a protection against spirits, 
Thus while some things are worn on the body in order to im- 
Prove the personal appearance, and consequently, as explained 
above, to give the individual a sense of his own value, others are 
worn because they are believed to have a piotective power, and 
thereby arouse in the person a sense of security, Exactly the 
some sort of protective power is attributed to things that cannot 
be worn on the body, such as fire, and it will therefore be con- 
venient to,consider together all the things that afford this kind 
of protection, whether they can be worn on the body or not. 

The interpretation here offered is that the customs connected , 
with this belief in the protective power of objects of various 
kinds are means by which is expressed and thereby maintained 
at the necessary degree of energy a very important social senti- 
ment, which, for lack of a better term, I shall call the sentiment 
of dependence. In such a primitive society as that of the 
Andamans one of the most powerful means of maintaining the 
cohesion’ of the society and of enforcing that conformity to 
custom and tradition without which social life is impossible, i is 
the recognition by the individual that for his security and well- 
being he depends entirely upon the society. Now for the Anda- 
man Islander the society is not sufficiently concrete and particular 

BAe y 

to act as the object of such a sentiment, and he ‘therefore feels 
his dependence upon the society not directly but in a number of 
indirect ways, The particular way with which we are now 
concerned is that the individual experiences this feeling of depend- 
ence towards every important possession of the society, towards 
every object which for the socicty has constant and important uses, 

The most prominent example of such an object is fire, It 
may be said to be the one object on which the socicty most of 
all depends for its well-being. It provides warmth on cold 
nights ; it is the means whereby they prepare their food, for they 
eat nothing raw save a few fruits; it is a possession that has to 
be constantly guarded, for they have no means of producing it, 
and must therefore take care to keep it always alight; it is the 
first thing they think of carrying with them when they go ona 
journey by land or sea; it,is the centre around which the social 
life moves, the family hearth being the centre of the family life, 
while the communal cooking place is the centre round which the 
men often gather after the day's hunting is over, To the mind 
of the Andaman Islander, therefore, the social life of which his 
own life is a fragment, the social well-being which is the source of 
his own happiness, depend upon the possession of fire, without 
which the socicty could not exist, In this way it comes about that 
his dependence on the society appears in his consciousness as a 
sense of dependence upon fire and a belief that it possesses power 
to protect him from dangers of all kinds, 

The belief in the protective power of fire is very strong, A 
man would never move even a few yards out of camp at night 
without a fire-stick. More than any other object fire is believed 
to keep away the spirits that cause discase and death, ‘This 
belief, it is here maintained, is one of the ways in which the 
individual is made to feel his dependence upon the society, 

Now this hypothesis is capable of being very strictly tested 
by the facts, for if it is true we must expect to find that the same 
protective power is attributed to every object on which the social 
life depends, An examination of the Andamanese beliefs shows 
that this is so, and thereby confirms the hypothesis, _ 

‘In their daily life the Andamanese depend on the instrinsic 
qualities of the materials thoy use for their bows and arrows and 

harpoons and other hunting implements, and it can be shown 
that they do attribute to these implements and to the materials 
from which they are made powers of protection against evil, 
Moreover it is even possible to apply a quantitative test and 
show that the more important the place a thing occupies in the 
social life the greater is the degree of protective power attributed 
to it, Finally I shall be able to show that as different materials 
are used for special purposes so they are supposed to have certain 
special powers of protection against certain sorts of danger. Thus 
the hypothesis I have stated is capable of being as nearly demon- 
strated as is possible in such psychological enquiries as the one 
we are engaged in. 

A man carrying his bow and arrows is supposed to be less 
likely to fall a victim to the spirits than one who has no weapons 
with him, One way of stopping a violent storm is to go into the 
sea (storms being supposed to be due to the spirits of the sca) 
and swish the water about with arrows, The natives sometimes 
wear a necklace formed of short lengths of the bamboo shaft of 
a fish-arrow, All the examples of such necklaces that I met with 
had been made from an old arrow. [ asked a native to make 
one for me, and although he could readily have made one from 
bamboo that had never served as an arrow he did not do so, but 
used the shaft of one of his arrows, Such a necklace may there- 
fore be described as an arrow in such a form that it can be worn 

“round the neck and thus carried continually without trouble, 

The protective power of the bow is at first sight not quite so 
evident, but the material used for the string is regarded as 
possessing protective power, and Lo this I shall return shortly, 

The best demonstration of the truth of the explanation 
offered is to be found by considering the different vegetable fibres 
of which use is made. ‘he most important of these are the 
Anadendron pantculatuim (used for bow-strings and for fine 
string), the “/¢biscus tihaceus (used for rope) and the Guetim 
edule (used for string, and inferior to the Avadendron), All these 
fibres are believed to possess power to keep away dangers, but 
there is a sort of specialisation in their use. 

The fibre of the Arédiscus is used mainly in the hunting of 
turtle and big fish. Consequently the tree itself from which the 

Fy ord 

fibre is obtained is believed to possess the power of warding 
off all dangers connected with turtle and the sea. There is a 
custom that turtle flesh may only be cooked with wood of 
the Hibiscus, otherwise it will be uncatable. In the turtle-cating 
ceremony the initiate who, as we shall see later, is in a condition 
of danger by reason of having caten turtle for the first time after 
a period of abstention, is seated on //idisews loaves and holds a 
bundle of the same leaves before him. At the same ceremony 
the leaves of this tree are used in the dance, and the initiate is 
given a skewer made from its wood with which to feed himself, 
If for any reason the leaves of the Z/#biscus are not obtainable 
when the ceremony is performed those of the Ayristica longt- 
Jota are used instead. Now this is the tree from which the 
natives always make their canoe paddles, which, like ropes of 
Alibiscus fibre, are used in hunting turtle. This specialisation is 
therefore easy to understand; the natives habitually make use 
of the A#biscus and the Aprisdica in turtle-hunting; they use the 
intrinsic qualities of these trees in their actual struggles with 
turtle and large fish, anc by means of these qualities they are 
able to succced in overcoming their prey; they therefore come 
to believe that these trees possess special powers which not only 
enable them to conquer the turtle itself but also are able to pro- 
tect them from the evil influences that they believe (for roasons 
to be explained later) result from the enting of its flesh, 

This explanation is readily verified by considering an exactly 
parallel instance. In the pig-cating ceremony at initiation the 
leaves of the “ybiseus or the Myristicn are not used, and are 
regarded as valueless, Paddles and ropes are of no use in hunting 
pigs. The leaves that are used in this ceremony are those of the 
Tetranthera lancafolia, It is from this tree that are obtained 
the shafts of pig-arrows, Hence the relation of the tree to the 
pig is exactly parallel to that of the 7Zrbiscus to turtle. It is by 
making use of the qualities of the wood that they arc able to 
destroy the pig and so they believe that its leaves will enable them 
to destroy the dangers that result from the eating of the animal. 

The leaves of the Zezranthera are also used, however, in the 
ceremony at a girl's first menstruation, and I cannot pass over 
this without an explanation. It is to be found in the fact that 

pig-arrows are used in fighting, so that the tree comes to have a 
special relation to the shedding of blood. Plumes of shredded 
Letranthera wood (made from an old arrow-shaft) must be worn 
by a homicide during the period of “purification” as a protection 
against the dangers that are believed to threaten him because 
he has shed blood, The same plumes were formerly always 
cartied in a dance preceding a fight, and at such times the 
natives used to rub their bows with the shredded wood in order 
to ensure success in battle, Thus it is clear that there is a 
special connection between this tree and the shedding of blood, 
due to the fact that pig-arrows, of which the shafts are made 
from it, are used in fighting as well as for killing pigs and other 
animals, It is probable that this is the explanation of the use of 
the leaves during the ceremony at a girl's first menstruation, 

These examples afford a crucial test of the hypothesis here 
maintained. Not only is the protective power of these substances 
explicable by the fact that they are things on which the socicty 
depends in its daily life, but the special uses of each of them as 
amulets are only explicable when we consider the <ifferent uses 
to which they are put as materials, 

The fibre of the Anadendron paniculatum is used for making 
thread, bow-strings, the cords of pig-arrows, and for binding the 
heads and barbs of harpoons and arrows, It has therefore no 
special relation to either pig or turtle, There is a belief, how- 
ever, that the plant dacs possess special protective powers that 
make it efficacious against certain dangers coming from the sea, 
A piece of the plant tied round the neck or worn in the belt 
of a swimmer is believed to protect him from sharks and other 
dangerous fish, A. piece of it crushed and placed in the sea is 
said to have stopped a violent storm on one occasion, Thus the 
Axnadendron seems to possess a special power which makes it a 
source of protection against dangers from the sea, The same is 
true of the Gretnin edule, though, as this fibre is less valued than 
that of the Axadendron, it is not supposed to be so powerful in 
its effects, In regard to the specialisation in the use of these two 
plants as amulets it scems likely that it is due to a notion of 
opposition between the things of the forest and the things of the 
sea, The Andamanese live in a double environment; the jungle- 

: ‘ . 

dwellers live entirely in the forest and have dealings with forest 
things; they develop knowledge and powers that make them 
better woodsmen than the coast-dwellers, ‘The latter live by the 
sea and are chiefly occupicd with things of the sea, being 
skilled in the occupations of fishing and canoeing, There is thus 
a contrast or opposition between the life of the forest and the 
life of the shore that runs through all the social life, and I believe 
that it is this opposition which explains the belief that the 
Anadendron and the Guetum, which are essentially forest things, 
are possessed of a quality that makes them contrary or opposed 
to all things of the sea. 

Personal ornaments are made from the fibres that have been 
mentioned (/7/discus, Anadendron, Guetum), and we are justified, 
I think, in regarding such ornaments as being to some extent 
amulets. I purchased from a man in the Little Andaman a 
charm that was hanging round his neck, which he seemed to 
yalue highly. I imagined that it might contain a human bone, 
but when I had unwound the ornamental thread with which it 
was bound and opened out the covering of bark I found inside 
the parcel only a carefully folded length of rope made from 
Hibiscus fibre, 

There is one fibre from which the natives of the Great Anda- 
man make themselves ornaments, which they do not regularly 
use in any other way, namely that of the Jens daccifera, We 
may perhaps regard this as a genuine and demonstrable example 
of a survival in custom. The natives of the Litthke Andaman, 
who, until their recent contact with those of the Great Andaman, 
did not know the use of the Axadendyon, use the fibre of the 
Ficus for their bow-strings, We are justified in assuming, I be- 
“Hevea, that the natives of the Great Andaman made a similar use 

‘of the same fibre before they had learnt to use the Anadendron, 
In those days much of the power that is now attributed to the 
Axnadendron, because of its service as the material for bow- 
strings, must then have been attributed to the Jcvs, When the 
substitution of the superior Axadendron fibre came about, the 
belief in the efficacy of the Jes did not disappear, although the 
ground of the belief (if we may call it so) had ceased to exist, 
If this be so, then the present use of the /icus fibre as an amulet 

is an example of ‘survival. It may be noted that the qualities of 
the Ficus art supposed to be,similar to tliose of the Anadendron, 
Thus while one medicine-man stopped a storm with Axvadéndron, 
another did the same thing on anotlier occdsion with Jens. + 

The above examples are sufficient to justify the*generatisa- 
tion that the Andamanese attribute protective power to all those 
substances on the strength and other qualities of which they 
rely in order to obtain their food or overcome their enemies. 
There are one or two other positive instances that have not been 
mentioned, Bees’-wax, which is used for waxing thread and 
bow-strings, is believed to have power to keep spirits away and 
to cure sickness. Cane, which is used by the natives for many 
different purposes, seems also to have its use as an amulet, for 
belts and other personal ornaments are made of pieces of cance 
attached to a length of rope, 

Negative instances are more difficult to discover, When I was 
in the Andamans I had not formulated the explanation that is 
offered here, and I therefore did not make any search for negative 
instances that might have afforded a means of testing the value 
of the hypothesis, I have no satisfactory evidence that pro- 
tective power is attributed to iron, or to the shells that were 
formerly used, as iron now is, for the heads and barbs of arrows, 
but it is quite possible that I may have overlooked evidence that 
was really there, I do not think that any particular protective 
properties are attributed to such things as the materials from 
which baskets are made and the clay that is used for pottery, 
‘These things, however, may be regarded as luxuries rather than 
necessities; they are not of the same immediate service to the 
society in its fundamental activity (that of providing food) as 
are weapons and the materials used in them, ‘ 

There are still two important kinds of amulets that remain: 
to be considered, First, protective power’is attributed to the 
bones of animals, which are made into personal ornaments; 
these cannot be dealt with until we have considered some of the 
beliefs relating to food. Secondly, a very high degree of pro+ 
tective power is attributed to human bones, but the discussion 
of this bellef must wait till we have discovered the meaning of 
the funeral customs of the Andamanese, 

To conclude the present argument, it would seem that the 
function of the belief in the protective power of such things 
as fire and the materials from which weapons are made is to 
maintain in the mind of the individual the fecling of his de- 
pendence upon the society; but viewed from another aspect the 
beliefs in question may be regarded as expressing the social 
value of the things to which they relate, This term—social 
value—will be used repeatedly in the later part of this chapter, 
and it is therefore necessary to give an exact definition, By the 
social value of anything I mean the way in which that thing 
affects or is capable of affecting the social life, Value may be 
cither positive or negative, posilive value being possessed by any 
thing that contributes to the well-being of the society, negative 
value by anything that can adversely affect that well-being, 

The social value of a thing (such as fire) is a matter of 
immediate experience to every member of the society, but the 
individual does not of necessity consciously and directly realise 
that value, He is made to realise it indirectly through the belief, 
impressed upon him by tradition, that the thing in question 
affords protection against danger. A belief or sentiment which 
finds regular outlet in action is a very different thing from a 
belief which rarely or never influences conduct, Thus, though 
the Andaman Islander might have a vague realisation of the 
value of Hibiscus, for example, that would be something very 
different from the result on the mind of the individual of the 
regular-use of the leaves of that tree in initiation ceremonies as 
a protection against unseen dangers, So that the protective uses 
of such things are really rites or ceremonies by means of which 
the individual is made to realise (1) his own dependence on the 
society and its possessions, and (2) the social value of the things 
in question, 

I have had to postpone to the later parts of the chapter the 
consideration of some of the objects possessing protective power, 
but I venture to state here three propositions some part of the 
evidence for which has alrcady been examined, and which will 
be sufficiently demonstrated, I hope, before the end of the 
chapter, They are as follows: (1) any object that contributes to 
the well-being of the society is believed to afford protection 

against evil; (2) the degree of protective power it is believed to 
possess clepends on the importance of the services it actually 
renders to the society; (3) the kind of special protection it is 
supposed to afford is often related to the kind of special service 
that it does actually render. 

We were led to the consideration of the protective power of 
objects through an attempt to understand the meaning of the 
methods of ornamenting the body in the Andamans, We’have 
seen that some ornaments are worn in order to express the 
personal value of the individual, while others are worn for the 
sake of the protection they are believed to afford, We have also 
seen that one method of painting the body (with white clay) 
is a means of expressing the personal valuc of the painted in- 
dividual, We will next consider the use of the clay called ody. 
This clay is painted on the body of a mourner and is the out- 
ward sign of mourning; it is used at certain stages of the initia 
tion ceremonies; it is also regularly used for painting the body 
with the designs known as gra-puéi, According to the rule of 
method laid down at the beginning of the chapter we must seck 
some common explanation of these different uses of the same 
substance, 

We may consider, first of all, the patterns (era-pudi) that are 
made with this clay on the body and face after eating certain 
foods such as pork and turtle, 

Mr Man gives two explanations of the use of these paintings 
of clay, During the hot season, he says, the natives “endeavour 
to lessen the discomfort caused by the heat by smearihg their 
bodies with a white-wash of common white clay and water” 
He adds: “it has long been erroneously believed that they have 
recourse to this expedient in order to allay the inconvenience 
which they would otherwise suffer from the bites of mosquitoes 
and other jungle pests; but the true reason for the practice is, 
I am well assured, that which I have given above!” In another 
place hé says: “ After cating pork or turtle they are in the habit 
of smearing og over their bodies with their fingers, in the belief 
that it affects their breath, and that evil spirits will be unable té 
detect, and therefore will not be attracted to, them by the 

1 Many of, eft. pe 76, , 

savoury smell of the food of which they have partaken, Again, 
when heated by travelling or by hunting or dancing, they have 
recourse {o the same wash, but in these cases it is applied thiniy+,” 

There are here two explanations of fundamentally different 
character. First the Andamancse practice of painting their 
bodies with clay is explained as having a purely utilitarian 
purpose, being intended to cool them when they are heated, In 
the second statement the explanation given is that the custom is 
intended to protect them from danger. 

My own observations do not altogether agree with the state- 
ments of Mr Man. I found that the natives painted themselves 
just as much in the cold season as in the hot season, The 
principal, if not the sole, occasion on which the clay is used is 
after or immediately before a meal, and therefore generally in 
the late afternoon or evening when the heat of the day is past. 
I do not feel so satisfied as Mr Man appears to be, that the clay 
really has the effect of keeping a person cool, particularly when 
it is remembered that the painting may consist of a few lines 
each as broad as a finger, Moreover, Mr Man’s explanation cloes 
not afford any reason for the fact that the clay is always applied 
in some sort of pattern. If it were merely to keep himself cool, 
we should expect to see a man cover himself all over with a 
plain coating evenly spread over the body. Such an even coating 
is never used, in the Great Andaman tribes, except by persons 
mourning for the dead, and is the essential mark of a mourner, 

Tt is casy to explain how Mr Man has fallen into an error in 
this matter. On many occasions, when I questioned the natives 
as to thelr reason for painting themselves with clay I received 
the answer, “When we have caten pork or turtle or dugong, we 
become of-h2if and so we take clay and paint ourselves.” Now 
the word o¢ime/ in the Afa-Jeru language is the word that the 
natives use to express whal we mean by the word “hot.” But 
while “hot” may always be translated by of-téneil or er-kimil, 
the latter word cannot always be adequately rendered in English 
by the word “hot.” Mr Man seems to have supposed that when 
an Andaman Islander says “hot” he means by the word only 
what we mean, whereas he really means a great deal more, 

1 Man, of, eff, ps 333+ 

Let us examine briefly the word in question. Tn the languages 
of the North Andaman the stem is -A/#22, With the piefix o7- 
or ev- it is used to mean “hot” as in 7” ot-hémid-dom, “T am hot,” 
or Lo ot-kimil b¢ ov Ina er-himil bi,“The water is hot.” Used 
by itself the stem 4zz7/ is the name of the latter part of the 
rainy season, when the weather is not hot but cool. A youth or 
girl who is passing through the initiation ceremonies is said to 
be aka-hindl, and is addressed or spoken of as Kévz7/, instead of 
by his or her proper name, The turtle-cating coremony is called 
tokbé-kimil, or cokbijo or himiljo, cokbd meaning “turtle” and jo 
meaning “eating.” The word “hot” is used by the natives in 
several unusual ways when they are talking their own language 
or Hindustani, Thus a stormy o: rough sea is said to be “hot,” 
and one native in describing to me (in Hindustani) the cessation 
of a cyclone said “the sea became cold.” A person who is ill is 
said to be hot, and getting well is expressed by the phrase 
* getting cool,” 

In the Asa-Bea language the word “hot” is translated hy 
Mr Portman by the stem za, The stem Admi/ appears in the 
form gumul in only some of the uses it has in the Northern 
languages. Ged is the name of the latter part of the rainy 
season, A youth passing through the initiation ceremonies is 
said to be eka-gumul and is addressed or spoken of as Gama, 
The turtle-cating ceremony is called guamul-le-he, le-ke meaning 
“eating,” The word thus means “the gwawud caling” and is the 
literal equivalent of the Azwi/-jo of the North, 

The uses of the word Aémz7 may be summarised as follows : 

(t) to mean “hot” in the sense of the English word; 

(2) in connection with illness; 

(3) in speaking of stormy weather; 

(4) as the name of the latter part of the rainy season; 

(5) to denote the condition of a youth or girl who is passing 
through or has recently passed through the initiation ccremonies, 
and to'denote the ceremonies themselves; 

(6) to denote a condition in a person consequent on eating 
certain foods, and perhaps sometimes due ta other causes, te 
remedy or obviate which the natives make use of clay painted 
in patterns on their bodies, 

“It is probable, then, that when a native says that after eating 
food he is of-Aé22 and therefore paints himself with clay he 
does not mean simply that he is hot. This will be still more 
evident when we consider the second explanation of the custom 
that is given by the natives. Many of those whom I questioned 
stated that after eating dugong, pork, turtle, etc, the body emits 
an odour, that this odour may attract the spirits of the jungle or 
the sea, and that to obviate this they paint themselves with clay, 
This agreos exactly with what Mr Man says in the second 
passage quoted above, It is confirmed by other customs, I was 
told that a man who has caten dugong will not leave the camp 
until some time after the dugong meat is all finished, for fear 
that the spirits may smell him and do him harm. It is to be 
noted in passing that painting the body with clay does not by 
any means remove the odour that does actually characterise a 
native after he has been eating fat meat of any kind. We must 
be careful, in this instance also, not to assume that an Andaman 
Islander means by “smell” exactly what we mean by it and 
nothing more, It will be shown later in the chapter that the 
Andamanese identify the smell of an object with its active 
magical principle. One example may be given here to show 
this, The origin of rheumatism in the legs is explained by the 
natives as being the result of the common practice of preparing 
the fibre of the Auadendron pantenlatum by sevaping it on the 
thigh, During this process, they say, the “smell” of the plant 
enters the thigh and is the cause of rheumatic or sciatic pains, 

The natives give yet a third statement of their reasons for 
using clay. On many occasions I asked them what would happen 
if they ate pork or turtle and did not paint themselves. In every 
case I received the reply that any man who did such a thing 
would almost certainly be ill, 

When a number of persons give three different reasons for 
one and the same action, and are equally sinccre throughout, it 
is to be presumed that the three different statements are 56 many 
different ways of saying one and the same thing, We may there- 
fore conclude that the Andaman Islanders believe that there is a 
peculiar power in foods (or in some foods) which makes it danger- 
ous to eat them. This danger may be expressed by saying that 

the person who has eaten food will, unless he takes certain pre- 
cautions, be liable to be ill, Now sickness is believed to be caused 
by the spirits of the jungle and the sea, and therefore an alter- 
native or equivalent statement of the same belief is that after a 
person has eaten food he is in danger from the spirits. We may 
therefore conclude that the word ot-Adwt/, when it is used to de- 
scribe the condition of a person who has eaten food, denotes 
simply this condition of danger, and nothing more, l’or this we 
shall find ample confirmation later on. Subject to such later con- 
firmation I will here state what has becn maintained, which is 
(1) that the eva-pudd patterns are to be explained as being pro- 
tective, (2) that the eating of food is regarded as dangerous, and 
(3) that this danger is associated in the minds of the natives 
with sickness and with the spirits. It will be convenient to leave 
the first of these three propositions for later discussion and take 
up the second, seeking to find the meaning of this belief in the 
dangerous propertics of food. 

Not all foads are equally dangerous, I was able to establish 
roughly a sort of scale, The most dangerous foods are dugong; 
the fish called omar; some of the snakes; the internal fat such 
as the kidney-fat or the intestinal fat of pig, turtle, monitor, lizard 
and Paradoxurus; the liver of sharks, sting-rays and J?/ofosus; and 
honey, Next in order come the flesh of pigs, turtle, monitor 
lizard and Paradoxurus and of the fishes mentioned above; also 
the eggs of turtle, To these should perhaps be added the edible 
grubs and some vegetable foods such as the yams and the Aréo- 
carpus fruit and seed, Lowest in the scale, that is, least dangerous, 
are molluscs and the commoner sorts of fish and vegetable foods, 

The principles underlying this grading of foods are two, Those 
foods that are difficult or dangerous to procure are considered 
more dangerous than others, Thus all the fishes that are thought 
most dangerous to cat are actually dangerous, such as the sharks, 
the sting-rays, the armed P/odosus, and the fish Aomar that has 
a powerful spike on its head with which it can inflict a dangerous 
wound. Secondly the foods that are most prized are regarded as 
being more dangerous than those that are less prized. The 
internal fat of animals is regarded as a great delicacy and therefore 
occupies a high place in the scale, It is this also that explains 

the position of honey and of the edible grubs, The dugong, which 
is of all foods the most difficult and dangerous to procure, and is 
at the same time more highly prized than any other, is regarded 
as more dangerous to eat than any other. 

It is this difference in the danger attributed to different foods 
that gives the clue to the explanation of the beliefs relating to 
them, The hypothesis I wish to put forward is that the custom 
of painting the body after eating food is an expression of the 
social value of food. 

In a simple community such as that of the Andaman Islands, 
in which the necessary food has to be provided from day to day, 
food occupies a predominant position, and is the chief source of 
those variations or oscillations between conditions of euphoria 
and dysphoria that constitute the emotional life of the society, 
Food is obtainable only by the expenditure of effort, and the 
effort isa communal one, ‘The obtaining of food is the principal 
social activity and it is an activity in which every able-bodied 
member of the community is required by custom to join, A man’s 
first duty to the society may be defined as the duty of providing 
food for himself and others, and no one is looked on with 
more contempt than one who is lazy or careless in this respect, 
On the contrary the man who stands highest in the esteem of 
others is the skilful hunter who is generous in distributing to 
others the food he obtains, The food provides the community 
with its chief joys and sorrows, When food is scarce the whole 
community suffers. The men spend all their time in hunting but 
are disappointed. They have to fall back upon foods that are little 
relished, such as the commoner kinds of molluscs, On the con- 
trary when there is plenty of food the whole socicty rejoices 
together. JEvery onc has as much as he or she can eat. Hunting 
and fishing become pleasant sports instead of arduous labour, 

Viewing the matter from its relation to the feelings of the 
individual we may say that it is particularly in connection with 
food that he is made to feel that he isa member of the community, 
sharing with others their joys and sorrows, taking part in a com- 
mon activity, often dependent upon others for the satisfaction of 
his hunger, and obliged by custom to share with those others 
what he himself obtains, Thus food is, for the Andaman Islander, 

the one object above all others that serves to awaken in him day 
_after day the fecling of his relation to his fellows, It is also the 
source of a very large’ proportion of his joys and sorrows, his ex- 
citements and disappointments. Thus it is that when the natives 
wish to amuse each other it is by tales of hunting that they do 
so, and.a large proportion of their songs relate to the getting of 
food. ' 
It is thus clear that food becomes an important secondary 
object of the fundamental affective dispositions that regulate the 
emotional attitude of the individual to the society to which he 
belongs. It is connected yery closely with the fecling of moral 
obligation; the most valued moral qualities in the Andaman 
Islands are energy in providing food and generosity in distribut- 
ing it; among theworst faults are laziness in hunting and meanness 
in giving to others. Similarly food is closely associated with the 
feeling of dependence. During childhood, particularly, the indi- 
vidual has to depend on others for his food; even later in life 
the food that a man eats is more often provided by others than 
by himself; he depends on the, community even for his daily 
nourishment, 

Different foods have different social values. Thus a dugong 
provides a large supply of a highly-prized delicacy, but on the 
other hand can only be obtained by strenuous and dangerous 
efforts of skilful hunters, At the other ond of the scale the social 
value of, shell-fish is very little, They are not relished and are 
only eaten when there is nothing better, while the labour of 
obtaining them is simply one of drudgery requiring little skill, 

Finally it must be pointed out that the value of food is bath 
positive and negative. It is the source of conditions a social 
euphoria when it is plentiful; while it is equally the source of 
social dysphoria when it is lacking. In other words, on different 
occasions it is the source of both pleasurable and painful states 
of the fundamental social sentiments. 

All these experiences connected with food organise themselves 
around the notion that foods, or the animals that are used for 
food, are things to be treated carefully, with respect, or, in other 
words, with ritual precautions. The sense of the social value of 
food reveals itself as a belief that food may be a source of danger _ 

unless it is approached with circumspection, and this belief, trans- 
lated into action, gives rise to the rite of painting the body after 
eating. This does not mean that when the Andaman Islander 
eats turtle he is actually in a state of fear; he feels that’ he would 
have reason to be afraid if it were not that the society has pro- 
vided him with a means of avoiding the dangers of turtle cating, 
What he does feel, then, as I have tried to show, is not a fear of 
food but a sense of ihe value of food. 

This interpretation will, Ihope, be amply justified laler,and the! 
psychological processes assumed by it will be further illustrated. 
One point needs to be emphasised here, namely that the sug- 
gested interpretation affords, as no other would seem to do, an 
explanation of the fact that some foods are believed to be more 
dangerous than others, and that while it is obligatory to paint 
the body after eating the more dangerous foods, it is not necessary 
to do so after eating those that are less dangerous, If the rite is 
simply the expression of the social value of foods, it will follow 
that different food substances, having different social values, 
must be subject to differences in ritual treatment. 

There are a few other customs connected with food, recorded 
in an earlier chapter, which show that in general food is regarded 
as something that may only be approached with ritual precau- 
tions, A turtle must be killed with its head towards the open 
sea, and must be cut up in one particular way, otherwise the 
meat would be “bad.” A pig must also be cut up in a particular 
way, and must be stuffed with certain leaves before it is roasted, 
A man will not cat certain foods when he is away from his own 
country, as he is afraid that to do so might make him ill, (This 
corresponds to the belief that there is less chance of illness in 
one’s own county than away from it, and that the spirits of a 
strange place are more dangerous than those that haunt the 
jungles and the waters of a man’s own home.) All these customs, 
T believe, are so many different expressions of the social value of 
food. . 

T have maintained carlier in the chapter that the sense of the 
social value of such things as fire and the materials used for 
weapons translates itself into the belief that these things afford 
protection against danger. This would scem, at first sight, to be 

a) 

contradicted by the explanation that I have just given of the 
belief in the danger of food, The apparent contradiction must be 
faced and resolved before we can procecd further, 

First, itcan be shown that the various things that are regarded 
as affording protection when used according to custom, are also 
believed to be dangerous, just in the same way that food is 
dangerous, One example of this will suffice, The fibre of the 
Anadendron paniculatum, which is used for bow-strings and other 
purposes, has been shown to possess a power which gives it efficacy 
against dangers of the sea suchas shaiks, This same power, how- 
ever, may have injurious effects if the plant is handled without 
proper precautions. Thus, if a piece of the green creeper, or a 
person who has recently been handling it, should be in a canoe, 
it would be impossible to capture turtle from that canoe, as they 
would be diiven away by the “smell” of the plant. Ifa piece of 
the creeper were buint in the fire there would be a great storm, 
according to one statement, or all the turtle would be driven away 
fiom the vicinity, according to another. The handling of the plant 
in the prepaiation of the fibre, by scraping it on the thigh, is 
believed to be the cause of rheumatism. Turtle meat that might 
by accident come in contact with the plant would be dangerous 
and would therefore not be eaten. These different beliefs show 
us that while this plant possesses powers that make it of service 
to the society, both directly as a material for weapons, and in- 
directly as a magical protection against evil, it is also dangerous, 
ie, it will produce undesirable effects unless treated with the 
proper ritual precautions, 

Now just as materials such as the Avadendron are dangerous 
but may yet be used protectively, so it can be shown that the 
things used for food are also capable of affording protection 
against evil. It may be recalled that an important clement of 
the treatment of sickness is by the use of special foods, Yams, 
honey, the fat of turtle and dugong and other foods are believed 
to possess curative properties, The flesh of the flying-fox is used’ 
as a remedy for rheumatism. But the clearest evidence is pro- 
vided by the cnstom of wearing ornaments made of the bones of 
animals that have been eaten. These ornaments are believed to 
es protective powers of the same kind as those attributed to 

i A, 18 

human bones, but they are considered to be more particularly 
‘of.value to the hunter when he is in the forest or on the sea, 
They are made chiefly from the bones of thase anintals that are 
beliéved to be most dangerous Lo eat, These animals are difficult 
and often dangerous to capture or kill, When obtained they 
become very important sources of well-being to the society. The 
‘Andamanese express their sense of the social value of these 
animals in the belief that it is necessary to adopt certain measures 
of ritual precaution in dealing with them. When these due pre- 
cautions are taken, however, then the socicty is able to make use 
of the flesh to serve its own ends. So, when an animal has been 
eaten, and has thus been made to serve as a source of advantage, 
of strength, the bones, which are the permanent remains of the 
feast, acquire a symbolic value as evidence of past social well- 
being, and omens of future security. They are a visible proof of 
the ability of the society to protect itself and its members from 
the dangers that are believed to threaten the human being in 
the most important activity of his life, the obtaining and cating 
of food. . 

Formerly the Andamanese preserved the skulls of all large 
animals such as pigs, turtle and dugong, At the present day 
they no longer preserve the skulls of pigs, giving as their reason 
that owing to the dogs obtained from Huropeans they now have 
little difficulty in killing pigs; but they still preserve the skulls 
of dugongs, and a fair proportion of the skulls of turtle, The 
Jqrawa still seem fo preserve with great care the skulls‘of all the 
pigs they kill, going lo the pains of enclosing cach one in a case 
of basket-work. These skulls, we must conclude, are more than 
mere trophies of the chase, As visible proofs of the ability of the 
society in the past to overcome the hostile powars of nature, they 
form, as it were, the guarantee of a similar ability in the future, 
and 1 believe that tlicir preservation is regarded as a means of 
ensuring success in hunting as well as protection for the hunters, 
The (urile skulls that ave often suspended under thes forward 
platform of a canoe, are, I believe, intended both to protect the 
occupants of the canoe from the dangers of the sea and to help 
them to obtain a good catch, 

The Andamanese belief in the power of the bones of animals 

to protect them from danger and to bring them luck, is there- 
fore very similar to their belief in the protective power of the 
materials used for weapons and implements. The consideration 
of the apparent contradiction mentioned above has Jed us toa 
more exact statement of the real belicf in these matters, They 
believe, we may say, that all the things from the jungle and 
the sea of which they make use as food or as materials, are 
dangerous unless approached with proper ritual precantions, but 
when so approached they become sources of strength and well- 
being and also of protection from unscen dangers, 

To return to the main argument, which was concerned with 
the meaning of the patterns of clay painted on the body after 
eating the more dangerous foods, it would secm that this action 

“is really a rite or ceremony, of the same general character as 
other ceremonial customs of the Andamans, It is an action 
required by custom, the peiformance of which on appropriate 
occasions serves to keep alive in the mind of the individual a 
certain system of sentiments necessary for the regulation of con- 
duct in conformity to the needs of the society, By it the individual 
is made to feel (or to act as though he felt) that his life is one 
of continually repeated dangers from which he can only be pre- 
served by conforming to the customs of the sociely as they have 
been handed down by tradition, He is made to feel that the 
eating of food is not merely the satisfaction of an animal appetite, 
but an agt of communion, that the food ilself is something 
“sacred” (if we may use that word in the sense of the original 
Latin “sacer”). It serves also, like any other rite in which all 
Join, to make the individual fecl the solidarity and unity of the 
community ; all share in the common repast and the common 
danger, and each man sees on his neighbour the clay with which 
he himself is daubed, i. 

Of course it is probable that the Andamanese custom of 
painting the body after eating, like our own grace before and 
after meat, with which it is parallel, tends to become a formality 
accompanied by little real feeling, but it can be shown, I believe, 
that such customs do possess a real value—a real psychological 
function—in keeping alive ideas and sentiments that will on 

occasion play an important part fa influencing conduct, 
18—2 

We have not yet completed the study of the Andamanese 
beliefs about food. To do so we must examine the initiation 
ceremonies, I hope to show that these ceremonies are the means 
by which the society powerfully impresses upon the initiate the 
sense of the social value of food, and keeps the same sense alive 
in the minds of the spectators of the ceremony. 

The position in the social life occupied by a child is diffrent 
from that of an adult; the child is dependent upon and closely 
united to his parents, and is not an independent member of the 
community, To this difference in social position there corresponds 
a difference in the attitude of a person towards a child and towards 
an adult, and also a difference in the attitude of a child and that 
of an adult towards the society, As the child grows up a change 
takes place in his position in the social life, and this must be 
accompanied by a change in the emotional dispositions of the 
child himself in so far as these regulate his attitude towards the 
society, and by a change in the attitude towards the child of the 
other members of the group. The initiation ceremonies are the 
means by which these changes,are brought about, and by which, 
therefore, the child is made an independent member of the society, 

The ceremonies have two aspects according as we regard thém - 
from the point of view of the society or from that of the initiate, 
For the society they are to be described as the recognition of 
the change of status of the initiate, just as the marriage ceremony | 
is the social recognition of the change of status hy marriage, 
* For the initiate they constitute a sort of moral or social education, 

To fit a child for his proper place in the community he needs 
to be educated, Part of the process consists of learning how to 
hunt, how to make bows and arrows, and so on, This necessary 
knowledge he acquires gradually by imitation of his elcers, in 
which he is guided and encouraged by them. But in addition to 
this he has to acquire those sentiments or emotional dispositions 
which regulate the conduct of members of the society and con- 
stitule morality. Part of this education in morality, this education 
of the sentiments, takes place gradually as the child grows up, 
fess by any actual instruction than by processes of imitation and 
suggestion ; but in this connection an extremely important part 
is played by the initiation ceremonies. That the long series of 

abstentions and ceremonies does have a very powerful emotional , 
effect on the youth or girl may be readily observed by an eye- 
witness ; that their permanent effect is to create in his or her 
mind a number of sentiments that previously existed not at all 
or only in an undeveloped condition will be shown in the course 
of the present argument. 

Since in the life of the Andamans hy fir the most important 
social activity is the getting of food, and it is in connection with 
food that the social sentiments are most frequently called into 
action, it is therefore appropriate that it should be through his 
relation to food that the child should be taught his relation to 
the society, and thus have those sentiments implanted in him or 
brought to the necessary degree of strength. During his infancy 
the child is almost entirely unrestrained and acts with great com- 
parative freedom, He does not realise, in any adequate manner, 
that the food with which he is freely provided (for children arc 
the fast to suffer hunger) is only obtained by sikifl and effort, nor 
does he realise that he will one day be requirecl to labour to 
supply food for others, There follows a period of restraint, during 
which the growing boy or girl ‘has to give up eating certain 
relished foods, and has to pass through a number of ceremonies, 
some of them painful, and all solemn and awe-inspiring, These 
restraints on the action of the individual are not imposed by one 
person, but by the whole society backed by the whole force of: 
tradition. Through a series of years, just at what is, for physio. 
logical reasons, the most impressionable age, the individual learns 
to subordinate his own desires to the requirements of the society 
or of custom, as explained to him by his elders, He is thus im« 
pressed, in a forcible manner, with the importance of the moral 
law, and at the same time he is impressed with a sense of the 
social value of food, The ceremonies thus afford a moral education 
adapted to the requirements of life as it is Ilved in the Andamans, 
It would need a very lengthy analysis to show all the effects of 
the cerémonies on the emotional life of those who undergo them, 
and for the purpose of this chapter such an analysis is unnecessary, 
It will suffice merely to mention a few of the more important. 
As stated above, the ceremonies teach the boy or girl self-control 
or self-restraint, and they do so in relation to one of the two 

fundamental human instincts,—hunger. The cutting of the boy’s 
back in the North Andaman gives a still sharper lesson in self- 
control in the endurance of pain. Secondly the ceremonies teach 
the initiate, for the first time in life, to view life and its duties 
and obligations seriously. The various ceremonies are all very 
solemn affairs for the initiate. Again, the growing boy or girl is 
made to feel very strongly the importance of conforming to the 
customs of the community to which he belongs, thus having im- 
planted in his mind what is certainly one of the most powerful 
of the sentiments that regulate conduct in the Andamans, In 
this convection there may also be mentioned the respect for 
‘elders which is a most important element in the regulation of 
social life in all savage communities, and which is strongly im- 
pressed on the initiate throughout the ceremonies. And yet again, 
the ceremonies awaken and develop in the adolescent that fear 
of unseen danger which, as we shall see later, has a very important 
place in the mental life of the Andamanese and an important 
function in their moral life, Tinally, the whole serics of absten- 
tions and ceremonies serves to develop in the mind of every new 
member of the society that sense of the social value of foods 
with which our argument has been concerned, which may be 
briefly described as being a realisation that food is a possession 
of the society, that not only the power to obtain food, but also 
the power to use it without danger is something that the individual 
owes to the society, and Lhat the bestowal upon him of this power 
involves the acceptance on his part of corresponding obligations. 

We may say, to look at the matter under another aspect, 
that the initiation ceremonies teach the youth or girl to realise 
what is implied in being a member of the society by putting him 
or her during the period of adolescence in an exceptional position, 
and, as il were, outside the society, The youth is no longer a 
child and may not act as a child; but he is not yet an adult and 
may not act as adulls do, Ile feels himself cut off, as it were, 
from the ordinary life of the group, having as yel no share in it, 
As a child he was not yet aware of what it means to bea member 
of a society, but now, by means of the ceremonies, his attention 
is directed to the society and its life, by his being placed in a 
position of isolation outside it, Ie begins to look forward to the 

time when he will take his proper place as an adult, and his 
share in the common life of the camp. At cach step of the cere- 
monies he fecls that he is brought a little closer, until at last he 
can feel himself a man amongst men, Thus he is brought to a 
consciousness of all that it must mean to him to be a member of 
the community; he is taught the significance and valuc of social 
communion. 

Since the greater part of social Jife is the getting and eating 
of food, to place a person outside the social life would he to forbid 
him from partaking of the food that is obtained by the society 
and consumed by it. This, however, would result in his starvation, 
The same object is attained, however, by making the initiate 
abstain for a period from a number of the most important and _ 
relished foods, and then making him abstain for a second period, 
from the others. This is not the only way however in which the 
initiate is cut off from social communion, A youth or girl who 
is aka-op is not permitted to cance, nor to be decorated with red 
paint and white clay, It is in the dance that the community 
expresses most completely its own unily. Being forbidden to 
join in the dance is therefore to be excluded from the common 
life. Painting the body with red paint and white clay is, as we 
have seen, a way of expressing that the individual is aware of 
his own position as a member of the group having the approval 
and good-will of his fellows, Thus these other prohibitions re- 
inforce and supplement the prohibition against cating certain 
foods during the period of adolescence, and the consideration of 
them serves to confirm the interpretation just given, I believe 
that the aha-op is also forbidden to use oda clay as a sign of 
mourning, and if this be so it is of considerable significance, as 
will be evident after we have considered the meaning of this use 
of clay, Unfortunately I am not quite sure of the facts, and so 
the point must be left, 

To discuss in detail all the features of these ceremonies would 
take much space, I propose therefore to take as typical of the 
others the ceremony of turtle-cating and to explain its various 
features, When this ceremony is performed the youth has been 
compelled for many months to abstain from eating turtle, and 
has thus learnt to realise the social value of food in general ond 

of turtle in particular, Te is now ‘to have the same lesson im- 
pressed upon. him in a different way. The previous part of his 
education has been the gontinuous action over a long period of 
a not very powerful cmotion, He has had to sit quietly while 
others regaled themselves with turtle meat and to be satisfied with 
less tasty food, At times he has probably gone hungry because 
the only food in camp was of kinds that were forbidden to him, 
The ceremony he is now to go through acts by producing in the 
space of a few days a very intense emotional experience, We 
have seen that the sense of the social value of food takes the form 
of a belief that food is dangerous to cat, and that its dangers may 
only be avoided by ritual precautions. At the turtle-cating ccre- 
mony the initiate is cating turtle for the first time as an adult, 
and is therefore exposed to great clanger which makes it necessary 
' to guard him with every possible ritual precaution, This, at any 
rate, is what the initiate himself is made to feel, and it is through 
this that the ceremony has its emotional effects, The initiate is 
not, of course, himself possessed by a simple fecling of fear, 
though the emotional state of his mind is built up on the basis 
of the fear instinct. What he is about to do is a matter of preat 
danger to himself, but at the same time the precautions that are 
to be taken are such as entirely to remedy that danger if they 
are properly observed, Thus what he experiences is an intense 
feeling of the importance and solemnity of the ritual In which he 
is to take part, 

All the details of the ceremony are readily to be explained 
as so many different ways of warding off the danger that threatens 
the initiate, He is seated on leaves of the F72bisens téaceits, 
which, as we have seen, possess special efficacy against dangers 
connected with turtle, Leaves of the same kind are placed under 
his ar ms 80 as to cover his belly, where, we may suppose, the 
danger is most intensé. A fire is placed near him, between him 
and the open sea. It has already been shown that fire is believed 
to afford protection against dangers of this sort, and the’appro- 
.ptiateness of the position is due to the fact that in this instance 
it is from the sea and the things of the sca that danger is to be 
feared, He may not feed himself with his fingers, but must use 
a skewer of discus wood. This is clearly only one more pre- 

caution against danger, thong the idegs connected with it are 
somewhat obscure, At the beginning of the ceremony the initiate 
is fed with turtle by a man who conducts the ceremony and who 
represents the socicty, that latter fact being sometimes symbolised 
by his wearing round ‘his shoulders a bark sling such as is used 
for carrying children. This means, I think, that it is the society 
that “gives” the food to the initiate, giving him at the same time 
the power to use it with safety. The older man hands on to the 
younger the right and the power to cat which he himself possesses, 
He makes himself responsible, as it were, for the action of the 
initiate. At one stage of the performance the initiate is rubbed 
over with red ochre, This is to be understood by tecalling that‘ 
red ochre and red paint are regarded by the natives as valuable 
remedies against sickness and against the spirits that cause sick. , 
ness. Immediately afterwards the body of the initiate is spattergd 
with edu clay, The usc of this clay after eating food was explained 
as a method of avoiding the dangers supposed to result from 
eating such foods as turtle, It is clear that exactly the same 
explanation will apply to its usg in the initiation ceremonies, 
I have not found a satisfactory explanation of the peculiar 
manner in which it is applied. That the youth is not allowed to 
sleep for the first lwo days of the ceremony will be explained 
later in the chapter, when it will be shown that sleep. itself is 
regarded as a condition of danger, 

A notable incident is that at the beginning of the ceremony 
the female relatives of the initiate are required by custom to 
come and weep over him, An explanation of this has already 
been given, but may well be repeated. At cach stage of the 
initiation ceremonies the initiate is withdrawn from the position 
of dependence that the child necessarily occupies, and as children 
are, for the most part, under the care of their elder female relatives, 
the ceremonies result in a partial destruction of those bonds that 
unite the initiate to his mother or his foster-mother and her 
sisters or to his own elder sisters, The weeping of the female 
relatives is as it were a reaction against this lessening of solidarity, 
It is evident why ‘the rite is necessarily one-sided, The female, 
relatives need to feel that they are not being entirely cut off from 
the initiate, and so they affirm thelr attachmentsto him by weeping 

over him. On the other hand the important thing for the initiate - 
himself is to feel that the bonds that united him as a child to the 
women who cared for him are now severed or modified ; he must 
no longer depend on them but must learn to depend on himself; 
hence it is necessary that he should not weep but should remain 
passive and as it were indifferent under the tears that are shed 
over him, 

The last part of the cexemony consists of a dance, in which 
the youth dances in the middle surrounded by a ring of men. 
As we have seen that dancing is in gencral an affirmation of 
solidarity between those taking part, and an expression of the 
unity of the socicly, we may well regard this dance as an affirma- 
tion of the solidarity that now exists between the youth and 
the other dancers, who are representatives of the society of 
adults, There is something more in the dance than this however. 
I pointed out that one of the results of taking part in a dance is to 
produce in the individual an experience of increased personal 
force, and it is obvious that this is a very appropriate fecling for 
the initiate who, by his long abstention from turtle, and by the 
ceremony he has just been through, has acquired an increase of 
personal force, an addition to his social personality, Before the 
dance the initiate is decorated with white clay (the snake pattern) 
and red paint. [ have explained this particular method of 
painting the body as being a means of expressing and so pro- 
dueitig or reinforcing the fecling of elation accompanying the 
recognition by an individual of his own social value, of the fact 
that he has deserved and obtained the good-will and regard of 
his fellows, The youth who has been through the period of 
restraint and the ordeal of the ceremony has done his duty and 
has earned the approbation of his friends. It is for this reason 
that he alone of the dancers is decorated with the painting that 
serves to express or arouse the elation or self-satisfaction that it 
is right for him to feck The painting is the mark of the increase 
in social value of the initiate brought about by the turtle-eatingr 
ceremony. 

There is one aspect of the dance that may be mentioned as 
being of importance, and which will be referred to again later, 
namely that the movements seem to be in a way imitative of the 

*movements of turtle in the water. The leaves used in the dance 
are those that posscss magical efficacy against dangers from 
turtle, 

I have not been able to satisfy myself as to the meaning of 
the belt and necklace of Pothos scandens worn by the initiate in 
the dance and for some days afterwards, It is probable that the 
clue to this lies in the resemblance of the leaves to the shape of 
a phallus, but I have no clear evidence that this is the real explana- 
tion, and therefore offer it as merely a surmise. 

If the natives be asked the reason for these ceremonies ‘they 
often reply that their purpose is to make the youth or girl grow 
up strong, By this word “strong” they seem to mean in the first 
instance able-bodied, skilful (in hunting, etc.) and above all able 
to avoid or resist disease, They believe that anyone who did 
not pass through the ceremonics would be certain to die at an 
early age, and they recall the instance of one young man who 
refused to submit to the ceremonies who died before reaching 
maturity, Now, since the danger that they fear in cating food is 
said to be sickness, we may translate their statement into other 
terms by saying that the purpose of the initiation ceremonies is 
to endow the initiate with the power to cat the dangerous foods 
with comparative safety. 

It would seem that an infant, being completely dependent 
upon his parents, is protected by that dependence from the 
danger of foods, but the adult is only able to male use of food 
with safety by reason of the possession within himself of a special 
power with which it is the purpose of the initiation ceremonies 
to endow him, Fach kind of food has its own kind of dangerous 
power, and therefore every individual needs to be endowed with 
the specia] power to avoid each kind of danger. For this reason 
there is a separate ceremony for each of the important kinds of 
food. Thus we see very clearly that, for the Andamanege, foad, 
or the power to make use of food without danger, is essentially 
a possession of the society, and one function of the initiation 
ceremonies is to keep alive this sentiment, 

But there is a further meaning, I think, lying behind the 
statement that the initiation ceremonies endow the youth or 
girl with strength. I have already argued that all the most 

important social sentiments are closely associated with the sense 
of the social valuc of food, and although the initiation ceremonies 
are chiefly concerned with food, that is only because that is 
the casiest way by which to gel at the main system of social 
sentiments, So that behind the special meaning of the ceremonies 
with relation Lo food we must look for a more general meaning 
in relation to the social life in general, This may be conveniently 
stated by saying that the purpose of the ceremonies is to endow 
the individual with a social personality, By the social personality 
of a person I mean the sum of those qualities by which he is 
able to affect the society. It is, in other words, what gives him 
his social value, The social personality depends in the first place 
on the social status of the individual, A young child seoms to 
be regarded as having no social personality, IIe is not an inde- 
pendent member of the society, and therefore has no immediate 
social value, no direct effect on the general social life. At any 
rate the social personality of a child is something very different 
from that of an adult, So, since the initiation ceremonies provide 
the passage from childhood tg manhoud or womanhood we may 
describe them as the means by which the society cndows the 
child with an adult social personality, 

But the social personality of an individual also depends on 
his personal qualitics, his strength and intelligence, his skill as 
a hunter, and on his moral qualitics, whether he is mean or 
gencrous, quarrelsome or good-Lempered, and so on, for all these 
things help to determine the place he occupies in the social life 
and the effects he has upon it. Above all, the social personality 
depends upon the development in the individual of those senti- 
ments by which the social life is rerulated and by which the 
social cohesion is preserved, Now we have seen that the initlation 
ceremonies do serve to develop these sentiments in the mind of 
the initiate, and we may therefore say that in this respect also it 
is true that the initiation ceremonies serve to develop in the 
child the social personality of an adult, . 

The consideration of the initiation ceremonies has served to 
confirm the hypothesis that the Andamanese customs relating 
to food are all of them different modes of expressing the social 
value of foods, We have now to consider the nature of the 

dangers that are supposed to accrue from the eating of food if 
due precautions be not taken, One statement of the natives is 
that the danger they fear is sickness, Now sickness of all kinds 
is believed by the Andamanese to be caused by certain super- 
natural beings called Lew or Cauga,—the spirits of the dead; 

and further, we have seen that the danger connected with food 
is sometimes said to be the danger of an attack by the spirits. 
So that it is evident that to undeistand the meaning of the fear 
of foods it is first of all necessary to understand the notions they 
have about the spirits, and to do this we shall have to consider 
the various customs relating to death and burial, 

For the society a death ‘is the loss of one of its members, one 
of its constituent parts, A person occupies a definite position 
in society, has a certain share in the social life, is one of the 
supports of the network of social relations, His death constitutes 
a partial destruction of the social cohesion, the normal social 
life is disorganised, the social equilibrium is disturbed, After 
the death the society has to organise itself anew and reach a 
new condition of equilibrium, In reference to the small com- 
munity of the Andamans we may translate the above statement 
into terms of personal feeling by saying that the death removes 
a person who was the object of feelings of affection and attach- 
ment on the part of others and is thus a direct offence against 
those senliments in the survivors, 

Though the dead man has ceased to exist as a member of 
the society, it is clear that he has by no means ceased to in- 
fluence the society. On the contrary he has become the source 
of intense painful emotions, Where the affection that was felt 
towards him was previously a source of pleasure it now becomes 
a source of pain, Defining the “social personality” of an in- 
dividual as being the sum of characteristics by which he has an 
effect upon the social life and therefore on the social sentiments 
of others, we may say that by death the social personality is not 
annihilated but undergoes a profound change, sv that fiom being 
an object of pleasurable states of the social sentiments it becomes 
an object of painful states, This is expressed by the Andamanese 
by saying that by death a man or woman becomes a Lan, 

The burial customs of the Andaman Islanders, however, are 

nol to be regarded as simply the expression of natural personal 
fecling, They are a collective and ritual expression of a collective 
feeling. This is evident fiom the fact that they are regulated 
in every detail by custom, It is the duty of the iclatives and 
friends to mourn, whether they feel sorrow or not, and it is 
equally their duty to mourn only for a certain period, 

The cohesion of a social group, by which is maintained its 
existence as a group, depends directly on the existence of a 
collective system of sentiments or affective dispositions that bind 
every member to every other. The death, or removal by any 
other means, of a member of the group is a direct attack against 
these sentiments. Now whenever a sentiment of any kind is 
subjected to an attack of such a kind as this there are only two 
possible alternatives; cither the sentiment must suffer a diminu- 
tion of its intrinsic energy, and thus be less capable of controlling 
behaviour in the future; or it must find an outlet in an expressive 
action of some sort which serves as a reaction of defence or 
compensation and restores the sentiment to its former condition 
of strength, The typical example of such an emotional reaction 
is anger; anything that wounds our self-regar ding feclings arouses 
our anger; if it did not do so those feelings would gradually 
weaken, This law holds true of collective sentiments as well as 
of individual sentiments, If the society permitted its solidarity 
to be attacked, whether by death or by any other means, without 
reacting in such a way as to give relief to wounded social feelings 
and so to reinstate them in their former condition, these senti- 
menis would Jose their strength and the society its cohesion, 
The burial customs of the Andamanese are to be explained, 
I believe, as a collective reaction against the attack on the 
collective feeling of solidarity constituted by the death of a 
member of the social group, 

The man being dead, the first thing that the society does is 
to sever its connection with him, and the first step in this process 
is to get rid of the body by burying it or placing it in & tree, to 
abandon the camp at which he died, and temporarily to drop 
the use of his name, It fs often supposed that customs’ such as 
these, which are found in many primitive societies, are duc to 
the fear of the dead man’s spirit, That there is an element of 

fear present is undoubtedly true, but this fear docs not scem lo 
be by any means instinctive, and therefore comparable to the 
fear that some animals exhibit towards the dead body of one 
of their species. On the contrary the fear itself needs to be 
explained, and this will have to be attempted later. 

There is one group of facts which show very clearly that the 
burial customs are not solely due to an instinctive fear of dead 
bodies, namely that the customs vary according to the social 
position of the deceased. A child plays very little part in the 
general life of the community; hence on the death of a child the 
camp is not deserted and only the parents are subjected to the 
mourning ritual, Similarly the death of a person who has for 
long been so ill as not to be able to take any important part in 
social life has very little effect on the community as a whole; 
the body of such a one is disposed of with scant ceremony and 
mourning is perfunctory. On the other hand the death of a 
noted hunter in the prime of life, of a man who is esteemed as a 
Jeader, is a much greater Joss; the whole community mourns 
for him; his body is placed on a tree instead of in the ground, 
showing that his death is regarded as something different from 
the death of a person who is interred, The body of a stranger 
who dies or is killed is not buried, but is thrown into the sca or 
cut up and burnt. The explanation that the natives give of this 
custom of burning the body is that it serves to dispel danger 
that might accrue from the presence of the dead body of a 
stranger, The blood and the fat of the dead man, from which 
they appear to fear evil influences, arc, they say, driven up to 
the sky in the smoke of the fire and are thus rendered harmless, 

There is, then, a close correspondence belwcen the manney 
of burial and the social value of the person buried, and it is 
evident that the differences in the mode of disposing of the body 
are quite inexplicable on the assumption that the funeral customs 
are solely due to the fear of the dead, 

Before burial the corpse is decorated with white clay and red 
paint, We have already seen that this is an expression on the 
part of the survivors of their regard for the deccased, A living 
man or woman is decorated in this way when, for some special 
reason, it is desired to express the fact that he or she has the 

good-will and regard of others, and it is applied to the dead 
body with exactly the same meaning. Fire and water are placed 
beside the grave. It is not necessary to suppose that the Anda- 
manesce believe that the spirit of the dead man makes any use of 
these, any more than it is necessary for us to believe that the 
spirit cnjoys the flowers that it is our custom to place upon the 
grave, The action in cach case is symbolical. 

The dead man was bound by ties of solidarity to those still 
living, Now that he is dead those ties have not ceased to exist, 
but continue until the society has recovered from the effects of 
the death, for they are based on deep-seated and claborately 
organised sentiments, I believe that the mourning customs of 
the Andamanese are to be explained on this basis, as being the 
means by which the social sentiments of the survivors are slowly 
reorganised and adapted to the new condition produced by the 
death, The severance of the dead man from the society is not 
a sudden but a gradual process, during which his relatives and 
friends, being still attached to him by social ties, are in an ab- 
normal condition which may be defined as a partial separation 
from the world of living met and women and a partial aggre- 
gation to the world of the dead (ic, the spirit world), This 
abnormal condition of the mourner is shown chiefly in his or 
her withdrawal from participation in the ordinary life of the 
society, We have seen that the eating of food is, for the Anda- 
manese, one of the most important of social actions, a Ikind 
of communion of the society, and that during the period of 
adolescence a youth is separated or withdrawn from the conumon 
life of the group by being forbidden to eat certain foods. So, in 
strict conformity with the same sect of notions, the mourner is 
separated from the normal life of the society by being forbidden 
to cat pork or turtle, these being the most important foods that 
the Andamanese have’, Like the ake-of, also, the mourner is 

1 Ina number of tribes of Western Australia [ found an exactly similar custont. 
Tt was formerly the rule that after the death of a near relative the mourner must 
abstain from eating kangaroo, that being the largest game animal. Since the establish- 
ment of sheep slations in their country, with the consequent greut decrease in numbors 
of the kangaroo, it has come about that the animal which now provideg their most 
important supply of meat is the sheep, and the modern rule is that a mourner must not 

eat mutton. 

‘ forbidden to take part in a dance, or to decorate himself with ‘ 

red paint and white clay, for by these actions the Andaman 
Islander becomes conscious of his position as a member of a 
closely unified group, and it is necessary for the mourner, as for 
the aka-of, to feel that for the time being he is cut off from the 
ordinary life of the group. The disuse, during the period of 
mourning, of the name of a mourner is to be explained, as we 
shall see more plainly later, on the same principle, the personal 
name being what marks the person’s position in the social life, 
so that the temporary dropping of the name shows that for 
the time being the person is not occupying his normal social 
position. , 

The distinctive sign of a mourner is the use of clay, which is 
smeared over the body and head, and from the name of this 
clay is derived the term that denotes a mourner (aha-odn), It is 
possible to explain this also as a symbolic expression of the 
separation of the mourner from the world of living men and his 
aggregation to the world of the dead, In his everyday life the 
Andaman Islander is black from head to foot. During mourning 
he turns himself as nearly as possible white from head to foot, 
by covering his body all over with clay. It must be remembered 
that the spirits of the dead are said to be white or light in 
colour, This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the (light- 
coloured) natives of India are called spirits (Zev), while men of 
such a dark-coloured race as the African negrocs arc not referred 
to by this term. The use of clay would therefore seem to serve 
not only to make the mourner unlike his ordinary self, but to 
make him like the spirits of the dead, 

Of course, the natives explain all these customs of mourning 
as being expressions of sorrow for their loss, and this is, from 
the simple standpoint of everyday life, an adequate and truc 
explanation. From the standpoint of psychology, however, what 
we need to know is why the sorrow is expressed in just these 
ways and no others, Moreover, the natives give as a further 
reason for the mourning customs that if they did not observe 
them they would be liable to sickness or even death. 

I have said that the Andamanese believe that by death a 
man or woman becomes a Lav, but there is a little uncertainty 

BA, 19 

‘in the statements of the natives as ta whether he becames a 
spirit at once, immediately after the death, or whether he does 
so only after the flesh of the body has decayed. Both state- 
ments are sometimes made, but it seems common to think of 
the dead person during the period of mourning not as a spirit 
(Lau) but as a dead man (emprlo), We may best express the 
ideas of the natives by saying that the process by which a man 
becomes a spirit {s one that takes some months to complete, and 
is only ended when the bones are dug up. An interesting insight 
into their notions in this matter is afforded by a belief, about 
which unfortunately I have very scanty information, to the effect 
that when a man dies he is initiated into the world of the dead 
by a ceremony resembling the ceremonies by which a youth is 
initiated into manhood. In the statement of an Aka-Kede in- 
formant the ceremony was spoken of by the term Aémd/, which 
is generally used for the initiation ceremonies, and was described 
as a poroto-kimi/, ic, a ceremony in which the dead man ate 
porate (Caryota sobolifera) in just the same way that a youth cats 
turtle (okdd) at the dokbs-himi, There is independent evidence 
that there is a special connection between the spirits of the dead 
and the Caryota palm}, 

The description of this ceremony (of initiation into the wor! ld 
of the dead) that was given to me stated that in it the shredded 
fibre named Zero was used in just the same way as the leaves of 
the [discus are used in the turtle-eating ceremony, Turther, 
as in the peace-making ceremony men stand against a suspended 
cane from which depend bunches of this same eve, so in the 
initiation into the spirit world the initiate has to stand against 
the rainbow while the dancing spirits shake it and him, It ts 
this shaking of the rainbow (according to my iiformant) that 
causes earthquakes, It may be recalled that the rainbow is 
regarded as a sort of bridge between this world and the spirit 
‘world, and that its name is “the spirit’s cane,” so that it would 
seom that it is regarded as like a cane with gro fibre suspended 
from it, such as is used in the peaca-making ceremony. 

The explanation of the use of this 4gro fibre was postponed 
earlier in the chapter, and may well be undertaken here, It serves 

1 Page 171. 

as a sign that the spot where it is placed is tabu, or, in more 
Precise terms, that the spot must be avoided because of the pre- 
sence there of a force or power that makes things dangerous, 
This force is present at the grave of a dead man, and therefore 
the fibre is placed at the grave to mark the fact, while a bunch 
is similarly suspended at the entrance to a village that is deserted 
after a death, In the peace-making ceremony the members of the 
one party stand against a suspended cane to which are attached 
strips of the fibre, The meaning of this, I think, is that it thus 
forbids the members of the other party from attacking them. If 
a man were to leave the screen of deve, he would, I believe, be 
liable to be killed by the enemy party; it is only as long as he 
stands against it with his arms outstretched that he is safe, 
because while there he is tabu. 

How then does this belief in the fibre as a mark of tabu come 
about? The fibre is worn by the women of the Little Andaman 
to cover their pudenda, and it was formerly worn in this way by 
the women of the North Andaman, We may conclude that this 
was an old clement in the Andaman culture dating back to the 
remote period when the inhabitants of the Little Andaman became 
separated from those of the Great Andaman, Now in a very 
special sense the sexual organs of women are tabu, and, without | 
discussing the matter in dctail, we may suppose that the Andaman * 
Islander regareds the genitals of women as a spot in which resides 
the same sort of force or power that makes the spirits, or the 
body of a dead man, dangcrous, One point may be mentioned 
as throwing light on this subject, and helping forward the’argi 
ment, namely that the natives of the North Andaman often use« 
the expression Lav-duku (meaning literally “spirit-women” or 
“female spirits”) to denote women collectively instead of the | 
phrase that might be expected—w’e-bukw. It would seem that by 
reason of their sex and the special ideas that are associated with 
it, women are regarded as having a very special relation with the ° 
world of spirits, We may conclude that the Agro fibre, being a 
convenient material for the purpose, was first used as a covering 
for the women, and in this way came to be used as a sign of 
tabu in general, or else that for some unknown reason the fibre 
was selected as a suitable material to mark any kind of tabu, and 

19—-2 

so came to be used both as a covering for women and also asa 
sign of warning at the grave and the village that has been visited 
by death’, 

‘To return from this digression to the question of the initiation 
of the dead man into the world of spirits, it is clear that since such 
ceremonies lake Lime to accomplish there is a period during which 
the dead man is in an indeterminate position; he is no longer a 
member of the society of the living, and has not yet become 
a member of the society of the dead, As long as he is thus 
situated his relatives and friends are still attached to him, so that 
he still remains as it were in partial contact with the living. 
During this time the society is still suffering the ill effects of the 
death, and the process of readjustment by means of the customs 
of mourning is still taking place. At the end of it the dead man 
becomes completely absorbed in the spirit world, and as a spirit 
he has ‘no more part in or influence over the social life than any 
other spirit, and the mourning is brought to a close by means of 
a ceremony. 

This ceremony has two parts, One is the recovery of the 
bones and their reaggregation to the society, a rile which we may 
regard as the final settling of the dead man in his proper place, 
All that is left of him, who was once a source of strength to the 
community, who had once—as it is here expressed—a social 
value, Are the bones, his name, and the memory of him that his 
fiends retain, We may suppose that the bones still have some- 
thing of the value that originally attached to their owner, and 
thdeed it is evident that they have, for after they are recovered 
they aye affectionately treasured as relics by the relatives. By 
the, end of the period of mourning the painful feclings aroused 
by the death have diced down, so that the dead man is now the 
‘object only of memories that are pleasant, or, at the worst, bitter. 
syeet. ‘The bones, then, are visible evidences of the fact that the 

‘society’ has recovered from the disruptive shock of the death, and 
ithis isivhy’ they are dug up as soon as the recovery is complete, 
or tat er in order to complete it, and are thereafter treasured. 

+1 The brakes formed by the cane (42/0) fiom the leaves of which the Ags fibre is 
obtained scem to be regardedéas lurking places of the spirits, The natives often sponk 
of the Bédo-tet-dan( Calamus leal spirits), F 

It should now be clear why the Andamanese attribute to the 
bones of dead persons the power to protect them from unseen 
danger’, Like the bones of animals that have becn eaten they 
are visible and wearable signs of past dangers overcome through 
the protective action of the socicty itself, and are therefore a 
guarantec of similar protection in the future. Ancl as the death 
of a member is an cnormously more important event for the 
community than the mere killing and-cating of a dugong, 30 an 
enormously greater protective power is attributed to the human 
bones than to those of any animal. 

The bones, then, are dug up, and brought into camp, where 
they are wept over just as a friend who has been absent is wept 
over. All that is left of the former person returns to the social 
life, henceforward to occupy a definite place in it, and the weep- 
ing is the rite of aggregation, the expression of the attachment 
of those who weep to the bones that now return to them from 
the grave, The skull and jawbone and the long bones are then 
decorated with red paint and white clay, this being the way in 
which the relatives express their sense of the value of them. The 
other bones are made up into strings and distributed to be ysed 
on occasion as amulets, 

Soon after the digging up of the bones the other part of the 
ceremony of the end of mourning takes place, We have seen 
that while the dead man was in an indeterminate position his . 
selatives were still attached to him by social bonds, but now that 
he has finally become a spirit, and is for ever definitely ‘cut off 
from the human society, these bonds cease to cxist, T: he moutnars, 
therefore, who have been cut off from the normal social life are fred 
to return to it and even if they should not so desire, yet it is their 
duty to do so, The return of the mourners to the society is 
marked by a dance. The clay that has marked their gondition 
is taken off, and they are decorated with white clay and red paint + 
and all the ornaments usual on ceremonial occasions, Thus ’ 
decoratetl they dance, the women on this occasion bejng required - 
to dance as well as the men, The danccis interrupted shortly after 
it is begun in order that those who have not been mournifg: may 
weep with the mourners, The weeping, according to the expla-, 
nation al/the beginning of the chapter isa rite of aggrogation by 

which the mourners are welcomed back to the society, just as 
returning friends arc welcomed after an absence, It has nothing 
whatever to do, I believe, with the dead person for whom they 
have been mourning, but is merely an expression of solidarity 
between those still alive, Dancing and the decorations used in 
the dance, I have argued, are means by which the society cx- 
presses its own unity, and makes the individual realise what it 
means to be one of a group, so that in this dance we see the 
society once more coming together to continue its common life, 
and compelling those who have been cut off from it to feel, even 
against their inclinations, that they have become once more units 
of the social body. After this ceremony the mourners are relicved 
from the restrictions to which they were subjected, 

In order to complete this discussion of the burial customs it 
is necessary to explain why a person’s name should be dropped 
from use after his death, and although this will require a digres- 
sion of some length, this seems the most convenient point at 
which to deal with it, There is a very special relation between 
the name of anything and its fundamental characteristics, which 
in logic we describe by saying that the latter are included in the 
connotation of the name, The way in which the Andamanese 
represent this relation to themselves is shown in onc of the legends, 
Ata time when the ancestors did not know cither the names or 
the uses of the different objects to be found in their country, one 
of them, Da Yeyat by name, walked through the forest enquiring 
of the objects he met what were their names, I'rom most of them 
he received no reply, but the yam and the resin replied to him 
and gave him their names. The legend shows that as soon as the 
hero of the tale knew the name of the yam he immediately knew 
that it was of use as a food and that it required to be cooked in 
a particular way, allhough he was till then ignorant of those 
important propertiey. Similarly, having discovered the name of 
the resin he knew that it could be made into a torch and so used 
to give light, : 

There is, to the mind of the Andaman Islander, a somewhat 
similar and very important connection belween a person’s name 
and what is here called his social personality, and this is cx- 
hibited in the customs whereby the name is avoided on certain 

occasions. “A consideration of the different instances will show, 
I think, that the name jis always avoided whenever the owner is 
for any reason prevented from’ taking his or her usual place in 
the life of the society. At such times the social personality 
is as it were suppressed, and the name which represents it is 
therefore also suppressed, 

From the moment of her first menstruation to the date of her 
marriage, or more strictly to the date of her first partuiition, the 
birth-name of a woman is dropped from use and she is called by 
her flower-name. A woman ouly attains her complete social per- 
sonality asa mother, Asa child she has not the power to become 
a mother. She acquires that power at her first menstruation and 
therefore from that time until this new virtue is actively exercised 
she is in a position in which one of her virtucs, one of the quali- 
ties making up her social personality, is in abeyance, Therefore 
her name (her birth-name) is not used and she is given a tem- 
porary name in its place, a flower-name, She is, as it were, in 
blossom, and only when her body ripens to its fruit is she a 
complete woman. 

At certain stages of the iniliation ceremonies the name of a 
youth or of a girl (the flower-name in this instance) is avoided 
for a certain period, Such occasions are during, and for some : 
time after, any of the more important ceremonies, such as the 
cutting of the boy’s back, the puberty ceremony of the girl, the 
turtle-eating and pig-cating ceremonics, After a boy's back is 
cut he Is addressed and spoken of for some time as Aida, his 
own name not being spoken, Similarly during and after the 
turtle-caling or the pig-eating ceremony he is addressed and 
spoken of by the name Kim7/, The explanation of these customs 
is that at these times the initiate is in an abnormal position by 
reason of the ceremony that has taken place, and is not permitted 
to take an ordinary part in social life, After the initiation cere- 
mony, for example, the youth is not permitted (o handle a bow 
for some weeks (the bow being the typical masculine implement). 

The names of a newly-married couple are avoided fora fewdays 
after their marriage, Marriage produces an important change in 
the social personality, and this change is expressed | in the marriage 
ceremony, but all such changes take time, and it is some days at 

least before the married couple can be expected to have settled 

_ down in their new positions, For these days, therefore, their 
names are not used. The same sort of explanation will hold for 
the’custom of droppiig the names of a father and mother before 
and after the birth of a child, particularly the first born, 

At the tuitle-eating ceremony of the North Andaman coast- 
dwellers the youth is given a new name, It is possible that a girl 
is also given a new name at this time, and that another name is 
also given to the youth at the pig-cating ceremony, but on these 
points I neglected to make sufficient enquiry. The name given 
at the turtle-eating ceremony is never used and is not likely to 
be known except to these who were present at the ceremony, and 
therefore setves no such purpose as the flower-name of the girl, 
The giving of the name is simply the mark of the change of 
social personality brought about by the ceremony. The youth 
receives an addition to his personality and therefore receives an 
additional name. It is significant that all the names given at this 
ceremony have reference to the sea and to things of the sea, par- 
ticularly to turtle, such as Cokbi-dira, tuttle-liver, Cosde-zet, turtle- 
blood, ete, 

Durlag the period of mourning, when, as we have seen, the 
mourner is withdrawn from the ordinary life of the society, his 
name is not used, showing that during this period his social per- 
sonality is in a state of partial suppression. After the mourning 
period is over the mourner, when he resumes his social personality, 
resumes at the same time his name. 

Now death is the most fundamental modification of the social 
personality that is possible and therefore the name of a person 
recently dead is strictly avoided. Death, however, does not de- 
stroy the social personality utterly and for ever, but produces in 
it a profound change, which begins at the death itself and is only 
completed at the end’of and by means of the customs of mourn- 
ing. After the mourning is over the virtues of the dead man 
affect the survivors through memory, and his bones "form a 
precious possession of the community, thus constituting for him 
anew social valuc, a new personality. During the perlod of 
change, while the personality docs not exist iri the same form 
‘as'before the death, but does not yet exist in the fofn in whigh 

it will when he lives only in the memory of his friends, the name 
is not used, After the mourning period is over the name may 
again be used, ‘ 

In general then, it may be said that at dny period in which a 
person is undergoing a critical change in his condition in so far 
as it affects the society his name falls out of use, to be resumed 
when the period of change is over. The reason for this is that 
during such petiods of change the social personality is suppressed ' 
or latent and therefore the name which is closely associated with 
the social personality must be suppressed also. 

The customs of burial and mourning are therefore seen to be 
not simply the result of natural feelings of fear and sorrow but 
ritual actions pe:formed under a sense of obligation and strictly 
regulated by tradition, They are means by which the society 
acts upon its members, compelling them to feel emotions appro- 
ptiate to the occasion, Since the dead person has, by his death, 
become a cause of social disruption, all contact with him must be 
avoided, But the dead man had a certain value to the society, 
and as a thing of any kind cannot be valucd unless its loss is felt 
as a source of pain, so if the community did not mourn when it 
lost one of its members that feeling of the social valuc of indi. 
viduals on which the existence of the society depends would soon 
diminish in strength, thereby weakening the social cohesion, 

It is now possible for us to understand the Andamanese bellafs 
about the spirits, The basis of these beliefs, I wish to maintain, 
is the fact that at the death of an individual his social personality 
(as defined above) is not annihilated, but is suddenly changed. 
This continuance after death is a fact of immediate experience 
to the Andaman Islanders and not in any way a deduction, The 
person has not ceased to exist, For one thing his body is still 
there, But above all he is still the object of the social sentiments 
of the survivors, and thereby he continues i¢ act upon the socicty. 
The removal of a member of the group is felt not as something 
negative’but as the positive cause of great social disturbance, 

‘The spirits are feared or regarded as dangerous, The basis of 
this fear is the fact that the spirit (ie. the social personality of a 
person recently dead) is obviously a source of weakness and dis- 
ruption to the community, affecting the survivors through thelr 

attachment to him, and producing a condition of dysphoria, of 
diminished social activity, The natural impulse of the Andaman 
Islander or of any other human being, would he, U believe, not to 
shun the dead body ofa loved one, but to remain near it as long 
as possible, It is the society, acting under a quite different set of 
impulses, that compels the relatives to separate themselves from 
the remains of the one they loved, The death of a small child has 
very little influence on the general activity of the community, 
and the motive for severing connection with the dead that is 
present in the case of an adult, either does not exist or is so wealk 
as to be overruled by the private feelings of affection, and so the 
child is buried in the hut of the parents, that they may continue 
to keep it near them, This affords a good test of the hypothesis, 
and gives strong support to the view that the fear of the dead 
man (his body and his spirit) is a collective feeling induced in 
the society by the fact that by death he has become the object 
of a dysphoric condition of the collective consciousness, 

If the Andamanesce are asked what they fear from the spirit 
of,a dead man they reply that they fear sickness or death, 
and that if the burial and mourning customs are not properly 
observed the relatives of the dead person will fall sick and 
perhaps die, ; 

The basis of this notion of the spirits is that the near relatives 
of the deceased, being bound to him by close social ties, are in 
fluenced by everything that happens to him, and share in his 
good or evil fortune. So that when by sickness and resulting 
death he is removed from the community, they are as it wore 
drawn afler him. For this reason they are, during the period of 
mourning, between life and death, being still attached to the dead 
man, Contact with the world of the dead is therefore regarded 
as dangerous for the living because it is believed that they may 
be drawn completely into that world, Death is a process by 
which a person leaves the living world and enters the world of 
the spirits, and since no one dies willingly he is conteived as 
being under a compulsive force acting from the world of spirits. 
Now sickness is a condition that often ends in death, a first stage 
of the way leading to the world of spirits, Hence sickness is 
conceived by the Andamanese as a condition of partial contact 

with that world, This is what is meant by the statement that 
sickness and death come from the spirits. : 

The way the Andamanese think about the spirits is shown in 
the Akar-Bale legend of the origin of death, Yaramurud, having 
died through an accident, self-caused, becomes a spirit, but he 
does so only under the compulsion exercised upon him by his 
mother, who, now that he is dead, insists that he must go away 
from the world of the living and become a spirit, The spirit 
then comes back Lo sec his brother and by this contact causes the 
brother's death, The story implies that it was not because Vara- 
murud was evilly disposed towards his brother that he killed him, 
but on the contrary it was his attachment to his relative that 
caused him to return to visit him, and death followed as a result 
of this contact of the living man with the spirit, Since that time 
deaths have continued to occur in the same way, Thus it appears 
that the Andamanese conceive that the spirits do not cause 
death and sickness through evil intention, but through their mere 
proximity, and,as the legend very clearly shows, the burial customs 
are intended to cut off the unwilling spirit from contact with the 
living. This explains also why during the period of mourning 
the relatives of a dead person are thoiight to be in danger of 
sickness, and have more to fear from the spirit than others, for 

‘since it is they who were most attached to him during life it is 
they who are most likely to suffer from contact with him after 
he is dead, It was Yaramurua’s brother who was the first to die 
through the influence of the spirits, 

The feelings of the living towards the spirits of the dend are 
therefore ambivalent, compounded of affection and fear, and this 
must be clearly recognized if we are to understand all the 
Andamanese beliefs and customs. We may compare the relation 
between the society of the living and the society of the dead to 
that between two hostile communitics havihg occasional friendly 
relations. That the Andamanese themselves look upon it in 
some stich way is shown by the belief that the ceremony by 
which a dead man is initiated into the world of spirits resembles 
the peace-making ceremony. The dead man, up to the time of 
his death, has been living in a state of enmity with the spirits, 
and before he can enter their community and share their life he 

1 Page a16. 

has to make peace with them in the same way that men make 
peace with one another afier they have been at war, 

This notion of hostility between the sociely and the world of 
spirits is found in other primitive societies, and seems everywhere 
to have a definite social function, The temoval of a member of 
the community cither by death or otherwise is a direct attack 
on the social solidarity and produces in primitive socictics an 
emotional reaction of the same general character as anger, This 
collective anger, if freely expressed, serves as a compensating 
mechanism, satisfying and restoring the damaged sentiment), 
But this can only happen if there is some object against which 
the anger can be directed, In the instance of homicide the social 
anger is directed against the person responsible for the death 
and against the social group to which he belongs, In the instance 
of death from sickness some other object has to be found, and 
amongst primitive peoples there are two chief ways in which this 
is done, An example of one incthod is afforded by the tribes of 
Australia, amongst whom there is a strong and constant hostility 
between neighbouring local groups, with a result that the anger 
‘ata death from sickness directs itself against some communily 
with which the group of the dead man is at enmity and it is 
believed that some member of that community has caused the 
death by magic. The Andamans afford an example of the second 
method. Amongst them it would seem that the enmity between 
different local groups (except as concerns the /graqwa in the 
South Andaman) was never very strong and the belief in evil 
magic was not. highly developed, so that the anger at a death is 
directed against the spirits, and sometimes find expression in 
violent railings against them, accompanied by all the bodily 
manifestations of extreme rage and hatred, 

Now though the Andamanese regard the spirits with fear and 
hatred, and believe that all contact with them is dangerous for 
living men, yet they do not look on them as essentially evil, for 
that would conflict with their own feelings of attachment to their 
dead friends, 

} The psychological function of individual anger is to restore to thelr normal 
condition the wounded selfregaiding sentiments, ‘I'he function of collective anger ig 
similarly to restore the collective sentimenta on which the solidarity of the soclaty 
depends. 

I gathered a few hints that they even believe that at times the 
spirits can and will help them. Thus a man will call on the sea- 
spirits of his own country to send plenty of turtle (over which 
the spirits seem to be assumed to have power) when he is going 
hunting. A very important fact in this conncelion is the different 
way in which a native regards the spirits of his own country and 
of other parts, the latter being thought to be much more danger- 
ous than the former because presumably they are the spirits not 
of relatives and friends but of strangers at the best or enemies at 
the worst, 

There is other evidence that the Andamanese do not regard 
the power that is possessed by the spirits as being essentially evil. 
This power, whereby the spirits are able to cause sickness, seems to 
be shared by the bones of deacl men, Indecd the Andamanese call 
such bones “spirit-bones” (/az-tot, dauga-ta). Now this power in 
the bones (though it may at times be supposed to cause sickness) 
is more commonly made use of in order to prevent. or cure it, 

The most conclusive evidence that the power of the spitils is 
not intiinsically evil, but may be used to produce both good and 
evil is afforded by the beliefs about medicine-men or dreamers 
(oko-Jumu), There are three ways in which a man can become a 
medicine-man, The first is (as the natives put it) by dying and 
coming back to life. Now when a man dies he becomes a spirit 
and therefore acquires the peculiar powers and qualities of a spirit, 
which he retains if he returns to life. Secondly, if a man straying 
in the jungle by himself be affronted by the spirits, and if he 
show no fear (for if he is afraid they will kill him) they may keep 
him with them for a time and then let him go. Such a man, on 
his return, is regarded as being a meclicine-man, and possessing 
all the powers of medicine-men. I was told of one man who 
became a medicine-man in this way within living memory, and 
it was stated that when he returned from the forest where he had 
been kept by the spirits for two or three days he was decorated 
with 4go fibre, We have seen that this fibre is used by the spirits 
in the ceremony by which they initiate dead men, and its presence 
on the relurned warrior was perhaps accepted by his friends as 
evidence that he had been initiated by the spirits. The third and 
last way in which a man may become a medicine-man is by having 

intercourse with the spirits in his dreams. This is a point to 
which it will be necessary to return later, Vor the present it is 
sufficient to note that in every instance the power of the medicine- 
man is believed to be derived from his contact wilh the spirits in 
one of the three possible ways. 

We are justified in concluding that the special power of the 
mecdicine-man, by which he is distinguished from his fellows, is 
simply the same power that is possessed by the spirits, from con- 
tact with whom he has obtained it, The medicine-man is believed 
to be able both to cause and to cure, sickness, to arouse and to 
dispel storms, In other words he has power for both good and evil, 
and we must conclude that the spirits have the same, Morcover, 
it is commonly said that the medicine-man is able to produce 
the effects he does, whether they be harmful or beneficial to his 
fellows, by communicating with the spirits in dreams and en- 
listing their aid. This would seem to prove the point that I am 
here concerned with, that the power possessed by the spirits, 
though contact with it is always dangerous, may yet in certain 
cir¢umstances be of benefit to the society, and is therefore not 
essentially evil in nature, 

The Andamanese believe that a medicine-man communicates 
with the spirits in sleep, and this is not the only evidence that 
they believe sleep to be a condition in which contact with the 
world of spirits is easier than in waking life, It is believed ‘that 
sickness is more likely to begin during sleep than when awake. 
During the initiation ccremonics the initiate is required to abstain 
from sleep after cating pork or turtle, and this would seem to 
be because sleep is regarded as generally dangerous and there- 
fore to be avoided on such occasions as this when every precaution 
needs to be taken. 

The explanation of this belief seems to lie in the fact that 
sleep is a condition of diminished social activity, in which the 
individual is withdrawn from active social Ife, and is therefore 
also withcrawn from the protection of the society, After eating 
turtle the initiate is in urgent need of the protection of the society, 
which would be lost to him if he were permitted to sleep, After a 
death, when tho corpse remains in the camp all night the people 
remain awake, and since there is no other common activity in 

which they can join, they sing, and thus protect themselves from 
the spirits that are present as the cause of the death, 

This explanation implies that all conditions of diminished 
social activity on the part of an individual are dangerous. One 
example of such a condition is sickness, in which the sicl person 
is unable to pursue his ordinary occupations, Other examples 
are afforded by a mother, and to a certain extent a father during 
the period preceding and following the birth ofa child, and by a 
woman during the menstrual period, All these, as various cus- 
toms show, are believed by the Andamanese to be conditions of 
danger in which it is necessary to take ritual or magical precau- 
tions. A better example for our purpose is that of an adolescent 
during the period covered by the initiation ccremonics, when, as 
we have seen, he is as it were cut off from the society, and there 
is abundant evidence that the Andamanese believe this to be a 
state of danger. Another example is the condition of a homicide 
during the period of his isolation. Lastly, we have seen that a 
mourner is cut off from the ordinary social life, and it may now be 
noted that the native explanation of the restrictions observed In 
that state is that if things were not done thus the mourner would 
be ill; in other words the condition of mourning is one of danger, 
and the ritual referring to it is the means by which the danger 
(from the spirit world) is avoided. This explanation does not 
conflitt with the one previously given but on the contrary we can 
now see that the notion that the mourner is in a position partly 
withdrawn from active participation in social life necessarily 
involves the belief that he is in a condition of danger, 

We may conclude that every condition in which the individual 
is withdrawn from full participation in active social life is regarded 
as dangerous for him, and that this is at least one of the reasons 
why sleep is so regarded. We have already noted that all con- 
ditions of danger tend to be thought of as,due lo contact with 
the spirits, and sleep is therefore supposed to be a state in which 
such corttact is easier than in waking life. Now sleep is visited 
by dreams and it comes about that the dream-life, by reason of 
its contrast with waking-life, is seized upon by the Andamanesc 
as a means by which the nature of the spirit world may be 

-represented to the imagination, 

The Andaman Islander seems to regard the dream-world as 
a world of shadows or reflections, for he uses the same word to 
denote a shadow, a reflection in a mirror, and a dream (the stem 
Sunuin Aka-Jern). Now when a man enters this shadow-world 
in sleep he is, as we have seen, conceived as coming into partial 
contact with the world of spirits. Hence the Andaman Islander 
believes that in dreams he may communicate with the spirits, 
that dreams may be a cause of sickness, and that in dreams a 
medicine-man can catise or cure sickness in his fellows. In this 
shadow-world the man himself becomes as it were a shadow, a 
mere reflection of himsclf; it is not he that lives and acts in his 
dreams but his o¢fnzlo, his double, his shadow-self, or, as we 
might say, his soul, It is but a step from this to the representa- 
tion of the spirit-world as a similar world of shadows and dream- 
shapes, and to the conclusion that when a man dics it is his 
ot-Jumulo that becomes the spirit. 

To summarise the argument, the belief in the world of spirits 
rests on the actual fact that a dead person continues to affect: 
the society, As the effect is one of disorganisation, whereby the 
social sentiments are wounded, the dead are avoided and the 
spirits are regarded with fear, But as a recently dead person is 
still regarded with feclings of attachment by his friends, the 
resulting final attitude towards the spirits is ambivalent, By 
a simple step the spirits come to he regarded as the’ catse of 
sickness and death, and therefore as hostile to living men, Yet, 
as the beliefs about medicine-men show, it is possible for excep. 
tional individuals to be on terms of friendship with the spirits, 
Finally, the dream-life affords a means by which the spirit-world 
may be represented in a simple and conercte manner, This last 
feature (the association of the spirits with dreams) I believe to be 
a secondary elaboration of the primary or fundamental belief 
which shows itself in-the ritual of death and mourning, serving 
only to rationalise it and male it more concrete, This need of 
concrete representation of the spirit-world shows itself*in other 
beliefs, in which may be seen the tendeney to become self- 
contradictory that is often the mark of ideas that arise as the 
result of attempts to rationalise conative and affective impulses. 
The spirits are, on the one hand, as it were shadows or images 

of living men, and yet, since they are feared and disliked, they 
are often represented as being repulsive and inhuman, with long 
legs and short bodies, with long beards and ugly faces’. The 
spirits must be thought of as somewhere, but there is no con- 
sistency in the statements as to where that somewhere is; one 
man will say that they live in the sky, another that they are 
under the earth, a third will point to a particular island as their 
home; at the same time it is evident from other statements that 
they vaguely conceive them as being everywhere, in the forest and 
the sea, 

We are now in a position to understand what the Andaman 

Islander means when he says that the danger he fears from food 
is from the spirits, The greatest evil that can happen to the 
community is the sickness or death of its members, and these 
are believed to be the work of the spirits, The sense of the social 
value of food takes the form of a belicf that food is dangerous, 
and inevitably the danger comes to be conceived as that of sick- 
_ ness or death, and is therefore associated in their minds with the 
spirits, 
But there is a more fundamental reason than this, £ have 
tried to show that it is because food has such important effects 
for good and evil on the social life that it is believed to be endued 
with a peculiar power which makes it necessary to approach it 
with ritual precautions, If this thesis be valid it should be capable 
of generalisation, and we should find the samc power attributed 
to every object or being that is capable of affecting in important 
ways the well-being of the society, We should expect that the 
Andamanese would attribute this power not only to the more 
important things used for food but also to such things as the 
weather and dead men (ic, the spirits), Now this, if the argument 
has been correct, is exactly what we do find, and we have here 
the reason why the Andaman Islander, when-asked what he fears 
from eating dangerous foods, replies that he fears sickness or the 
spirits of the dead. 

We may formulate in precise language the beliefs that underlie 
the ceremonial, remembering always that the Andaman Islanders 

11 once drew a few grotesque figures for the amusement of some Andamanese 
children, and they at once pronounced them to be “spirits,” 

BA 20 

themselves are quite incapable of expressing these beliefs in words 
and are probably only vaguely conscious of them, (1) There isa 
power or force in all objects or beings that in any way affect the 
social life. (2) It is by virtue of this pawer that such things are 
able to aid or harm the society. (3) The power, no matter what 
may be the object or being in which it is present, is never either 
essentially good or essentially evil, but is able to produce both 
good and evil results, (4) Any contact with the poweris dangerous, 
but the danger is avoided by ritual precautions. (5) The degree 
of power possessed by anything is directly proportioned to the 
importance of the effects that it has on the social life. (6) The 
power in one thing may be used to counteract the danger due to 
contact with the power in some other thing. 

We have studied this power in the animals and plants used 
for food and the things used as materials. It is this that makes 
turtle dangerous to eat and Anadendron fibre dangerous to pre- 
pare, and it is this also that makes animal bones or the leaves of 
Hibiscus available for protection, We have now seen that the 
same power is present in dead men, in their bodies, their bones, 
and in the spirit-world to which dead men go. All contact with 
the-world of the dead is highly dangerous, and yet we have seen 
that human bones may be used for protection and that even the 
spirits may be induced to heal sickness or allay storms, We have 
also seen that the same power is present in the oke-juntn, dnd we 
have made the important discovery that it is through contact 
with the spirits that he acquires the power. This reveals another 
important principle. (7) If an individual comes into contact with 
the power in any thing and successfully avoids the danger of such 
contact, he becomes himself endowed with power of the same 
kind as that with which he is in contact, Now although the oko- 
jumu possesses a very special social value, yet every man and 
woman has some sotial value, some of that power which makes 
any heing capable of affecting the society for good or ill, and we 
can now see that the initiation ceremonies are the means by 
which the individual is endowed with power (or, as the natives 
say, made strong) by being brought into contact with the special 
power present in each of the important kinds of food, The initia- 
tion of the ordinary man or woman is parallel to the initiation , 

of the oko-jumu save that in one instance it is the power in foods 
and in the other, that in the spirits with which the initiation is 
concerned, 

It has been held in this chapter that the socicly or the social 
life itself js the chief source of protection against danger for the 
individuale If this be so then the socicty itself possesses this 
same power with which we are dealing, and we must expect to 
find that contact with this power is also dangerous for the indi- 
vidual. Now the occasion on which the individual comes into 
contact with the power in the society is in the dance, and I found 
evidence that the natives believe that dancing is dangerous in 
exactly the same way as eating food. Confirmation of this will 
appear later, 

Tt would seem that for the Andaman Islander the social life 
is a process of complex interaction of powers or forces present 
in the society itself, in each individual, in animals and plants and 
the phenomena of nature, and in the world of spirits, and on 
these powers the well-being of the society and its members 
depends. By the action of the pringiple of opposition the socicly 
—the world of the living—comes to be opposed to the spirils—- 
the world of the dead. The society itself is the chief source of 
protection to the individual; the spirits are the chicf source of 
danger. Hence all protection tends to be referred to the sociely 
and all danger to the spirits. In the initiation ceremonies it is 
the society that protects the initiate against the dangers of food, 
and those dangers are referred, generally if not quite consistently, 
to the spirits, with which at first sight they would seem to have & 
nothing to do, 

It is row at last possible to understand the uses of the word 
ot-kimil which were first discussed on page 267 above, When the 
word is used in reference to a person who has just partaken of 
food it denotes a condition of danger produéed by contact with 
the power in foods, This condition results at any time from the 
eating of any of the more important foods, but is clearly produced 
in an extreme form when a food such as turtle or pork is being 
eaten for the first time at a ceremony of initiation. Hence the 
initiate is most intensely £¢m/ and is therefore addressed and 

« Spoken of by that term, or as we might say “ the AémiZ person,” 
20—-2 

Used in reference to sickness the word denotes a condition 
of danger due to contact with that power (in the spirits or in 
food) which is the cause of sickness. Used in reference to storms 
it again denotes a condition of danger for the society, Storms 
are sometimes said to be caused by the spirits’. This is also the 
explanation of the use of the word to denote a particular season 
of the year, The Kimz/ season is by no means hot, but cool; it is, 
however, the season at which violent cyclones are most likely to 
occur, being the period of the change from the south-west to the 
north-east monsoon. It is therefore a season of danger to the 
society from that power which produces storms, 

Finally, a man who has joined in a dance is said to be ot-ddaeal 
and seems to be regarded as being in a condition of danger 
similar to that produced by food. It might be thought that in 
this instance the word is only used in its literal meaning of “hot,” 
but I believe that this is not so. The dance is the occasion on 
which the individual comes most closely into contact with the 
power in the society itself, and I believe that this contact is 
regarded as dangerous and therefore as making the individual 
ot-kirmil. 

Thus we see that in its various uses the word o¢-Aéutil denotes 
a condition of danger due to contact with that power on the 
interaction of the different manifestations of which the well-being 
of the society depends, : 

How is it then that to denote this condition the Andamanese 
use a word which, primarily, seems to mean “heat”? The answer 
is that they conceive the qualities that give to objects their social 
values as being the manifestations of a kind of energy, and as 
being similar to the kind of energy which they know ‘best, that 
of heat, The psychological hasis of this is not difficult to discover. 
The eating of food is productive of bodily heat (the Andamanese 
live in a hot climate and eat much fat, it must be remembered), 
so that the power present,in foods is inevitably thought of as 
a sort of heat or heat-producing energy, In the dance the 
Andaman Islander experiences, as we have seen, an increase in 
his own personal force or energy, and this also is associated with 

? The Andamanese beliefs about storms and the weather generally will be dealt 
with in the next chapter. 

the sensation of bodily heat produced by. dancing. All other 
bodily activities result in the sensation of heat (in hunting and 
work of all kinds) and as it is in his activities that the social 
value of the individual is manifested this value is itself conceived 
as a sort of heat-producing energy. Further the Andamanesc 
seem to associate with the idea of heat all conditions of mental 
activity and excitement. We ourselves do the same, as shown 
by such words as “ ardour,” “zeal,” ete, and such phrases as the 
heat of anger, or enthusiasm,” and there is good ground for think~ 
ing that all such associations or symbolisms (sensory metaphors) 
have a physiological basis, Finally, fire which (as we shall sec 
better in the next chapter) is regarded by the Andamanese as 
the most important possession of the society, and which (as we 
have already seen) has in a very high degree the power that 
makes objects capable of affecting the society, is for this reason 
in a suitable position to become the archetype of all forms of 
energy, activity or force, This system of notions of the Anda- 
manese that the world is the arena of a continual struggle of 
forces presént in the society itself, in cach individual, in the 
Substances that are used for foods and materials, in fire, in storms 
and sunshine, and in the spirits and bones of the clead, is, as 
T have tried to show, the result not of any process of reasoning 
but of the immediate social experience, and as it is in the heat 
of his’ own body, and in states of excitement of his own mind, 
that the individual does actually cxpericnce the effects of these 
forces upon himself he uses the same word to denote all. con 
ditions of heat and all conditions of the manifestation of this 
energy, organising around that word as well as he can his some- 
what vague conceptions, 

In case this symbolism should still secm strange, and the 
explanation of it unsatisfactory, it is as well to show by means 
of a couple of quotations that in other primitive societies differ- 
ing widely from the Andamanese similar uses of the words hot 
and heat’are to be found, In his work on the Achehnese (Vol. 1, 
p- 305) C, Snouck Hurgronje writes thus of the natives of the 
Malay Archipelago: “In the native language of the 1. Archi. 
pelago all happiness, rest and well-being are united under the 
concept of ‘coolness,’ while the words ‘hot’ and ‘heat’ typily 

all the powers of evil, Thus when a person has either just endured 
the attack of a ‘hot’ influence or has luckily contrived to escape 
it, the adat prescribes methods of ‘cooling’ in order to confirm 
him in the well-being which he has recovered or escaped losing, 
The same thethods aie also adopted for charming away evil 
things and baneful influences, the removal of which is regarded 
as an imperative necessity. For instance, the completion Yof a 
house, and various domestic festivities, are made the occasion for 

a process of ‘cooling’; so also with a ship when newly built or 
after holding of a kanduri on board ; and before the padi is 
planted out the ground must be purified from ‘ hot’ or dangerous 
influences,” In this instance we find the word “hot” used only in 
reference to evil forces, In the Andamans thete is no line drawn 
between good and evil forces. In spite of the differences between 
them it is clear that the same mental process is 1esponsible for 
the symbolic use of the word “hot” in the Andamans and in the 
Malay Archipelago. 

In Codrington’s The Melanesians, p. 191, we find an example 
of the same mode of thought. “That invisible power which is 
believed by the natives to cause all such effects as transcend 
their conception of the regular course of nature and to reside in 
spiritual beings, whether in the spiritual part of living men or in 
the ghosts of the dead, being impaited by them to their names 
and to various things that belong to them, such as stones, snakes, 
and indeed objects of all sorts, is that generally known as mana, 
By means of this men are able to control or direct the forces of 
nature, to make rain or sunshine, wind or calm, to cause sickness 
or remove it, to know what is far off in time and space, to bring 
good luck or prosperity or to blast and curse, In the New 
Hebrides, the Banks’ Islands, the Solomon Islands about Florida 
as in New Zealand and many of the Pacific Islands the word in 
use is mana, In Santa Cruz a different word malete is used, 
which bears however the same meaning, At Saa in Malanta all 
persons and things in which this supernatural power resides are 
said to be saka, that is, hot. Ghosts that are powerful are saka; 
a man who has knowledge of the things which have spiritual 
power is himself saka; one who knows a charm which is saka 
mutters it over water, saru’e and makes the water ‘hot,’ ha’asaka. 

. 

The people of Mala Masiki, the lesser part of the island, which 
is cut in two not far from its south-eastern end by a narrow 
channel, think that the men of the larger part, Mala Paina, are 
very saka. If one of these visiting the Saa people points with his 
finger, suisui, there is danger of death or calamity ; if one of them 
spits on a man he dies at once,” Here again there are important 
differences, as might be expected in such different cultures as 
those of Melanesia and the Andamans, and yet it is clear that 
there is a fundamental similarity of mental process, 

The nature of this symbolic representation of the forces that 
affect the social life may be made clear by considering another 
example, The natives say that they usc odw clay after eating 
because their bodies give off an odour which would attract the 
spirits if they did not paint themselves. The power of an object, 
by virtue of which it has what may be called magical efficacy, is 
sometimes identified with its odour. A number of the plants that 
are used as remedies for sickness, such as the Trigonostemon, uc 
possessed of strong and characteristic odours, and the natives 
think that it is through the odgur that they effect a cure, 
Similarly the powerful properties attributed to the Avadendron, 
whereby it will cause rheumatism, keep away sharks and spirits, 
and turn turtle-meat bad, or stop a storm, are all said to be the 
results of its “smell.” The stimulating power of olfactory sensa- 
tions probably has much to do with the development of these 
beliefs, but the discussion of their psycho-physiological basis 
would lead’ us too far away from the main subject, interesting as 
it would be, 

Ta the jungles of the Andamans it is possible to recognize a 
distinct Succession of odours during a considerable part of the 
year as one after another the commoner trees and lianas come 
into flower, When, for example, the species of Sterculia called 
in the North Andaman jerz comes into Blossom, it is almost 
impossible to get away from the smell of it except on the sea- 
shore when the wind is from the sea. Moreover these various 
flowers give their scent to the honey that is made from them, so 
that there is also a succession of differently flavoured kinds of 
honey, The Andamanese have therefore adopted an original 
method of marking the different periods of the year by means of 

the different odoriferous flowers that are in bloom at different 
times, Their calendar is a calendar of scents’. 

Now they seem to regard each flower~period as possessing its 
own particular kind of force, of which the scent is the manifest 
sign, and to think that the succession of these different forces 
produces the succession of different fruits, the whole gencrative 
energy of nature being conceived as the result not of one force 
but of many, following one another in regular rotation, When a 
girl reaches puberty the natives think of her as having blossomed 
as it were, the later ripening being the birth of her children, and 
so she, like the plants of the jungle, is under the influence of 
the same natural forces that produce the successive blossoming 
and fruiting of the different species. Therefore, when a girl 
reaches her blossoming time she is given, for a name, to be used 
until she bears her fruit, the name of that particular odoriferous 
plant that is in flower at the time, it being this particular one of 
the successive forces of the forest life that has brought her child- 
hood to an end, 

Under the influence of myscular exertion the human body 
gives off a characteristic odour, of one generic kind, but differing 
somewhat in every individual. The odour of the body, being the 
immediate result of activity, may therefore well be regarded by 
the Andamanese as being closely connected with the virtue or 
energy of the person. Further, the eating of certain foods, such 
as dugong, turtle and pork, causes the body of the Andaman 
Islander to give out a noticeable and recognizable odour, different 
from that of mere perspiration, The natives themselves seem to 
distinguish different odours for these different foods, but I was 
not myself able to appreciate such differences, The And&manese 
sce in this odour given off after eating a manifestation of the 
energy that has been absorbed with the food, which energy it is 
that makes the food both necessary for life and also a source of 
danger, This seems to be the meaning of the belief that the spirits 
are attracted to a man by the odour of the food he has caten 
untess he paint himself with clay. 

We can now at last return to the rite of painting the body 
with odv clay after eating, I have suggested that the use of this 

1 See above, p. 119. 

clay in mourning is a means by which the mourner marks the fact 
that he is in a peculiar relation to the spirit-world, spirits being 
believed to be light in colour, The mourner is in contact with 
the spirit-world through his connection with the dead person, 
and to mark his condition he paints himself to resemble the 
spirits, thereby affirming his solidarity with them. The clay 
protects him from the danger that results from any contact with 
the spirit-world. According to the rule of method laid down at 
the beginning of the chapter we must find a similar explanation 
of the use of odu after eating. 

We have seen that it is the same kind of force in the spirits 
and in the animals used for food that makes them both dangerous. 
Yet at the same time there is a sense in which it is true that 
each kind of thing has its own peculiar kind of force. The 
ceremony of turtle-eating endows a youth with power to avoid 
the dangers of turtle but it does not give him the power to 
avoid the dangers of pork. A/édscus leaves are efficacious against 
turtle, but against the pig Zetranthera leaves must be used, 
In describing the patterns paintqd on the body after cating it 
was stated that there is a tendency to connect particular types 
of pattern with particular kinds of food. Thus a design commonly 
used after eating turtle suggests the plates of the turtle’s carapace, 
and a pattern used after eating pork similarly suggests the longi- 
tudinal markings on the pig’s back, This would seem to in- 
dicate that when a man has eaten turtle he paints himself so as 
to identify himself with the animal he has caten, and similarly 
with other foods, just as in mourning he paints himself so ag 
to identify himself with the spirit-world, In other words, the 
painting of the body with oa serves to show that there is a 
relation between the individual and some source of power, which 
relation can best be described as one of solidarity with the 
species, whether of animals or supernatural beings, in which the 
power resides. The mourner {s in contact with the dangcrous 
powers of the world of death, and by expressing his solidarity 
with that world he avoids the dangers that might result from his 
condition, For the fear of any being and a feeling of solidarity 
towards that being are incompatible with one another. Similarly 
a-man who has eaten turtle is in contact with the power that 

resides in the turtle species, a power that may be dangerous, but 
which when mastered and made use of by proper precautions is 
a source of well-being, of strength. By painting himself with a 
pattern that reminds him in some way of the turtle he expresses 
his solidarity with the turtle species and so obviates the dangers 
of his condition, 

This interpretation is made more probable by the considera- 
tion of the dances of the initiation ceremonies, In the dance at 
the turtle-eating ceremony the movements of the dancers suggest 
the movements of a turtle swimming, If the resemblance be not 
imaginary we may regard this as another method of affirming 
the solidarity of the dancers with the turtle species. We should 
then have to conclude that the dance at the pig-eating ceremony 
is similarly imitative of the movements of a pig, and though this 
is quite possible it is not so obvious. 

This same kind of clay is used in the initiation ceremonies, 
At the turtle-eating and pig-eating ceremonies it is spattered 
over the body of the initiate from head to foot. I have no 
explanation to offer for this, peculiar method of application. 
After the ceremony is over the initiate is painted with clay in a 
pattern called 2i¢l-/'eva-puli which consists of a background of 
the clay on which a pattern of separate spirals is made with the 
finger. The pattern is to be seen in Plate x1 I cannot put 
forward with any confidence the explanation I have to offer of 
this pattern, for I have no means of confirming it, and it is there- 
fore little more than a guess. It is that the spiral or circle is a 
symbol of the camp and therefore of the society and the social 
life in general, the basis of the symbolism being the roughly 
circular or elliptical form of the village or communal hut, and 
the circular form of the dance (more noticeable in the Little 
Andaman than in the Great Andaman). If this be really the 
meaning of the symbol then the explanation of its use in the 
initiation ceremonies would be that in these ceremonies the youth 
is preserved from danger by the force inherent in the society, 
which affords protection to all its members, and the use of the 
symbol of the society would therefore be most appropriate. 

, The act of painting the body with ody clay is therefore a 
rite which advertises the fact that an individual is iny thtimate 

contact with some source of that power which belongs to the 
things that affect the social life, and it thereby serves to keop 
alive the sentiments associated with that notion of power. The 
painting after eating reminds the individual of his dependence 
upon and obligation towards the society, and, since all join in 
the rite, it serves also to maintain the unity of the community. 

We may now return to the question of the meaning of per- 
sonal ornament in general, It isa commonplace of psychology 
that the development of the sense of self is closely connected 
with the perception of one’s own body. It is also generally 
recognized that the development of the moral and social senti- 
ments in man is dependent upon the development of self. 
consciousness, of the sense of self. These two important principles 
will help us to appreciate the hypothesis to which the discussion 
has now led, that in the Andamans the customary regulation of 
personal ornament is a means by which the society acts upon, 
modifies, and regulates the sense of self in the individual. 

There are three methods of ornamenting the bady in the 
Andamans, (1) by scarification, (2) by painting, and (3) by the 
putting on of ornaments. 

The natives give two reasons for the custom of scarification, 
that it improves the personal appearance and that it makes the 
boy or girl grow up strong. Both these mean that scarification 
gives or marks an added value, The explanation of the rite 
would therefore seem to be that it marks the passage from child. 
hood to manhood and is a means by which the society bestows 
upon the individual that power, or social value, which is possessed 
by the adult but not by the child. The individual is made to 
feel that his value—his strength and the qualities of which he 
may be proud—is not his by nature but is received by him 
from the society to which he is admitted. The scars on his body 
are the visible marks of his admission. The individual is proud 
or vain of the scars which are the mark of his manhood, and 
thus the society makes use of the very powerful sentiment of 
personal vanity to strengthen the social sentiments, 

Turning now to the painting of the body, we have secn that 
the pattern of white clay serves to make both the painted in- 
dividual and those who see him feel his social value, and we 

have seen that this interpretation explains the occasions on 
which such painting is used. To complete the argument it is 
necessary to consider the occasions on which the use of white 
clay is forbidden. 

Those to whom this prohibition applies are (1) a youth or 
girl who is aka-of, ie, who is abstaining from certain foods 
during the initiation period, (2) a mourner, (3) a homicide duing 
the period of isolation, and (4) a person who is ill, All these 
persons are excluded from full participation in the active social 
life, and therefore the social value of each of them is diminished, 
It would obviously be wrong for a person in such a condition to 
express by decorating himself a social value that he did not at 
the time possess, 

The occasions on which this style of painting is used or for- 
bidden are thus all satisfactorily explained by our hypothesis, 
It remains to consider the nature of the painting itself, and how 
far it is an appropriate means of expression, To do this we 
must discuss very briefly some of the processes of symbolic 
thought of the Andamanese, Conditions of well-being (both 
individual and social) are associated in the minds of the Anda- 
manese with fine weather, both directly (through physiological 
action) and indirectly (through the effect of fine weather on the 
social life). Hence Zomo, who, as we shall see in the next 
chapter, is a personification of fine weather, is a being who is 
connected with goodness and happiness, With fine weather, and 
therefore with individual and social well-being, the Andamanese 
associate brightness and whiteness (for which they have only 
one word) and any bright or light coloux The association of 
light and dark with euphoric and dysphoric conditions’ respec- 
tively has a psycho-physical basis, for it seems to be universal 
in human nature. Now the clay that the Andamanese call zod- 
odu is the whitest substance they know, and is for this reason 
fitted to be symbolical of conditions of well-being, Fine weather 
is associated, in the minds of the Andamanese with honey, be- 
cause in the season of fine weather honey is plentiful, and is also 
associated for a similar reason with snakes, Sweciness itself is 
universally associated with pleasant things, again through a 
spsycho-physical link, The Andamanesc believe in a special con- 

nection between honey and a species of large snake called wera- 
Jobo ox or-tudi}, so that this snake comes to be representative of 
fine weather and sweetness and therefore generally of states of 
well-being. Now, throughout the Great Andaman the pattern 
in which white clay is painted on the body is called after this 
snake, and the zig-zags of which the pattern is composed may 
be supposed to be representative of the snake itself When, 
therefore, a man paints himself with white clay in a pattern 
which he regards as representing the snake ware-jodo, it is 
evident that the painting is meant to express a condition of 
well-being, with which the snake itself, and whiteness, are, by a 
number of links, closely associated. This is not all, however. 
The Andamanese, we may not doubt, derive from the painted 
pattern an esthetic pleasure due to its rhythmical character, its 
shape as an arrangement of lines and spaces, Further it provides 
the pleasure that we obtain from a thing elegantly and skilfully 
made, and this explains why so much care is taken in the making 
of the pattern, This pleasure at what we may call the beauty 
of the pattern heightens the effect produced by its symbolic 
references, The real value of the pattern, its pleasure- giving 
quality, is transferred to the man on whose body it is executed. 
He himself is pleased with it, proud of it, and so becomes pleased 
with and proud of himself, for the pattern by being imprinted 
on his body becomes part of him, The sense of self attaches to 
it, as with us the sense of self attaches to our clothes, 

It would be interesting to carry the analysis of the mental 
processes involved in all this a stage or two further, but cnough 
has been said, I hope, to show that the nature of the painting 
with cl#y is appropriate to its use as marking or expressing 
value, 

Patterns are sometimes painted with this same white clay on 
the face alone, such patterns being built up either of the zige 
zags of the snake pattern, or of rhythmically arranged series of 
short lites, The use of such paintings is regulated by a sort of 
etiquette. By so having his face decorated a man expresses that 
he is pleased with himself, and obviously there are occastons on 
which it is appropriate and others on which it is inappropriate 

1 See p. a7, ‘ 

that he should feel thus, A man who has been successful in the 
day's hunting, for example, is quite justified in having his face 
ornamented in this way, and it is on such occasions as this that 
the custom is observed. : 

When a man is painted for a dance, or on any other 
ceremonial occasion, with white clay, he is also painted at the 
same time with red paint. In these instances we must suppose 
that the red paint serves the same purpose as the pattern of 
white clay with which it is combined, namely to make the 
decorated person pleasantly aware of his or her social value, 
Red paint is also used, however, in sickness, and on other 
occasions, as affording protection against evil, particularly evil 
from the spirit-world. 

This double use of red paint is to be explained by reference 
to the colour symbolism of the Andaman Islanders, For them 
the colour red is pre-eminently the colour of blood and of fire, 
There is ample evidence of this which it is perhaps not necessary 
to state. Now blood is identified with the warmth of the body 
and with life; the blood and the fat are sometimes spoken of as 
the two vital principles. Fire, as I have already shown, is taken 
as a symbol of activity and of mental excitement. Thus the 
colour comes to be associated in the minds of the Andamanese 
with all euphoric conditions, with excitement, vitality, mental 
and bodily activity, and with energy or force in general. *It is 
possible that this symbolism, which seems to be much the same 
in all divisions of mankind, has a psycho-physical basis in the 
stimulating dynamogenic power of sensations of redness, 

When a person is sick he is in need of vitality, of energy, and 
so his body is daubed with the red paint that is a symbel of the 
things that he needs, and by a simple mental process he comes 
to believe that by applying the paint to his body he increases 
his energy and vitality, and so helps himself to get rid of the 
sickness, At a dance, or on other ceremonial occasions, it is 
required that the individual shall have a sense of his own value, 
and for this he must experience that sense of personal force and 
vitality that is produced, as we have seen, by the action of the 
dance, This effect is reinforced by the use of the red paint which 
is the symbol of that condition of energy and vitality that it is 

(for some special reason) necessary for him to feel. As the value 
of the individual depends upon his strength or force, the red 
paint is thus a suitable means of expressing the value of him on 
whose body it is painted, and really expresses, though by different 
means, exactly the same thing as the pattern of white clay with 
which it is combined, 

We are now in a position to understand the use of white clay 
and red paint in the purification of a homicide, This takes place 
at the end of a period of isolation, during which the man is 
entirely cut off from the social life, and lives in a condition of 
supposed extreme danger on account of the blood that he has 
shed. During this time he may not use his hands to touch food, 
and at the end his hands are purified by the application to them 
of red paint and white clay. It is clearly because these two sub. 
stances are both of them in different ways symbols of conditions 
of well-being that magical virtue is ascribed to thelr use in this 
instance, It is perhaps worth while to recall that both red ochre 
and white clay are sometimes given internally as remedics against 
sickness, 

For the sake of the argument it has been necessary to separate 
the two motives underlying the use of personal ornament, the 
desire for protection and the desire for display. But we now sce 
that these two motives are very intimately related and are really 
both involved in every kind of ornament, All ornament in some 
way marks the relation of the individual to the society and to 
that force or power in the society to which he owes his well-being 
and happiness. When painting or ornament is used to give pro- 
tection, it is, as we have scen, the protective power of the socicty 
itself that is appealed to, and what is expressed is the dependence 
of the individual on the society, When ornament or paint is used 
for display it is again the dependence on the society that is ex- 
pressed, though in a different way and on occasions of a different 
kind, We have seen that scarification is also a means of marking 
the dependence of the individual on the society, and it is very 
important to note that the Andamanese sometimes explain it as 
due to the desire for display and sometimes to the need of pro- 
tection (enabling the child to grow strong and so avoid the 
dangers of sickness), showing very clearly that there is some 

intimate connection between these two motives, or at any rate 
that one and the same method of ornamentation can satisfy both, 
There is the further example of red paint, which is combined 
with the pattern of white clay for purposes of display, and is also 
constantly used in many ways as affording protection, 

We are thus brought to the final conclusion that the scarifica- 
tion and painting of the body and the wearing of most if not all 
of the customary ornaments are rites which have the function of 
marking the fact that the individual is in a particular permanent 
or temporary relation to that power in the society and in all 
things that affect the social life, the notion of which we have 
seen to underlie so much of the Andaman ceremonial, 

The scarification of a boy or girl leaves permanent marks of 

- the permanent relation between the adult and the society, By 
means of it and the initiation ceremonies that follow or accom- 
pany it, and of which it may really be considered to be a part, 
the society gives the individual his social value, of which the 
scars remain as a visible sign for him to be proud of, and at the 
same time endows him with the power to avoid the dangers with 
which his life is beset. 

The paintings of clay after food mark the temporary relation 
between the individual and the power present in the food he 
has eaten. It is chiefly thought of by the natives themselves as 
protective, as we have seen, but it also gives an opportunity for 
the exercise of personal vanity, for much care is taken in the 
designing and execution of the pattern, which therefore affords 
the painted individual much the same sort of satisfaction as the 
snake pattern of white clay. It calls his attention to his own 
appearance, and makes him feel pleased or satisfied witl» himself, 
conscious of his own personal value, A condition of unity and 
harmony is produced in the community by a feast as well as by 
a dance, and in each-instance that harmony is expressed by the 
painting of every member with the same material in a similar 
design. The relation of the individual to the society ‘is made 
visible on his body, By means of the paintings after food the 
society not only protects itself from danger but also rejoices in 
the well-being that is produced by a supply of relished food, 

Inversely it can now also be shown that the painting of white 

clay and red paint worn at a dance and after marrlage and 
jnitiation is not only a means of display but is also protective. 
Both red paint and white clay are used to give protection in 
sickness, and they are similarly used in the purification of the 
hands of a homicide, Moreover we have seen, in reference to the 
word of-kimdl, that the dance is a condition of danger by reason 
of the contact it involves between the individual and the power 
of the society. The few days following an initiation ceremony 
are definitely believed to be a period of danger for the initiate, 
and during this time the pattern of white clay and red paint 
must not be washed off but must be allowed to wear off, By the 
time the last traces of the pattern have disappeared the danger 
is considered to be over. There is evidence that the first few days 
of marriage are regarded as a period of danger. It would seem 
that the natives do attribute to the painting with white clay and 
red paint some power of protection, but this is hidden under the 
importance of such painting as a means of display. 

Of the various ornaments that are worn on the body some 
would seem to be worn almost solely for purposes of display, 
because they are pleasing to the eye. Such are the necklaces 
and other ornaments of small shells, It would seem that the 
same motive is also responsible for the use of the yellow skin of 
the Dendrobium of which the Andamanese are so fond. The 
ornathents of netting and shell seem to be worn primarily for 
display, but it is quite possible that some protective power is 
attributed to them, as to the paintings of white clay with which 
they are regularly worn, The belts of Paxdanus leaf that are 
worn by women are a mark of the sex, and the style of belt worn 
differs with the social status of the woman. They thus serve to 
exhibit the special social value of the woman in so far as it 
depends upon her sex and her social status, but I believe that 
the Andamanese attiibute to the belt and to the apron of leaves 
worn with it a power of protection against the spccial dangers 
to which women are believed to be subject, Ths is suggested 
by the use of the Pandanus leaf in the ceremony at a girl's first 
menstruation, I failed to discover any special ideas connected 

? Tam unfortunately obliged to leave a big gap in this chapter and in the book, 
owing to my inability to discuss the Andamanese notions about sex. The natives of 

BA. ar 

» 

with the ornaments of Paxdanus leaf that are sometimes worn 
by both men and women at dances. The ornaments that ae 
worn primarily for their protective power are those made of 
human and animal bones and those of pieces of canes or of 
fibres of Hebéscus or Ficus, These are always made decorative 
by the addition of shells and yellow Dexdroditm skin, and there- 
fore besides their primary function also serve as means of display, 

It is clear then that in the various methods of ornamenting 
the body the two chief matives that we have considered are so 
combined that they can hardly be estimated separately, and it 
is this mingling of motives that has led us to the final under- 
standing of the meaning and social function of bodily ornament, 
Each of the different kinds of ornament serves to make manifest 
the existence of some special relation betweeh the individual and 
the society, and theiefore of some special relation between him 
and that system of powers on which the welfare of the society 
and of the individual depends. One of the most important 
aspects of the relation of the individual to the society is his 
dependence upon it for his safety and well-being and this is 
revealed in all painting and ornament worn for protection, But 
the society not only protects the individual from danger; it is 
the direct source of his well-being ; and this makes itself felt in 
the customary regulation by which the use of the more important 
ornaments used for display is confined to occasions on which it is 
quite clear that his happiness is directly due to the society, such 
as a dance or feast, Thus the customs relating to the ornamenta- 
tion of the body are of the kind that I have here called cere- 
monial. They are means by which the society exercises on 

the Great Andaman at the present time show an unusual prudery in (heir conversation 
and dealings with white men, but there is good reason to suspect that this is due to 
the influence of officers who have been in charge of the Andaman Home in former 
years, At the present timewall the men except a few of the oldest in remote parts are 
very careful never to appea: before a white man without some covering although formerly 
they wore nothing. In their conversation in the presence of a while man they are 
careful to avoid reference to sexual matters. The men of the Little Andaman who 
have not come under the influence of the Andamanese Homes, still go naked and 
unashamed, and induige in obscene gestures and jokes, At the time I was in the 
Andamans I failed to realise the very great importance of a thorough knowledge. of 
the notions of a primitive people on matters of sex in any attempt to understand. their 
customs, and therefore failed to make the necessary enquiries, 

appropriate occasions some of the important social sentiments, 
thereby maintaining them at the necessary degree of energy 
required to maintain the social cohesion. 

To complete the discussion of ornament in general it is 
necessary to refer very briefly to the ornamentation of objects 
such as bows, canoes and baskets. Such ornamentation consists 
of (1) incised patterns (on bows, ete.), which may be compared 
with the scarification of the body, (2) painting with red paint 
and white clay (bows, canoes, skulls, etc.), or with prepared wax 
(Nautilus shell cups, etc.), (3) patterns made with the yellow 
skin of the Dendrobium (baskets, etc.), and (4) shells attached 
by thread (baskets, baby-sling, etc.), The important point to 
note is that the decoration applied to utensils is of the same 
character throughout as that which, when applied to the body, 
has been shown to be an expression of the social value of the 
person. Thus the pattern painted on a canoe with white clay 
and red paint is the same as that on the body of a dancer, It 
would seem, therefore, that the ornamentation of utensils is a 
means of expressing or marking the social value of the decorated 
object, and it might even be held that the application of orna- 
ment to utensils is really a matter of ceremonial. Just asa newly 
married man is painted with the snake pattein which wears off 
and is not renewed, so a new canoe or a new South Andaman 
bow is painted with the same pattern as soon as it is finished, 
and after this pattern wears off it is not renewed. It is the act 
of bringing a new canoe or bow into use that is the occasion of 
the ceremonial expression of its value, if we may so regard the 
painting, A new relation is established between the socicty and 
an object, which thereby acquires a special social value, just as 
a youth acquires a special new social value at the conclusion of 
one of the initiation ceremonies, This example is sufficient to 
show that at least there is nothing in the ornamentation of 
utensils that conflicts with the explanation of bodily ornament 
given in‘this chapter’, 

1 In order to carry the analysis further it would be necessary to consider in detail 
the whole question of the relation of art and ceremonial, and that of the soctal function 
of art which fs involved in it, and also to deal with the notion of “value” ns it appears 
in primitive societies, The material from the Andaman Islnnds is not suitable for the 

discussion of these problems. 
21—2 

It is time to bring the argument to a conclusion, It should 
now, I hope, be evident that the ceremonia) customs of the 
Andaman Islands form a closely connected system, and that we 
cannot understand their meaning if we only consider each one by 
itself, but must study the whole system to artive at an interpteta- 
tion. This in itself [ regard as a most important conclusion, for 
it justifies the contention that we must substitute for the old 
method of dealing with the customs of primitive people—the 
comparative method by which isolated customs fiom different 
social types were brought together and conclusions drawn from 
their similarity,—~a new method by which all the institutions of 
one society or social type are studied together so as to exhibit 
their intimate relations as parts of an organic system, 

I have tried to show that the ceremonial customs are the 
means by which the society acts upon its individual members 
and keeps alive in their minds a certain system of sentiments, 
Without the ceremonial those sentiments would not exist, and 
without them the social organisation in its actual form could not 
exist, There is great difficulty, however, in finding a suitable 
method of describing these sentiments. In attempting to put 
into precise words the vague feelings of the Andaman Islander 
there is always the danger that we may attribute to him con- 
ceptions that he docs not possess, For he is not himself capable 
of thinking about his own sentiments, 

In the attempt to exhibit the meaning of the ceremonial 
I have shown that it implies a complex system of beliefs about 
what I have called power, and have stated those beliefs in more 
or less precise terms, But the Andaman Islander is of course 
quite incapable of making similar statements or even $f under- 
standing them. In his consciousness appear only the very vaguest 
conceptions, such as those associated with the word Adnd/ or with 
odours, We, in ordet to understand his customs must substitute 
for such vague notions others capable of precise statement, must 
formulate in words the beliefs that are revealed in his actions, 
but we must be careful not to fall into the error of attributing to 
him the conceptions by which we make clear to ourselves hig 
indefinite sentiments and notions and the ceremonies in which 
they are expressed. 

With this qualification, then, the ceremonial of the Andaman 
Islands may be said to involve the assumption of a power of 
a peculiar kind, and we have been able to formulate certain 
principles which, although the native is quite incapable of stating 
them as principles, are revealed in the ceremonial. This power, 
though in itself neither good nor evil, is the source of all good 
and all evil in human life. It is present in the society itself and 
in everything that can affect in important ways the social life. 
All occasions of special contact with it are dangerous, ie, are 
subject to ritual precautions, 

It should already, from the course of the argument, be plain 
that this power or force, the interaction of whose different mani- 
festations constitutes the process of social life, is not imaginary, 
is not even something the existence of which is surmised as the 
result of intellectual processes, but is real, an object of actual 
experience, It is, in a few words, the moral power of the society 
acting upon the individual directly or indirectly and felt by him 
in innumerable ways throughout the whole course of his life’, 

One of the most important ways in which the individual 
experiences the moral force of the society of which he is a 
member is through the feeling of moral obligation, which gives 
him the experience of a power compelling him to subordinate 
his egoistic desires to the demands of social custom, Ihe in- 
dividial feels this force acting upon him both from outside and 
from inside himself, For he recognizes that it is the society with 
its traditions and customs that constrains him through the force 
of public opinion, and yet the conflict between customary duty 
and selfish inclination takes place in his own mind and ts ex+ 
periencetl as the clash of antagonistic mental forces, The moral 
sense within impels towards the same end as the social opinion 
without. : 

This force of moral obligation is felt not only in relation 
to right and wrong conduct towards other persons, but is also 
felt in all ritual, whether negative or positive. 

? The exposition of this important thesis can only be given here fn the most 
abbreviated form, The thesis itself, as applied to primitive ritual in general, owes 14 
origin to Professor Emile Durkheim, and has been expounded by him (more partion: 

larly in his work Les Formes élémentaives de la Vie religiense) aut by Messieurs IT, 
Hubert and M. Mauss, 

The moral force of the society is also felt, in a quite different 
way, in all states of intense collective emotion, of which the dance 
affords a good example. I have shown how in the dance the 
individual feels the society acting upon him, constraining him to 
join in the common activity and regulate his actions to conform 
with those of others, and, when he so acts in harmony with them, 
giving him the experience of a great increase of his own personal 
force or energy. All ceremonies in which the whole community 
takes part give the individual the experience of the moral force 
of the society acting upon him in somewhat the same way as 
the dance, 

Thus in these and other ways the individual does experience 
the action of the society upon himself as a sort of force, not 
however as a physical force, but as a moral force, acting directly 
in his own mind and yet clearly felt as something outside his own 
self, and with which that self may be in conflict, 

How is it, then, that this force comes to be projected into the 
world of nature? The answer to that question, which can only be 
very briefly indicated here, is to be found in the conclusions 
at which we have arrived with regard to social values, The moral 
force of the society is experienced by the individual not only 
directly but also as acting upon him indirectly through every 
object that has social value, The best example of this process is 
found in the things used for food, Thus, in the Andamans, food 
is very closely connected with the feeling of moral obligation, as 
we have seen. Further, food is one of the principal sources of 
those alternations of social euphoria and dysphoria in which, 
through the action of the collective emotion, the individual 
experiences the action of the society upon his own wdll-being. 
When food is plentiful happiness spreads through the community 
and the time is spent in dancing and feasting so that the individual 
feels a great increase in his own personal force coming to him from 
the society or from the food. On the other hand, when food 
is scarce and’ hunting unsuccessful the community feéls itself 
thwarted and restrained and experiences a sense of weakness, 
which collective feeling has for its immediate object the food the 
lack of which is its origin. 

Similarly with the phenomena ‘of the weather and all other 

\ 

objects that have social value, they are all associated in the mind 
of the individual with his experience of the action of the society 
upon himself, so that the moral force of the socicty is actually 
felt as acting through them, 

But it is really through the ceremonial that this is mainly 
brought about. It is in the initiation ceremonies that the moral 
force of the society acting through foods is chiefly felt, and the 
same experience is repeated in a less intense form in the rite 
of painting the body after food. It is similarly through the pro- 
tective use of the materials used for weapons and through the 
various ritual prohibitions connected with them that the moral 
force of the society acting through them is chiefly felt, The 
argument has been that it is by means of the ceremonial that, 
the individual is made to feel the social value of the various 
things with which the ceremonial is concerned. Putting this in 
other words we can now define the ceremonial as the means by 
which the individual is made to feel the moral force of the 
society acting upon him either directly, or in some instances 
indirectly through those things that have important effects on the 
social life. By its action upon the individual the ceremonial 
develops and maintains in existence in his mind an organised 
system of dispositions by which the social life, in the particular 
form it takes in the Andamans, is made possible, using for 
the purpose of maintaining the social cohesion all the instinctive 
tendencies of human nature, modifying and combining them 
according to its needs, 

As an example of such modification of primary instincts 
let us briefly consider that of fear, to which, from the time of 
Petronits’ to the present day, so much importance has been 
attributed in relation to the origin of religion, In childhood any 
fear of danger makes the child run to its mother or father for 
protection, and thus the instinct of fear becomes an important 
component of that ‘feeling of dependence that the child has 
towardé its parents, The piimitive society uses the fear instinct 
in much the same way. The Andaman Islander, through the 
ceremonies and customs of his people, is made to feel that he is 
in a world full of unseen dangers,—dangers from the foods he 

7 Primus in oxbe deos fecit timor, 

eats, from the sea, the weather, the forest and its animals, but 
above all from the spirits of the dead—which can only be avoided 
by the help of the society and by conformity with social custom. 
As men press close to one another in danger, the belief in and 
fear of the spirit-world make the Andaman Islander cling more 
firmly to his fellows, and make him feel more intensely his own 
dependence on the society to which he belongs, just as the fear 
of danger makes the child feel its dependence upon its parents. 
So the belief in the spirit-world serves directly to increase the 
cohesion of the society through its action on the mind of the 
individual. An important law of sociology is that the solidarity of 
a group is increased when the group as a whole finds itself opposed 
to some other group; so, enmity between two tribes or nations 
increases the solidarity of each; and so also, the antagonism 
between the society of the living and the world of the dead 
increases the solidarity of the former, 

The argument is now concluded. I have examined, as fully 
as space would permit, all the more important features of the 
Andaman ceremonial, and haye tried to show what part they 
play in the social life of the Andamans. At the end of our enquiry 
it is well to ask if any definition of ceremonial can be given more 
exact than the vague one with which we started. The chapter 
has shown that what I have denoted as ceremonial consists of 
(1) collective actions, (2) required by custom, (3) performed on 
occasions of changes in the course of social life, and (4) expressing 
the collective sentiments relating to such social change. By the 
first part of the definition we exclude the magical practices of the 
medicine-men, which however it has been convenient to consider 
in connection with the ceremonial, as it has helped us td’ under- 
stand some of the ideas underlying both magic and ceremonial. 
If we are not to exclude the rite of painting after eating food we 
must regard the obtaining of a good supply of food as being 
a change in the course of social life even though it occurs very 
frequently, and even every day for weeks together, It must be 
admitted, however, that the definition does not give us any very 
clear dividing line between ceremonial and art, play, or morals. 
The painting of the body with white clay after marriage or initia- 
tion must, I think, be regarded as ceremonial, while the painting 

» 

of a new bow or canoe with the same clay in the same pattern 
should perhaps more conveniently be called art, But what are we 
to say of the painting worn at a dance or the face-painting that a 
man occasionally wears when thete is no special reason? The 
dance at the end of mourning is clearly a ceremony, but can we 
say the same of the ordinary dance after a successful hunt? And 
if it be not ceremonial, shall we call it art or play? When friends 
are required to give presents to a newly-married couple are we to 
call this obligation one of ceremonial, of etiquette or of morals? 
These and similar questions are perhaps incapable ofa satisfactory 
answer, nor does it seem necessary to attempt to find one. Those 
elements of culture that we now differentiate and call by different 
names were, in primitive societies, undifferentiated and not clearly 
to be distinguished from one another, and a striving after too 
great a precision of definition in dealing with such a culture as that 
of the Andamans leads, I think, not to a clearer understanding, 
but to the opposite, The main thing is to keep close to the facts. 
In this chapter I have examined a number of facts which are 
plainly related and the question of how we are to label them 
is one that may well be left till such time as we shall have 
acquired a more profound insight into the nature of culture in 
general and the complex forces involved in its existence and 
growth, For the present, some vagueness in our provisional 
classifications need not greatly perturb us,

In the last chapter I tried to explain, by reference to psycho- 
logical principles, the more important ritual and ceremonial 
observances of the Andamanese; in the present chapter I shall 
deal in a similar manner with the legends recorded in Chapter Iv. 
That is to say, 1 propose to explain, not how the legends arose, 
but what they mean, what part they play at the present time in 
the mental life of the Andaman Islander. Customs that seem at 
first sight meaningless or ridiculous have been shown to fulfil 
most important functions in the social economy, and similarly I 
hope to prove that the tales that might seem merely the pro- 
ducts of a somewhat childish fancy are very far indeed from 
being merely fanciful and are the means by which the Anda- 
manese express and systematise their fundamental notions of life 
and nature and the sentiments attaching to those notions. 

I propose to analyse a few of the more important legends, 
and will begin with the Azar-Bale story of the origin of night 
and day. The explanation of this story depends on the con- 
nection of day and night with the cicada. This species of 
cicada, of which I do not know the scientific name, always 
makes a noise (“sings” as the natives say) during the short 
interval of twilight between sunset and darkness and between 
dawn and sunrise. It is possible that individual insects of the 
species make a noise at other times of the day and night, but I do 
not remember to have heard them, and it is only at the beginning 
and end of the day that they are all to be heard singing together. 

2 Page 214, 

f 

The song of the cicada, as day gives place to night and as 
night changes to day is one of the most familiar of all natural 
phenomena to the Andamanese, Another fact that is made use 
of in the legend is that if one of these insects be crushed as was — 
the cicada of the story, or even if it be taken up in the hand, it 
will utter its shrill and plaintive note, not unlike the cry of a 
human being in pain. Finally, fully to understand the tale, it is 
necessary to remember that in all the tribes of the Great Anda- 
man Division there is a prohibition against killing the cicada, 
The meaning of this prohibition will have to be discussed in 
connection with the legend. 

The facts stated above enable us to understand what may be 
called the skeleton of the legend, One of the ancestors killed a 
cicada (a forbidden act), the cicada uttered its cry (as it does 
when hurt), and as a result, darkness covered the world (as, 
it always does when the cicada sings in the evening), Leaving 
aside, for the present, the rest of the story, we may try to make 
clear to ourselves just what this part of it expresses, The 
explanation that I propose is to the effect that the legend is 
simply an expression or a statement of the “social value” of the 
phenomenon of the alternation of day and night, By the social 
value of anything I mean, as explained in the last chapter, 
the way in which that thing affects the life of the society (either 
beneficially or adversely) and therefore the way in which it 
affects the social sentiments of the individuals who compose the 
society. There is no need to discuss at length and in all 
its bearings, the way in which the alternation of day and night 
affects the socia] life of the Andamancse. The one outstanding 
feature Of first importance is that the day is the time of social 
activity whereas the night is a period when the society ts, as 
a rule, not active, It was shown in the last chapter that one of 
the most important elements in the mental complex revealed by 
a study of the ceremonial is the recognition of the fact that it is 
on the activity of the society that the individual depends for his 
security and well-being. So long as he can feel that he is an 
active member of an active community the individual feels that 
he has for his support (morally and physically) a great force on 
which he can rely. If, for any reason, he is temporarily cut off 

from the society and from participation in its life, he is in a 
position of insecurity, and believes himself to be in danger from 
the powers of the world of spirits. It is an inevitable result of 
this that the daytime, when the society is active, should be felt 
to be a period of comparative security, while the night, when all 
social activity ceases, should be felt to be a period of comparative 
insecurity, That the day and night are so regarded is shown in 
the belief of the natives that the spirits are more to be dreaded 
during the night than during the day. 

The Andaman Islander, like many other savages, is afraid of 
the dark, It might perhaps be thought that this fear is imme- 
diate and instinctive, a result of the physiology of the human 
nervous system, but that, I think, would be a false assumption, 
Many infants would seem not to be at first afraid of darkness, 
but to learn to fear it, as they learn to fear many other things, 
It is not possible here to enter into a discussion of the matter, 
but I would hold that in the Andaman Islanders and probably 
in other savages, the fear of darkness, of night, is a secondary or 
induced feeling, not by any means instinctive, and is in large 
part due to the social sentiments, to the fact that at night the 
social life ceases. The savage feels, and rightly so, that for every- 
thing he has and is, for the safety and well-being of his body and 
the comfort of his soul, he depends on the communal life in which 
his own life is merged, When, at the close of day, the social 
life ceases, he feels, should anything occur to direct his attention 
to his own condition, less secure than when the social life is pro- 
ceeding actively around him’, 

The interpretation that I would offer of the Akar-Bale 
legend is that it is an expression of these sentiments*relating 
to the night, an expression that takes advantage of the connec- 
tion between the song of the cicada and the alternation of night 
and day, One feature of the manner of expression will be 
explained later in the chapter, namely that it takes the form of 
a story relating to a mythical period of the past. ‘For the 
present the necessity of this particular form must be accepted 

\ We have seen, in the last chapter, that any condition of the individual in which 
he is withdrawn from active participation in the common life is regarded as one of 
danger from magico-religious forces antagonistic to the society, 

as a postulate. Granting this it remains only to show that 
the legend does express the social value of night as defined 
above. 

The fear of night, or rather, since that fear is rarely more 
than potential, the feeling that night is a time of insecurity, is 
part of the general attitude of fear or respect towards the forces 
of nature that are believed to be possible sources of danger to 
the society. Now it has been shown that this particular attitude 
to nature finds expression in ritual prohibitions of various kinds, 
For instance, the Andaman Islander translates his feeling of the 
social value of food substances into the belief that such things 
must be treated with ritual precautions, Applying this to the 
case before us, we must first recognize that to the Andaman 
Islander the alternation of day and night and the singing of the 
cicada are not separate phenomena but are two parts or aspects 
of one and the same recurring event, Now, the night and the 
day are things that cannot be handled, ie, cannot be immediately 
subject to the actions of human beings, while the cicada can be 
handled. Hence it is to the cicada that the need of precaution 
is referred, Any interference with the cicada is forbidden, and 
this prohibition serves as a mark or expression of the social 
value of that alternation of night and day with which the cicada 
is so intimately associated’, 

The legend of the A#ar-Bale tribe is simply an elaboration 
of this theme. In the beginning there was no night, ho darkness, 
Social life was continuous and was not subject to periods of 
diminished intensity, Then one of the ancestors (apparently in 
a fit of temper owing to his lack of success in fishing) crushed a 
cicada, and the cry of the insect brought darkness upon the 
world. The darkness, with its inhibition of activity, is clearly 
regarded as an evil, ie, as a manifestation of force hostile 
to the society, and this accords with the definition of the 
social value of night given above, where it was shown that 
this vale is negative, that night is a source of social 
dysphoria, 

1 Tt will be shown Jater in the chapter thal some part of the respect paid to the 

cicada is due to its connection not with the day and night but with the seasons of 
the year. 

This interpretation is confirmed by the statements about the 
night made in the North Andaman (where this legend does not 
seem to exist), such as that the night is made by the spirits 
(Zaz) who draw a mat or cloth across the sky. When we 
remember that the spirits are the embodiment of the forces 
hostile to the society we see how this statement expresses the 
feeling that night is the time when such hostile forces are in the 
ascendant, 

The Akar-Bale story, besides giving an account of the origin 
of night, relates the invention of singing and dancing, There is 
no specific reference to dancing in the story as recorded from my 
Akar-Bale informant. The reference is found, however, in the 
version recorded by Mr Man? and it is implicit even in the 
Akar-Bale version. Dancing is always accompanied by a song, 
and every song is composed with the express intention of being 
sung at a dance, Thus, for the Andamanese, singing and 
dancing are merely two aspects of one and the same activity. 

Dancing, except on a few special ceremonial occasions, 
always takes place at night. , Night, as we have seen, is a source 
of social dysphoria. It prevents the pursuit of the common 
social activities, such as hunting or making canoes or weapons, 
The condition produced by darkness can be neutralised by 
means of singing and dancing, the dance being a condition of 
intense social euphoria, in which social activity is at its maxi- 
mum, and all the social sentiments are pleasurably and intensely 
excited, 

This belief that dancing and singing are means by which the 
evil influence of darkness can be overcome is shown in the 
custom observed when a corpse remains in a camp all*night, of 
sitting round it and singing, in order (so the natives say) to 
keep away the spirits that have caused the death. They do not 
dance, because the pleasurable excitement of the more intense 
activity would be incompatible with the condition naturally 
resulting from a death, This custom affords clear evidénce that 
singing, and in a yet higher degree the combined activity of 
singing and dancing, possess magical efficacy against the dangers 
prevalent at night, 

1 Page 215, 

This relation between the (negative) social value of night 
and the (positive) social value of dancing and singing is simply 
and clearly expressed in the legend, It was the “singing” of 
the cicada that produced the darkness, The ancestors, finding 
themselves overwhelmed with darkness, set to work to remedy 
this evil by singing (and, it is to be presumed, by dancing to the 
song), One after another they sang a song, just as at a dance 
one man after another sings until he is tired, Finally, after the 
dance had gone on for a number of hours, Xgyoro took his turn 
at singing and the night came to an end and day appeared. So 
effectual was the means adopted of neutralising the evils of dark- 
ness that it finally resulted in the return of the daylight in which 
ordinary social life is possible, 

The reference to resin in the legend can be easily understood, 
The Andamanese use resin to provide the light by which they 
dance, as well as for torches for fishing on dark nights, It is 
their only artificial light, and without resin a dance would bea very 
poor affair. Thus the social value of resin is that it affords a 
means of neutralising to a certain extent the effects of darkness, 

These are, I think, all the essential elements of the story, 
One of the ancestors, under the influence of an anti-social passion, 
killed a cicada, which uttered its cry, and thereupon the world 
was covered with darkness, The ancestors then made torches of 
resin ‘which enabled them to neutralise the darkness to some 
extent, They then invented dancing and singing and after they 
had continued for a number of hours the light came back, Since 
that time day and night regularly alternate with one another, 
and the cicada sings at each period of change. Men have learnt 
how to ude resin for artificial light, and how to remedy the effects 
of darkness by dancing and singing, 

The legend is thus simply the expression in a particular form 
of the relation between the society and a certain natural phe- 
nomenon in terms of what have been called social values, We 
find expressed the social values of night and of resin and 
dancing. It may be noted that the legend also gives a special 
social value to the ancestors, different from and greater than that 
of men or women at the present day. The ancestors of the 
Andamanese were able to do many things that men cannot do 

now ; they were able to affect the processes of nature in a way 
that is no longer possible. This notion of the social value of the 
ancestors, of the past, will be shown to be one of the most 
important elements in the legends, it being this that is respon- 
sible for the general form of the stories, The consideration of 
this subject, however, must be postponed, 

There are still a number of points of the legend that have 
not been considered, It is not easy to account for the inclusion 
in this story of the discovery of the yam. It is possible that 
there is some ground of association between the yam and the 
cicada, but I do not certainly know of any such, There is a 
legend recorded by Mr Man from the Afa-ZBea tribe, and given 
above}, in which an account is given of the lucky discovery of the 
first yam by the chance shooting of an arrow. It is therefore 
quite likely that the yam story first existed quite independently, 
and that it has become incorporated in the legend of the origin 
of night on account of the fact that the incident of the shooting 
of an arrow was found in both of them, 

There is one reason for.the inclusion of the yam incident 
that it is worth while to note, By its means it is told how 
Da Teyat discovered a new object of each of the three kinds— 
animal, vegetable, and mineral. The new animal was the 
cicada, the new vegetable was the yam, and the new mineral was 
the resin, which, as the story shows, the natives classify as a 
“stone,” although they know its vegetable origin, The story is 
thus rounded off and given an air of completeness and symmetry, 

The incident of the shooting of the three arrows is of some 
interest as giving us an idea of how the Andamanese think of 
chance or luck, Arrows, it must be remembered, are* regarded 
as being possessed of magical power. Further, the ancestors them- 
selves possessed powers that do not belong to living men, as is 
shown repeatedly irt the legends, The ancestor shoots an arrow, 
and, by reason of his power and that of the arrow, it strikes an 
important object and leads him to a discovery. The mére 
striking of the object by the arrow seems to give him a certain 
degree of power over the object, whereby he forces it to reveal 
its name, (We have already seen, by a reference to this very 

1 Page 221. 

t 

story, that there is an important connection between the name 
of an object and its social value’) Thus, in common with other 
primitive peoples, the Andaman Islanders regard what we call 
luck or chance as due to the action of the magical powers 
possessed by objects and by human beings, 

There is one point that is not very plain in the Akar-Bale 
version, but I think we must take it that Da Teyat was dis 

gusted at his lack of success in fishing, His irritation was not, 

diminished but rather increased by the fact that he did succeed 
in procuring one small and worthless fish, His shooting of the 
arrows must be regarded, I think, as the result of his anger.’ He 
might be supposed to address his arrows as follows: “You have 
not succeeded in hitting any fish at which I aimed you; let me 
see if you can hit anything on your own account, when I take 
noaim.” In this way he was led to the discovery of the yam, 
the resin and the cicada, for though it is not explicit, it is 
evident that it was the third ar:ow that led him to the cicada, 
His irritation was not yet appeased however, and he crushed the 
cicada, thus bringing darkness over the world. We must infer 
that he was aware of what he was doing, for as soon as he had 
discovered the yam and the resin he learnt their names and 
thereby learnt all there was to know about them and their 
properties, and we must suppose that he similarly learnt the 
name’ of the cicada, and that to injure it would cause darkness, 
In the Axa-Bea legend recorded by Mr Man it is expressly 
stated that the ancestors who performed the actions that led 
to the first darkness did so because they were annoyed by the 
continuous heat of the sun’ 

Now we have here a very impoitant feature of the legend 
which it will not do to overlook, We shail find that it is a 
principle of the Andaman legends that evil results follow from 
evil actions. Night, which, by reason of its negative social value, 
is regarded as an evil, is shown to be the result of the mis. 
behaviour of one of the ancestors in giving way to anti-social 
feclings of anger or annoyance, It is a case of like producing 
like, When an individual gives way to such feclings as anger 
he becomes a source of danger to the society, or at any rate a 

1 Page 294. © Page 215. 
BA. 22 

source of social dysphoria by disturbing the harmony of the 
community, Thus, in the legend, it was the wickedness of the 
ancestor in giving way to his feeling of irritation that led to the 
social disaster. Inversely, it was through the combined effort 
of the ancestors joining in a harmonious action (singing and 
dancing) that the day was brought back. 

The events of the legend are supposed to have taken place 
at a spot named Golugwa, I only visited this spot once and 
did not take particular note of it, nor have I information about 
the position it occupied in the social life of that part of the 
island in former times. We do know, however, from the name 
Golugma Bud, that at one time it was the site of a communal 
hut and was therefore an important camping place. It may 
have been a place at which dance-meetings were frequently held, 
and this would be a sufficient reason for its selection as the 
legendary site of the first dance 

One of the minor motives of the A#ar-Bade version of this 
story is the identity of the ancestor who appears as the chief 
actor. I 1egret to say that I have never found the exact 
meaning of the word deya¢. Though I asked the natives to 
bring me a specimen they did not do so. It is probably either 
a species of spider or of ant. However, even if I had succeeded 
in identifying the ¢eyat, it is possible that I should not have 
discovered the reason why this particular creature was selected 
as the heio of the story. This can be shown by considering 
another of the incidents of the story. All the ancestors who 
sang and tried to bring back the day failed except the Aeyore. 
This is a species of small 1ed ant. Whenever I heard this story 
told or referred to, this particular incident (the successfl singing 
of Agyoro) caused great amusement amongst the listeners, It 
was obvious that it was a good joke. Yet in spite of my 
endeavours on more than one occasion I was unable to see what 
the joke was. 

In the 4-Puéikwar veision of the same legend? it was Pete, 
the monitor lizard, who crushed the cicada and brought darkness, 
This is to be explained not on the basis of any particular 
characteristic of the lizard, but as being due to the position that 

1 Page 213. 

this animal occupies in the A-Pséikwar mythology in general 
as the first ancestor of the Andamanese. As the first progenitor 
he is made responsible for the origin of all sorts of things. The 
story of the origin of night must have a chief actor, and in the 
absence of any important ground for selecting any other of the 
ancestors the A-Puéikwar story-teller falls back on the monitor 
lizard, 

In the above analysis I have drawn a distinction between 
what may be called major and minor motives of the story. The 
validity of the interpretation of the legends offered in this chapter 
depends on the validity of this distinction, and it is therefore im- 
portant to provide a method by which we can separate major 
from minor motives. This can only be done when there are 
several versions of the same legend, Major motives may be de- 
fined as those which appear in all the versions of one legend, 
while minor motives are those which may vary from one version 
to another without producing any fundamental change in the 
legend itself. Thus, by a compatison of the Aéar-Bale and the 
A-Pudikwar versions it can be shown that the identity of the 
chief actor is a minor and not a major motive. 

If we compare the Akar-Bale legend with the Aka-Bea version 
recorded by Mr Man we see that they have in common (1) the 
explanation of the origin of night as due to the breaking of 
a rule} (2) the tracing back of the trouble to the anti-social passion 
of anger on the part of the actor or actors, (3) the account of the 
origin of dancing and singing as a means of neutralising the effects 
of darkness, All the other elements of the story are different in 
the two versions. In the Aka-Gea story it is the killing of 
a grub (gurug) that brings on the night, which is itself called 
gurug, What the meaning of this may be I cannot say. I did 
not hear this version of the story, and was not able to make any , 
enquiries concerning it. All that it is necessaty to note is that 
both the legends express the social value of night, and they both 
express it in very much the same way, the difference being that 
the Azar-Bale version makes use of the connection between 
night and day and the cicada, while the A#a-Bea story makes a 
similar use of some connection (not yet explained) between the 
night and a grub, 

22—2 

Thus the comparison of different versions confirms the inter- 
* pretation here given, The legend expresses the negative social 
value of night as a period when social activity is diminished and 
the power of protection of the society therefore lessened. It does 
so by telling how the night first arose as the result of dis- 
obedience to a ritual prohibition, ie, of meddling with the forces 
of nature, It traces the original cause yet further back to the 
anger of one of the ancestors, anger being itself a source of 
social disturbance. It passes on to express the social value of 
the dance, with its accompanying song, and exhibits the relation, 
within the system of social values, of dancing and darkness, 
Thus, although the manner of expression may differ, yet what is 
expressed is the same in both versions, and we are therefore 
justified in regarding this as the essential content of them, 

An exactly parallel explanation can be given of the Andaman 
notions relating to the moon, The social value of moonlight is 
due to the fact that it enables the natives to fish and catch turtle 
and dugong by night. A clear moonlight night affords the best 
opportunity for harpooning dugong. During the second quarter 
the light of the moon steadily incieases,and the period of moon- 
light falls in the first part of the night. After the change to the 
third quarter the light steadily diminishes, and moreover there 
is a gradually increasing period of complete darkness at the 
beginning of the night. The natives do not care to get‘up in 
the middle of the night to go fishing or hunting turtle, There- 
fore the second quarter is the time when they undertake such 
expeditions, and after the change to the third quarter they 
abandon them largely or entirely, and if they do go out they 
have to depend on torches, Therefore we may say that during 
the second quarter the moon gives valuable help to the natives, 
but during the third quarter withdraws that help. 

At the beginning of the third quarter the moon rises in the 
evening with a ruddy hue, The natives explain this red and 
swollen appearance by saying that the moon is angry,” When a 
man does something that hurts or damages another it is generally 
(in Andamanese life) because he is angry. So to say that the 
moon is angry is equivalent to saying that he is damaging or 
hurting someone, as he is indeed damaging the society by with- 

drawing the light by which for the past week or so they have 
been able to capture fish and turtle, The phenomena of the 
change of the moon in so far as they affect the social life are 
represented as if they were the actions of a human being. We 
may describe this briefly by saying that the moon is personified, 
using that term in a special sense to be defined more exactly 
later. Amongst the Andamanese, as amongst ourselves, anger is 
associated with heat, and this explains why the red glow of the 
moon when he rises during the first few nights of the third quarter 
is regarded as the visible sign of his anger. 

Even the moon, however, is not to be expected to be angry 
without a cause. The natives say that the anger is due to some 
bright light having been visible at the time the moon rises, The 
personification is thus further elaborated. The moon gives the 
light by which fishing and turtle hunting at night are possible, 
This light has a positive social value, and its withdrawal is an 
evil, They therefore regard the moon as jealous, so jealous that 
if anyone makes use of an artificial light, as of a fire or torch or 
burning resin, the moon immediately is consumed with anger 
and withdraws the light that has been of so much use and has 
not been sufficiently appreciated, This belief is a means by 
which the value of the moonlight is recognized. Thus the be- 
iefs about the moon can be interpreted in exactly the same 
way ‘as the legend about night; both express, in accordance 
with the same psychological laws, the social values of natural 
phenomena. 

I will next consider not a single legend but a number of 
different stories, t:unning through all of which we can find a 
single major motive. I have recorded? three legends which 
relate, with some differences of detail, how in the beginning the 
ancestors had no fire, how fire was introduced by one of thetn, 
and how many of them, being burnt or frightened, were turned 
into animals of different kinds, In one version® the sea-eagle 
came into the camp of the ancestors and threw fire amongst 
them ; whereby many of them being frightened were turned into 
animals, Another version is very similar, the chief actor, how- 
ever, being the prawn’, In an Akar-Bale version Din-deri, now 

1 Pages 207 and 204, a Page 207. 3 Lid, 

a fish, obtained the fire and burnt some of the ancestors with it 
so that they became fishes. 

This legend is a widespread one, being found both in the 
north and in the south of the islands, The fact that the actor is 
different in the three recorded versions proves that the identity 
of the hero of the tale is a minor motive, ie, one that may be 
varied without affecting the essential meaning of the myth, 

The story serves as an explanation of the markings on 
birds and fishes, these being where the ancestor who became 
the species was burnt by the fire. Thus the legend is of the 
kind that is often called etiological. The common method of 
explaining such legends is to say that they are crude attempts 
on the part of primitive man to explain the natural phenomena 
with which they deal, in this case the bright colours of birds and 
fishes, Such an interpretation cannot be regarded as adequate. 
Why should the Andaman Islanders want to explain the markings 
of animals? Why should they explain them in the form of a 
legend, and why should the legend take this peculiar form ? 

The clue to the true interpretation of the three stories 
mentioned must be sought in the social value of fire. It was 
shown in the last chapter that fire is regarded as the symbol 
of social life and social activity, the centre around which the 
social life revolves, the source from which it draws its force, We’ 
may say, ina word, that it is the possession of fire that makes 
social life (as the Andamanese know it) possible. It was shown 
that it is on account of this relation of the society to fire that the 
latter is believed to be a source of security, of protection against 
the spirits, Now amongst all the creatures that inhabit the 
world, man is the only one that possesses and makes ust of fire. 
Here, then, is the fundamental notion that is expressed in these 
legends. At first, so the story runs, animals and human beings 
were one, were not distinguished. Then came the discovery of 

+fire. Some of the (undifferentiated) ancestors fled from the fire, 
because they were afraid of it, or because it burnt them: They 
became birds and beasts and fishes, retaining their fear of the 
fire, and being cut off for ever from the human society which, 
~ from that moment, constitutes itself around the fire. It is the 

1 Page 204. 

possession of the fire that makes human beings what they are, 
that makes life as they live it possible, It is equally (according 
to the legend) the lack of fire, or the lack of ability to make use 
of fire, that makes the animals what they are, that cuts them off 
from participation in human life. 

This, briefly, is the way I would explain the legend mentioned 
above, and ample confirmation will be forthcoming when we 
consider some of the other legends. Attention may be called 
here to a very significant phrase in a version of the fie legend 
recorded by Mr Portman! to the effect that “it was on account 
of the fire (i.e, of the possession of fire) that the ancestors became 
alive,” 

The three stories considered above contain three motives, 
(1) They express the social value of fire, by making the founda- 
tion of human society (through the differentiation of men and 
animals) depend on the discovery of fire. (2) They express a 
peculiar notion as to the relation of the human species to other 
animals, which is found also in other legends, (3) They givea 
legendary explanation of some of the characteristics of animals, 
such as the bright colours of certain birds and fishes. 

It would seem that these same motives are present in many 
of the legends relating to the origin of fire. In the common 
version of the fire legend the fire is stolen from Béliku (Puluga) 
by the kingfisher. This bird has a patch of bright red feathers 
at the neck and these are explained as being where he was 
struck by the fire or the pearl-shell (lightning) flung by Biféu, 
In one variant the kingfisher swallowed the fire and had his 
head cut off by the lightning, whereupon the fire came out of his 
neck wlitre the red feathers now are. In most of the versions it 
would séem to be implied that though the kingfisher succeeded 
in obtaining fire for the use of the ancestors, he was himself 
unable to profit by his own exertions, for-he was turned into a 
bird condemned to eat his fish raw for ever. In one story, how- 
ever, from the Aka-Kede tribe, it would seem that the kingfisher, 
by the possession of fire, and through the loss of his wings and 
tail, became a man, There is a lack of logic here which it 
is worth while to note. Although the kingfisher became a man 

1 Page 203, 

yet the legend is clearly based on the explanation of the red 
feathers of the bird’s neck as due to the action of the fire, The 
psychological significance of such inconsistencies as this will 
have to be discussed later on. 

Let us now consider another group of legends, We have 
seen that one explanation (in the mythological sense) of,how the 
birds arose is that they were ancestors who fled from the fire. 
There are other stories that give a different account and relate 
that the animals came into existence through a great flood or 
storm that overwhelmed the ancestors, Both of these legends 
are to be found in the same tribes, Their incompatibility does 
not prevent them from being both equally accepted. If it can 
be shown that the story of the flood is simply an alternative 
method of expressing the same set of representations that 
underlie the story of the origin of the animals through the 
discovery of fire, the interpretation of the latter will be in some 
degree confirmed. ee 

One account of the flood or storm, variants of which were 
obtained from both the north and south of the islands, tells how 
the ancestors only with great difficulty succeeded in saving the 
fire, Although it is not explicitly stated, we may conclude, 
I think, that it was because some of the ancestors kept their fire 
alight that they remained human, while those who lost their fire 
were turned into animals. If my personal impressions ate of 
any value, this is really the idea that does underlie the legend 
in the native mind. Thus it would appear that this version of 
the flood myth is simply a reversal of the fire legend previously 
considered. They both express the same thing in different ways. 
They both make the possession of fire the thing on whith social 
(ie, human) life depends, the fundamental difference between 
man and animals, 

It may be objected to this interpretation that in some of the 
versions of the flood myth there is no reference to the ancestors 
being turned into animals, while in others there is no réference 
to the saving of the fire. The reply to this is that if we are to 
understand the legends we must not consider each separately, 
but must seek out the connections between the different stories, 
connections that are not always obvious. Thus, as there are, in 

each of the tribes, different versions of a flood myth it might be 
supposed that the natives believe in several different floods 
having taken place in the times of the ancestors. Mr Man 
seems to have come to the conclusion that there were two 
distinct floods, I am fully satisfied, from personal knowledge, 
that the natives think of only one flood or catastrophe, and refer 
to it all the different legends, Sometimes a man will relate how 
the flood came and the fire was nearly lost, but will make 
no mention of the origin of animals at this time. At another 
time the same man will relate how the flood turned the ancestors 
into animals, but will make no mention of the saving of the fire, 
To understand the meaning of the legends we must connect 
these different stories together, for we know that they are con~ 
nected in the minds of the Andaman Islanders themselves, 
Every native knows that it was at the time of the flood that the 
animals came into existence and he may remember this fact when 
he hears the story of how the firc was nearly lost. Similarly, when 
he hears the story of how the animals came into existence he 
remembers the other story of how the fire was nearly lost. Thus 
one man gave-me a legend of the flood which explained the 
origin of the animals, and at the very end he mentioned as an 
afterthought “It was at this time that the fire was saved by Mata 
Taolt,” , 

‘When we thus connect the different stories relating to the 
flood we see that they express a definite system of representa~ 
tions or beliefs, which are found in all the tribes, and that this: 
system is sometimes completely and sometimes partially ex- 
pressed in the different versions, On the interpretation here 
suggesttd the major motives of the flood myth are (1) the social 
value of fire as expressed by making the difference between’ 
man and the animals depend on its possession by the former and 
not by the latter, and (2) the notion of the animals as having 
once been one with the ancestors, These two motives are both 
present in the legends of the origin of fire that were previously 
considered, It can be shown that even the third motive of the 
fire legend manages to creep into the flood story, In the 
Aka-Kede version? the dove is mentioned as having saved the 

Page 207. 

fire, The connection between the dove and the fire (which 
appears in other legends)! would seem to have its basis in the 
shining plumage of the bird, just as the kingfisher is connected 
with the fire through the red feathers of its neck, 

The details of the legends may be briefly mentioned. One 
Aka-Jeru version® explains how one of the ancestors made 
a noise by breaking firewood while the cicada was singing and 
so raised a great storm, in which the fire was nearly lost, and in 
which many of the ancestors were turned into animals, This 
version is a fairly complete expression of the fundamental 
representations on which the whole group of legends is based. 
There is an elaboration of one point in that an account is given 
of how the cyclone was brought about. This is a separate 
motive which will be discussed and explained later in connection 
with the Biliku myth, 

Another legend from the same tribe® relates to a storm that 
was caused in the same way, and that resulted in the destruction 
of the whole world. The fire, which was nearly extinguished, 
was saved by one of the ancestors. No mention was made of 
the ancestors being turned into animals, This version, however, 
as I have recorded it, is incomplete. J was unfortunately unable 
to understand some of what the narrator told me. 

The Aka-Kede version‘ similarly does not distinctly state 
that the ancestors who were destroyed by the flood were turhed 
into animals, but the fact that the three persons mentioned in 
the legend are all birds suggests that it was at this time that the 
birds originated. The bird called ¢aram-lebeh, having lowered 
the surviving ancestors to the ground with their fire, remained at 
the top of the Dipterocarpus tree and has been there evér since, 
The Aka-Kol version of the same story® simply states that the 
ancestors were turned into animals in a cyclone, but contains no 
mention of the rescue of the fire, 

In a number of these legends it is stated that the ancestors 
saved themselves by climbing up into a tall tree or into the 
trees, This is to be explained by the fact that the birds all live 
up in the trees, and a great many of them can never be seen 
save overhead. The top of the forest is where the birds live, it 

1 Page 202, > Page 206. 3 Lid, 4+ Page 207. 5 Page 208, 

is their world, raised above the world of men and women. The 
flood drove the inhabitants up to the tops of the trees, The 
birds remained there and only the human beings came down 
again. As the original inhabitants were driven up into the 
trees by water covering the land we may complete the myth by 
saying that those who failed to reach the upper world were on 
that account compelled to spend the rest of their existence in the 
water as fish and turtle. This is, I think, what the legend really . 
means, Thus the story of the flood gives a picture of a three- 
fold world, the waters below with their inhabitants the fishes and 
turtle and other marine creatures, the solid earth, and the upper 
region of the top of the forest where the flowers bloom and the 
butterflies and other insects and the birds pass their lives. This 
representation of the top of the forest as a world in itself may 
seem strange to one who has never seen a tropical forest, but to 
one who has spent months beneath it the forest-top of the 
Andamans does seem a world in itself, near yet inaccessible, a 
world where there is a gay and interesting life in the sunshine 
above, of which the wanderer in the deep shade beneath can only 
catch occasional glimpses as he gazes up through the tangle of 
boughs and leaves, For the natives of the islands therefore the 
top of the forest is an alien world into which they can only 
penetrate with extreme difficulty, by climbing, and with the life 
of which they have little to do. Similarly the waters of the sea 
are another world into which they can only penetrate for a few 
moments at a time by diving’, 

It may be said that, on this view, no allowance is made for 
the existence of terrestrial animals, That is true, but it must 
be remembered that there are very few such animals in the 
Andamans, The civet-cat and the monitor lizard and some of 
the snakes are as much arboreal in their habits as they are 
terrestrial There remain only the pig and the rat as true 
terrestrial animals, and it may be noted that neither of these two 
animals ever figures in the legends as an ancestor. There are 
independent legends that relate to the origin of the pig, and the 

, 

1 The same threefold division of the world is seen in the beliefs about the three 
kinds of spirits, those of the forest, those of the sea, and the Aforxa who, while spoken 
of as spirits of the sky, are often thought of as living in the tops of the tall trees. 

‘ 8 

rat seems to be of 50 little importance that no explanation of its 
origin would seem to be necessary, Moreover the monitor 
lizard and the civet-cat, which aré partly terrestrial, occupy for 
this reason exceptional positions in the legends. Thus there is 
a legend recorded from the Aka-Kede tribe which accounts for 
the simultaneous origin of the civet-cat and the pigs through a 
game of the ancestors', The monitor lizard is in an altogether 
exceptional position in that it is equally at home in the trees, on 
the ground and in the water of a creek, It is in a way free of 
all the three divisions of the world, This helps us to understand 
why in some of the tribes the monitor lizard is regarded as the 
original ancestor not only of the Andamanese but also of all the 
animals, including the birds of the forest and the fishes of the 
sea, The civet-cat cannot live in the water as the lizard can®, but 
can climb trees and run on the ground. In many of the legends 
the civet-cat is said to be the wife of the monitor lizard. It will 
_ be remembered that in the Akar-Bale story it is the civet-cat, 
the wife of the first ancestor (the monitor lizard), who saved the 
fire from the flood by climbing up to the top of a steep hill with 
it. Thus it may be seen that the position of the monitor lizard 
and the civet-cat in the legends of the Andamanese is partly 
determined by the position that these two animals occupy in 
relation to the threefold division of the world revealed in the 
story of the flood, < 
The repeated mention of the Déprerocarpus tree in these 
legends would seem to indicate that it is a motive of importance, 
The tree is the tallest tree of the Andaman forests, and is very 
common, but it is probable that this does not afford an adequate 
explanation, and that there are other ideas connected With it in 
the minds of the Andamanese that would justify the place it 
occupies in the mythology. In one Afa-/eru story the whole 
forest is said to havessprung from a Dzpzerocarpus seed dropped 
by Biliku after she had destroyed the original forest in her 
anger. It may be noted in passing that in the languages of the 
North Andaman the word for this tree is the same as the word 
for dugong, 
+ 2 Page 218, 

* ® It is worth while to recall here the belief that if a man goes into the water after 
eating civet-cat he will not be able to swim. 

H ' 
t i 

Let us now briefly examine the story of the origin of animals 
as recorded from the Akar-Ba/e tribe, There are three variants 
of this story. The one recorded from an A-Pudzkwar informant? 
must really be regarded, I believe, as an imperfect reproduction 
of the Ahar-Bale version, The version given by Mr Man? is also 
of Akar-Bale origin, as is shown by the fact that the phrases in 
it are in the A#ar-Bale language, A comparison of these variants 
shows that the main purpose of the story is to rclate how a great 
storm or cyclone visited the islands in the times of the ancestors 
and turned many of them into animals, The storm was brought 
about by the action of one of the ancestors who in anger did some 
of the things that are known to anger Puluga and cause a storm, 
In some of the other legends we find the same motive. Thus 
in an Aka-Jeru legend! the flood is said to have been caused by 
one of the ancestors breaking firewood while the cicada was 
singing. In an Aka-Kede version® this part of the story is 
further elaborated, and a reason is given for this action on the 
part of the ancestor. Kopo-tera-wat was angry with the rest of 
the ancestors because they refused to give him any of the honey 
they had collected, and he therefore deliberately performed the 
action that brought the storm, The purpose of these elements 
of the legend is to explain how the great flood came about, by 
tracing it to the anti-social action of some one or moré of the 
angestors, just as the night is supposed to have been produced 
by an ancestor who performed a forbidden action. In the 
Aka-Kede version and also, as we shall see, in the Asar-Bale 
story, the matter is traced still further back and the anti-social 
action of the ancestor is explained as being caused by his anger 
which had been aroused by a disagreement with the ancestors, 
The origin of the catastrophe that separated the once united 
ancestors into animals and human beings is thus traced to the 
fact that they could not live together sociably and in harmony, 
In the Azar-Bale story the part which explains how one of 
the aneestors came to give way to anger is highly elaborated, 
It starts with the quarrel of the tree-lizard with some of the 
ancestors, (It may be noted in passing that the tree-lizard is 
quarrelsome in reality.) This leads to the death of the lizard (or 

») Page 208. 2 Ibid. 3 Page 209. * Page 206, 5 Page 207. 

his transformation into an animal that still bears the name), and 
so to the grief of his mother and her anger against the ancestors 
who have killed her son, This elaboration of one part of the 
story tends to obscure the meaning of the whole, This is 
particularly the case in the version recorded by myself in which 
the anger of the tree-lizard is the direct cause of the change of 
some of the ancestors into animals. The narrator sets out to 
explain how a flood or cyclone came and turned the ancestors 
into fishes and birds, He elaborates the details of the first part 
of the story to such an extent that he loses sight of the con- 
clusion. The purpose of the story as explaining the origin of 
animals remains in his mind, however, and gives rise to the 
description of how some of thé animals had their origin as 
animals (ie, were cut off from the human society) by being 
thrown by the lizard into the forest or into the sea. The legend 
in this form may therefore be regarded as giving an alternative 
explanation of the separation of the animals from the human 
society, the cause of the separation being a great quarrel in 
which they were all involved. In other words, human society is 
only possible if personal angér be subordinated to the need of 
good order; the animals are cut off from human society because 
they could not live peaceably together without quarrelling. 

The examination of the variants of the flood-myth has taken 
us away from the main argument. In the various stories there 
are two separable elements. There is first the explanation of how 
a disastrous flood or storm was caused by the non-observarice 
of ritual prohibitions connected with Bitihu (Puluga). This 
element will have to be considered in relation to the Bizku 
myth, There is secondly the account of how through the flood 
or storm the birds and fishes became separated from the human 
race, and the three regions of the world, as the Andaman Islander 
knows it, became established, It is this second element that I 
have sought to explain. To repeat the argument, I would hold 
that it is really through the loss of the fire that the birds and 
fishes became cut off from mankind, and that therefore this 
element of the legends of the flood expresses exactly the same 
notion as the legend of the catastrophe that followed the discovery 
of fire, The two groups of legends result from the way the 

Andaman Islander feels about the fire as being the one thing on 
which the society most completely depends for its welfare. 

The preceding analysis has shown that the legends relating 
to the origin of animals, whether through the action of fire, or by 
the flood, serve to express the social value of fire, If this inter- 
pretation be correct we have a close parallel to the explanation 
of the story of the origin of night. In both cases, it has been 
argued, what the legend really expresses is the way in which a 
particular phenomenon (fire, in one case, the alternation of day 
and night in the other) affects the life of the society and the 
sentiments on which that life depends. The legends of the 
catastrophe, however, obviously contain another element of 
importance, revealing as they do a certain way of thinking about 
the animals, This element has not yet been explained. The 
representation of the birds, etc, as ancestors is not confined to 
one particular legend or group of legends, but runs through 
them all. Its explanation is therefore better postponed until we 
come to deal with the general features of the mythology, and 
will then have to be undertaken, 

Let us now turn to the legends that concern Brdihu (Puluga) 
and Zarai (Deria), which are of capital importance in the 
Andaman mythology, The clue to the understanding of them 
lies in the Andamanese notions about the weather and the 
seagons, In the Andaman Islands the ycar may be divided 
into four seasons, There is the cool season lasting from the 
beginning of December to the middle of February; immediately 
following this is the hot season from February to the middle of 
May; then comes the rainy season, from May to the end of 
Septemker; October and November constitute a short season to 
themselves, In the cool season the weather is uniformly cool ; 
there is very little rain, and storms are almost unknown ; the 
wind blows uniformly from the N.E. In the hot season there 
is little or no rain; the wind is generally N.E.,, but may be 
variable ; summer lightning is frequent, but there are no violent 
storms except at the very end of the season, During the rainy 
season, after a short period of uncertain stormy weather with 
which it begins, the wind blows uniformly from the S.W.; it 
rains heavily, sometimes every day for weeks together, but 

violent storms (cyclones) are very rare. Between the rainy 
season proper and the cool season there is a period of six 
or eight weeks in which the weather is unsettled; the wind is 
variable; fine weather alternates with storms that are sometimes 
of terrific violence; waterspouts are frequent; it is at this 
season that violent cyclonic storms are likely to occur. This 
season is called by the Andamanese Kim! (Gumul of Aka-Bea), 
We have seen in the last chapter that the word Aiwed/ denotes a 
condition of social danger, or of contact with the power possessed 
by all things that can affect the life and safety of the society. It 
is obviously in this sensc, and not as meaning “hot,” that it is 
applied to the season in question, for the months of October and 
November are fairly cool, certainly very much cooler than 
February and March. We shall find that this is an important 
point in connection with the Bi#4u myth. 

The life of the Andaman Islander is profoundly affected by 
the alternation of the seasons, There are, first of all, the violent 
cyclonic storms that occasionally occur. Such a storm may 
uproot the jungle for miles, making it impassable for years to 
come, and thus destroying some of the native hunting grounds, 
The wind is sometimes so violent as to tear every leaf from the 
trees in its path. While the storm lasts there is danger to the 
lives of the natives, An old man recounted to me how on the 
occasion of a violent cyclone he and the others of his village: took 
refuge in the sea and on the open shore from the danger of falling 
trees, and remained there till the violence of the storm had 
abated. The usual name for a cyclone in Aka-/eru is toho-por, 
ie. “falling wood” or “falling trees.” Even if all the natives 
escape the danger of death or injury, there is still the,extreme 
fear and discomfort of the experience. If a storm lasts for any 
length of time the natives, who are unable or afraid to go out 
hunting, have to do without food until itis over. Incidentally the 
storm may destroy their huts, canoes, and other property and 
thus cause loss that has to be made up by toil. . 

The second important effect of the seasons on the life of ‘the 
Andamanese is through the food supply, During the cool 
season, and the succeeding hot season, a number of vegetable 
foods, including the very important roots and some of the most 

prized fruits, are available. On the other hand, during these 
seasons the land animals are in poor condition, In the hot 
season, at any rate, lizards, snakes and the civet-cat are not 
eaten, Pigs are breeding and are in such poor condition that 
often a pig that has been killed is left in the jungle as being not 
good enough to eat, The hot season is pre-eminently the season 
of honey, which is so abundant that the natives are able to 
obtain much more than they can consume. In the rainy season 
there are few vegetable foods and very little honey, but on the 
other hand the jungle animals are in good condition and flesh 
food is abundant; fish are more plentiful in this season than 
during the dry weather, In the Kimi? season (October and 
November) the natives add to their food supply two varieties of 
grub (the larvze of the cicada and of a beetle) which are regarded 
as great delicacies. Roughly we can say that the rainy season is 
the season of flesh food, the Kimz/ season is the season of grubs, 
the cool season is the season of fiuits and roots, and the hot 
season is the season of honey. 

By reference to the prevailing wind the year may be divided 
into two parts, the N.E. monsoon from November to May, and 
the S,W. monsoon from May to November. 

I propose to show that the Andaman Islanders express the 
social value of the phenomena of the weather and the seasons, 
ie, tle way these phenomena affect the social life and the social: 
sentiments, by means of legends and beliefs relating to the two 
mythical beings whom they call Bikw and Tarai. Using the 
word personification in a sense to be defined later in the chapter, 
we may say that the Andamanese personify the weather and the 
seasons in*the persons of Bilthu and Tarai, Biliku is associated 
with the N.E. monsoon; she lives in the N.E,; the wind from 
that quarter is called “the Aiku wind”; to Bitiku, therefore, 
belong the cool and the hot seasons, these being the seasons of 
the N.E. monsoon, Zarai is associated with the S,W. monsoon; 
he lives in the S.W. ; the wind from that quarter is called “the 
Tarai wind,” or, in Aka-Bea, simply Deria; to Tarat therefore 
belongs the rainy season. It is possible to show that the 
Andaman Islanders associate with these two beings all the 
phenomena of the weather and the seasons, and are able to 

BA. 23 

represent the changes of the latter as though they were the 
actions of human or anthropomorphic beings. 

Inthe mass of beliefs and stories relating to Bitiku and Tarat 
. there are some elements on which there is absolute agreement 
in all the tribes of the Great Andaman Division. I propose 
to treat these as being the most important elements. There is 
absolute unanimity, for instance, as to the connection of Bikiku 
and Tara? with the N.E, and the S.W. respectively, and with the 
winds that blow from these two points of the compass, Further, 
this belief does not conflict in any way with any other belief of 
the Andamanese. There is similar unanimity in the beliefs that 
Biliku is angry at the digging up of yams, and at the melting of 
bees’-wax. There are other matters on which the agreement is 
fairly general but not absolute, For instance, there is a common 
belief that it was Bilizu who first discovered fire, but there are 
also legends as to the origin of fire in which Bilifu does not 
figure. I propose to treat such elements as these as being of 
secondary importance, Finally there are other elements with 
regard to which the beliefs of different tribes are not in agree- 
ment, For instance, in the South Andaman Puluga is regarded 
as male, while in the North Andaman Bitiku is female. I 
propose to regard such elements as being of only minor im- 
portance, ie., as not being closely connected with the central 
notion or notions expressed in the myth, *. 

Applying the strict method outlined above, we may begin by 
noting that there is complete unanimity in regard to the con- 
nection of Bilitu and Tarai with the NE, and the SW. 
respectively, and therefore with the monsoons, No interpreta- 
tion of the myth can be adequate unless it sets out from this 
fact, The connection is so firmly fixed that it appears in the 
names of the winds themselves. Even in this matter of 
the winds, however, there is a slight difference in the detail of 
the beliefs in different tribes. In the North Andaman it 
would seem that only the two principal winds are retognized ; 
the S.W. wind (more accurately W.S.W.) is called “the Zarad 

1 It appears also in geographical names, Prvuga-Par-mugu, meaning ‘the Puluga 
front? is the name of a part of the Archipelago facing the N.E. and means ‘the side 
facing Puluga’ 

‘ 

wind” (not, be it noted, “the wind of Tarai”); the N.E, (or 
more accurately N.N.E.) wind is called “the Biikw wind.” 
These two winds are by far the most important, as the former 
blows steadily throughout the rainy season and the latter blows 
with almostequal steadiness throughout a good part of the cool and 
hot seasons. In the Aka-Bea and Akar-Bale tiibes the gencral 
belief seems to be preciscly the same as in the North Andaman, 
Only the two principal winds are considered to be of importance 
and one is associated with Deria and the other with Paduga, In 
these two tribes, as in the North Andaman, practically no notice 
is taken of the existence of winds from other quarters, In the 
A-Putikwar tribe there is a notable difference, of great im- 
portance to the true interpretation of the legend. There is 
a dual division of the winds; the S.W. wind is called Zeria ; the 
other winds (of which a number are recognized) are all called 
Bilik, Thus Bilik is a generic name for a number of winds, 
namely for all the northe:ly or easterly winds, including not only 
the N.E., but also the N.W, and S.E. winds, The S.W, wind is 
called by a simple name, Zerza, or as it would be better rendered 
in English “the Zeria.” The othér winds are called by com- 
pound names such as M@etepur Bilik, Koito Bitik, etc, which we 
can only translate as “the N.E. Bik,” “the East Bilih,” etc, 

Two things of importance are shown by the consideration of 
theserfacts, The first is that there is a sense in which it may be 
said that the Andaman Islandeis personify the winds in the 
persons of Aziku and Tara’; they apply to the natural 
phenomenon a name which is also the name of a mythological 
person, and they apply it directly and not in a possessive form, 
ie, they sty “the Bidik” or “the Bitiku wind” and not “Bilihn's 
wind.” The second is that only the S,W. wind is associated with 
Tarai and all the other winds are associated with Biliku. 

The last point is one of considerable importance in the 
interpretation of the myth, If we divide the year by reference 
to titre prevailing winds, then the rainy season, with the excep- 
tion of its béginning and its end, belongs to the S.W. wind ; the 
hot season (save its end) and the cool season may be regarded 
as belonging to the N.E. wind, though the wind may be variable 
in the hot season; there remain two portions of the year, at the 

23—2 

change of the monsoon, when the wind is variable, which cannot 
be classified as belonging strictly to the S,W. or. to the N.E. 
wind, The fact that all these variable winds are denoted in the 
A-Pudikwar tribe by the name Bilik shows that in this tribe 
they are all classified with the N.E. wind, In this way the year 
is divided into two slightly unequal parts, one belonging to Zeria 
or Tarai including the whole of the rainy season except the end 
and the very beginning, the other belonging to Biik (Biliku) 
including the K¢27 season, the coo! season, the hot season, and 
even the first few days of the rainy season, This strict division 
only appears in the A-Pudikwar tribe, but it will be shown that an 
approximation to the same notion is found in the other tribes. 
There is general agreement in all the tribes in the belief that 
storms are due to Biliku or Taraz, Both of them send rain and 
thunder and lightning, but whenever mention is made in the 
* legends of a violent storm it is always Bi/ikw who is mentioned 
as causing it, and never by any chance Yarai, Thus, in regard 
to this matter of storms, it is evident that Biiku is more 
important than Tarai, and this is only one example of the pre- 
ponderance of Bilikw over her consort. This preponderance 
will need to be explained as one of the essentials of the myth}, 
We have already seen how the Andaman Islander represents 
any natural phenomenon having negative social value as though 
it were the result of the action of a person in anger, this being 
the one anti-social passion with which he is most familiar in 
his own life, Thus the withdrawing of the light of the moon 
after the full is explained as being due to the anger of the moon, 
The negative social value of a violent storm is obvious. In 
accordance with the general principles of his mytltology the 
Andaman Islander therefore explains the storm as being due 
to the anger of a personal mythical being. But storms are 
intimately connectéd with the winds, so that it must be Bilzhu 
and Tarai (in whom the winds are personified) who are respon- 
sible for the storms, Further, in the Andamans, violent storms. 
are very rare except at two special periods of the’ year, at the 

1 Although it is generally believed that storms (or more exactly, violent storms or 
cyclones) are the results of the anger of Sévik, yet there is « conflicting belief that 
storms are made by the spirits, particularly the spirits of the sea, 

Li 

change of the monsoon, This gives a further ground ‘of associa- 
tion with Biku and Tarazd between whom the seasons are 
divided. We have seen that in classifying the winds the natives 
(of one tribe at any rate) associate with Tarai only the steady 
S.W. wind which brings not cyclones and violent storms but 
steady rain, while all the other winds are associated with Biltku, 
If this be so it is clear that a cyclone, with its wind veering from 
one quarter to another, must be the work of Bi/ikw. Further, if 
the Biliku season be regarded as including all the periods of 
variable northerly and easterly winds as well as the peiiod of the 
steady N.E,, then we can say that it is only in the Bitéhe period 
that violent storms are likely to occur. It is evident therefore 
that an examination of the natural phenomena themselves gives 
us an adequate reason for the preponderance of Biliku over 
Tarai in the legends. This will be made even more evident as 
we proceed. 

Another law of the Andaman mythology is that a person, 
such as the moon, is never angry without cause, There are a 
number of actions that ate believed by the Andamanese to 
cause the anger of Biku; of these there are three of extieme 
importance, all the others being certainly of much less im- 
portance, It is necessary, therefore, to examine these three 
carefully and find their meaning. 

There is absolute agreement in all the tribes with regard to 
the belief that Biizu is angry and sends bad weather when 
bees’-wax is melted or burnt. The season of honey is the hot 
season from February to May, During the rainy season scarcely 
any honey is to be found and that only of the inferior (black) 
variety, sit is clear therefore that honey belongs particularly to 
the Bitiku portion of the year, During the hot season honey is 
abundant and large quantities are collected. As the natives 
make use of the wax, and as this is useless till it has been 
melted, this is the special season of the melting of bees'-wax, 
Atthe beginning of the season the Bi/iku wind blows calmly 
from the N.N.E, As the season draws to a close the wind 
becomes variable, uncertain, and in some years violent storms 
occur ushering in the rains of the S,W. monsoon. Year after 
year the wax-melting season comes to a close in stormy weather, 

» 
Now stormy weather and the anger of Bidéku are, for the Anda- 
man Islander, one and the same thing, so that to say that the 
anger of Bi/iku follows the melting of bees’-wax is in one sense 
simply a statement of actual observable fact. 

Another belief about which there is absolute unanimity in 
all parts of the Islands is that Bzikw is angry when certain 
plants are cut down or dug up. These plants include some of 
the most valuable vegetable foods of the Andamanese, such as 
the yams and the pith of the Caryota palm. Amongst the roots 
and fruits associated with Sku there are one or two that were 
not botanically identified. All of them, however, about which I 
was able to obtain any information whatever, are available as 
food during the cool and hot seasons, and either not at all or in 
very small quantities during the rainy season. On the other 
hand, of the vegetable foods that are available during the rainy 
season, not one is ever mentioned as being in any way connected 
with Biliéu, Further, amongst all the foods of the cool and hot 
seasons only those are intimately connected with Biliku which 
begin to be available during the Kimil season, A few examples 
may be mentioned. The yams and other edible roots are not 
found at all in the rainy season, but the tubers begin to form in 
the K7zmil season (October and November) and small quantities 
of these roots are available for food at that time. By the time 
the cool season has set in the roots become abundant, and they 
continue to be found until well on into the hot season, All these 
roots are regarded as being specially connected with Bziku and 
are spoken of as her foods, The same thing applies to the 
Caryota sobolifera of which the pith is eaten either raw or 
cooked, The pith begins to form in the A7m7/ seasoit, and this 
highly prized food is available right through the cool season, 
The fruit of the Cycas, which is another of those belonging to 
Biliku, also begins te ripen at the beginning of the cool weather. 
As regards the utada scandens, Kurz, in his Burmese Flora, 
mentions it as seeding in the “cold season.” I neglected to take” 
note of the relation of this plant to the seasons, but the state- 
ment of Kurz may be relied on. Thus it is seen that the 
vegetable foods that are associated with Biléku are those that 
begin ‘to be available for food during the K7z7 season and are 

¥ 

abundant during the coo! season. Now the Kyi season, which 
is really the opening of the N.E. or 2éikw monsoon, is the 
season at which cyclonic storms are likely to occur. Here again 
therefore, as in the case of bees’-wax, there is a definite ground 
of association in familiar natural phenomena, Year after year, 
as these foods begin to ripen and to be caten, the islands are 
visited with stormy weather, sometimes of exceptional violence, 
When the Andaman Islander says that the stormy weather which 
is the sign of the anger of Sz#éu follows the digging up of yams 
and the cutting down of the Caryota palm or the gathering of the 
seeds of the Cycas or Extada, he is stating what is an actual fact, 

The case of these vegetable foods is in one way different from 
that of bees’-wax. The melting of the wax goes on for some 
weeks before the anger of Bitku is finally aroused, when storms 
come to punish the offenders, and the change of season cuts 
short the supply of honey. In the case of the roots, etc., it 
would seem that it is only the first step that counts. The 
danger lies in the beginning of the season, Once the anger of 
Gitiku has burst forth the bad weather ceases, the danger is 
past, and weeks of fine weather ensue, during which the natives 
may eat freely of the foods in question without fear of con- 
sequences, In this connection considerable importance may be 
attached to a statement made to me on more than one occasion, 
to thé effect thaf the most efficient way of stopping a storm is to 
go into the forest and destroy the plants that belong to Biléhu, 
ie, do the very things that make her angry, We may apply this 
to the events of the Kimi/ season. The natives begin to dig up 
yams and collect other vegetable foods, and thereupon Bidiku 
becomesmngry and stormy weather follows. All that the natives 
have to do is to show sufficient peisistence in continuing to eat 
yams, etc, and the anger of Br#ku is bound to subside and the 
stormy weather to cease. : 

There is a third belief that is generally accepted in all parts 
of-the Great Andaman, that Bziku is angry if a cicada be killed, 
or if a noist be made while the cicada is singing in the morning 
or the evening. The interpretation of this belief is made difficult 
by the fact that there is also an association between the cicada 
and the day and night. Thus Mr Man states that the prohibition 

+ 

against making a noise at dawn’ (While the cicada is singing) is 
associated not with Puduga but witli the sun’. 

The grub of the cicada is eaten duting the A727 season, and 
at no other time of the year, Here the association is simple 
enough. The killing of the cicada (grub) takes place only 
during a brief season, and this is the season when cyclones 
occur, However, the grub of a beetle is eaten at the same 
season and yet I never heaid of any connection between Biliku 
and this other grub, Certainly if there is a belief in such a 
connection it is very much less important than the belief relating 
to the cicada. Further, there is the belief that if the imago of 
the cicada be killed or if a noise be made while the cicada 
is singing, Bitiku will be angry and will send bad weather, 
which is obviously not simply the result of the custom of eating 
the grub of the cicada ding the Kim? season. 

The relation of the cicada to Bivike is almost certainly due 
to the connection of the insect with the seasons, Unfortunately, 
not then recognizing the importance of the matter, I did not, 
while in the Andamans, take particular note of the relation of 
the life-cycle of the cicada tos the revolution of the seasons, and 
I am reluctant to trust to vague memories of matte1s to which [ 
did not pay special attention. Mr Man states, apparently on the 
authority of a native, that during the cold and dry seasons the 
cicada is seldom seen (and is therefore presumably also scldom 
heard), What I believe to be the life-cycle of the insect is as 
follows, During the rainy scason only the adult insects are to 
be found, They lay their eggs at some period during the rainy 
season, possibly towaids the end. In October and November 
the eggs have developed into pupa, and it is theseethat the 
natives eat; but apparently the adult insects, or some of them, 
still survive at this time and are to be seen and heard. By 
about December the last of the adult insects die out and the 
grubs have not yet attained the adult form, so that there is 
a period during which no adult insccts ate cither seen or heard. 
It is probable that the new generation makes its first Appearance 
in adult form as soon as the first rains of the rainy season 
begin. 

1 Page 154. 

The essential point, on which we can base an interpretation 
of the myth, is that the,dicada is not seen ‘or heard during the 
fine weather (December to March), It probably, as stated above, 
makes its reappearance just at the period of the stormy weather 
that ushers in the rainy season. Similarly, it does not dis- 
appear until after the end of the stormy petiod of the Kiwzi? 
season, (I have certainly heard and seen the insect in October, 
and to the best of my recollection in November also.) Thus the 
cicada is definitely associated with the part of the year including 
the rainy season and the two stormy periods at its beginning 
and end. I believe that this is the fundamental fact that 
explains the Andamanese beliefs about the connection of the 
insect with the weather. 

I was told of a ceremony that was held at the end of the 
Kuimil season in the Akar-Bale tribe (and possibly in other 
tribes also) the puipose of which was said to be to ensure 
fine weather for some months and which is called “Killing the 
cicada.” The ceremony consists of doing the very thing that 
is believed to produce storms, viz. making a noise while the 
cicada is singing in the evening. ‘ As soon as the cicada begin 
to sing all the persons in camp make as much noise as 
they can by banging bamboos on the ground, striking the 
sounding-board, or hammering on the sides of canoes, thus 
making just the kinds of noise that are said to be most disliked 
by the cicada, According to the statement of my informant this 
ceremony results in “killing” all the cicadw so that they are 
not heard again for many weeks, and while this silence lasts fine 
weather is assured. The meaning of this little ceremony is 
plain wlten we secall the fact that though the digging up of yams 
and the cutting down of the Caryofa palm anger Biliku and 
result in storms yet sufficient peisistence in these actions, and 
therefore in any others that are displeasing to Bzku, results in 
dispelling the kad weather. Thus it is seen that although the 
matter‘ is a little more complicated, yet the belief in the con- 
nection ofthe cicada with Biku and with bad weather can be 
explained on exactly the same lines as the beliefs about bees'- 
wax and vegetable foods. The fact that the same explanation 
can be given of the three most important prohibitions connected 

with Bithu gives a high degree of probability to the interpreta- 
tion here offered, These three beliefs are the only ones of real 
importance. I am unable to explain the connection of Biktku 
with the species of fish, the bird and the two kinds of wood 
mentioned on page 156, In the North Andaman there is. 
a definite association between Biliku and spiders, the generic 
name for “spider” being 42/zu, 1 believe that this could be 
explained on the same basis as the connection with the cicada, 
ie, through the connection of spiders with the changes of the 
seasons, but as I unfortunately neglected to take note of the 
habits of the spiders of the Andamans I cannot speak with any 
certainty and therefore prefer not to enter into a discussion of 
the subject, 

The explanation that I have to offer of these beliefs relating 
to Biliku and to the things that offend her is that they are 
simply the statement in a special form of observable facts 
of nature, The rainy season comes to an end, the wind becomes 
variable, yams and other vegetable products begin to ripen and 
are used for food, and stormy weather comes, some years 
bringing cyclones of exceptional violence, Then follows a 
périod of steady N.E. winds with fine weather and abundance 
of vegetable foods, during which the noise of the cicada is not to 
be heard, Then comes the honey season, when everyone is busy 
collecting honey and melting bees’-wax. The wind becoines 
very variable, storms come, the fine weather comes to an end 
and the rainy season begins again. These facts affect the 
feelings of the Andaman Islander and he expresses his impres- 
sions by regarding all these happenings as if they were the 
actions of an anthropomorphic being. The vegetable jSroducts, 
the cicada, and the honey all belong to Bi&u. When the yams 
are dug up she is angry, or in other words, storms occur; a storm 

1 The application of the ‘name dz/ikz to the spider is cleaily a mind motive, and 
probably a late accretion, The name of the N.. monsoon is the same in all the 
divisions of the Andamans about which we have information, with dialectic differences 
only. In the Little Andaman the form of the name is O/uga, and thegsame name is 
given to the monitor lizard. Presumably, therefore, there was onginally one name 
throughout the Andamans for the N.E. monsoon (Oluga, Puluga, Bihk, Bitika, 
Biliku) and later this name was apphed to the spider in the Noth Andaman and to 
the monitor lizard in the Little Andaman. It may be noted that the name of the 
monitor lizard varies from one innguage to another in the Great Andaman, 

zs the anger of Biliku. The cessation of the song of the cicada 
removes one of the possible causes of the anger of Bi/iku, and 
therefore marks the period of fine weather. That anger appears 
once more when the natives busy themselves with melting 
bees’-wax, ‘ . 

It may be noted that these beliefs about Bztku give an 
expression of the social value of honey and bees’-wax and 
of vegetable foods such as yams, The Andaman Islands provide! 
few fruits containing natural sugar. Yet the natives are in- 
ordinately fond of sweet things ; they greatly enjoy the sugar 
that they now obtain from the Settlement of Port Blair, Honey, 
which was almost their only sweet food in former times, was 
therefore very greatly valued. Apart from the yams and other 
foods associated with Bziéku there are very few productions of 
the Andamans containing starch in a palatable form, To the 
native who has been living during the rainy season almost 
entirely on meat and fish, the starchy foods of the stormy season 
(yams, Caryota, etc.) are of great value, and they are very highly 
prized. Thus the foods associated with Biviku all havea high value, 

We all know how the value ‘of an object is increased if, in 
order to obtain it, we have to make some considerable effort 
or sacrifice, or put ourselves in danger of some evil. Reversing 
this mental process, the Andaman Islander expresses his sense 
of the value of honey and yams by the statement that to obtain 
them he must be prepared to risk the anger of Bi/éku with-its 
results. It was shown in the Jast chapter that the value of food 
in general is expressed in the belief that all food is more or less 
dangerous to eat, and that ritual precautions must be observed 
if the danger is to be avoided. Here in the Biiku myth, we 
have a further example of the same sort of mental process, in 
relation not to all foods in general but to a few foods of special 
value, Yet another example may be given: Roast pork is highly 
relished by the natives, and they believe that the roasting of pork 
offends certain spirits of the sky and is therefore dangerous’, 

1 It is lo be noted that these tabus connected with S¢/#éx are not absolute prohibi- 
tions; they are beliefs that if certain things are done Bzééér will be angry (i.e., there 
may be storms); if you do these things you must risk the danger. It is exactly the 
same with the roasting of pork, , » 

Returning now to the subject of Bike as the sender of 
cyclones, it is necessary for the argument, even at the risk of 
repetition, to show (1) that this is by far the most important 
attribute of Bi/zéu, and (2) that it follows immediately from her 
connection with the N.E. monsoon. 

Taking the second point first, we may note, in the first place, 
that while Zaraz is associated with the steady S.W. wind which 
blows with very little variation for months at a time, Bediku is 
associated with the variable winds of the hot season. Now a 
characteristic of a cyclonic storm is the way in which the wind 

N 

“ 

ow” 

~, ’ 
. 

The line represents the position of the Andaman Islands, ‘The larger ariows show 
the direction in which the cyclonic disturbance is moving, The smaller arrows show 
the direction of the wind, 

veers from one quarter to another, Further, as most of the 
cyclones that cross the Andamans travel from the south-east in 
a north-westerly direction, and the movement of the cyclone is 
in a counter-clockwise direction, the first wind of a cyclonic 
storm when it strikes the islands comes from the north-east, 
This may be seen from the accompanying diagiam, It is only 
at the very end of the storm, when the storm centre has passed, 
that the wind blows from the south-west. Thus it ifclear that 
the association of cyclones with Bake and not with Tara¢ 
is determined by the nature of the phenomena which the Bi#iku- 
Tarai myth sets out to explain. 

, 1 

That the most important attribute of Bi//ku is her connection 
with the cyclones is evident when we consider the legends in 
which she is mentioned. In most of the legends in which her 
name occurs? she is spoken of as being angry with the ancestors, 
and we know that a cyclone and the anger of Bi/ibv are, for the 
Andaman Islander, one and the same thing, In some of the 
stories mention is made of a great storm that Bi/dke sent which 
nearly destroyed the world. All through the legends we find 
her pictured as a being whose anger is to be feared, who has the 
power to destroy human life and human property, Tarai is 

“never mentioned in this way, for the rains of the south-west 
monsoon themselves have no such power, 

We are now in a position to compare the characters of 
Bitiku and Tarai and explain their relative positions in the 
myth. The reason for the preponderance of zZikz lies in the 
fact that it is she who sends cyclones, while Zeva7 sends nothing 
more than heavy showers of rain. Tarai is never responsible 
for the destruction of life and propeity, whereas Bikiku is, Thus 
the preponderance of B7/iku follows from the essentials of the 
myth. Secondly, Tarai is corfstant, ever the same, whereas 
Biliku is changeable. The rainy season of one year is exactly 
like that of another, and during the time it lasts the weather is 
consistent throughout. On the contrary, one year the Baiku 
season brings é a terrific storm, and another year it is much 
less violent, while, from day to day during certain parts of 
the Bide season the weather is unsettled, so that you cannot 
tell what the morrow will bring with it. It is obvious that this 
uncertainty about the actions of Si##u, the fact that she cannot 
altogetiter be reckoned with, would tend to make her of greater 
importance in the eyes of the Andamanese than her consort 
Tarai. 

Let us now consider the question of the sex of Bitiku. On 
this matter there is a lack of agreement. Inthe North Andaman 
Tarat‘is declared to be male and Silike female. It can readily 
be shown'that this results from the position of Bliku and Tarai 

1 See, for instance, the Aka-Jeiu legend on pages 197—198, the Aka-Kede on 
page 200 and that from the Akar-Bale tube on pages 200—201, and also the legends 
on pages 207, 208, 

as regulating the seasons, Zara? rules over the rainy season, in 
which the chief food is the flesh of animals of the land and of 
the sea; it is the business of men to provide flesh-food. On the 
contrary Biliku rules over the seasons in which the chief foods 
are vegetable products of different kinds; it is the business 
of women to provide such foods, It is only men who go out 
hunting for pigs or turtle or who harpoon or shoot fish, and 
it is always the men who attend to the first part of the cooking 
of pig, turtle and dugong; it is the women who dig up the yams 
and collect the fruits and seeds, and it is the women also who 
cook them, There is a very real sense, then, in which flesh 
foods may be called the foods of men, and vegetable foods may 
be called the foods of women, and, since flesh foods are the foods 
of Tarai and vegetable foods are the foods of Biiku, there is a 
sound reason for calling Zevad male and Biliku female, 

This way of thinking of Bizku as female is in harmony with 
her character as outlined above, Women (in the Andamans) 
are notoriously uncertain, changeable creatures. You can 
always reckon fairly well what a man will do, but not so with 
a woman, Moreover, when the Andaman Islander wishes to 
picture to himself a pair of closely associated beings, it is 
natural that he should compare them to the most closely 
asséciated couple with which he is familiar,~-husband and wife. 
This tendency leads him to make the sun and Hoon man ‘and 
wife in many of his legends, and it may well be expected to have 
its influence on the Bidiku myth also, 

In the South Andaman however, both Puluga and Davia 
are said to be male. It can be shown that this view is also 
appropriate in its way. The Azar-Bale say that Pulmga and 
Daria were once friends, but have quarrelled and now live 
at opposite ends of the earth and are perpetually renewing their 
quarrel, Daria has things to himself for a few months (the 
5.W. monsoon) and sends his wind; then Pwluga makes an 
attack on him; some weeks of unsettled weather ensu¢ while 
they are fighting, until Daria is beaten and Puluga fakes over 
the control of the weather and sends the N.E. wind, By and 
by, however, Daria shows himself again and there is another 
quarrel, with its unsettled and stormy weather, which ends in the 

defeat of Pz/uga and the reinstatement for a period of Daria, 
Even the bald language in which it is stated does not quite hide 
the poetical grandeur of this conception of the world as the arena 
of two battling giants in a never-ending quarrel. Those who 
have lived through a tropical cyclone with its wind changing 
from one quarter to another, its consummate violence, its sudden 
onslaught, its pause (that is felt to be merely a pause) as the 
centre of the disturbance reaches and passes you, and then its 
sudden renewal of the mad combat with the wind coming now 
from the opposite quarter, cannot but 1ecognize in the Asar-Bale 
myth a successful attempt to describe such a storm in figurative 
language, ; 

Such a combat could only be pictured by the Andamanese 
as taking place between two men, and the myth in. this form 
therefore necessarily involves the belief that both Puduga and 
Daria are male, It is evident, therefore, that this view has some 
justification, that it does enable the Andaman Islander to 
express the feelings and impressions evoked in him by the 
phenomena of the weather. I venture to think, however, that" 
the southern myth is not quite so satisfactory as the northern 
one, does not translate quite so well all the different features of 
the natural phenomena with which it deals‘, . 

A most important element of the myth is the connection, of 
Bifeu (Pulugit} with fire. In all the tribes there are legends 
that represent Brku as the first possessor of fire, which was, 
according to some versions, given by her to the ancestors, and 
according to others stolen from her by one of them, There can 
be no doubt that these legends owe their origin to the connection 
between, Bz/ékw the storm-sender and lightning, 

There are several different beliefs about the lightning, 
According to one of these the lightning (Z/e) and the thunder 
(Korude) are persons, who produce the phenomena of the same 
name, Another belief is that thunder and lightning are pro- 
duced by Biliku and Tarai. On the whole, it would seem that 

YIn a piper in Folé-lore, vol. xx, 1909, I put forward the hypothesis that 
probably at one time all the tribes of the Andamans regarded Bild (Puduga) as 
female, and Zarai (Daria) as male. I aim still inclined to think that there is some 

evidence for this, but a discussion of what the Andamanese beliefs may have been in 
the past is entirely outside the scope of this chapter and is therefore omitted. 

the latter belief is the one which is most frequently present to 
the minds of the natives. A man seeing lightning in the sky 
will say, according to the season, the prevailing wind, etc., Biiku 
tatobom, or Tarat datobom ;“ Biliku (or Tarai) is at work.” There 
are different accounts, however, of the way in which Bik makes 
the lightning. One belief is that it is a fire-brand flung by her 
through the sky; a second is that it is a mother-of-pearl shell 
(4e) similarly Aung; yet a third statement is that she produces 
the lightning by striking a pearl shel] (42) on a red stone, 

There is no doubt that the Andamanese regard lightning as 
fire; the charring of trees struck by it is sufficient to convince 
them of this, Thus lightning and the sun are the only two’ 
natural fires that they know. (With the relation of Biliku to 
the sun I shall deal later.) As the wielder of lightning Bike 
thus becomes the possessor of fire. The simplest of the different 
beliefs, the one following immediately from the natural phe- 
nomena, would be, therefore, that which makes the lightning a ° 
fire-brand, This is, on the whole, the one that is most usually 
expressed, at any rate in the South Andaman. 

The explanation of lightning as a shell depends not only upon 
the pearly lustre of this kind of shell, but also on other features 
of it, The shell in question (Je) is used by women alone, and its 
use jis confined to slicing yams and other i ie in pre- 
paring them for food. Its association with wiku theréfore 
follows from the view of Bilikw as female and as heing especially 
associated with yams and other vegetable foods, Granting this 
fundamental connection, then the brightness of the shell, its 
keen edge and the way in which it can be made to skim through 
the air, will explain the statement that lightning is just such a 
shell thrown by Bik. In the South Andaman, where Puluga 
is regarded as male, this belief about the pearl shell would be out 
of harmony with the rest of the myth, and, as we should expect, 
it is not found, However, the A#a-Bea word for lightning 
(be-2ya, the ~iya or -ya being a suffix) suggests that they may 
have had a similar belief in the past’ 

, In the North Andaman the two views of lightning as a fire- 
brand and as a shell are both held, because they both, in 

« I The stem 4¢ seems to be connected with the idea of cutting. 

different ways, fit in well with the rest of the myth. There is 
yet a third view in which these two contradictory beliefs are, as 
it were, reconciled. This is that Bz/izw produces lightning by 
striking a pearl shell against a red stone. 

In the North Andaman the action of throwing a shell or a 
fire-brand is regarded as typical of Bittku ; this is the way in 
which she is pictured by the native, and in which she would 
doubtless be portrayed if the Andamanese had a pictorial art, 
In the dance described in an earlier chapter, in which the dancer 
gave representations of various mythical beings, Bidéku was 
represented by the dancer holding a shell in his hand and 
dancing round threatening to throw the shell at the spectators. 

The representation of Bike or Puluga as throwing her 
lightning in the form of a fire-brand or a shell appears in several 
of the legends of the origin of fire, and in particular in the legend 
of which different versions are found in all parts of the islands 
that tells how the kingfisher stole fire from Bi/ékw and how the 
latter flung a fiie-brand or a shell at the thief. 

The most usual form of the fire legend, and the only one 
that I ever heard, is that in which the fire is stolen. Mr Man 
has recorded a version in which Puduga is represented as giving 
the fire to the ancestors. Considerable importance attaches, to 
this motive of the story as it reveals to us the way in which the 
Andamanese usually think of Biiku and of their own relation to 
her. She is not, so far as these stories go, a benefactress who by 
the invention of fire has earned the gratitude of men, but rather 
a person with whom the human society, both in the time of the 
ancestors and at the present day, is in a condition of opposition. 
Though @/iku had fire, yet she kept it for herself and it was 
only obtained from her by stealth. She was angry when her 
fire was stolen and tried to punish the offender, 

This opposition between Bidz and th¢ ancestors is shown 
in other legends. In some of the stories she is represented not 
as living with the ancestors, but as living on one side of a 
narrew strait while the ancestors lived on the other, as in the, 
Akar-Bale and A-Puéikwar legends. She is thus separated 
from the ancestors in the minds of the natives, In the Asa- 
Kede legend the ancestors eat the foods that Béilika regards as 

BA. 24 

specially belonging to. her, and she kills them, As a result the 
ancestors join together and kill Beka. In the Akar-Bale 
version something of the same sort appears ; Puduga is always 
getting angry with the ancestors because they eat vegetable 
foods, and in his anger he destroys their huts and other property 
(as a cyclone does, and as an Andaman Islander is sometimes 
known to do in a fit of temper); at last the ancestors send him 
away out of the world. In the A-Pudtkwar legend Biktk goes 
away from the world in anger becapse the ancestors steal his 
fire. In the Aka-/eru version Biliku eats up all the food of the 
ancestors, and so they go away and leave her; she then destroys 
them with her shells (lightning) and finally perishes in an 
attempt to cross the sea on a stone, All these legends seem to 
express much the same thing in different ways, namely the 
existence of a condition of hostility between Bilikw and human 
beings, based on the fact that the latter venture to make use of 
the things (yams, etc.) that Biliku regards as peculiarly her 
propeity, There can be no doubt that this is the usual way in 
which the Andamanese conceive the relation between Bd/ééu and 
the ancestors, and therefore,*since the ancestors represent the 
society in its beginnings, between Bike and themselves. This 
relation is quite in agreement with what we have seen to be the 
essential basis of the myth, The natives obtain from the N.E. 
monsoon things highly valued, such as yams arfd‘honey, butthey 
are given as it were grudgingly after a period of storms, and 
finally taken away in another period of storms, 

This view of Alike as hostile to mankind is not, however, 
absolutely universal if we are to accept Mr Man’s account of the 
myths of the South Andaman, Mr Man describes Puluga as 
the creator of the world and the beneficent ruler of mankind, 
Although I could not find a native who held exactly the same 
views about Px/uga.as those that Mr Man represents as being 
the views commonly held in the tribes he studied (A#a-Bea and 
A-Putikwar), yet there is no doubt that at times, and more 
particularly in the southern tribes, the natives do reBard Puduga 
as the benefactor and even the creator of the human race‘, 

1 In dealing with the account given by Mr Man of the Andaman mythology it is 
necessary to remember that he was undoubtedly influenced. by a very strong desire to 

“ Ff 

The representation of Biltku as hostile to mankind depends 
upon her position as the angry storm-sender, and this, as the 
legends show, does seem to be the more -usual way of regarding 
her. But there is another and contrary aspect of Biliku. The 
revolution af the seasons brings to the Andamanese new 
supplies of welished foods,—the grubs of the Kiwi? season, the 
yams and honey of the cool and hot seasons. One of the 
Andamanese names for the season of the N.E, monsoon means 
“the season of abundance.” Therefore Bitiku, as the personifi- 
cation of this season, is herself the giver of good things, This 
aspect finds a partial expression in the legends, Bidhu is 
regarded as having created or discovered the use of all the 
natural productions associated with her. (In one legend it 
is Perjido, the son of Biliku, who discovers honey with his 
mother’s help.) She thus occupies a position similar to that of 
the other ancestors, towards whom the men of the present feel 
grateful for the benefits they have bestowed on mankind, This 
view of Biliku as benefactress is often extended in the Noith 
Andaman to the belief that it was she who invented all the 
arts now practised by women, arfd there are traces of a belief 
that it was her son Perjido who was similarly responsible for the 
arts practised by men. 

This view of Béku as a benefactress, although it conflicts to 
someé extent with the view of her as on the whole hostile to 
mankind, yet, since it springs from the essential basis of the 
myth, cannot be overlooked, During the stormy season the 
Andaman Islander may well forget every aspect of Bi/iku save 
that she is responsible for the storms of which he goes in fear, 
but during the fine weather of the N.E. monsoon, when there fs 
no longer any fear of a violent storm and when he is enjoying 
an abundance of the good things that he regards as especially 
belonging to Bik, his feeling towards her must be of a very 
different nature ; she is then the being who gives him the fine 
weather, the relished foods. Thus, contrary though they be, 

show ‘that the beliefs of the Andamanese about Py/zga were really fundamentally 
the same as the beliefs of the Christian about his God. It may be taken as certain 
that he did not consciously allow this wish to affect his record of the Andaman beliefs, 
but it is very improbable that it did not unconsciously have a great deal of influence 
both on Mr Man and on his informants. 

24-2 

these two aspects of Biliku are both integral parts of the 
myth. 

But Biliku is, also the first possessor of fire, and we have 
seen that fire is regarded by the Andamanese as the source of 
the life of society, and therefore, in a way, of all life, Bdhu as 
the source from which comes the fire is also the source of life, 
This view of Bi/iku is certainly to be found in all parts of the 
islands, though it has been developed more in the South than in 
the North. Bziku thus becomes responsible for the beginning of 
the society, and since the whole universe centres in the society, 
of the whole universe. She becomes the being who created or 
arranged the order in which men live. 

For the honour of this position Az/tk has, however, a 
competitor. Besides the lightning there is another natural 
source of fire, the sun. We find therefore two different (and 
contrary) developments of the myth of the beginning of the 
world, In one of these the sun is associated with Bitihu, is 
regarded as belonging to her or made by her. For instance, in 
an Aka-Kede legend, she is stated to have made the sun by 
throwing a flaming brand into the sky, By this means Bd/iku 
becomes the sole source of fire and therefore of life. This is the 
position that Puluga occupies in the versions of the legends 
recorded by Mr Man. In those legends Paduga gives fire to the 
first human beings by making the sun come doWwn to earth'and 
ignite a pile of wood. The alternative development makes the 
sun independent of Bikv and it is then the sun, or a mythical 
person associated directly with the sun, who becomes the maker 
of the world, the source of life. Unfortunately, I did not obtain 
much detailed information about this development of the myth, 
In the North Andaman the being named Cara is associated with 
the sun and with fine weather, and is certainly sometimes regarded 
as the maker of the world. In the South Andaman itis Jomo who 
is associated with the sun. Men and women, when they die, go to 
live with Jomo in the sky, It is Zomo who is responsible forall 
things being as they are. He was the first being fit was he 
who arranged the order of nature; and similarly it was he who 
created the social order, so that a question as to why some 
custom is observed is often answered by saying that it was 

Tomo who made it so. In Mr Man’s account Tome is degraded 
to the position of being merely the first man made by Puluga, 
but in the accounts that were given to me by the natives of the 
Akar-Bale and A-Putikwar tribes Tomo was a rival of Puluga ; 
sometimes one and sometimes the other was spoken of as being 
the supreme maker of all things. An Akar-Bale man of very 
high intelligence, who had been educated as a Christian, in 
trying to explain to me statements about Tomo made by 
another Akar-Bale who was regarded as an authority on the 
legends of his tribe, said that Zoo was the same thing to the 
Akar-Bale that God is to the Christian. When I asked him if 
it was not rather Pu/uga who was the Andaman equivalent of 
God, he said that some people might think so, but that according 
to the old man to whom I was talking it was Tomo-and not 
Puluga who occupied the position’ 

There is only one more point that needs to be discussed, and 
that is the connection of Az/éku with the spirits, It is clear that 
Biltiku and Tarai must be distinguished from the spirits (Lax), 
yet at the same time Bi/zku is brought into relation with the 
spirits by the existence of two alternative explanations of bad 
weather, One of the explanations is that storms are due to 
Biliku, while the other is that they are due to the spirits, 
particularly the spirits of the sea. Both these beliefs, con- 
tradictory as they seem, are held by the Andamanese, The 
connection of the spirits with the weather is due to the fact that 

1 To complete the discussion of this part of the subject it would be necessary to 
deal with many points in the legends of the real meaning of which I do not feel 
satisfied. I have, for instance, given no explanation of the position of PerJido in the 
Biliku- Taské myth, although this is probably an impoitant matter. Nor have I traced 
to its source the connection of Zi/ikv (with her net, and her hole, or cave, in which 
she shuts herself up Lo sleep and from which she comes out to bring rain and storm) 
with the spider. Besides Jomo, Biliku has yet another competitor for the position of 
control over the fine weather of the hot season, namely the snake, or-cubi (wara-jobo), 
which is regarded as being in some way the guardian of honey and of fine weather, 
‘There arg legends that show the connection of this snake with honey (pnge 224) and 
the same sonngetien is shown in the honey-eating ceremony (page 105). According 
to Mr Man, when the natives of the South Audaman see a dark cloud approaching 
and they do not wish it to rain they threaten Pu/uga that they will call up the 
wara-jobo to bite him, The snake, like other snakes, is only to be seen during the 
hot weather of the honey season. It may be remembered that it is from this snake 
that the pattern used in decorating the body with white clay is named. 

the weather is a thing that can limit the activity of the society, 
and we saw in the last chapter that there is a tendency to 
associate with the spirits of the dead all things that in any way 
interfere with the smooth progress of social life. When it is said 
that a storm can be stopped by swishing arrows in the sea, or by 
placing in the sea a piece of Anadendyon creeper, it is to the 
spirits of the sea, who are afraid of arrows and of the Axadendron, 
that the storm is attributed, and not to Bilike, 

In the A~Pudikwar tribe I found an association of Bik with 
the spirits. One man of this tribe (a medicine-man or dreamer) 
stated that the B77k are a distinct class of spirits, distinct from 
the Lau and the /urua, yet similar to them, It is the Bie who 
control the weather, Certain men, when they die, become not 
Lan or Jurua, but Biz, Thus in one of his dreams that he 
related to me he met and conversed with the spirit of a deceased 
friend whom he spoke of as Lotto Bilik, Bowto having been his 
name when he was alive, A medicine-man is able to control 
the weather through his communication with the B4é in 
dreams, In this tribe therefore we find a doctrine according to 
which Bik is not the name of a single being but of a class of 
beings similar in essentials to the other two classes of spirits, It, 
seemed to me possible that these beliefs are a comparatively late 
introduction by some of the miedicine-men ofthe tribe, The 
Boito about whom my informant Zora dreamed seemed to ltave 

had some part in the development of the doctrine. This does 
not, however, in the [east detract from its value as affording us 
an insight into the beliefs of the Andamanese, 

These beliefs clearly spring from an attempt to distinguish 
from one another the different northerly and easterly wfhds, each 
of the recognizable winds being regarded as a separate person, 
and from the merging together of the two contrary beliefs in the 
weather as regulated by spirits and by Bik and Leria, The 
general system of beliefs about spirits as being responsible for 
all things that may affect human well-being inevitably lefids 
to the notion that the weather is controlled by the spirits, 
and this is implied also in the belief that a medicinc-man (whose 
power is derived from contact with the spirits) is also able to 
influence the weather to some extent, This doctrine, however, 

conflicts with the view of the weather and the seasons as controlled 
by Biliku and Tarai, who are not spirits but personifications of 
natural phenomena. It is perhaps this conflict between doctrines, 
both of them important and indeed necessary, that has led to the 
elaboration of the peculiar beliefs met with in the 4-Pudikwar 
tribe. ‘ 
I have dealt with most of the more important details of the 
Biliku-Tarat myth, and have tried to show that the whole myth 
is an expression of the social value of the phenomena of the 
weather and the seasons, These phenomena affect the social 
life in certain definite ways and thereby become the objects of 
certain sentiments; these sentiments are expressed in the 
legends, Bézku and Tarai are personifications of the N.E, and 
S.W. monsoons; as such they are responsible for the weather ; 
feelings awakened by the weather are therefore referred to 
Biliku and Tarai; thus the fear of a cyclone at certain periods 
of the year is expressed as a fear of the anger of Bitikw, Since 
the time when men go in fear of storms is also the time when 
they are just beginning to dig up yams and eat thenf, the 
myth connects the anger of Arik with the digging up of 
yams, and similarly in the cases of honey and the cicada, 
As Bitiku is associated with vegetable foods, and these are 
things with which women chiefly have to do, Biiku (in the 
Neith Andaman) is regarded as'female; Tarai, being associated 
with flesh foods, is male; the two are therefore conceived as wife 
and husband. As the maker of storms S7@hu is responsible for’ 
the lightning and is therefore possessed of fire, She thus comes 
to be regarded as the first possessor of fire, This gives rise to 
stories »f how the ancestors obtained their fire from Bi/iku, 
and as she is generally regarded as being hostile rather than 
friendly towards mankind, the stories relate how the fire was 
stolen from her. But besides being the maker of storms Ditiku 
is also the dispenser of the good things of the season of the 
N.E. ‘monsoon and when this aspect of the procession of the 
seasons &% prominent before their minds the natives think of 
Biliku as a benefactress of mankind. As she is the possessor of 
fire, and as fire is the source of the life of the society, she comes 
to be regarded as herself the source of life, though there is an 

alternative myth that gives this position to a being associated 
with the sun. 

Such is a brief outline of the explanation that I have tried to 
demonstrate, It may be objected that there are a few important 
details and several minor details that I have not explained. To 
that extent my explanation is incomplete, but I hope that I 
have given sufficient evidence for it to justify us in using it as 
an integral part of the explanation of the meaning and function 
of the Andaman mythology in general. 

It is not necessary, for the purpose of this chapter, to 
examine one by one all the legends recorded. Indeed, there 
are many details of the Andaman mythology that I cannot 
explain, owing simply, I believe, to my lack of insight into the 
ways of thought of the natives. The examples already con- 
sidered are sufficient for the argument. If the interpretations 
given of these be correct we can base on them certain general 
conclusions, 

I have explained some of the more important of the legends 
as being expressions or statements of the social value of natural 
phenomena. The alternation ‘of day and night, for example, 
affects the life of the society in a certain definite manner and 
this gives rise to a certain way of thinking and feeling about the 
phenomenon i in question, These thoughts and feelings, however, 
remain vague and without fixity until they are formulated ‘tnd 
expressed either in the form of some definite rule of behaviour, 

" such as the prohibition against noise while the cicada is singing, 
or in some concrete statement, such as that afforded by the legend 
of the origin of night. Similarly the legends relating to the! 
origin of fire or the saving of the fire during the flood serve to 
give definite and permanent form to the vague feelings that 
result from the way in which the possession of fire affects the 
social life. Finally, I have tried to show that the myths relating 
to Biliku and Taraé are nothing but the expression in concrete 
form of the ideas and feeling#’ that result from the effects of the 
weather ‘and the seasons on the life of the Andaman “Islanders, 
From these examples I now propose to draw a general conclusion, 
All the legends, I wish to maintain, are simply the expression in 
concrete form of the feelings and ideas aroused by things of all 

kinds as the result of the way in which these things affect the 
. moral and social life of the Andaman Islanders, In other words 
the legends have for their function to express the social values 
‘of different objects,—to express in general the system of social 
values that is characteristic of the Andaman social organisation, 
To justify this general statement it will be necessary to show 
how it comes about that these representations are expressed’ in 
the form of myths and legends dealing with the ancestors and 
with such anthropomorphic beings as Bidikw and Tarai. 
Throughout the myths we meet with examples of what 
T have called the personification of natural phenomena. It is 
now necessary to give a more exact definition of this term. By 
it I mean the association of a natural phenomenon with the 
idea of a person in such a way that the characteristics of the 
phenomenon may be regarded as though they were actions or 
characteristics of the person, The simplest form is that in 
which the phenomenon itself is spoken of and thought of as if it 
were an actual person, Thus the sun and the moon are spoken 
of as Lady Sun and Sir Moon, Similarly, in the North 
Andaman, the night is personified and is called Lady Night 
(Mimi Bat), In many cases of personification however, while 
the person may or may not possess the same name as the 
phenomenon, the latter is said to be produced by the former. 
Thus, in the Nor' th Andaman, &/e is the name of the lightning, and 
le is spoken of as a person ; yet, if we enquire further, we are told 
that Ze (the person) produces the lightning by shaking his leg. 
A somewhat similar case is that of Bidiku and Tarai. These 
two beings are said to produce the winds that blow from the 
different Yuarters of the compass. But when we enquire as to 
the names of the winds, we find that in the South Andaman 
(4-Pucikwar tribe) the S.W, wind is called Teria,and the other 
winds are all called 824% Thus the name of the person is also 
used as the name of the phenomenon of which he is (in the 
phraseology here used) the personification, In the North 
Andaman ,Wwe find a difference, the winds being called “the 
Biliku wind” and “the Tarai wind” It is necessary to insist 
on this translation of the native Biléku boto and Tarai dete. We 
should expect, if Bédiku were simply a person who produced the 

winds, that the latter would be called “the wind of Biliéu,? a 
possessive form (Biliku zo boto) being used, but this is not so, 
and the phrase habitually used can only be properly translated 
“the Biliku wind” just as we might say “the north wind.” 
Thus, even in the North Andaman Bidzku and Tarai are used as 
the names of the two chief winds. 

In all these cases, sun and moon, Bitiku and Tara, etc, I 
propose to use the term personification, as being the most con- 
venient and not liable to be misunderstood after having been 
carefully defined. We have now to seck an explanation of this 
proéess of personification, A great deal has been written on the, 
subject of peisonification in mythology, and it is therefore not 
without diffidence that I venture to put forward an explanation 
which can only be very briefly stated in this place and would 
requite for its full exhibition a lengthy psychological explanation. 

An insight into the process of personification is afforded by 
considering our own use of figurative language, We tallc of the 
angry storm, the raging sea. In such cases we allow ourselves 
for a moment to regard the natural phenomenon as if it were a 
person or the action of a pérson, and we do not even trouble 
distinctly to express the “as if” We use such phrases in order 
to attain a more forcible expression of our thoughts and feclings, 
How is it that such expressions succced in the purpose for which 
they are used ? , 

The reason would secm to be that our knowledge and under- 
standing of persons is much more intimate than our knowledge 
of things, The fact that we are able, by the action of sympathy, 
to know what persons with whom we are in contact are feeling, 
gives us an understanding of them that we can never seach with 
inanimate objects, 

In all human society the most important elements of the 
experience of the individual are due to his relations with other 
persons. In the development of the emotional life of the child, 
persons intervene at every turn, and there is thus butlt up a 
system of sentiments and representations which fofins the very 
foundation of the individual’s affective life, In other words the 
first organised experience that the individual attains is all 
connected with persons and their relations to himself. This 

early experience provides a basis on which we may and do 
organise later experiences. The perception of the leaping waves 
and lashing spray of a sea in tempest arouses in us a .vague 
emotional reaction, but it is an experience that we have not 
learned to formulate exactly. The feeling awakened in us is, so 
to speak, unclassified, there is no exact word by which we can 
express it. We therefore fall back upon that system of affective 
: experiences that have been classified, and for which we do have 
adequate words, and we apply the word “angry” to the scene 
before us, At the utterance of the word, with its appeal to 
infantile memories and to the long series of experiences *that 
have been associated with it, the emotion becomes more definite, 
if not more intense, We are thus enabled to classify our present 
experience, to associate it with past experiences that have been 
arranged in our minds in an organised system, and to find 
a place for it in that system. 

Applying this‘to the case of the myths we must first of all 
note that the Andaman Islander has no interest in nature save 
in so far as it directly affects the social life. Scientific and 
artistic interest in nature are products of civilisation. The 
Andaman Islander has no desire to understand the processes of 
nature as a scientist would wish to do, nor has he any concep- 
tion of nature as a subject of esthetic contemplation, Natural 
phesiomena affect him immediately by their influence on his own 
life and on the life of his fellows, and are thereby the source of 
a number of emotional experiences. In order to express these 
he has to make use of that part of his own experience that 
is already thoroughly organised, namely, that relating to the 
actions ®f one person as affecting another or as affecting 
the society, Only in this way is he able to organise his 
experiences arising from the processes of nature, to classify and 
render definite the vague impressions that-are aroused in him, 
He interprets nature in terms of the world with which he is 
most familiar, the world of persons, being enabled to do so by 
the’ presence within him of a regulated and definite body of 
experience which he has derived from his relations with persons 
from the time of his first awakening to the consciousness of the 
external world, 

There is a parallelism here, as in many other matters, 
between the psychological development of the individual and 
that of the race. The fundamental need for the child is to 
learn to accommodate himself to his environment. In this en- 
vironment by far the most important objects are persons— 
parents and other children—and the first business of the 
growing child is to learn to adapt his actions to the require- 
ments of this intercourse with persons, This is so over- 
whelmingly important that the other need (of adapting himself 
to inanimate objects) is quite overshadowed by it. The child 
has to make’ experiments and observations upon persons, to 
learn how they will act. He meets with such a phenomenon as 
anger, for example, the anger of a parent, or of another child, 
and by means of a succession of experiences he comes to a 
satisfactory understanding of this particular thing, and what 
it means with reference to himself and his actions. This notion 
of the anger of a parent becomes the nucleus around which is 
organised the experience of similar phenomena. In play or 
sometimes in earnest, the child treats all sorts of inanimate 

_ objects and events connected ‘with them as if they were persons 
or the actions of persons, By this means,’ and by this means 
alone, he is able to exercise himself in his newly acquired 
experience and to extend and organise it yet further, 

In the history of the race the development of society 
depends upon the organisation of personal relations, ‘The 
task of man in primitive society is therefore similar to the task 
of the child. The needs of his life compel him above -evety- 
thing else to devote himself to organising that part of his 
experience that relates to the actions of persons fpon one 
another; all else is subordinated to this supreme need; and 
just as the child organises and develops his experience by 
treating inanimate objects as if they were persons in such a way 
that we can hardly tell if he is in play or in earnest, so primitive 
man, in exactly the same way, organises and develops ‘his 
social experience by conceiving the whole universe ds if it were 
the interaction of personal forces. 

This explanation of the nature of personification helps 
us to understand some of the Andamanese beliefs, Natural 

phenomena such as the alternation of day and night, the changes 
of the moon, the procession of the seasons, and variations of the 
weather, have important effects on the welfare of the society. 
The latter, in so far as it is regulated from within, depends on 
the adaptation of persons to one another. Men must learn to 
live in harmony, to sacrifice their own desires at times to the 
needs of others, to avoid occasions of giving offence, and not 
readily to give way to anger when offence is given. The 
Andaman Islander represents this fundamental law of the 
society as though it were the fundamental law of the whole 
universe. When any evil befalls the society it is as though 
some personal power were in question, as though some one 
were angry at some offence, Thus the moon and Biiku are 
represented as persons who can be offended and whose anger has 
unpleasant results, Conversely when all goes well it is because 
there is harmony or solidarity between men and the nature 
beings which affect men’s lives, In a word, the forces with 
which the Andaman Islander is most familiar as affecting his 
welfare are those of solidarity and opposition; it is solidarity 
that maintains the harmony of’ social life, opposition that 
destroys it. The forces of nature in so far as they affect the 
society are therefore represented as being of the same nature ; 
there can be either solidarity or opposition between men and 
natua&; the former leads to well-being, the latter to misfortune, 

Thus the personification of natural phenomena is one of the, 
methods by which the Andaman Islander projects into the world 
of nature the moral forces that he experiences in the society, 
The process is essentially similar to that described in the last 
chapter in connection with the ceremonial, save that there the 
forces we were considering were largely impersonal. Perhaps, 
rather than speaking of it as a projection of moral forces into 
nature, we should regard it as a process of bringing within the 
circle of the social life those aspects of nature that are of im- 
portance to the well-being of the society, making the moon and 
the mohsoohs a part of the social order and therefore subject to 
the same moral forces that have sway therein, 

The personification of natural phenomena is not, however, 
the only method by which their social value can be expressed, 

The Akar-Bale legend of the origin of day and night, as we saw 
at the beginning of the chapter, expresses the social valuc of the 
alternation of light and darkness by means of a story of how it 
originated in the time of the ancestors. If we seek to under- 
stand all that this legend means we must ask why the Andaman 
Islanders believe in the existence of the ancestors, and why they 
attribute to them the characteristics that are exhibited in the 
stories they tell about them, The ground of the belief in the 
ancestors is to be found in the existence of a sentiment funda- 
mental! in all human sociely, which I shall call the feeling of 
tradition. When an Andaman Islander is asked the question 
“Why do you do so and so?” he very frequently replies 
“ Because our fathers did so before us.” This answer expresses 
in its simplest form the feeling of tradition. In all his actions, 
in the way he obtains and cooks his food, in the way in which 
he makes his various implements and weapons, in the moral and 
ritual customs that he is 1equired to obscive, the native acts in 
accordance with tradition. If he should ever feel inclined to 
deviate from it he finds himself in conflict with a powerful com- 
pulsive force. In tradition, ‘therefore, the individual is aware 
of a force stronger than himself, to which he must submit 
whether he will o: not. Further, he is aware that the power 
which he possesses, as a member of the society, whereby he 
is able to face the hostile or at best indifferent forces of welure 
and provide himself with food and maintain himself in security 
and happiness, is not simply a product of his own personality, 
but is derived by him from the past. Towards this past, chere- 
fore, on which his own life so obviously depends, he feels a 
grateful dependence, So long as he acts in conformity with 
tradition he can enjoy safety and happiness, because he is relying 
on something much greater than his own qualities of mind and 
body, . 

To put the matter in a few words, the individual finds 
himself in relation with an ordered system—the social order— 
to which he has to adapt himself, The two chief foments in 
his affective attitude towards that order are his sense of his own 
dependence upon it and of the need of conforming to its require- 
ments in his actions, It is this,—his sense of his own relation 

to the social order,—that the Andaman Islander expresses in 
the legends about the ancestors, which recount how that order 
came into existence as the result of actions of anthropomorphic 
beings. 

Some of the legends recount the invention of weapons or 
implements or the discovery of the uses of natural objects. In 
one of the North Andaman stories it is said that all the weapons 
and implements now used by men were invented by the first man, 
whose name, Jutou, probably means “alone,” ie, the man who 
was at first by himself. This first man made himself a wife 
from the nest of the white ant, The regulated society of the 
ants, and the numerous population that a nest contains, give 
this story its symbolic meaning. 

Besides what may be called general culture legends, of 
which the story of /zzeu is an cxample, there are several special 
culture legends relating to various discoveries and inventions, 
such as the tale of how the use of yams for food was first 
discovered, or that which tells how the monitor lizard discovered 
quartz and scarified himself with it. By means of these legends 
the Andaman Islander expresses his sense of his own dependence 
onthe past. He pictures a time when the social order as it now 
is had not begun, or was just beginning ; the knowledge he now 
possesses was then being acquired, the weapons he uses were 
being, invented, the moral and 1itual laws that he obeys were in 
process of being formulated. 

It is obvious that the Andaman Islander cannot regard the 
ancestors as being persons exactly like himself, for they were 
responsible for the establishment of the social order to which he 
merely conforms and of which he has the advantage. He says, 
therefore, that they were bigger men than himself, meaning by 
this that they were bigger mentally or spiritually, rather than 
physically, that they were endowed with powers much greater 
than those even of the medicine-men of the present time, This 
explains the magical powers that are attributed to many, or indeed 
to all,"of the ancestors ; the belief in the existence in the past 
of men or beings endowed with what we may almost call super- 
natural powers is the inevitable result of the way in which 
the man of to-day feels towards the men of the past on 

whose inventions and discoveries he is dependent for his daily 
nourishment}, 

Besides the social order there is another, the order of nature, 
which is constantly acting upon the social order. To this also 
the individual has to adapt himself, and his knowledge of how to 
do so is equally derived from the past. The order of nature only 
affects him through the social order, and the two therefore 
necessarily seem to him merely two parts of one whole,—the 
order of the universe, In the legends he tells how not only the 
social order but also the order of nature came into existence; an 
example is the story of the origin of night. 

The Andaman Islander finds himself in an ordered world, a 
world subject to law, controlled by unseen forces, The laws are 
not to him what natural laws are to the scientist of to-day, they 
are rather of the nature of moral laws. He recognizes only one 
meaning of the word right and of the word wrong; right action 
is that which is in conformity with law, wrong action is that 
in opposition to the law; it is wrong to give way to anger, it 
is wrong to kill a cicada, or to have a bright light in camp 
when the moon is rising in the third quarter, and it is wrong 
also to try and use unsuitable material for an implement or 
weapon, Wrong actions always lead to harm; if you use 
unsuitable wood for your bow it will break and your labour be 
wasted ; if you kill a cicada it will rain heavily ; if you giveaway 
to anger readily you will carn the dislike of your fellows that 
may some day lead to your undoing. Right and wrong mean 
acting in accordance with the laws of the world or in opposition 
to them,and this means acting in accordance with or in opposition 
to custom. Custom and law are indeed here two words for the 
same thing. 

’ The forces of the world, as the Andaman Islander conceives 
them, are not the hlind mechanical forces of moderti science: 
rather are they moral forces. Their action upon human beings 
is not only to be witnessed in external events, but ig to, be 

4 In the last chapter it was shown that the attribution of magical ford? to such things 
ag foods and human bones is simply the means by which the social values of these 

things nre represented and recognized. Similarly here the magical powers of the 
ancestors are simply the representation of their social value, i.e. of the social value of 

tradition, 

, 

experienced in the man’s own consciousness or.conscience. He 
feels within himself their compulsion when he would run counter 
to them, and their support when he leans upon them. The law 
of the world, then, is a moral law, its forces are moral forces, its 
values moral values ; its order is a moral order, 

This view of the world is the immediate and inevitable result 
of the experience of man in society, It is a philosophy not 
reached by painful intellectual effort, by the searching out of 
meanings and reasons and causes ; it is impressed upon him in 
all the happenings of his life, is assumed in all his actions; it 
needs only to be formulated. And the argument of this chapter 
has been that it is as the expression or formulation of this view 
of the world as an order regulated by law that the legends have 
their meaning, fulfil their function. 

The legends of the Andamanese then, as I understand them, 
set out to give an account of how the order of the world came 
into existence, But the Andaman Islander has no interest in 
any part of it except in so far as it affects his own life. He is 
interested in the procession of the seasons or the alteination of 
day and night, or the phases of the moon, only in so far as these 
things have effects upon the community, In other words he is 
interested in natural phenomena only in so far as such phe- 
nomena are really parts of the social order, This I have 
expmagsed earlier in the chapter by saying that the legends deal 
not with all aspects of natural phenomena but only with their 
social values, 

A fundamental character of the natural order (as of the social 
order) is uniformity; the same processes are for ever repeated, 
This chamacter of nature the legends take for granted; they assume 
that if a force is once set into action it will continue to act 
indefinitely, They assume also a period in which the present 
order did not exist, Anything that happened in that period 
has gone on happening ever since, One of the ancestors 
diseoveted how to cook yams, and men have been cooking 

Styams in'tlfe same way down to the present day. A cicada 
was crushed and cried out and the night came, and since 
then the darkness has come every evening as soon as the 
cicada sings. In one of the legends the tree lizard was 

BoA. 25 

quarrelsome, and has remained so, Thus the legends represent 
the social order, including such natural phenomena as may 
be said to belong to it, as being due to the interaction of 
forces of a special character that came into existence in the 
beginning and have continued to act uniformly ever since. In 
this way they express two most important conceptions, that of 
uniformity (or law) and that of the dependence of the present 
on the past. 

It is the need of expressing these two conceptions that gives 
the legends their function. They are not merely theoretical 
principles but are both intensely practical. The law of uni- 
formity means that certain actions must be done and others not 
done if life is to run smoothly; any deviation from uniformity 
in conduct is dangerous as being contrary to the law that 
regulates the universe. What actions are to be done and what 
are to be left undone was determined once for all in the past 
when the present order came into existence, The knowledge of 
what to do and what to avoid doing is what constitutes the 
tradition of the society, to which every individual is required 
to conform, 

The legends, then, set out to express and to justify these 
two fundamental conceptions. They do so by telling how the 
social order itself came into existence, and how, also, all those 
natural phenomena that have any bearing on’ the social sell- 
being came to be as they ate and came to have the relation to 
the society that they possess. 

One group of facts that have an obvious relation to the 
society consists of the geographical features of the islands, The 
more notable features of the part of the country in which a man 
lives, and which he regards as his own, are intimately connected 
with his moral sentiments, His attachment to his group neces- 
sarily involves an attachment to the country of the group, The 
same sort of thing exists amongst ourselves. This attachment 
of the members of 2 group to their own country explains, I 
think, the part played by what may be called “local matives” 
in the legends of the Andamanese. Such motives are of 
considerable importance, of much more importance than would 
appear from the stories that I have transcribed. The recent 

changes in their mode of life have had far more influence on the 
local organisation of the tribes than on any other part of their 
social organisation, and this has not been without its effect on 
the legends. We may say, briefly, that the local motives of the 
legends serve to express the social values of localities, In 
general each locality has its own versions of the legends, in 
which the events related are supposed to have taken place at 
some spot or other in the neighbourhood, Thus all the more 
prominent features of a locality are associated with the events 
of the legends. In some cases tales are told that explain these 
features as having come into existence when the ancestors were 
alive; a reef of rocks was formerly a canoe, for instance, A, few 
such legends were recorded in an earlier chapter, but it is 
probable that there were a vast number of similar tales that I 
did not hear, In some cases a locality has a special social value 
and therefore a special place in the legends. Thus Wote-Hini 
was the great meeting-place for the natives who lived on 
Baratang and on parts of the South Andaman and the Middle 
Andaman, and was also sometimes visited by the natives of the 
Archipelago. Consequently Wota-Zmi is represented in the 
legends of the A-Pudikwar tribe as being the great mecting- 
place or dwelling-place of the ancestors, The effect of these 
associations between the places with which he is familiar and 
thesskents of the legendary cpoch in the mind of the Andaman 
Islander probably is similar to the effect on ourselves pf the 
historical associations of our own country; they serve to make 
him aware of his altachment to his country or to express his 
sense of that attachment, 

Theresstill remains a most important feature of the legends 
which has not yct been explained, namoly the position of the 
animals as ancestors, Many of the actors in the legends bear 
the names of animals but at the same time are spoken of as 
though they were human beings. Many of the legends explain 
how seme species of animal arose from some one of the 
ancesiérs Who became an animal and the progenitor of the 
Species, Thus, in the North Andaman, o/o was one of the 
ancestors; he made wings for himself out of palm-lcaves, and 
so was able to fly; he lived a solitary life in his home at the top 

of a tree, and was in the habit of stealing men’s wives; in the 
end he became the sea-eagle, and this species still bears the 
name holo. It is necessary to define as exactly as possible what 
meaning these stories have to the natives, It is not simply that 
the legendary person is a man with the name and some of the 
characteristics of an animal ; nor is it simply that the legendary 
person is the ancestor of the species of which he bears the name. 
We can only adequaticly express the thought of the Andamancse 
by saying that he regards the ‘whole specics as if it were a 
human being. When, in the legends, he speaks of “ Sea-eagle” 
he is thereby personifying the species in the sense in which the 
word personification has been used throughout this chapter; he 
is regarding the characteristics of ‘the species as if they were 
characteristics or actions or results of actions of a person. 
Admittedly this is a vague description, but the vagueness is in 
the mental phenomenon described ; the Andamanese do not, in 
this matter, think clearly and analyse their own thoughts, 
However, we can help ourselves to understand their thoughts 
by recalling the tales that amused us as children, in which 
the fox or the rabbit of thé tale was an embodiment of the 
whole species. 

The part played in the legends by any particular animal is 
determined either immediately or indirectly by its observable 
characteristics, Thus the connection of the kingfisher with Jeo is 
due to the fact that he is a fish-eating bird, and that he has a 
patch of bright red feathers, red being, in the Andamanese 

. mind, always associated with fire. The other birds that are 
mentioned in the different versions of the fire legend cither 
possess remarkable plumage (as the dove, and the parrot) or 
are fish-eating birds, The Andamanese rogard fish as the 
fundamental human food, having only one word for “food” 
and “fish,” and thay never eat their fish raw as the kingfisher 
does, In the Akar-Bale story of the origin of the animals 
the tree lizard is characterised by his quarrelsomeness, and by 
the fact that he is very difficult to catch hold off thés¢ are 
both actual characteristics of the animal itself, The crab 
appears in the same legend as a person with a very powerful 
grip, and with a hard shell to his body, The monitor lizard has 

his place in the legends determined by the fact that he can 
climb trees, run on the ground and swim in the water, and is 
thus equally at home at the top of the trees, on the ground, or in 
the creek, I have already given this as one of the reasons why 
he is chosen as the first ancestor of all the animals and of 
human beings, The lizard also seems to be regarded by the 
Andamanese as a particularly libidinous animal, and is therefore 
regarded as the inventor of sexual intercourse and of procrea- 
tion, Why he should have this sexual reputation I do not 
know, The tale of how the lizard invented  scarification 
depends on the fact that the marks on the lizard’s skin bear 
a strong resemblance to the marks that the natives make on 
their own skins with sharp fragments of quartz, The position 
of the Pavadoxurus or civet-cat in the stories in which she 
appears is due to the fact that while she can live in the tees or 
on the ground she cannot swim; hence, when the flood came, 
she fled from the water and climbed a stecp hill and thus kept 
the fire alight. In the light of these examples we are justified, 
TI think, in assuming that in all cases, even when the meaning: is 
not clear, the part played by any’animal in the legends is due 
to some actual characteristic of it. 

There is thus a parallelism between the personification of 
natural phenomena and the personification of animal specics, 
"T Ivete shown that the characteristics of such beings as Biiku 
and Tarai are all to be explained by a consideration of the 
actual characteristics of the phenomena of which they are the 
personification (the winds) and of the phenomena immediately , 
connected therewith, The same thing has now been shown to 
be true with regard to the personified animals, The process of 
personification is carried out in exactly the same way in the two 
different classes of cases, I gave as the reason for personi- 
fying natural phenomena the fact that in this way, and in this 
way only, the Andaman Islander is able to express the 
sentiments that are aroused in him by them. We must see 

ain “Central Australia it is believed that if boy who has not been initinted cats 
large lizards he will develop an abnormal and diseased craving for sexual intercourse, 
(Spencer and Gillen, Vative Tribes of Central Australia, p. 471.) A friend who has 

observed the monitor lizard in Australia tells me that the animal fully deserves ite 
reputation, 

if we can justify the personification of animals by a similar 
argument, 

The habits of observation fostered in the mind of the 
Andaman Islander by his method of winning his sustenance 
lead him to take a lively interest in all the creatures of the 
jungle and the sea, about whose ways he therefore has a great 
store of knowledge, Every tree and plant of the forest, every 
bird and insect, every creature that lives in the sca or on the 
reef has its name, His interest, however, in the case of many of 
the animals has little or no relation to practical life, for he does 
not make use of them for food or in any other way. ‘There is 
here therefore something that contradicts the fundamental 
assumption of the philosophy that is expressed in the legends, 
there is a lack of mental unity. These interests in the birds 
and insects are not correlated with the central mass of interests 
that control the Andamanese mind and give it its unity, 
Although his philosophy assumes that everything in which he 
takes an interest has some meaning in reference to his own life, 
yet here are things that at first sight have no such meaning. 
The correlation that is lacking in his experience is brought 
about by means of the legends; a meaning is provided for 
the apparently meaningless, The fundamental interest of the 
Andaman Islander, as of all men in primitive, societies, is his 
interest in persons and personal relations, By regardipgenhe® 
animals as persons and relating stories about them he is able to 
correlate his interest in them with the fundamental basis of his 
mental life, 

This explanation does not perhaps sound very satisfactory, 
We do not at present understand the forces that compel the 
normal mind to strive after unity in its experience. Let us 
examine the matter a little more closely, All the thoughts and 
feelings of the Andaman Islander (or at any rate all those that 
are expressed in the legends) centre in the society; for him the 
“world is merely a stage on which the social drama is perpetually 
enacted. He coordinates all his thoughts, emotions, afd interests 
around the society, and in the legends he builds up a picture 
showing the connection between the socicty and those phenomena 

“of nature that affect it, The majority of the animals (the birds, 

the insects, and innumerable ‘kinds of fish), not being used for 
food, or in any othér way, bear no apparent relation to the 
social life. Yet by reason of the woodcraft developed by 
the necessities of his life he is compelled to take notice of 
these creatures and to become interested in their ways. Here, 
therefore, are two conflicting clements in his consciousness, 
(1) his belief that the whole of nature derives its meaning 
and interest from its relation to the society, and (2) his con- 
sciousness of an alien world (of the birds, elc.) which seems to 
have no direct relation to the society, and which nevertheless he 
cannot help being constantly aware of. The Andaman Islander, 
as I have stated more than once, does not possess any scientific 
or abstract interest in nature. He never asks himself “ What is 
the meaning of this?” in the same way that a scientist of our 
own civilisation might do. He asks “ What is the meaning of 
this thing in relation to me and my interests and feclings, and 
to the social life of which my life is a fragment?” It is because 
he does feel the need of answers to questions of this kind that 
the conflict we have noticed arises, ‘his conflict has to be 
resolved, and there are apparontly three alternatives: (1) to 
admit that there is a meaning in nature apart from its relation 
to the society, (2) to refuse to take any interest in birds and 
insects, (3) to explain away the apparent lack of relation, It is 
this third altefnative that is chosen by the Andaman Islander, 
and there are obvious reasons why it should be 80, The 
explanation is accomplished in a direct and simple “manner, 
In the beginning men and animals were one; then came an 
event or series of events (the discovery of fire, the great flood, 
or a gyeat quarrel amongst the ancestors) whereby the men 
and the animals became cut off from one another, to live 
henceforward in the same world, but separated by an unseen 
barrier, : 

The argument Thay be put in another way that may perhaps 
be more convincing, “fhe actual sentiment that is aroused in 
the ‘minfl of the native by the animals is that here is un 
important and interesting part of the universe that is alien: 
to him, from which he is cut off in some strange way. It is 
this real sentiment, itself the inevitable result of his life and his 

surroundings, that is expressed in the belief in the animals as 
ancestors, ‘ 

If this explanation be correct we should expect to find that 
the animals that figure in the legends are those that have no 
immediate social value either as food or in any other way, while 
on the other hand the animals that are used for food will not 
appear in the legends, or will occupy therein a very different 
place fram the others. The only land animal that is regularly 
used for food is the pig. It is therefore a confirmation of the 
explanation that we find that the pig is never under any 
circumstances regarded as one of the ancestors, that is to say, is 
never personified in the same way that other animals are. One 
legend about the pig! explains, not how the animal came into 
existence (that seems to be assumed), but how it acquired its 
senses, Another legend? tells how the civet-cat persuaded some 
of the ancestors to play a game in which they pretended to be 
pigs, and they were turned into these animals, Here we are 
clearly dealing with something different from the ordinary 
process of personification, for we have not one ancestor in whom 
the species is personified, but .a number of persons who were 
suddenly changed from men and women into pigs by the 
magical performance of the civet-cat, In the sea there are 
several animals that are regularly used for food. The dugong is 
spoken of as an ancestor in an Akay-Bale logehd, but in ‘the 
North Andaman there is a story of how the dugong originated 
from a“pig that Perfido tricd to roast without first disem- 
bowelling it and cutting the joints of its legs, There is also 
in the North Andaman a story of how turtles originated*, The 
existence of these legends shows that the pig, the tule and 
the dugong occupy a different position in the minds of the 
Andamanese from that of the other animals. This serves, 
in some measure, to confirm the explanation given above. 

We may briefly consider what may be regarded as a kind of 
negative instance by which to test the argument, The would of 
the stars constitutes a part of the universe just as alidh, just-as 
devoid of apparent meaning as that of the birds, We may ask 
therefore how it is that the Andaman Islanders have no star 

1 Page 417 © Page 218. 3 Page 218, 

myths of the kind that are common in other primitive societies, 
The answer is, I think, that the Andamanese do not have their 
attention called to the stars, As their camps are in the dense 
forest there are very few occasions on which they see the sky at 
night, When fishing at night on the reefs or in canoes they are 
too busy to pay much attention to the stars, They have not 
learnt to relate the procession of the stars and the change of the 
seasons, nor have they learnt to tell the time at night from their 
declination: Their navigation is only along the coast and they 
have therefore no use for the stars as guides of direction, On 
the contrary, wherever we find a developed star-mythology we 
find that the stars are studied either as guides to navigation or 
journeying overland, or as giving indications of the changes 
of the seasons. 

We have considered all the more important aspects of the 
subject matter of the legends; it remains for us to turn to the 
form and enquire how it comes about that the representations 
which analysis reveals are expressed in just the way they are, in 
a word, why the expression takes the form of a story, It is 
obvious that in this place no attempt can be made to deal with 
the general problems of the psychology of story-telling, All 
that I wish to do is to point out one or two reasons why the 
legend is an appropriate form (perhaps we might say, the only 
“psesiple form) for the expression of the view of the world that is 
revealed in the Andaman mythology, 

The Andamanese, like other savages, have not acquired the 
power of thinking abstractly, All their thonght necessarily 
deals with concrete things, Now the story form provides a 
means @f expressing concretely what could otherwise only be 
put in an abstract statement, (A large part of the interpreta- 
tion of the legends, as here undertaken, consists in restating the 
content of the legends in abstract terms.) Moreover, even if the 
Andaman Islanders were capable of thinking abstractly, yet, 
since swhat they need to express are not thoughts so much as 
feelings (Sot intellectual so much as affective processes), they 
would still miced a concrete form of expression. For it is a 
familiar fact that the concrete has a much greater power of 
awakening or appealing to our feelings than has the abstract. 

In particular the story has ever been a popular medium by 
which to appeal to sentiments of all kinds, 

The chief ground for the interest in stories shown by children 
and by savages is, I believe, that they afford the means of 
exercising the imagination in certain specific directions and 
thereby play an important part in enabling the individual to 
organise his experience. The course of the development of 
the human mind (from childhood to adolescence, and from 
the earliest human ancestor to ourselves) depends upon or 
involves the existence at certain stages of growth (and to 
a certain extent throughout the whole process) of a conscious 
egoistic interest. Mankind, to develop what we call character 
and conscience, must learn to take a conscious interest in 
himself, in his own actions, and their motives. The develop- 
ment of this self-consciousness in children is a process of great 
interest to the psychologist and has already been studied in an 
imperfect fashion, You have only to watch a child playing a 
game in which he or she enacts some imaginary part to see how 
such games afford a means by which the child develops and 
widens his interest in himself* Children, and many grown-up 
people (particularly during conditions of lessened mental: 
activity), indulge in what are called daydreams, which take 
the form of an imaginary succession of adventures of which the 
dreamer is always the hero, The character of daydreaptsmis 
that they are always frankly cgoistic and boastful, Now this 
sort of interest in stories is found in the Andamanese, though 
not in the legends, At the end of a day a group of Andamanese 
may often be seen seated round a fire listening while one of 
them recounts adventures. The narration may be merely an 
exaggerated account of real happenings, but is more often purely 
fictitious, The narrator will tell, with few words, but with many 
expressive gestures, how he harpooned a turtle or shot a pig. 
He may, if his hearers are content to remain and listen, as they 
sometimes are, go on killing pig after pig for an hour ar two 
together. The point to be noted is that these tales Mare dlways 
frankly egoistic and boastful, and it is for this’ reason that 
they may well be compared with the daydreams of the more 
civilised. 

Besides this cgoistic interest in stories there is another that 
is closely connected with it in origin and function, The necessi- 
ties of social life, particularly in childhood and in primitive 
societies where a small number of people are constantly reacting 
upon one another, involve an intense degree of interest in 
persons and personal qualities, This interest is aroused and 
fostered by the constant play of personal forces in the social life, 
Its strength accounts, I believe, for the power of appeal to 
sentiments that is possessed by stories. 

It is a commonplace that in many forms of play the child or 
the adult (and it is also true of animals) exercises faculties that 
are important parts of the system of habits or dispositions by 
which the individual adapts himself to his surroundings, We 
may regard the interest in stories as similar to play-interests in 
general, Life in society requires the individual to develop a 
faculty of what may be called character-estimation, whereby 
he may judge the motives that are likely to influence the 
conduct of another person, I have myself noticed that savages 
such as the Andaman Islanders and the Australian aborigines 
are as a rule good judges of character. They can quickly 
estimate how to adapt their conduct and conversation to the 
character of a person they mect for the first time. They are 
often exccllent mimics, being able to imitate exactly the tone of 

“volce or manner of walking or any other idiosyncrasy of a person 
whom they have only seen for a short time, I believe, then, that 
the legends of the Andamanese may be regarded as a means 
whereby they give exercise to their interest in human character, 
just as in other kinds of play they exercise other interests and 
faculties that are integral parts of their adaptation to their 
environment, By means of the personification of natural phe- 
nomena and of species of animals, and through the assumption 
of the existence of the ancestors and thei times, they are able 
to develop a special kind of unwritten literature, which has for 
them just the same sort of appeal that much of our own litera- 
ture has ‘for us. Doubtless it is not a very polished form of art; 
the characterisation that it exhibits is simple and even crude; 
the story is not told very skilfully, and indeed the story-teller 
relies much on his use of expressive gesture to convey his 

meaning; nevertheless it does fulfil amongst the Andamanese 
the same sort of function that more developed literary art does in 
civilised society. 

There remains one other matter to be dealt with briefly, 
I have pointed ont on several occasions that the legends contain 
inconsistencies, Some of these only appear when the real 
meaning of the legend is discovered, but others are on the 
surface, It is clear that the Andamanese do not always apply 
to their legends the laws of logical consistency. It must not, 
however, be supposed that they are equally illogical in other 
matters, for this is not so. In matters of everyday practical life 
the Andamanese show just as much sound commonsense as the 
inhabitants of a civilised country. They are excellent observers 
of natural phenomena and are capable of putting their observa- 
tions to practical use. In any attempt to explain their 
mythology, therefore, it is necessary to show why in this sphere 
they do not apply their powers of reasoning. We can under- 
stand this when we tecall the purpose of the legends as here 
described, which is, not to give rational explanations, but to 
express sentiments, When thére are two altcrnative rational 
explanations of a phenomenon between which we cannot 
definitely choose we say that either one or other is probably 
true, In those mental processes in which the purpose is to find 
a symbolic expression for sentiments or desires, the erthgr-o9™ 
relation js inadmissible owing to the very nature of the thought- 
process itself, If two expressions of the same sentiment are 
present, both equally adequatc, we must either reject one of 
them or by making use of both on different occasions admit 
the possibility of inconsistency, Where the inconsistency 
becomes more or Jess obvious we expect the reason to step in 
and insist that a choice shall be made, But a mind intent on 
expressing certain fselings, faced with two alternative and 
equally satisfactory but inconsistent symbols, will hesitate to 
choose between them even at the command of the desire for 
logical consistency. It will cling as long as possible t8 bofh‘of 
them. This is just what the Andaman Islander seéms to do in 
his mythology. The view of lightning as a person who shakes 
his leg seems to express in some way certain notions of the 

natives about the lightning. The alternative explanation of 
lightning as a fire-brand thrown by Si/7ku also satisfics in some 
way his need of expressing the impressions that the phenomena 
make upon him. In spite of the inconsistency he clings to both 
symbols as best he can, 

The very existence of inconsistencies of this kind proves 
without any doubt that the mental processes undeilying the 
legends of the Andamanese are not similar to those that we 
ourselves follow when we attempt to understand intelligently 
the facts of nature and of life, but rather are to be compared to 
those that are to be found in dreams and in art,—processes of 
what might conveniently be called symbolic thought, It would 
perhaps hardly be necessary to point this out were it not that 
many cthnologists still tiy to interpret the belicfs of savages as 
being the result of attempts to waderstand natural facts, such as 
dreams, death, birth, etc. Such writers assume that the savage 
is impelled by the same motive that so strongly dominates 
themselves, the desire to understand,—scientific curiosity—and 
that such beliefs as animism or tolemism are of the nature of 
scientific hypotheses invented to explain the facts of dreaming 
and of death on the one hand and of conception and birth on 
the other. If this view of the natuie of primitive thought were 
correct it would be impossible to conceive how such inconsisten- 
™ Ties as those that we mect with among the Andamanese could 
be permitted, On the view that the myths of primitive. societies 
are merely the result of an endeavour to express certain ways of 
thinking and fecling about the facts of life which are brought 
into existence by the manner in which life is regulated in socicly; 
the presence of such inconsistencies need not in the least 
surprise us, for the myths satisfactorily fulfil their function not 
by any appeal to the reasoning powers of the intellect but by 
appealing, through the imagination, to the mind’s affective dis- 
positions. 

‘ The thesis of this chapter has been that the legends are the 
expression of social values of objects of different kinds. By 
the social value of an object is meant the way in which it affects 
the life of the society, and thercfore, since every one is interested 
in the welfare of the society to which he belongs, the way in 

which it affects the social sentiments of the individual. The 
system of social values of a society obviously depends upon the 
manner in which the society is constituted, and therefore the 
legends can only be understood by constant reference to the mode 
of life of the Andamanese, 

The legends give us in the first place a simple and crude 
valuation of human actions. Anger, quarrelsomeness, carelessness 
in observing ritual requirements are exhibited as resulting in 
harm, This is the moral element of the stories strictly so called, 
and is to be observed in many of them, The young men who 
failed to observe the rules laid down for those who have recently 
been through one of the initiation ceremonies were turned to 
stone, The quarrelsomeness of the lizard led to the ancestors 
being turned into animals. The bad temper of one of the 
ancestors resulted in darkness covering the earth, or in a great 
cyclone in which many were destroyed, 

Secondly, the legends as a whole give expression to the social 
value of the past, of all that is derived from tradition, whether 
it be the knowledge by which men win their sustenance, or the 
customs that they observe. In the wonderful times of the 
ancestors all things were ordered, all necessary knowledge was 
acquired, and the rules that must guide conduct were discovered. 
It remains for the individual of the present only to observe the 
customs with which his elders are familiar. Pe aa 

The legends of a man’s own tribe serve also to give a social 
value to ,the places with which he is familiar. The creeks and 
hills that he knows, the camping sites at which he lives, the reefs 
rand rocks that act as landmarks by reason of any striking feature 
they may present, are all for him possessed of a historic anterest 
that makes them dear to him. The very names, in many cases, 
recall events of the far-off legendary epoch, 

Again, many of tls: legends express the social value of natural 
phenomena. By reference to Bitiku and Tarat, for instance, the 
native can express what he feels with respect to the weathernaned 
the seasonal changes that so profoundly affect the comfnon"life. 
Vinally, in the legends he is able to express what he’ feels about 

he bright plumaged birds and the other creatures with which 
ie is constantly meeting in the jungles, which are a source of 

perennial interest, and are yet so clearly a part of the world cut 
off from himself and his life, having no immediately discernible 
influence upon his welfare, 

This system of social values, or rather this system of senti- 
ments, that we find expressed in the legends is an essential part 
of the life of the Andamanese; without it they could not have 
organised their social life in the way they have. Morcover the 
sentiments in question need to be regularly expressed in some 
way or another if they are to be kept alive and passed on from 
one generation to another. The legends, which are related by 
the elders to the young folk, are one of the means (the various 
ceremonial customs analysed in the last chapter being another) 
by which they are so expressed, and by which their existence is 
maintained, ‘ 

Although the term “social value” has been used as a‘ con- 
venient expression, yet the meaning of the legends might he 
expressed in other ways. We may say, for instance, that they 
give a representation of the world as regulated by law. The 
conception of law which they reveal is not, however, that to 
which we are accustomed whenewe think of natural law. We 
may perhaps adequately state the Andaman notion by saying 
that moral law and natural law are not distinguished from one 
another, The welfare of the society depends upon right actions ; 

awong actions ‘inevitably lead to evil results. Giving way to 
anger is a wrong action, as being a cause of social disturbanco, 
In the legends the catastrophes that overwhelmed the ancestors 
are in many instances represonted as being caused by some one 
giving way to anger, There is a right way and a wrong way to» 
set aboyt making such a thing as a bow. We should explain 
this by saying that the right way will give a good serviceable 
weapon, whereas the wrong way will give an inferior or useless 
one. The Andaman Islander tends to look at the matter from 
a different angle; the right way is right because it is the one 
that has been followed from time immemorial, and any other 
way ‘is Wrong, is contrary to custom, to law. Law, for the 
Andaman Islander, means that there is an order of the universe, 
characterised by absolute uniformity; this order was established 
once for all in the time of the ancestors, and is not to be 

interfered with, the results of any such interference being evil, 
ranging from merely minor ills such as disappointment or 
discomfort to great calamities, The law of compensation is 
absolute. Any deviation from law or custom will inevitably 
bring its results, and inversely any cvil that befalls must be the 
result of some lack of observance, The legends reveal to our 
‘analysis a conception of the universe as a moral order. 

Here I must conclude my attempt to interpret the customs 
and beliefs of the Andaman Islanders, but in doing so I wish to 
point out, though indeed it must already be fairly obvious, that 
if my interpretation be correct, then the meaning of the customs 
of other piimitive peoples is 10 be discovered by similar methods 
‘and in accordance with the same psychological principles. It is 
because I have satisfied myself of the soundness of these methods 
and principles, by applying them to the interpretation of other 
cultures, that I put forward the hypotheses of these two chapters 
with an assurance that would not perhaps be justified if I relied 
solely on a study of the Andamanese, To put the matter in 
another way, I have assumed a certain working hypothesis, and 
} have shown that on the basis of this hypothesis there can be 
built up a satisfactory explanation of the customs and beliefs of 

- the Andamanese, But the hypothesis is of such a nature, stating 
or involving as it does certain sociological or psychological laws 
and principles, that if it be true for one primitive people it, rivet 
be true for others, and indeed, with necessary modifications, must 
be true of all human socicty. Such a hypothesis, it is obvious, 
cannot be adequately tested by reference only to one limited set 

of facts, and it will therefore be necessary, if it ig to become 
something more than a hypothesis, to test its applicatéon over 
a wider range of cthnological facts, 

The matter is so important that it is necessary, even at the 
risk of wearisome r%petition, to give a final statement of the 
hypothesis that, in this chapter and the last, has been applied 
to and tested by the facts known to us concerning the Andaman 
Islanders: 

In an enquiry such as this, we are studying, I take it, not 
isolated facts, but a “culture,” understanding by that word the 
whole mass of institutions, customs and beliefs of a given people, 

For a culture to exist at all, and to continue to exist, it must 
conform to certain conditions, It must provide a mode of 
subsistence adequate to the envi:onment and the existing density 
of population; it must provide for the continuance of the society 
by the proper care of children; it must provide means for 
maintaining the cohesion of the society, All these things involve 
the regulation of individual conduct in certain definite ways; 
they involve, that is, a ce:tain systom of moral customs. 

Each type of social organisation has its own system of mordl ‘ 
customs, and these could be explained by showing how they 
serve to maintain the society in existence. Such an explanation 
would be of the psychological, not of the historical type ; it 
would give not the cause of origin of any custom, but its’ social 
function, For example it is easy to see the function of the very: 
strong feelings of the Andamanese as to the value of gencrosity 
in the distribution of food and of energy in obtaining it, and as 
to the highly repichensible nature of laziness and greccliness* 
(meaning by the latter word, eating much when others have 
little), It has only been by the cultivation of these virtues, or 
by the eradication of the opposite vices, that the Andaman 
society has maintained itself in cxistence in an environment 
where food is only obtainable by individual effort, where it cannot 
be preserved from day to day, and where there are occasional 

“times of scarcity, It could be shown, to take a further example, 
how the manner in which the life of the family is organised 
is closely related to ceitain fundamental social needs, If we 
were attempting an explanation of the Andamanese culture as 
a whole and in all its details it would he necessary to examine 
all the moral customs of the people and show their relations 
one to anotlfer and to the fundamental basis on which the socicty 
is organised. 

The necessary regulation of conduct jn a given society 
depends upon the existence in each individual of an organised 
system of sentiments, That system of sentiments or motives 
will cltarly be different in different cultures, just as the system 
of moral rules is different in socictics of different types, Yet 
there is, so to speak, a general substratum that is the same in 

BA. : 26 

all human societies, No matter how the society may be organised 
there must be in the individual a strong feeling of attachment 
to his own gioup, to the social division (nation, village, clan, 
tribe, caste, or what not) to which he belongs. The particular 
way in which that sentiment is revealed in thought and action 
will depend upon the nature of the group to which it refers, 
Similarly, no society can exist without the presence in the minds 
of its members of some form or other of the sentiment of moral 
obligation—the sentiment that certain things must be done, 
“certain other things must not be done, because those are right, 
good, vittuous, these are wrong, bad, vicious or sinful, Further, 
though perhaps less important, yet not less necessary, there is 
the sentiment of dependence in its various forms—dependence 
on others, on the society, on tradition or custom. 

For a culture to exist, then, these sentiments (and others 
connected with them, that need not be enumerated) must exist 
in the minds of individuals in certain definite forms, capable 
of influencing action in the direction required to maintain the 
cohesion of the society on its actual basis of organisation. This, 
we may say, is the social function of these sentiments, 

Leaving aside altogether the question of how sentiments 
of these kinds come into existence, we may note that they 
involve the existence of an experience of a particular type, The 
individual experiences tht action upon himself of a powerest™” 
force—constiaining him to act in cerlain ways not ‘always 
pleasant, supporting him in his weakness, binding him to his 
follows, to his group. This force is clearly something not him- 
self—something outside of him therefore, and yet equally clearly 
il makes itself felt not as mere external compulsion og support, 
but as something within his own consciousness—within himself, 
therefore. If we would give a name to this force we can only 
call it the moral force of society, The very existence of a 
human society, the argument has run, necessatily involves the 
existence of this actual experience of a moral force, acting 
through the society upon the individual, and yet acting within 
his own consciousness, The experience, then, is’ there, but it 
does not follow that the primitive man can analyse his own 

experience} it is obvious enough that such analysis is beyond 
him, Still the experience docs lead him to form certain 
notions or representations, and it is possible to show how these 
notions are psychologically related to the expericnce of a moral 
force, 

The experience of this moral force comes to the individual in 
definite concrete experiences only, We fiist learn to experience 
our own dependence in our dealings with our parents, and thus 
we derive the concrete form in which we clothe our later adult 
feeling of our dependence upon our God, Or, to take an examplé 
from the vast number provided by the customs of the Andamanese, 
the Andaman Islander, like other savages, the main concern of 
whose lives is the getting and eating of food, inevitably finds his 
experience of a moral force most intimately associated with the 
things he uses for food. Inevitably, therefore, he regards food 
as a substance in which, in some way, the moral force is inherent, 
since it is often through food that the force actually affects him 
and his actions, The psychology of the matter can be traced, 
I hope, in the arguments of the last chapter, From the analysis 
there given of different customs 4nd beliefs it should be obvious 
that the way in which the Andaman Islander tegards all the 
things that influence the social life is due to the way in which 

_.they are associajed with his experience of the moral force of the 
soviéty, 

In this way there arises in the mind of primitive mar, as the 
result of his social life and the play of feeling that it involves, 
the more or less crude and undefined notion of a power in 
society and in nature having certain attributes, It is this power 
that is responsible for all conditions of social cuphoria or dysphoria 
because in all such conditions the power itself is actually 
experienced, It is the same power that compels the individual 
to conform to custom in his conduct, actihg upon him both 
within as the force of conscience and without as the force of 
opinion. It is the same force on which the individual feels 
himself to"be dependent, as a source of inner strength to him 
in times of eed, It is this force also that carries him away 
during periods of social excitement such as dances, ceremonies 

26-—2 

or fights, and which gives him the feeling of a sudden great 
addition to his own personal force. 

The Andamanese have not reached the point of recognizing 
by a special name this power of which they are thus aware, 
T have shown that in some of its manifestations they regard it, 
symbolically, as being a sort of heat, or a force similar to that 
which they know in fire and heat. In more developed societies, 
however, we find a nearer approach to a definite recognition of 
this power or force in its different manifestations by means 
of a single name. The power denoted by the word mana in 
Melanesia, and by the words orenda, wakan, nauala, etc, amongst 
different tribes of North America, is this same power of which 
I have tried to show that the notion arises from the actual 
experience of the moral force of the socicty, 

These scntiments and the representations connected with 
them, upon the existence of which, as we have scen, the very 
existence of the society depends, need to be kept alive, to be 
maintained at a given degree of intensity. Apart from the 
necessity that exists of keeping them alive in the mind of the 
individual, there is the necessity of impressing them upon cach 
new individual added to the society, upon each child as he or she 
develops into an adult, Even individual sentiments do not remain 
in existence in the mind unless they are exercised by being 
expressed. Much more is this the case with collective sentiméntsy~ 
.those shared by a number of persons, The only possible way 
by which such collective sentiments can he maintained is by 
giving them regular and adequate expression. 

Here then, according to the argument of the last chapter, we 
find the function of the ceremonial customs of primitive peoples 
such as the Andamanese, All these customs are simply means 
by which certain ways of feeling about the different aspects of 
social life are regularly expressed, and, throngh expression, kept 
alive and passed on from one generation to another. Thus the 
customs connected with foods serve to maintain in existence 
certain ways of feeling about foods and the moral futie’ con- 
nected with them, and similarly with other customs, 

Affective modes of experience (sentiments, feelings or 

emotions) can be expressed not only in bodily movements but 
also by means of language. I have tried to show that the 
function of the myths and legends of the Andamanesée is exactly 
parallel to that of the ritual and ceremonial. They serve to 
express certain ways of thinking and feeling about the society 
and its relation to the world of nature, and thereby to maintain 
these ways of thought and feeling and pass them on to succeeding 
generations, In the case of both ritual and myth the sentiments 
expressed are those that are esscntial to the existence of the 
society, 

Throughout these two chapters I have avoided the use of the 
term religion. My reason for this is that I have not been able 
to find a definition of this term which would render it suitable 
for use in a scientific discussion of the beliefs of such primitive 
peoples as the Andamanese, 

When we use the term religion we inevitably think first of 
what we understand by that term in civilised socicly, It is not 
possible, I believe, to give an exact definition which shall retain 
all the connotations of the word as commonly used and which ° 
shall at the same time help usrin the study of the customs of 
undeveloped societies, The definition of religion that seems to 
me on the whole most satisfactory is that it consists of (1) a belief 
in a great mora] force or power (whether personal or not) existing 
if nagure, and (2) an organised relation between man and this 
Higher Power. If this definition be accepted it is clear that 
the Andamanese have religious beliefs and customs, They do 
believe in a moral power regulating the universe, and they have 
organised their relations to that power by means of some of* 
their siraple ceremonies, Yet it docs not scem possible to draw 
a sharp dividing fine between those heliefs and customs that 
properly deserve to be called religious, and others which do not 
deserve the adjective. It is not possible, in the Andamans, to 
separate a definite entity which we can call religion from things 
that may more appropriately be igen as art, morality, play, 
or sotial eremonial. 

Nevertheless the purpose of these two chapters has been to 
éxplain the nature and function of the Andamanese religion, 

Amongst the fundamental conditions that must be fulfilled if 
human beings are to live together in society is the existence 
of this thing that we call religion, the belief in a great Unseen 
Power, between which and ourselves it musi ever be the gieat 
concern of life to establish and maintain harmony, The Andaman 
Islander with his somewhat childish faith, the Australian black- 
fellow decorated with paint and feathers impersonating his 
totemic ancestor, the Polynesian sacrificing human victims on 
the marae of his god, the Buddhist following the Holy Eight- 
Staged Path, are all following in however different ways the 
same eternal quest.

In this appendix I shall give a brief account of the technical culture 
of the Andaman Islanders, with a few compaiative notes on the tech- 
nology of the Semang of the Malay Peninsula and the Negritos of the 
Philippine Islands, The Andamanese, the Semang and the Philippine 
Negritos are so similar in physical characteristics that it is reasonable to 
suppose that they are descended from a single stock, It is on the basis 
of this hypothesis that they are all spoken of as belonging to one race, 
the Negrito race. It is therefore of some interest to compare the culture 
of these three different peoples to see if we can determine what was the 
culture of their ancestors, 

In such hypothetical reconstruétions of the past it is necessary to 
proceed with extreme caution, as there is no means of controlling results. 
The method I have adopted is to compare first of all the different types 
of technological, products or activities found in different parts of the 
Andamans in order to determine as fai as possible what was the techni- 
cal culture of the ancestors of the Andamanese when they figt reached 
the islands, and what changes have taken place since the islands were 
occupied. It is only this primitive or generalised Andamancse culture 
that can be compared with that of the Semang or the Philippine, 
Negritog, 

Thom the point of view of technical culture the nativos of the 
Andamans must be separated into two main divisions, which will be 
spoken of as the Great Andaman Division and the Little Andaman 
Division respectively’. The most plausible explanation of the differ- 
ences of culture and language between these two divisions has been 
mentioned already. We must assume that when the islands were first 
peopled, or at, some later time, the inhabitants of the Little Andaman be- 
came isolated from those of the Great Andaman. The language and the 

1 See Introduction, p. 12 

aq 
technical culture of each of the two groups undetwent a number of 
. changes during the many centuries that followed. At a much later 
date, after (he differences between the two divisions had been developed, 
‘and probably not many centuries ago, a party or several partics of 
natives must have made their way from the Little Andaman as far as 
Rutland Island. Here they came in conflict with the natives of the 
Great Andaman Division, and in this way arose the antagonism between 
the Jarawa (the immigrants from the Little Andaman) and the other 
natives of the South Andaman (who formed in 1858 the Aka-Bea tuibe), 
which has lasted down to the present day. We shall find that the 
technical culture of the Jaiawa has been only very slightly influenced 
by contact with the natives of the Great Andaman Division, and there- 
fore differs very little from that of the Little Andaman at the present day. 

Primitive Andaman Culture 

N. Sentinel Little Javawa Southern Northern 
Andaman Group Group 
Little Andaman Division Great Andaman 
Division 

T have provisionally included the natives of the North Sentinel 4sland 
in the Little Andaman Division. The ground for so doing is that the 
form of bow in use in the Noith Sentinel Island is similar to that of the 
Litlle Andaman and unlike that of the Great Andaman. Unfortunately, 

“almost nothing is known about the technology of the North Sentinel, 
and nothing whatever about the language. It is possible ‘that the 
natives of this outlying islet have been isolated for many centuries from 
both the Litlle Andaman and the Great Andaman, and further informa- 
tion about them might show that their technology is different in 
important 1espects from that of the Little Andaman. 

Within the Great Andaman Division there are a number of diffor- 
ences in technology between the tribes of the North And\mait and 
those of the South Andaman and Middle Andaman, - 

In order to render the exposition and argument that follows more 
easily understood Lhe supposed relations of the different types of culture 

A 

, 

are shown in the form of a diagram or. tree. The justification for this 
arrangement will appear as we proceed. 

There is only very scanty information available about the technical 
culture of the Negritos of the Malay Peninsula, whom we may speak of 
as the Semang. There are differences of technology between the 
Semang of different parts, and a careful study of these differences would 
serve to thow much light on changes that have been introduced since 
the Semang were isolated from the rest of their race, Thete is no 
doubt that the Semang have adopted many elements of thei: present 
culture from their neighbours the Sakai and others. In some instances 
it is possible to trace this external influence, but in others it is doubtful 
whether we are dealing with a primitive Semang form or with a form 
adopted from their neighbours’, 

The same thing must be said about the Philippine Negiitos, Our 
information is not sufficient to enable us to discuss the local differences, 
nor to determine what elements of the culture have been introduced by 
contact with other races?, 

HABIraTIons, 

The huts of the Andamanese gre best understood by considering 
first of all the simplest and most temporary stiuctures, A man away 
from the main camp at night (on a hunting expedition) erects for 
himself a simple shelter of leaves, Such hunting shelters vary con- 
sideyably according to circumstances, In the rainy season they are 
built rnuch more substantially than in the dry season. Sometimes 
shelter is found between the buttresses of large tees, a few leaves 
being added. hero is, however, one type of hunting shelter that is 
usual, ‘Two poles are cul and crected peipendicularly in the grouys* 
so that they stand about four fect apart and about four feet tins 
To the, tep of these is ticd, with cane or erceper, a eee of 
A few poles or sticks of sufficient length are placed so as toro is 
against the horizontal pole at an angle of about 45°, the ends Al, the 
on the ground. On these are placed any leayesthat can be o! 

and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. 1, quoted 

Rudolf? Maka, Dre Intandstamme der Malayischen Halbinsel, > 

Martin, ’ i 
2 ‘The infomation about the Philippine Negritos is derived fro 3 | 

of Zambales, Manila, 1904, quoted as Aeed, and A. Ri. Meyer, 2) Pen the fine 

Die Negritos, Dresden, 1893, quoted as Afeyer, 

t 

preferably the Jeaves of canes and other palms. The shelter thus 
consists of a single rectangular roof, one end of which resis on the 
ground, while the other rests on a horizontal bar attached to the top 
of two perpendicular supports. ‘The shelter is built facing to leeward, 

The usual family hut of the Andamans is built on exactly the same 
principles as a hunter’s shelter, but, being intended for occupation for 

«some weeks or even months, is more carefully built. “For a small hut, 
to be occupied by one family, four posts are erected, two at the back 
being from two to four fect high above the ground, while two at the 
front are from five to seven feet high, Two horizontal poles aie 
attached, one to the top of the fiont posts and the other to the back 
posts, with strips of cane. If poles of a convenient size and forked 
at the top are available these may be used for the posts of the hut, the 
horizontal poles being supported in the forks, but a native would not 
trouble to search for such timbers, being satisfied with an unforked post, 
A few slender timbers, preferably of mangrove wood (Brugurera), are 
placed on the two horizontal poles and bound to them with cane. ‘These 
rafters, as they may be called, project for a fool or two above or beyond 
the higher horizontal, and similarly project a foot beyond the lower one 
so as almost to reach the ground, 

In the better kind of hut a mat is made of palm leayes, and this 
mat is placed on the raflers and tied to them with strips of cane. To 
make a mat a number of strips of bamboo or cane of sufficient length 
are taken and placed on the ground parallel to each other, Leaves of 
a species of cane are collected and each leaf is divided into two parts 
down the middle. These halfleaves are then attached to the strips 
of bamboo or cane, by means of strips of the outside of canes, the 
technique being wrapped-twined work. The halfleaves aro altached so 

“That the leaflets, which are attached to the leafslem at an angle, incline 

*almenately to one side and the other. The photograph reproduced in 
and \ Vi! shows a hut of the kind hee described, Mats inecourse of 
nativelg are shown lying on the ground in Plates vi and vit. 

both uyquicker, but less efficient way of thatching the hut is to take 
tion aboleaves such as are used for making a mat and fasten them 
important’s Of five or six directly to the rafters. 

Within f this type, each occupied by a single family, are built by 
ences in techf the Great Andaman Division in the form %f villages. 
those of the Std the natives of the Little Andaman build similar huts 

In order tog camps, occupied during the fine weather, 
easily understoo if this type are provided with a floor raised above the 

ground. Such a floor is erected on short posts, and may be made of 
bamboos or of planks or pieces of broken-up canoes. <A floor of this 
kind, raised a foot or so above the ground, is shown in Plate vi. 
Huts are sometimes to be scen with a floor raised as much as three 
feet above the ground. 

The simple Andaman hut as above described is entirely open at 
the front and on each side. In an exposed situation screens of palm- 
leaves may be erected at the side. Ifstill more shelter is required, a hut 
may be built with two roofs, Such a hul requires six posts, two taller 
ones six or seven feet high, and four shorter ones, two on each side, 
For such a hut two mats are made, and are so attached that one mat 
projects above the other. No attempt is made to fasten the two mats 
together at the top, but on the contrary a space of several inches is 
left between them to allow the smoke of the fire to escape, rain being 
excluded by the overhang of one of the mats, Huts of this type may 
be seen in Plate v1. 

Each of the huts hitherto described is occupied by a single family, 
In order to understand the communal huts it is necessary to consider 
the arrangement of small huts in a camp or village, In the tribes 
of the Great Andaman there are two main types of such arrangement. 
The first type is that of the hunting, camp, which is occupied for a few 
nights only. In this all the huts are placed facing in the same direc- 
tion (to leeward) and in a line with one another. The second type 
is that of a village to be occupied for some wecks or months, In this 
the huts are armnged round an open space, all facing inwards, as 
descrilaed earlier in this book’, All encampments in the Great 
Andaman tend to conform to one or other of these types, but varia- 
tions are introduced according to the nature of the site occupied. Thus 
in a hunting camp the site may not permit of the crection of the huts 
in one line. A village is, as a rule, only put up at a spot that has 
been used from time immemorial, where there is an open space of 
sufficient size, but if, for any reason, a site is selected where there is 
not room to arrange all the huts around the dancing ground, the 
arrangement of the village may be irregular, + 

The hunting camps of the Jarawa are sometimes arranged on the 
same principle as those of the tribes of the Great Andaman Division, 
ie, alt facthg in one direction and as nearly in one line side by side 
as the site will allow. 

The natives of the Little Andaman erect hunting camps in the fine 

2 See ps 34+ 

. 

weather. In the only one that I have seen the huts were arranged 
irregularly so as to make the best use of the available space. 

A few words must be said on the sites chosen fer encampments. 
It must be remembered that the islands are entiely covered with 
forest. The natives will not, if they can avoid it, put their camp under 
high trees, for fear of the danger of falling branches in a storm. Al 
the same time they prefer a situation where there is an open space 
surrounded with forest so that they are sheltered fiom the wind. The 
coast-dwellers always camp immediately within the jungle on the shore 
of the sea or of a creek. The forest-dwellers usually choose a position 
on a hill or ridge, and this is patticulaily the case with the Jarawa. 
The camp must be close to a supply of fresh water. In the tribes 
of the Great Andaman Division no precautions are taken against 
a possible attack by enemies, but the Jarawa do take precautions, 
clearing the trees around their camps so that they have a good view 
of the approaches, and even, apparently, placing look-out stations at 
the tops of the paths’. 

Amongst the coast-dwelling tribes there are sites that have been 
used for encampments for many centuries. At these spots there are 
found heaps of refuse that have accumulated year by year. ‘These 
kitchen-middens, as they are somgtimes called, consist of the shells 
of molluscs, bones of animals, stones that have been used for cooking, 
fragments of pottery, and loam produced from decayed wood and other 
refuse. 

The two types of camp ariangement which aie sten in the village 
and the hunting camp are exhibiled in two different lypes ef com- 
munal hut. One of these, corresponding to the hunting camp, may 
be termed the long shelter. Yt is apparently only used in the North 
Sentinel Island. A hut of this type was scen by Mr Gilbert Rogers 
in 1903. IL was rectangular, 4o fect long and x2 feet wide. ‘The 
roof was suppoited on three rows of sinall posts rangingein height 
from 3 feet at the back to 6 fect at tho front of the hut. The roof 
projected about 2 feet in either direction beyond the posts and was 
about 2 feet from the ground at the back and 7 feet above the ground 
at the front. There were twelve places for fires, six in front and six 
at the back of the hut, and near each, on the right-hand side, was 
a platform supporled on four sticks, of the usual Andanfinese type, 
for keeping food. ‘There were two rows of sleeping places which were 
separated by small poles, making rectangles on the ground about 5 feet 

1 See Census Report, 1901. 

x 

by 4 feet, each of which was probably occupied by a man and his wife 
and small children}. s 

The relation of this type of communal hut, in which all the 
members of one local group are brought together under a single roof 
of one slope, to the ordinary family hut of the Andamans, and the 
arrangement of the hunting camp in a line, is obvious. 

To the arrangement of huts in a village around a central open space 
corresponds the second type of communal hut, which may be called 
the round hut, Communal huts of this type were formerly built by the 
natives of the Great Andaman Division, but have fallen into disuse in 
recent times, owing to the natives having become much more migratory 
in their habits. Huts of the same type are built at the present day by 
the natives of the Little Andaman and by the Jarawa, 

In its typical form this kind of hut is built by erecting two circles 
of posts, a smaller circle of tall posts, and a wider circle of shorter 
posts. The tops of these posts are connected by horizontal and 
sloping timbers, which make the fiamework of the 100f, The roof 
is made of a number of mats of palm-leaves, which are laid on the 
rafters and tied to them with strips of cane, The mats me made in 
exactly the same way as the smaller mats used for the small huts 
and already described. ‘They arg sometimes rectangular in shape, 
though occasionally an attempt is made to make them narrower at 
the top and broader at the bottom. They are artanged on the roof 
go as to overlap one another and thus make the hut rain-proof They 
are nol joined iit the centre, but a small space is left for the smoke of 
the fires lo escape, and the rain is prevented from entering by letting 
one or two of the mats overhang the others at the top. a 

In the round huts of the Jarawa and the Little Andaman there is no 
centre-post, and according to the statements made to me by the natives 
of the Great Andaman they did not use a centre-post for their huls, 
In the ,description attached to a photograph in the British Museum 
Mr Poitman speaks of the centre-post of a communal hut, which is 
shown in thd photograph still standing, although the hut had been 
pulled down. It would therefore seem that in tre Great Andaman the 
natives did sometimes erect a centre-post for their round huts, The 
typical round hut, however, has no centre-post. 

Ittis cl€ar that the round hut has been developed from the village, 
Tf all the small huts of a village be drawn together so as to touch each 

* 

1 Supplement (o the Audaman and Nicobar Gasatle, January 2, 1904+ 

other, and if the mats of thatching be lengthened so as to meet and 
overlap in the middle, we have a round hut in its typical form. ‘The 
evidence that this is so is afforded by the thatching, consisting of separate 
mats, often rectangular in shape (like the mats used for family hnts), 
placed so as to overlap one another. This ciude way of thatching could 
hardly have originated in any other way. Iuther evidence is afforded, 
as we shall sce, by the internal arrangement of the hut. 

Although the hut is here called a round hut, it must not be 
supposed that the shape is always regularly circular, It may be 
somewhat oval, and in any case is rarely very regularly constructed, 
In general, however, the shape approaches more or less nearly to 
a circle. 

Huts of this kind vary in size according to the number of families 
occupying them. The height in the middle may be as much as go fect 
and the diameter may be 6o feet. The smallest I have seen was a Jarawa 
hut on Rutland Island, which was only nine feet high and rg feet maximum 
diameter. In exposed situations the mats of thatching reach as far as 
the ground, but huts are sometimes built in sheltered situations with 
a space of a fool or two left between the ends of the thatch and the 
ground, A low doorway is provided on one side, 

Within the hut there is a centyal space that is the common part 
of the hut and corresponds to the dancing ground of the village. In 
the wet season the communal fire is situated in this open space, and 
here the communal cooking is performed, In Jarawa huts the roof 
of the central part of the hut is hung with trophies Of the chase,con- 
sisting of pigs’ skulls bound with cane. In former times the matives 
of the Great Andaman Division hung similar trophies in their round 
huls, Around the central space are the spaces allotted to the different , 
families, these being matked off by means of short lengths of wood 
laid on the ground. : 

It is thus clear that the basis of Andamanese architectureés the use 
of a single rectangular roof giving a shelter open at the front. This is 
the usual form of the hunter's shelter and of the family hut in the village. 
For additional shelter two such roofs may be used, but no atlempt is 
made to join them, one being made to overlap the other. There are 
two customary modes of arranging huts, either side by side facing jn the 
same direction or round an open space facing inwards, Whtre, instead 
of separate roofs for each family, we have a united roof, these two artange- - 
ments of the camp give rise to two different types of communal hut, 
the long hut and the round hut, 

Tn a village cach hut is occupied by one family. In the communal 
hut (of either type) each family has a special portion of the hut marked 
off for its special use. Whether in a village or in a communal hut each 
family has its own small fire, at which the family meals are prepared. 
At one side of this fire is erected a small platform about a foot above 
the ground, suppoited on either three or four upright sticks. ‘This 
platform is used for storing food. ‘The natives of the Little Andaman 
erect low bamboo platforms to serve as beds, arranged round the com- 
munal hut, each family having its own, In the Grent Andaman the 
natives, as a rule, make a bed of leaves on the ground and lay a sleeping 
mat on the top of this. In damp situations, however, they sometimes, 
as already mentioned, make a floor to the hut, raised a foot or two 
above the ground, and sleep on that. The Jaiawa have a habit of 
sleeping in the wood-ashes of their fires in their cold weather hunting 
camps. 

Turning now to the Semang, we find some differences in respect to 
their habitations, Those of the Semang who have not been influenced 
to a great extent by their neighbours and have not settled down to agri- 
cultural pursuits, never camp in the same spot for more than a, few days, 
and have therefore no need to build anything except temporary shelters’, 

The Semang often erect their, sheltcrs in trees, well above the 
surface of the ground. This is a feature which distinguishes them 
‘from the Andamanese. It seems probable that these tree-shelters have 

been adopted by the Semang as a protection against wild beasts’ As 
thete are no dahgerous beasts in the Andamans, the extra labour 
involved in building a shelter in the branches of a tree instead of on 
the ground would serve no useful purpose. The difference in this 
srespect between the Semang and the Andamanese is therefore due to 
‘a difference in the circumstances in which they live, 

The typical form of Semang sheller, occupied by one family, is 
erected by planting three or four stout sticks or poles in the ground 
in a row at an angle of about Go° or 75° and lashing palm-leaves 
across these. The screen or roof thus formed is further supported, 
if necessary, with one or two poles used as props in front, These 
shelters are similar to the Andaman sheltcrs in having a single 
sloping reclangular roof, but differ from them in being supported, 
not -by upfight posts, but in an altogether less adequate manner. 

} Skeat, p. 17% 4 Skent, pe 174+ 
§ Skeal, p. 176, and plate, Seealso Annandale, Jascieuli Afalayensis, Anthropology, 
Part I, Plate rv, 

However, the Semang shelters are apparently very easy to érect, and 
as they are only occupied for a night or two there is no inducement 
to the natives to make them more substantial. 

The Semang sometimes make a shelter by planting a number of 
palm-leaves in the ground in a semicircle so that the overhanging ends 
meet in the centre’, 

As the Semang are constantly moving from place to place, they have 
little use for a communal hut of substantial build. One communal 
shelter has been described, which contained eleven sleeping-places 
arranged in two long rows. ‘The upright timbers of the shelter consisted 
of young saplings planted in two opposite rows, across them being 
lashed the leaves of a palm, There were, besides, two central posts 
or pillars, each about a third of the distance from either end of the 
shelter, and a dozen poles placed as props or wind-braces in various 
positions and at various angles, in order to strengthen the structure 
and keep it from being blown over in a high wind, ‘The two slopes 
of the roof were not united over a ridge-pole, but a longitudinal aper- 
ture was left between them for about two-thirds of the entire length 
of the roof, and through the gap thus caused the greater part of the 
smoke from the many fireplaces issued. All round the walls were ranged 
a number of bamboo slceping-platforms, five to six fect in length by 
about three feet in breadth, The owner of each sleeping-platform or 
family unit possessed a separate fire or hearth’, 

We have only scanty information about the huts of the Philippine 
Negritos. In Zambales (Luzon) a certain number of tha Negritos 
have adopted a settled made of life and depend on agriculgure for 
some pait of their subsistence. The most advanced of these have 
adopted the form of hut common amongst their neighbours. The less 
setlled Negritos of Zambales erect huts which arc almost exactly the 
same as the family huts of the Andamanese. ‘Two short upright posts 
are erected for the back of the hut, and two taller ones fowthe front, 
and on these four posts a rectangular roof of one slope is erected, 
A bamboo floor or platform is erected a foot or so above the ground, 
just as in some Andaman huts*, In the Zambales huts the upright 
posts are forked and the horizontal poles are supported in the fork, 

At Casiguran the Negritos ercet palm-leaf shelters similar to those 
of the Semang, A few poles are Uhrust into the ground at an’ gngle 
and in a row and palm-leaves are attached to these, the screen being 
further supported with props’ 

1 Skent,p.174. * Skeat,p.r77, = ® Reed, Platexxxvitt, 4 Meyer, Plate x, 

A comparison of the three branches of the Negrito race in the light 
of present information shows that the usual form of habitation amongst 
them is a sloping roof or screen of palm-leaves. One form of this, the 
simplest to construct, ‘but only suitable as a temporary shelter, is in 
common use amongst the Semang and is found amongst the Negritos 
of Casiguran, The other form, more permanent but requiring more 
Jabour to erect, is in common use in the Andamans and amongst the 
Negritos of Zambales. Of communal huts we have no evidence in the 
Philippines. ‘The communal shelter of the Semang consists of two 
screens leaning towards one another. The two types of communal hut 
of the Andamans are both derived from the family hut. , 

HUNTING, FISHING, ETC, 

The Andaman Islanders depend for their subsistence entirely upon 
the natural productions of the forest and the sca. They make no 
attempt whatever to cultivate the soil. Until the introduction of dogs 
in 1858 they had no domestic animals, Young pigs are occasionally 
kept in captivity till they are grown, but they are killed for food and 
are not bred in captivity, Thus the Andamanese provide themselves 
with food by three different forms of activity: (1) collecting such things 
as roots and fruits and honey, (2) fishing i in the sca and in the creeks, 
(3) hunting the wild animals of the forest. 

For hunting the Andamanese rely entirely on the bow and arrow, 
Since they have lad dogs they occasionally make hunting spears, but 
they did.not do so in former times. They make no use whatever of 
any method of trapping game or birds. For fishing they also nmke use 
of the bow and arrow, wading out on to the recfs and shooting the fish, 
and in this they are very skilful, Crustaccans, such as crabs and cray- 
fish, are captured in the same way. In the North Andaman a sort of 
short fish sgear was formerly in use as an occasional substitute for the 
bow and arrow. In all parts of the islands small nets are used by the 
women for catching small fish and prawns. In the Great Andaman 
large nets were formerly used for capturing turtle, dugong and large fish 
near the shore, At the present time the natives of the Great Andaman. 
Division make use of harpoons with which they capture turtle, dugong 
and large fis from their canoes, Harpoons are not used in the Little 
Andaman, The Andamanese are also aware of methods of poisoning 
or stupefying fish in pools by means of certain plants that they crush 
and place in the water, bul I have never seen them use this method of 

BA. ) 29 

fishing, although they say that they formerly did so. They have no 
fish hooks and no fish taps. At the present time a few of the natives 
have learnt to take fish with hook and line, but they are unable to 
make hooks for themselves, and have to obtain them from the Settle- 
ment at Port Blair. 

In collecting roots a digging stick is used, and a hooked pole is 
used for gathering fruit, but they have no other special implements in 
use in collecting natural productions, and have no need of any. The 
adze is used for obtaining molluscs and for cutting honey-combs from 
hollow trees. 

It is thus clear that by far the most important utensil of the 
Andamanese is the bow and arrow. We may say that they are essen- 
tially a bow and arrow people. This is even more true of the natives 
of the Little Andaman Division than of those of the Great Andaman 
Division. 

It may be noted here that the Andamanese have no weapons that 
are used only for fighting, They fight with their chief hunting weapon, 
the bow and arrow. Nor have they any special defensive weapons, the 
shield being unknown, 

The Semang in their natural condition depend for their subsistence 
on collecting 10ots and fruits from the forest, on catching fish in the 
streams, and on hunting animals. Their mode of subsistence is thus 
essentially the same as that of the Andamanese. One difference is that 
they have not the sea fiom which to draw supplies, and another is that 
the forests in which they live afford a much larger varicty of game. 
A number of the Semang now practice a little rude agriculttwe which 
they hive undoubtedly adopted in imitation of their neighbours of 
other 1aces', 

The principal weapon of the Semang, as of the Andamanese, is the 
bow and arrow. In hunting they also use spears’, thus showing 0 
difference from the Andamanese. Some of the Semang make use of 
the blow-pipe with poisoned darts, but it is practically certain that they 
have adopted the use of this weapon fiom their neighbours the Sakai’, 
They also make uke to some extent of traps with which to capture 
jungle animals and birds. The wilder Semang living in the mountains 
have little opportunity of obtaining fish. Those of thom that dwell 
near rivers use fish-spears and harpoons for catching larfe fish, and a 
small baskét-work scoop for catching small fry, They also fish with 

‘1 Skeaty p. 341+ 2 Skent, p. 270. 
8 Skeat, p. 280. 4 Skeat, p. 20g. 

tod and line, the hooks being, as a rule, roughly manufactured from 
bits of brass or other wire’. The Semang have no special fighting 
weapons either offensive or defensive. 

In the Philippines some of the Negritos practice a little rude agri- 
culture’, It is practically cettain that they have only adopted this 
méde of subsistence through contact with agricultural peoples of other 
races, They originally depended cntirely upon collecting, fishing and 
hunting, and even those who now giow a few scanty crops devote a 
large part of their energies to hunting and collecting the natural 
products of the jungles’ The chief weapon of the Negritos of the 
Philippines, as of the Andamanese and the Semang, is the bow and 
arrow, They use the bow and arrow for shooting fish, haying special 
fish-arrows’, It seems doubtful if they use spears, unless they have 
adopted them from their neighbours. In hunting decr the Negritos of 
Zambales use large nets like fish nets. They are acquainted with the 
use of traps for game but they seem to prefer to depend on the bow 
and arrow®, In the larger streams of Zambales they make fishing weirs 
of bamboo, after the manner of the Christianised natives of the same 
part, 

As the most important weapon of the Andamanese, and indeed of 
the Negritos in general, is the bow, we may consider this first. Different 
kinds of bow are in use in different parts of the Andamans, but by a 
careful comparigon of them it is possible to show how they aie all derived 
from one original pattern. 

The first kind ‘of bow to be described is that in use in the Little 
Andamas. These bows are all made of a reddish-brown wood (possibly 
Mimusops littoralis), ‘They are cut with an adze from a straigitt piece 
of wood, and are planed but not polished, The length varies within 
fairly wide limits, Six specimens selected as typical havo lengths of 
T3I, 1§0, 1595, 163, 168 and 188 centimetres, giving an average of 
about 160 eontimetres (= 63 inches), In section the bow is markedly 
convex on the one side and slightly convex on the other, The lwo 
figures (Fig. 1) show the section at the middle and at a point 7 cw, 
from the end of a typical specimen. The shape in section varics 1 
little from one example to another, and the dimensions of breadth and 
thicknegs also vary. Alt the broadest point, which is in the middle, the 
average brea&th of six bows is 3:2 cm., the broadest being 3°7 cm., and 
the narrowest 2'g cm. The average thickness in the middle is 18 em, 

1 Skeat, p. 205. ® Reed, p. 44- Reed, pi dy 
+ Reed, p. 47. © Reads ps 47 6 Reed, p, 48. 
Bn—2 

the actual figures ranging from 2‘1 to rg. cm. T'rom the middle the 
bow tapers slightly towards each end. At a distance of 7 cm. from 
the end of, the bow the average breadth is 1'8 cm., and the ayerage 
thickness 1'2 cm. 

The flatter side is the inside of the bow. Referring to the figures, 
the side marked 4 is that which faces a man as he holds the bow ready 
to shoot (called here the inside). Cis thus the right-hand side and D 
the left-hand. By breadth is meant the distance from C'to D, and by 
thickness the distance from 4 to 2. 

At each end of the bow there is a shoulder, as shown in Fig, 2 
The length from the shoulde: to the end of the bow, ie. the length of 

Fig. 1 Fig, a 

Fig. 1 Section of Little Andaman bow, in the middle and near the end 
Tig. 2. Shoulder of Little Andaman how 

. 

the point on ‘which the string is looped, is about 10 to 12 mm. Both 
ends are the same. ror a few centimetres below the shoulder, the bow 
js served over with string or fibre. In a carefully finished bow the 
arving is usually done with ornamental string, ie. with string round 
thich is twisted tlie dried yellow skin of the Dendrobium. In other 
xamples plain string is used, or a strip of twisted Zeus fibre, or even 
owadays a twisted strip of cotton cloth, 
Bows are never ornamented in the Little Andaman eitfler with saint 
¥ with incised patterns. . 
The bow-string of the Little Andaman is made of strips of the bark 
f the Meus /actifera. The number and width of the strips used 

depend on the size of the bow. Ina small bow now in the Cambridge 
Museum the string is made of a single strip of bark about x cm. 
in width. This strip is simpl} twisted, the twist being that of a right- 
hand or male screw. When two strips are used they are not twisted 
around one another in the way that a two-ply rope is made, but arc laid 
flat together and twisted together, so that when the shing is finished 
only one of the strips is visible, the other being inside. In a stout 
string for a large bow three or four strips may be twisted together in 
this way, The bow-string is not a rope, but a twisted strand (Mig, 3.) 

A 

Fig. 3 Wig. 4 
Fig. 3. Bow-string of twisted fibre, Liltle Andaman 
Fig. 4. Diagram showing the method of making the loop in the end of the 
Little Andaman bow-string 
At ont end of the string a loop is made, as shown in Fig, 4, The 
end is doubled over to make a loop of the right size, a round turn is 
made over the standing part (4) and the end (2) is twisted in with the 
standing part by untwisting the latter, laying the end in, and twisting up 
again. If this splicing, as it may perhaps be loosely called, be not 
sufficiently, secure, it is served over or stopped with finer fibre of the 
same ‘kind’ This loop is of sufficient size to slip down over the 
shoulders, At the other end the string is attached to the peg either 
with a knot, or else by means of a sinall loop (just large enough to go 
over the peg, but not large enough to slip over the shoulder) made in 

exactly the same way as the loop already described. When the bow is 
to be strung the larger loop is slipped over the peg at the top end of 
the bow and is pushed down over the shoulder. ‘The other end (with 
the smaller loop) is then slipped on the peg at the lower end, resting on 
the shoulder. The lower end is placed on the ground, while the top end 
is held in the hand. The man places his foot against the middle of the 
bow and draws the top towards him until he is able to slip the top loop 
of the string up over the shoulder so that it catches the peg or tip, The 
bow is then ready for use. 

Toy bows are made for small boys of oxactly the same general 
pattern as the large bows. A toy bow of this kind, now in the Cam- 
bridge Museum, is 107 cm. long and 18 mm, broad in the middle. 

‘The next type of bow to be considered is that used by the natives 
of the North Sentinel Island. I have only been able to see one specimen 

A 
A 
mele 
@ ny 
8 : 8 
Fig. 5 Vig. 6 

Fig. 5. Section of bow from North Sentinel Island 
Vig. 6. Section of Jaiawa bow 

of this type, which is in the British Museum. It is made of a Gifferent 
kind ofwood from that used in the Little Andaman. The length is 
155'5 om. and the breadth at the middle is 4:3em. The section in the 
middle, which is shown in Tig, 5, is slightly different from that of the 
average Little Andaman bow, but it has tho same feature of greater 
convexity on the outside and less convexity on the inside,ind it lies 
just within the range of vmiation of the Little Andaman type, The 
ends of the bow are shaped in the same way as those of the Little 
Andaman bow. Thd breadth at the shoulder, however, is 2°5 cm,, which 
is greater than the corresponding measurement of the Little Andaman 
bow. The bow is not ornamented either with a painted or incised 
pattern, The string is missing, There is no binding at thé end’ below 
the shoulders, but this has possibly been present and come off, as the 
specimen is one that has been thrown away by its owner owing to the 
wood having split. So far as we can tell from this single specimen 

the bow of the North Sentinel differs very little from that of the Little 
Andaman. 

We now come to the bows of the Jarawa of the South Andaman, 
The Jarawa of Rutland Island, of whom there are now very few, but of 
whom there were a larger number twenty or thirty yeas ago, make bows 
exactly like those of the Litthe Andaman, and apparently do not make 
any other kind. The Jarawa to the north of Port Blair, who have been 
driven northwards by the spread of the Penal Settlement, also make 
bows of this type, which it is not possible to distinguish from LitUle 
Andaman bows, These northern Jarawa, however, also make bows of 
a different kind. These wil] be spoken of as belonging to the “modified 
Jarawa type.” They are larger than Little Andaman bows, having an 
average length of about 185 cm., with a breadth of about 5em. The 
section, throughout the greater part of the length, is either plano-convex, 
or, more frequently, concavo-convex. The section of a typical example 
is shown in Fig, 6. At the middle of the bow, where it is held in the 

f) 

avi 
ih 
Fig. 7. Upper end of South Andaman bow 

° 

hand, there is a slight thickening produced by a protuberance on the 
insidg, ie. on the flat or concave side. In a certain number of 
specimens the bow, instead of being straight, is slightly recmved out- 
wards, Finally, the wood from which these bows are cut ig not the 
same as that used in the Little Andaman, 

The Little Andaman bow, the North Sentinel bow and tho Jarnwa 
bow are all varieties of one type. The Little Andaman form is probably . 
nearest, to the original of the type, and I shall show later how the 
modifications found in the modified Jarawa type came to be adopted, 

We now come to bows of a different type, of which there are two 
varieties, one used in the South and Middle Andaman, and the other 
used in the North Andaman, 

‘The bow of the South Andaman tibes is not cut from a straight 
piece of wood, but is cut from a tree that has bent in the course of its 
growth into a suitable curve. A tree has to be found that will provide 
a piece of wood of the required shape. Trom this the bow is shaped 
with an adze, and is finished by planing with a boar’s tusk. 

t 

”~ 

® 

Bows of this kind vary in length between 180 and 210¢m,, the most 
usual length being between 190 and 19g cm. At the upper end the 
bow is brought to a point approximately circular in section. From this 
point it broadens out until, at a distance of about 50 or 55 cm., or 
between one-quarter and one-third of the length of the bow, il reaches 
its maximum breadth, which is, on the averige, about 5°5 cm, The 
section of the bow at this point is convex on the outer side, while on 
the inner side it may be flat or slightly concave, or even in rare instances 
slightly convex. In many specimens there is a very slightly raised keel 
running down the middle of the inside of the bow. The thickness of 
the bow at the point mentioned is usually 1°5 to 1°75 cm,, and there is 
little variation in this respect in different specimens, (See Fig. 8.) 

At the middle the bow decreases in breadth and increases in thick- 
ness to form a handle, At the handle the usual section may be 
described as pear-shaped, the greatest diameter being the thickness 
(from ,inside to outside) and not the breadth, 

A 

8 sf 
Vig. 8 Section across the blade of a South Andaman bow 

From the handle Lowards the lower end the bow again incréases in 
breadth, ‘so that the lower portion is about the same breadth and thick- 
ness as the upper portion. AL the lower end it tapers to a point, 
circular in section, but the point is blunter than at the upper ond, , 

Thus the whole bow consists of a leafshaped upper portion or blade 
which is straight (i.e, neither curved inwards nor outwards), waist or 
handle, and a lower blade that is curved backwards or outwards at 
about its middle, this being the position of the bend in the wood from 
which it is cut. A bow of this type is shown in Plate v. 

Near each end the bow is served over with string for a distance of 
3 or 4.cm,, leaving a bare point at the upper end of about d em. long, 
and a point at the lower end of about rg cm. (Fig. 7.) * $ 

A bow-string is made from the fibre of the duadendron, A number 
of strands of the fibre are taken and are waxed with black bees’-wax. 
Four of these strands are taken, three of them aro placed together and. 

the fourth is wound spirally round them. When the end of the active 
strand (the one being twisted round the others) is neared, ’a riew strand 
is taken and laid in. The twisting is continued for 9 few turns and the 
newly inserted one is then taken, the end of the first active strand being 
Taid in and wound over in its turn. The process continues in this way, 
new strands being added until a cord of sufficient length has been made. 
This is again waxed over on the outside. 

At one end of the cord a knot is tied. At the other end a loop or 
eye is formed. To make this eye, when the cord is of sufficient length, 
the end of it is bent over to form a loop of about 1 cm, ora little more 
in diameter. This loop is then served over with thread made of 
Anadendron fibre. The serving is continued over the neck of the loop 
for about 13 cm. This gives an eye with the appearance shown in 
Fig. 9. A loose strand of fibre is left at the neck of the loop. ‘This is 
wound spirally over the cord, as described before, new strands being 
added one after another until the cord has been treated in this way for 
about 35 cm. from the eye. It is then stopped by serving it over for 

Tig. 9. Loop of bow-gtring, South Andaman 
ig: F ig 

about 2 cm, with Anadendron thread, It is clear from this description 
thas the cord is somewhat thicker for about 35 cm, from the end with 
the eye than it is in the rest of its length, 

To string the bow the knolled end of the bow-string is fastened 
round the top end of the bow with a slip knot, so that it rests on the 
top of the string serving. The bow is then turned upside down and the 
top end (now temporarily at the bottom) is fixed in the ground or 
against stone, so that it will not slip. The other ond of the bow is 
taken by the left hand, while the cord is held in the right, the right foot 
is placed against the handle or middle of the bow and the bow is bent, 
the end held by the hand being drawn towards the operator until he is 
able to slip over it the eye or Joop al the end of the string, 

After the bow has been strung the upper portion, which before was 
straight, is now curved inwards, and the bow therefore appears as 
S-shaped when seen from the side, When a man starts out hunting or 
fishing he strings his bow and tests it, and it remains strung till he 
returns, when he unstrings it and places it in his hut, 

The advantage of having a knot at one end of the string seems to 
be that should the string bo stretched by use it can be tightened by 
altering the position of the knot. 

At the point where the nock of the arrow is placed when the bow 
is drawn, it is usual to serve the stiing over with thread of Anadendron 
fibre, 

The peculiar features of the South Andaman bow depend on the 
fact that the bow takes advantage of the greater toughness and clasticity 
of wood that has been compressed in the course of its growth, When 
the bow is drawn the strain does not fall evenly, but, by reason of the 
shape of the bow, is concentrated on one portion, namely the lower 
portion of the bow where it is curved outwards. This is easily seen 
when a bow is strongly drawn, for from the S-shape: that it has before, 
it becomes very nearly true arc-shaped when fully drawn. The lower 
portion of the bow works as though hinged, and thus the strain is 
largely borne by the curved portion of the bow. Now this portion is 
cut from the concave side of a tree that has been bent while growing, 
and consequently the fibres of the wood are here stronger, tougher and 

Fig. to. Ornament on South Andaman bow 
more elastic. The result is that fol.a given amount of energy spent in 
drawing the bow a greater force of propulsion is given lo the atrow 
than with a bow of the Little Andaman type. ‘ 

The breadth of the bow is necessitated by its shape, for if f wore 
narrow thé string would slip round on to the outside of tho bow. The 
narrowing at the handle is necessary for holding the bow. ‘Thé adoption 
of tapered ends instend of shoulders is a definite improvement ng it 

“makes the bow less liable to split at the ends. 

The bows of the South Andaman group of tribes af’ always 
decorated with incised patterns, The conventional pattern is shown in 
Fig, 10. One line of such pattern runs down each edge of both the 
inside and the outside’ of the bow, and on the inside a similar line of 
pattern runs down the middle. When bows are newly made they are 
often also decorated with designs in red paint and white clay, partict- 
larly if they are intended as gifts, “These painted designs soon wear off 
and are not renewed. 

Tn these tribes bows are sometimes made of a size so large as to be 
almost useless for hunting. One such bow, now in the Cambridge 

Museum, is 220 cm. long and with a maximum breadth of ro cm. 
Such bows are very carefully made and decorated and are intended as 
gifts. A man generally makes such a bow with the deliberate intention 
of giving it to some person whom he wishes to please. The bow that 
I have was specially made to give to me in this way, A man who 
possessed such a bow would not dream of using it in hunting, but he 
might use it in a shooting match, in order to show his skill. 

In the South Andaman tribes toy bows are made for boys of some- 
what the same shape as the ordinary hunting bow. An cxample of 
such a bow, now in the Cambridge Museum, is 121 cm. long. It is cut 
from a bent piece of wood in such a way that the lower portion is 
curyed outwards, The section in the middle is plano-convex, very 
nearly the half of a circle, the breadth being 26 mm. and the thickness 
13mm. It is broadest in the middle, and tapers towards each end. 
When strung it assumes the typical S-shape of the South Andaman 
bow. It is served over with thread at one end and with a strip of 

A 

Fig. in Section across the pikde of a North Andaman bow 

gotton cloth at the other, leaving two points for the string, The latter 
js of the usval South Andaman type, but of smaller dimensions, 

We must turn now to the bow used by the four tribes of the North 
Andamar, which is of a somewhat different pattern from that just 
described, It is, in the first place, shorter, lighter and more slenderly 
made. Of ten typical specimens the shortest is 153 cm. long, and thee 
longest i 82 cm. The usual length is about 160 to 165 cm. In its 
broadest part the North Andaman bow is broader than the South 
Andaman bow, the breadth varying from 6°5 to 7'3 em. in different 
specimens, 7 

Although the North Andaman bow is, as a rule, cut from a curved 
plece of wood, it may, on occasion, be cut from a piece that is practi- 
cally ‘straight. 

At the upper end of the bow there is a long point. In a specimen 
that is in every way typical, at about 5 cm. from the point the 
section is circular and the diameter is about 5 mm.; at about jo cm. 

ay 

from the end the section is slightly fattened or oval, and the maximum 
diameter (the breadth from side to side) is about 1°5 cm. From this 
the bow broadens fairly rapidly, until at a distance of about 60 cm. 
from the end it is 7 em. broad. The section at a point 6o cm. from 
the end is shown in Tig, 11, where it may be secn to be convex on 
the outside and only very slightly convex on the inside. At about 
75 cm, from the end the bow narrows in breadth to form a handle, at 
the same time increasing slightly in thickness. The handle is approxi- 
mately citcular in section in the middle, which is about 95 cm. from 
the upper end, and about 80 cm. from the lower end, the diameter being 
about 2'2 cm. Below the handle the bow broadens out once more 
into a lower blade which in shape and section is similar to the upper 
blade. At a distance of about 30 cm. from the lower end the bow once 
more narrows off to a point approximately circular in section. The 
lower point of the bow is not so long or so tapering as the upper point. 

The whole bow thus consists of two blade-shaped portions tapering to 
a point at each end, and witha waist or handle between them. The upper 
blade is straight, ie, is not curved either outwards or inwards, The 
lower blade is curved outwards (like that of the South Andaman bow) 
in nearly every newly made bow and in every bow that has been in use. 

The upper part of the bow is served over with string for about 
z'gcm. (at a distance of rg*s cm. from the end in the bow that has 
been described), and the lower end is similarly served (ab a distance of 
Gem. from the end). The general shape of the bow as scen from 
inside is shown in Tig, 12. ae 

The bow-string of the North Andaman is made from Avafendron 
fibre in nluch the same way as described in connection with the South 
Andaman bow, but in the North there is a loop or gye at both ends of 
the string. As soon as the first few centimetres of the cord have been 
made (by the method previously described) it is bent over into a loop, 
and this loop is sctved with dnadendron thread, just as in tie case of 
the South Andaman string. ‘The making of the string then proceeds in 
the usual way until a sufficient length has been made, this depending, 
of course, on the lenglh of the bow for which it is intended, The end 
ig then bent over into a loop, and this loop is served over with thread. 
The loose end of fibre is not in this case (as it is in the South, Andaman 
string) twisted round the standing part of the cord, but is laid beside it, 
and the thread that has been used for serving is wound ‘spirally round 
them both for a distance of about 10 cm. from the neck of the leop, 
so that the end is stopped, 

tal 

° Fig, 12 Fig. 13 

Fig. 12, North Andaman bow seen from the front ; 

Fig. 13. North Andaman bow ; 4, in the half-strung or reversed position, 2, in 
me ly slrung position, The arrow shows the point where the bow is seasoned over 
the fire. 

¢ 

When the bow is to be strung the first made loop is slipped over the 
top end of the bow so that it rests on the thread serving already 
mentioned, the neck of the loop being on the inside of the bow. The 
bow is then laid on the ground, inside downwards, a foot is placed on 
the middle, and the lower end of the bow is bent upwards (and there- 
fore outwards) far enough to allow the other loop of the cord to be 
slipped over the end. The bow is now in what may be called the half- 
strung position, and in order lo understand the mechanical principles of 
this type of bow it is necessaty to make quite clear what this position is. 
It is shown in Fig. 13, 4. The string passes from the top to the bottom 
on the outside of the bow, so that the bow is, so to speak, reversed, and 
is subjected to a strain that causes it to curve outwards. In most bows, 
when they are first made, there is an outward curve in the lower 
portion, owing to the bow having been cut from a curved picce of 
wood. When the bow is half strung this outward curvature is increased, 
Ifa bow be made from a straight piece of wood, an outward curve is 
produced by the operation of stringing it, as described above, 

As soon as a bow is completed it ia strung in the reversed position 
described, and is then placed over a fire, in such a position that the 
lower (curved) blade is immediately above the fire. The smoke and 
heat of the fire season the wood of this portion of the bow. Any 
specimen of a bow of this type, unles$ it has been newly made and not 
seasoned, is blackened on the innerfsurface of its lower paxt, The bow 
is left to season in this way for some time. A man places his bow over 
the fire of his own hut, which is kept constantly burning day and night. 
It must be remembered that all the time it is being scasoned the how is* 

_ Subjected to a slight strain curving it outwards. 

After the bow has been sufficiently scasoncd it is brought into use. 
When a bow that is half strung or strung in a reversed wity is to be 
qused, it is taken by the handle in the left hand, with the string away 
from the body, the bow being upside down. ‘The lower part of,the bow 
(i.e, what is really the top of the bow when it is in ils normal position) is 
rested against the thigh, The string is taken in the right hand and 
pulled over towards the body, so that the bow reverses itself and 
appears in the fully strung position shown in Fig, 13, 2. It is then ready 
for immediate use, , 

A bow of this type is hardly ever entirely unsirung. Whn a man 
has finished with his bow for the time being, he puts it once more in 
the half-strung position, by an action the .everse of that described above, 
and then hangs the bow over the fire. ‘Thus while the bow is in active 

> 

use it is in the fully strung position, and at all other limes it is kept in 
the half-strung position. 

Tt is clear that the North Andaman bow depends on a principle that 
is not made use of in the South Andaman bow, which we may state by 
saying that if a piece of wood be subjected to the influence of heat and 
smoke while it is bent in one position il will acquire greater strength 
and elasticity to react against a strain that bends it in the opposite 
direction, When the bow is fully strung it is S-shaped. When it is 
drawn’the greater part of the strain falls on the lower portion where it 
is curved outwards. It is this portion of the bow that is strengthened 
by seasoning. 

The North Andaman bow is very much lighter than the South 
Andaman bow and is much more elastic. I always found it very 
difficult to shoot with a South Andaman bow, but on the other hand I 
found the North Andaman bow very easy to use. In drawing it only a 
slight pull is required in order to send an airow with considerable 
velocity, The disadvantage of the noithern bow is that, owing to its 
slighter build, it does not last very long, and is liable to be broken. 
However, it only takes a man a few days to make a new bow, string 
included, and the very definite superiority of the North Andaman bow 
over that of the South Andaman amply compensates for its shorter life. 

Bows of exattly the same shapé but of smaller dimensions are made 
in the North Andaman for boys, the length varying from about 90cm. 
to about rzoem, For very small boys toy bows of a different pattern 
are made. Ther bow is formed of a piece of wood about 90cm. long 
Qnd’frgm 2 to 2*g cm. broad in the middle, ‘The section in the middle 
is conyexo-convex, with a high degree of convexity on the outside and 
@ much slighter convexity on the inside, ‘Tha bow tapers to a point at 
each end, but it tapers more gradually at the lop than at the bottom. 
The bow-string, is a simple piece of string (lwo-ply) made of Anadendron ‘4 
fibre, Ij, is tied to the lower end of the bow at a dislance of r'g to 
gem, from the end, and at the top it is tied at from 4 to 7¢m. from 
the end, The shape of a toy bow of this kind as scen from the side is 
shown in Fig. 14. It is not S-shaped, like the toy bow of the South 
Andaman previously described, but the curvature is asymmetrical. 

T obtained a specimen of a toy bow made of bamboo, Unfortunately 
theré-wastio string, but it was probably intended to be strung in the 
fashion of the North Andaman toy bow just described. The outer 
surface of the bamboo was the outside of the bow, with the result that 
in section the inner side of the bow was more convex than the outer 

? 

[arp, 

side. This is the only bow in the whole of the Andamans in which I 

ever saw this feature. In all other bows of whatever 
type the outer side is markedly convex and the inner 
side is either concave, flat or only slighUly convex. 

It is now possible to compare one with another 
the different forms of bow in use in the Andamans. 
It would seem almost certain that the North Andaman 
bow can only have been derived from the form in use 
in“the South Andaman or from one very similar to 
it. It is only after they were in the habit of making 
bows with an outward curve in the lower portion 
that the natives could have devised’ the method of 
seasoning this portion of the bow and keeping it in 
the reversed or half-strung position. It is unnecessary 
to argue the matter in detail, and we may conclude 
that the North Andaman type is derived from the 
South Andaman type. 

It is less certain, but still highly probable, that 
the South Andaman form was derived from a bow 
similar to that still in use in the Lite Andaman. 
The South Andaman toy bow shows a stage inter- 
mediate between the Little Andam&n bow and the 
usual South Andaman form. The section of this 
toy bow is very similar to that of the Little Andaman 
bow. It has no blades, and therefore no waist for 
the handle. The shape, however, is asymmetrical. 
Owing to,the different method of stringing it, the 
shoulder at the end of the bow is unnecessary, and 
the bow is strengthened (prevented from splitting so 
easily) by tapering the end to a point instead. ‘The 
difference between the toy bow and the general 
South Andaman bow is the presence in the tatter 
of the two blades and the waist. ‘The broadening 
of the bow into the blades is necessary in order to 
prevent it from accidentally reversing itself. 

We have still to consider the modified form of 
the Jarawa bow. The origin of this is easy to discover 
by the examination of a few typical specimens. Since 

the Jarawa have been in the South Andaman they Wi 

have beon in hostile contact with the tribes of 

ig 14. Toy bow 
of the North 
Andaman 

the South Andaman Division. They have had opportunities of handling 
bows of the kind made by these tribes, and they have apparently dis- 
covered that these bows are more efficient than their own, but they have 
had no opportunity, such as only friendly intercourse would give, of 
discovering the principles on which the South Andaman bow is made. 
They have attempted to imitate it to the best of their ability, and this they 
have done (1) by making their bows longer and broader, (2) by making 
them concavo-convex in section instead of convexo-convex, (3) by cutting 
them occasionally from wood that gives them an outward curve in the 

Primitive Negrito Bow 

Little Andaman 
Bow 

South Andaman 
Toy Bow 

South Andaman 
Bow 

Modified * 
Jgrawa Bow 

. 

North Andaman 
Bow* 

North Andaman 
Toy Bow 

Jower portion, (4) by imitating the shape of the handle without, how- 
ever, giving the bow a waist, (5) by serving over the bow-string with 
thread at the point where the arrow touches it,*(6) by ornamenting 
their bows with incised and painted patterns, These are the only 
differences between the modified Jarawa type and the Little Andaman 
type, ahd afl these may be explained as attempts to imilate the bows of 
the South Andaman Division, In not a single one of the modified 
Jarawa bows that I have seen is the fundamental principle of the South 
Andaman bow successfully applied. 

28% 

We may conclude that the ancestors of the Andamanese at one 
time used a bow resembling that in use in the Little Andaman at the 
present day, and that the S-shaped bow of the Great Andaman has been 
invented since the separation of the'two main divisions of the race. 

It is not possible, owing to lack of sufficient information, to deter- 
mine exactly the types of bow used by the Semang. The following 
notes are based on only six specimens, two of which are in the Museum 
of Ethnology at Cambridge’, while the others are in the British 
Museum. Four of the specimens are sufficiently similar to one 
another to be regarded as belonging to one type, which seems to be the 
usual type of Semang bow. In length they are 165, 174'5, 182 and 
197'5 cm., and at the middle they vary in breadth between 2'5 and 
3cm. Three are of palm-wood, and the other is of a light-coloured 

. C > 
t 4 
Fig. 15. Section across the middle of four Semang*bows 

but tough kind of wood. The shape of the section*in the middle of 
the ‘bow varies considerably in the different specimens, as skown 
Fig. 15. There is some uncertainty as to which is the ingide, and 
which is the outside of the bow. At each end there is a shoulder, 
the point or tip at one end being in every instance ‘considtrably longer 
than the other. The string in each case is a three-ply rope, having a 
spliced eye at one end and being fastened to the bow with a &nat at the 
other end, 

The other two specimens do not conform to this type. One is of 
wood, 134cm. longs and 3‘5cm. broad in the middle. One end 
is provided with a notch on each side for the string, while the other end 
has three pairs of notches. The string is a three-ply cord with a loop 
or eye at each end. The other specimen is made of bamoo, ‘and is 
147cm. long and 2‘25 cm. broad in the middle. One end has one 

1 For information about the two specimens at Cambridge I am indebted to the 
kindness of Mr J. W. Layard. 

pair of notches and the other has two pairs, The string is two-ply with 
a loop at.each end, 

What we may perhaps regard as the usual type of Semang bow thus 
differs from the bow of the Little Andaman in three important respects, 
(r) in having a longer point at one end than at the other’, (a) in 
having a string of three-ply rope instead of a strand of twisted fibre, and 
(3) in the variations in the section at the middle. From the four 
specimens available it is not possible to deterntine around what norm or 
norms the section of different specimens varics, 

Turning to the Negritos of the Philippine Islands, although a number 
of bows have been described by Meyer’, the available information is 
not sufficient to enable us to determine what are the different types, and 
what is their relation'one to another. Amongst the different varieties 
of bow used by the Negritos there is one which is very similar to the 
bow of the Little Andaman, It has a rounded or convex outer side, 
and a flattened inner side. ‘The string loops on to a point at each end, 
and the string itself is formed of twisted fibre. 

From a study of the available material it seems that we are justified 
in concluding that the primitive Negrilo bow was made of wood, with a 
shoulder at each end, probably with a section rounded on one side and 
flattened or keeled on the other, and that it had a string of twisted fibre 
with a loop or eye at one end, the other end being attached with a knot. 

The Andarfan Islanders use two.different kinds of arrows, one for 
shooting fish and the other for shooting pigs. 

a The common fish-arrow, as at present used in all parts of the Great 
Andamiq Division, consists of three parts—a shaft, a fore-shaft, and a 
point. The shaft is a length of bamboo straightened by means of heat, 
and may vary in length from 70 to rrocm, At one end the bamboo 
is cut off about 3 cm. beyond one of the nodes, and a nock js made 
(Fig. 16). At this end the shaft is ioughened with a Cyreza shell so as 
to give a fitm grip*for the fingers, At the other end the shaft is tapered 
for about a centimetre. At this end the bamboo is roughened with a 
shell to give a hold to the thread with which it ig bound. The fore- 
shaft is a length of wood from 15 to 40 cm. long, One end is slightly 
tapered go that it fits tightly into the end of the bamboo shaft. The 
other tnd {g tapered to a point, which is flattened on one side, The 

1 According to Skeat the end with the longer point is the lower end of the bow 
(Skeat, p. 273), but Martin (p. 785) describes a bow of this type and stales that the 
longer point is the upper end, 

3 Meyer, pp. 1317 and Plates vi—viit, 
28-2 * 

re 

fore-shaft is inserted into the end of the shaft and the joint is bound 
over for’a distance of about 2'5 cm, with thread. The point consists 
of a piece of iron wire, sharply pointed at both ends. This is Jaid 
against the flattened side of the fore-shaft and is bound to it with thread 
in such a way that one point projects at the back to form a barb 
(Fig. 16). When the binding is completed it is covered entirely over 
with a composition made by melting together bees'-wax, resin and red 
‘ochre. The composition is melted over a fire, is applied with a short 
piece of wood and is then smoothed over with a hot Cyreaa shell, 
Only the binding attaching the point to the fore-shaft is covered with 
composition, and not that at the joining of the fore-shaft and the 
shaft, 

Arrows of this kind are used for shooting fish, but they also serve 
to shoot snakes or rats and on rare occasions birds, 

Similar fish-arrows are made in the Little Andaman, but they are 
larger (i.e. both longer and thicker) than those of the Great Andaman 
Division. The two ends of the bamboo shaft are not roughened, and 
the binding attaching the point to the fore-shafi is not covered with 
composition (which seems to be unknown in the Little Andaman) but 
with bees’-wax only. 

This seems to be the traditional,form of fish-arrow of the Andamans. 
Before iron was plentiful the point.consisted either of the serrated bone 
from the tail of the sting-ray or ofa piece of the tibia of a pig ground 
down to the requisite dimensions on a piece of stone, and sharpened at 
each end. st 

In the Little Andaman fish-arrows are sometimes used with two ‘or 
four prongs attached to a bamboo shaft. In the British Museum there 
is an arrow from the North Sentinel Island with four prongs‘tied on to 
a wooden shaft, each prong being barbed by a detached piece of wood 
at the end. 

A simple form of arrow is made in both the Great Andaman and 
the Little Andaman consisting of a bamboo shaft with a pointed wooden 
head, the point being hardened in the fire. Such arrows are now very 
rarely used, save for°shooting at a mark, but it is probable that before 
iron was plentiful they were used as a substitute for the fish-arrow 
described above, being easier to make although less serviceable. . + 

The pig-arrow in use in the Great Andaman consists of 4 shdft; and 
a fore-shaft to which is attached a head, The shaft isa piece of the 
wood of the Zérranthera lancefolia, cut from the tree and straightened 
by means of heat. At the narrower end a nock about r cm, deep is 

Fig. 17 

Tig. 18 

e 

=e0—— 

Fig. 19, 
Fish-atrow of the Great Andaman 

is s 
‘Hg 6 

Fig. 16. 
Fig. 17. Head of pig-arrow, Great Andaman 
Fig. 18. Pig-arrow with detachable head, Great Andaman 
Method of making the cord of the Great Andaman pig-arrow + 

Fig. 19. 

‘ q 

cut, and the arrow is served with thread of Anadendron fibre for about 
1'6 em, above the nock, in order to prevent splitting. At the other end 
the shaft is hollowed out to a depth of about a centimetre. This hol- 
lowing is done with the point of a fish-arrow or other similar piece 
of pointed iron. For a distance of about 1°5 cm. the end of the shaft 
is served over with thiead of Awadendron fibre, so as to prevent it from 
splitting. 

The fore-shaft consists of a piece of tough wood one end of which 
is cut to such a size that it will fit fairly tightly into the hollow at the 
end of the shaft. At the other end it is split so as to admit the head. 

+ The head consists of a piece of tron broken into shape with the aid 
of a stone hammer and then ground down and sharpened on a whet- 
stone or with a file if one be obtainable. The usual shape is shown in— 
Big. 17. The head is inserted into the split end of the fore-shaft and 
the end of the latter is then served over with thread. A few centi- 
metres below the head either one or two sharp-pointed pieces of iron 
wire are placed against the foie-shaft in the same plane as the head 
and are bound firmly to it with the thread, so as to provide a barb or 
barbs, 

A cord is made and one end of it is attached to the shaft and the 
other end to the fore-shaft. This cord is made as follows. A number 
of strands of Anadendron fibre are*taken and waxed with bees’-wax. 
These are made into a cord by thé same method as that described in 
connection with the Great Andaman bow-string, one strand being 
wrapped round the others. About 4o cm. of single tord is made in 
this way and the two ends are tied together, A piece of elastif’ Woot 
is bent into the form of an arc and the loop of cord is placed aver this 
so that it is stretched tight. A length of thread (of Auadendron fibre) is 
made and wound on to a fine netting needle or oti to a thin slip of 
wood, and the two cords as they are stretched side by side are bound 
together with this thread by the process known as “nippering’, (Fig. 19). 
In this way a firm and strong flattened coid is produced. One end of 
this is fastened to the foie-shaft immediately above the end that: fits 
into the shaft. The ofher end is fastened to the shaft a few centimetres 
from the end, leaving a short length of the shaft around which the cord 
may be spirally wound when the arrow isin use. (Fig. 18.) 

Finally, the thiead on the fore-shaft, i.e. that which hold# the-head 
and barbs in place, and also.that which serves to attach the end ‘of the 
cord, are covered with the composition already described as used on 
fish-arrows. 

Arrows of this kind are used in pig-hunting. The fore-shaft is 
inserted into the end of the shaft, the cord attaching the two being 
wound spirally round the end of the shaft. When a pig is struck the 
barbs prevent the head from coming out of the wound. As the pig 
attempts to run away the shaft catches against the undergrowth of the 
jungle and comes loose from the fore-shafl. Sooner or later the shaft 
becomes entangled in the undergrowth and holds the wounded pig fast 
till the hunters can come up with it and despatch it, It is abvious 
that the cord of the arrow needs to be so strong that the pig cannot 
break it. 

The natives of the Great Andaman tribes say that before they-had 
plenty of iron they made similar pig-arrows with heads of shell and 

——harbs of pig’s bone. 

The natives of the Little Andaman make a pig-arrow very similar to 
that of the Great Andaman tribes, but on the average somewhat longer. 
The cord attaching the fore-shaft to the shaft consists of a length of 
double two-ply rope of Aldiseus fibre. The binding of the arrow is 
done with thread of the Gwetwm fibre instead of Anadend> on, and is not 
coated with composition but is smeared with bees’-wax, The barb 
(there being usually only one) is not fixed in the same plane as the 
head, but in the plane at right angles to it. (Fig. 20.) 

Amongst the Jarawa the head’ of the pig-arrow is attached to the 
fore-shaft by a different method, hols being made in the iron through 
which the thread that holds it is passed. (I'ig. 21.) 

» Another kind of pig-ariow is sometimes made in the Great Andaman 
that 19s not a detachable head, ‘The shaft is a length of bamboo into 
one end*of which is fitted a fore-shaft of wood. The end of, this fore- 
shaft is split and a head of iron is inseted into it and bound there. 
Such an arfow maf be without barbs or may have one or two barbs of 
iron, It is used only rarely and then chiefly for despatching a pig that 

has aheagy bey struck by an arrow of the usual kind. The natives* 

say that in former times ariows of this kind were used in fighting in 
preference to ordinary pig-arrows, which, however, were also used. 

In former times the natives of the Great Apdaman, according to 
their own statements, made an airow consisting of a bamboo shaft at 
the end of which was inserted a head made of Areca wood. An arrow 
of this kisfd, made for me by a native, is shown in Fig. 22, 

None of the arrows made in any part of the Andamans is feathered. 

In a comparison of the arrows of the Andamanese with those of the 
Semang and the Philippine Negritos the most interesting point is that 

Fig. 22 

Fig, 20. Pig-arrow, Little Andaman 
' Fig. an Head of Jarawa pig-arrow 
Fig. 22. Artow with head of Areca wood, Great Andaman 

Fig. 23. Harpoon, Great Andaman 

e 

all three branches of the Negrito race use arrows with detachable heads. ie 
Arrows of this kind from the Philippines are described by Meyer’. 

An important point of difference would seem to be that while the 
Andamanese do not feather their arrows the Semang and the Negritos 
of the Philippines do so. It would seem, however, from the account 
of Semang arrows given by Skeat? that the feathering is such that it is 
of no actual service in directing the flight of the weapon, and that it 
is doubtful whether the Semang really understand the principle of 
feathering, or whether they do not employ it as the mutilated survival 
of more intelligent methods or perhaps make use of it for solely 
magical purposes. 

Another important point of difference is that the Semang poison 

~—their arrows, while the Andamanesé do not. In this connection it 
must be remembered that the former people have for long been neigh- 
hours of people who use blow-pipes with poisoned darts. ; 

After the bow and arrow the most important hunting weapon of the 
Great Andaman is the harpoon which is used in capturing dugong, 
turtle, porpoise, and large fish, The harpoon consists of « head, a shaft 
anda line. The line isa length of rope of A#discus fibre of as much as 
twenty fathoms or more in length. The shaft is a bamboo of about 
18 feet in length. One end is cut off fairly near a node and is then 
served over with thread, and slightly hollowed. The head consists of” 
a long piece af iron, such as a stoi nail, brought to a sharp point at 
one end. The other end is served*over with thread in such a way as 
to make it fit fairly tightly into the end of the bamboo shaft, Some 
Gistangp from the point of the head two barbs of iron are attached 
by thread, and between this point and the lower end the line is 
attached.. (See Fig. 23.) 

A man*using the harpoon stands on the forward platform of the 
canoe, holding the bamboo shaft in his hand. ‘The head is inserted in 
the upper end ef this, and the line passes over his shoulder. and is 
coiled in the bottom of the canoe, the other end being attached to the 
forward out-rigger boom or to the thwart that takes its place in a large 
canoe. He poles the canoe along the reef with the harpoon shaft. 
When about to make a throw he raises the shaft till he can hold the 
butt end in his right hand, with the point directed towards the fish or 
turtle, an@ he then leaps forward so that if he succeeds in his aim the 
weapon strikes with all the force of his weight behind it, When the 
turtle or fish is struck the bamboo shaft floats loose and this is secured 

1 Meyer, Plates vi and vill. ® Skeat, p. 274. 

f 

by the man in the water, who returns to the canoe. It may be necessary 
to strike the prey with a second harpoon, but if the first was well 
thrown the animal is firmly held by the line. 

Fig. 24. Turtle net, South Andaman 

Harpoons are not used in the Little Andaman. The natives of the 
Great Andaman say that they themselves have only used them since 

all ai 

they were able to obtain ion and that before that time they could only" 
capture turtle and dugong in facts. It would scém therefore that the 
harpoon has been invented or adopted by the tiibes of the Great 
Andaman Division in compaiatively recent tithes, and was ‘not an 
element of the primitive Andamanese culture, * 

The turtle net is no longer used, as the natives prefer the harpoon 
and have all the inion they need. Such nets were formerly made of 
rope of Aibiscus fibre. A net was about rs0 cm, in width and of 
variable length. One specimen that was made for me had an open 
mesh of about 25 cm. square, while another had a smaller mesh, The 
knot used in a net from the South Andaman is the ordinary fisherman's 
knot shown in Fig. 244. In anet from the North Andaman the knot 

~vged is a slip-knot, one strand 
being tied with an overhand knot 
over another which it crosses at 
right angles as shown in Fig. 25. 

Each end of the turtle net is 
attached to a stake pointed at the 
lower end. The lower edge of 
the net is weighted with stones 
attached as shown in Tig, 24, 
while to the upper edge are 
attached a number of floats, cach 
consisting of a long thin stick of : ; 
ATibiscus wood to the upper end of = igs fb Knot mest in making the 
whicl?ig attached a tassel of fibre, 

The vet was placed in shallow water so that the stones yested on 
the bottom while the tassels at the upper ends of the Moats appeared 
above the surface, * As soon as a turlle was entangled in the net the 
agitation’ could be obscived by those watching who would proceed to 
the spot tg securg their capture, 

So far as is known it would seem that nets of this description are 
not used in the Little Andaman. 

The Andamanese make practically no use of speais. At the present 
time the natives of the Great Andaman Division sometimes make pig- 
spears of a length of stout cane or rattan with a head of inon attached. 
The native themselves say that such speats have qnly been made since 
the occupatign of the islands, and it is probable that they were first 
made in imitation of spears used by Buimese convicts for pig-hunting. 
They are hardly ever used, the pig-airow being preferred. 

* in pools on the reef. 

g 

The true fish-spear is unknown in the Andamans though use is 
sometimes made of a harpoon similar to the turtle harpoon, but of 
smaller dimensions and with a finer line, for harpooning fish. 

In the North Andaman a sort of fish-gig was formerly in use made 
of about twelve pieces of Areca wood of about rog to 
iro cm. long and 1 cm. or less broad and with tapered 
and sharp-pointed ends. These were fastened side by 
side by means of a strip of wood near one end, as shown 
in Fig. 26. This weapon was used for spearing small fish 

CUTTING IMPLEMENTS. 

At the present time the Andamanese make use of 
iron for their cuttmg implements. It is uncertain when 
they first learnt the use of iron, but it was certainly 
before the end of the eighteenth century, What iron 
they had was obtained from wrecks, of which there haye 
always been a number on the Andamans, The metal 
has only become plentiful since the European settlement 
of 1858. 

It is highly probable that the Andamanese, though 
they may have learnt the use of iron from implements 
used by visitors to their shores, have not learnt from anya 
other people the method of workitlg the metal. Even at 
the present day they do not make any use of heat in the 
manufacture of their iron implements, the metal being 
worked cold. It seems highly probable that they have 
simply adopted in connection with iron the methods 
they formerly used in dealing with other materials, 
particularly shells. 

The materials used by the Andamanese, apart fram _» Fig. 26, 
iron, are wood, bone, shell and stone, We may begin by po ree 
considering their use of stone. 

In former times quartz flakes were used by the Andamanese for the 
two purposes of shaving and scarifying the skin, and for hardly any 
other purpose. (Among minor uses of stone flakes may be mentioned 
those of cutting the finger-nails, and sharpening boars’ tusks) A‘quartz 
pebble is held in the left hand and is struck with a hard rounded pebble 
of any suitable kind. A flake is thus knocked off and falls into the 
palm of the left hand, The flake is examined, and if it be suitable it is 

at once used. If it be unsuitable it is thrown away and another made, 
For shaving, flakes with a sharp blade-like edge are required ; for scari- 
fying, flakes with a fine point me preferred. A flake is used till its fine 
edge is lost and is then thrown away and another made. Thus a 
woman who is shaving some one’s head may use as many as twenty 
flakes one after another, and to obtain twenty suitable flakes she 
probably makes as many as forty 1 even moe, The kitchen-middens 
or heaps of refuse that are found on the sites of old encampments 
contain thousands of quartz pebbles that have been used as cores, and 
thousands of flakes. 

Besides quartz there is a flinty kind of stone that is used in much 
the same way for making flakes, Suitable pieces of the stone are 
obtained and are placed in the fire for a few hours. They are taken 
out, and when they are cold are used in exactly the same way as a 
quartz pebble, 

At the present time quartz is hardly ever used in this way, for the 
natives greatly prefer glass, and they obtain sufficient old bottles from 
Port Blair to satisfy their requiiements. The bottom of a bottle is 
treated in every way as though it was a quartz pebble, a flake being 
knocked off and used, and then another and so on till the operation in 
hand (whether shaving or scaiifying) is completed. The flake is held 
between the thumb and fist finger when it is being used. In no case 
is a flake of quartz or glass ever kept, It is only made when required 
and after having been used is throw! away, 

The natives themselves say that they formerly never made any use 
oF stong for cutting purposes save in the case of stone flakes as desmibed 
above. “As against this there are thice statements that mual be con- 
sidered. » Colebrooke, who visited the islands in 1789, says of the 
Andamanefe that ‘their canoes are hollowed out of the trunks of trees 
by means of fire and instiuments of stone, having no iron in use 
amongst shem, except such utensils as they have procured from the 
Europeans and sailors who have lately visited these islands; or from 
the wrecks of vessels formerly stranded on their coasts.” The accuracy 
of Colebrooke’s statement is made doubtful by the fact that at the 
present time (since 1858) the natives do not use fire in making their 
canges, and it seems improbable that if they had this custom in 1789 
thay should have discontinued it and have entirely forgotten that it ever 
existed. Further if they used implements of stone in 1789 it is 
certainly strange that by 1858 they should have entirely forgotten 

«that they ever did so. When Mr Man was making his enquiries 

oy 

r 
{ 

the oldest men all agreed in stating that they never used stone 
for their adzes. We may conclude that Colebrooke’s statement is 
untrustworthy. 

Stoliczka records the finding in the South Andaman of a stone celt 
and a stone arrow-head in the kitchen-middens of the South Andaman, 
The chief 1eason for doubting the value of this find is that Stoliczka 
states that these implements were made of tertiary sandstone, which it 
is very hard to believe would be of any use whatever. We may there- 
fore adopt the opinion of M. Lapicque’ that Stoliczka had found 
flagments of a whet-stone of sandstone and had beer mislead into 
thinking that he had found an axe and an atrow-head, 

A third statement that needs to be considered is one by Mr Portman, 
who presented to the British Museum an arrow with a head of stune 
made specially for him by a native of the North Andaman who stated 
that in former times such arow-heads were used by the Andamanese. 
At the present time the arrow-head is broken and it would seem to be 
so fragile as to be entirely worthless fo the purpose to which it was 
supposed to be put, The natives of the Noith Andaman whom 
I questioned stated that they did not use stone for ‘their airow-heads, 
but shell, We may therefore hold that the evidence given by Mr Portman 
ig not at all satisfactory, : 

"In the Akar-Bale tribe I heard a legend that at a certain spot there 
vis a kind of stone which was used by the ancestors for amaking adzes. 
I visited the spot and the stone wa8 pointed out to me, Unfortunately 
the specimen that I took was lost and I am therefore unable to_state 
what the stone was, but it was such that it would have been;utterfy 
impossible to make any sort of adze out of it. It was of a cfystalline 
nature and was easily fractured by a blow against even a soft substance 
such as wood, It was clear that the native statements aVout_it were 
» merely a legend having no historical value. 

We may justifiably conclude that it is probable that thesstatement 
of the natives to the effect that before they possessed iron in any 
quantity they made their adzes and arrow-heads out of shell and not 
out of stone, is correct. Their use of stone for cutting was therefore: 
confined to the flakes which have been described. - 

The most important material to the Andamanese seems to have 
been shell. Mollusc shells wete used in the natural form or” after 
having been manufactured. The chief shell used in its natural form is 

% Lapicque, “ Ethnographie des Iles Andaman,” Bidletin de ta Socitté @ Anthro- 
pilogie de Paris, 1894, p- 370- 

€ 

the Cyrena which serves al the present time as a knife, a scraper and a 
spoon. Even when they have knives of iion and stecl they still use the 
Cyrena shell in preference for some purposes. It is used as a scraper 
in preparing fibres for rope and thnead, in making arrows, as a knife for 
cutting thatching leaves and cane and even thread and rope, and for 
making incised patterns on bows and arrows. ‘he shells are always to 
be found lying about their encampments, and a few are always carried 
with them when they migrate to a fresh camp, Those living inland 
obtain their supply of shells fiom their friends on the coast. 

When in use the shell is clasped between the thumb and fist finger, 
the thumb passing over the convex side and the finger round the hinged 
edge. The remaining fingers are used to clasp the object that is being 
sctaped or cut. In cutting, the motion is away from the body, being 
produced by a twist of the wrist. In scraping the motion is away from 
the body, or from left to right. A knife of iron or steel is held in this 
way by the natives whenever it is used for any purpose for which they 
formerly would have used a shell, The blade is clasped near the 
handle between the thumb and fist finger, the back of the blade pressing 
against the root of the thumb, and the handle away from the body. 

Another shell that is used in its natural form is a small whelk shell 
that is used as a scraper for scraping off the outer skin of mangrove 
seeds in preparing them for food. 

A shell that is used in very nearly its natural form is a kind 6f pearl 
shell that grows along creeks througlt the mangrove swamps. The shell 
is only very slightly curved and it is for this reason that it is selected as 
aiftabley The weuk edge or lip of the valve is broken away, and the 
edge is then slightly ground on a stone. This implement is used by 
women for'slicing yams and certain other vegetables such as some 
kinds of se@ds when they are being prepared for food, 

The natives say that before iron was plentiful they used shells for 
the heads af theiwpig-arrows. Several different species of shell seem to 
have been used, the chief concern being to obtain a piece of sufficient 
size that was as nearly flat as possible. Such shells are those belonging 
to the larger bivalves, The natives state that their method of woiking 
thé shell was to break it oughly into shape with stones and then grind 
it down‘ on a whet-stone until it was given a sufficiently sharp point 
and.edge. “Some arrow-heads of shell were made for me by this method 
at my request by one of the old men of the Noith Andaman. 

The natiyes state that before they had iron they made their adzes of 
shell. Two different men of the North Andaman made two shell adzes 

for me, one of Fixaa shell, and the other of a shell that I omitted 
to identify. The Aizxa shell adze seemed to me only suitable for light 
work such as finishing off a bow or a canoe, as it seemed likely to 
break under a strong blow. The other adze was much stronger and 
therefore capable of heavy work, and although the edge seemed to me 
to make it a poor implement with which to cut down a tree yet it 
certainly did not seem less suitable than the stone adzes used by many 
primitive peoples. If I were given a choice of implements with which 
to fell a tree, between the shell adze of the Andamanese and a stone 
axe of South-western Australia I should certainly choose the former.» 

According to the natives they formerly used bone for the points of 
their fish-arrows and for the barbs of their pig-arrows. For both of 
these purposes they now use iron, The bone was bioken into a piece 
of suitable length and then ground down with a whet-stone. Apparently 
the bone most frequently used was the tibia of the pig. For their fish- 
arrows they also made use of the bone of the tail of the sting- TAY,;—~ 
its “sting.” When the fish was caught the bone was knocked off and 
reserved for use. It required no treatment whatever, being simply 
bound on to the point of the fore-shaft in the same way that an iron 
point is now attached. 

Colebrooke, in 1789, described their arrows as “headed with fish- 
bones or the tusks of wild hogs, sometimes merely with a sharp bit of 
wood hardened in the fire.” By fish-bone he probably means the bone 
ofthe sting-ray. Where hewrites thé tusks of wild hogs we should probably 
read “the bones.” A boar’s tusk is curved, and it seems impossible to 
imagine how it could possibly be used as an arrow-head or arrow-poift. 

The ‘boar's tusk is used by the Andamanese aa an irftplement, 
however, making a very efficient 
sort of spokeshave, The edge 
which is used is kept sharp by 
scraping with a quarts or glass 
flake or with a Cyrena shell. 
The edge is near the point (at 
a in Fig. 27) and the tusk is 
clasped at the other end between 
the forefinger and the root of 
the thumb (at 4 in Fig, 27), the 
movement being away from the 
body. It is used for planing Fig. 27. Boar's tusk, used as 
bows and paddles, and in the a spokeshave 

hands of an Andaman Islander is a very efficient implement, producing 
a beautifully smooth and even surface. 

+ Of wood the Andamanese formerly made knives and arrow-points. 
The knives were made of a slip of bamboo or cane shaped and 
sharpened with a Cyrena shell. Such knives were used for cutting 
meat and apparently for no other purpose. <A knife was always 
attached by a short length of cord to a skewer of pointed deca woad. 
The double implement was used in cooking and eating, the skewer 
serving to lift pieces of meat in and out of a pot, while the knife served 
to cut them, At the present time the cane or bamboo knife is’ 
replaced by a knife made from hoop-iron, but the shape of the original 
implement is retained as nearly as possible and a skewer of Areca wood 
is generally attached 'to it. 

Fig. 28. Adze and knife 

As has Ween alteady stated the Andamanese formerly used hard 
wood such as that of the Aveca palm for the points and heads of their 
arrows., They dosnot seem to have made use of bamboo in this way. 

At the present time iron is used for the blades of adzes, for the 
heads and barbs of pig-arrows, the points of fish-arrows, the heads of 
harpoons, and for’ knives, The method of working the metal is 
apparently exactly the same as the method they‘ formerly used for 
working shell and bone. For the head of a pig-arrow a suitable piece 
of irontis taken and a fragment of about the right size is broken off by 
means of a stone hammer. This is then roughly broken into the 
required shape, no heat being used, and no advantage being taken of 
the malleability of the metal. The next process is to grind it on a 

BA. 29.4 

whet-stone. The natives are always eager to obtain files which enable 
them to do this part of the work much more rapidly. When the arrow- 
head has been ground into shape the edges are sharpened. Blades for 
adzes are made in exactly the same way fiom any suitable piece of iron 
or steel, such as a cutlass or an old file or a piece of thick hoop-iron. 
The adze-blade is attached to a handle of mangrove wood by the 
method shown in Fig. 28. 

‘The barbs of pig-airows and the points of fish-arrows are made 
in the same way by breaking the metal into a suitable shape and then 
grinding it on a whet-stone. It is probable that this was the method 
that was formerly used for dealing with bone for these purposes, 

In the case of the knife, iron or steel is now substituted for cane or 
bamboo, but the knife has retained its shape in spite of the change of 
material. The shape of a knife, whether of cane or of iron, with its 
attached skewer of Avece wood is shown in Fig, 28, 

In the case of the harpoon the native tradition is that this imple- 
ment was only made after they had discovered the use of iron. 

At the present time both the Semang and the Negritos of the 
Philippines make uge of iron, The Semang heat the iron until it is 
red-hot and then batter it into shape between two stones’. The shapes 
of the iron weapons and implements which they make follow fairly 
closely those made by the Malays. 

In an attempt to reconstruct the primitive Negrito culture it would 
seem that the most reasonable hypothesis is that the primitive Neguitos 
had no knowledge of iron and had not learnt to fashion implements out 
of stone, but relied entirely on such materials as wood, bone apd sh@ll. 
The Andamanese, becoming possessed of iron through wrecks upon 
their islands, applied to it the technique that they had developed for 
dealing with shell, and thereby invented their ‘presen? method of 

. Working iron without heating it. The Semang and the Negritos of the 
Philippines probably first learnt the use of iron frog theig neighbours 

of other races. There is not at present any evidence to show that 
the Negritos ever had any method of working stone except the very 
simple one at present in use in the Andamans for making flakes, 

STRING, Ropr, Mats, BASKETS, AND NETTING, 

For string, rope and thread the Andaman Islanders make use’of a 
number of different vegetable substances, but they make no use what- 

1 Skeat, p, 383. 

ever of any animal substances. Some of the more important fibres, 
with their usés and the methods of preparing them, are mentioned 
below. 

The bark of the Aibiscus tiHaceus, which occurs in the beach vege- 
tation in all parts of the islands, provides the Andamanese with one of 
their most important fibres. By the coast-dwellers of the Great and 
Little Andaman Divisions it is used for making rope. In the Great 
Andaman Division the rope made from it was formerly used for making 
turtle nets, and is now used for the lines of turtle harpoons, and for 
hawsers to attach a canoe either to a stone used as an anchor or to a 
tree, No other fibre is used for these purposes. The Jidiscus rope 
does not seem to be much affected by salt water. The forest-dwellers 
Of the Great Andaman have less use for rope, and at the same time are 
not able to obtain so readily the Aidéscus fibre. What rope they do 
have is therefore obtained from the coast-dwelleis or is made of some 
other fibre, In the Little Andaman the Aiisews is regularly used for 
rope. It is also used for the short cord by which the detachable head 
of the pig-arrow is attached to the shaft. In the Great Andaman a 
strip of the bark of the 2Zidiscus is used for the sling in which children 
are carried. Strips of the bark are worn by the women of the Little 
Andaman across their shoulders and breasts, as a sort of ornament, 

To obtain the fibre young straight shoots of about rzo cm. in Jength 
are cut from the tree, those free from gnarls, and having a smooth 
bark, being chosen. ‘The bark (inner and outer layers) is peeled off in 
strips of from x°5 to 3.cm, in width, The inner or liber layer is then 
séparatd from the outer layer of the bark, is well scraped with a Cyrena 
shell and“dried in the sun or over a fire. When dry it is worlted in the 
hands until the various layers of fibre separate one from another. Tt is 
then ready %o be made into rope. The fibre is interlacing, and when 
freshly made is a lustrous greyish brown, After exposure to salt water 
it turns a Aark brown, 

Mr E. H. Man, in his work on the Andamans, speaks of the 
Melochia velutina as providing fibre for rope. This is an error. ‘The 
tree to which Mr Man refers is the Aibiscus tiliaveus. Tt is extremely 
common on the shores of the islands, as it is in many other parts of the 
tropics,” It is very easily identified, as it bears its characteristic yellow 
flower’ for" long time every ‘year. There is no doubt whatever that 
this is the tree from which the natives regularly oblain the fibre for 
the rope they use in turtle-hunting and fishing and in their canoes. 
Other writers, following Mr Man, have repeated his error in calling it 

20—2— 

| 

the Melochia velutina, for example Sir Richard Temple and Mr Portman. 
In Mr Portman’s collection of photogiaphs in the British Museum 
there is a good photograph of a Hibiscus Hliaceus tree labelled “ AZedochia 
velutina.” JY looked carefully in the Andaman jungles for the Adedochia 
velutina but was unable to find it, and I am quite certain that in any 
case, even if it be fourid there, it is not commonly used by the 
natives for rope. 

The bark of a number of other trees provides fibre of which the 
natives occasionally make use. Amongst these are one or more species 
of SYerculia (S. villosa ?), and a tree that I identified somewhat doubt- 
fully as Grewia /aevigata, The coarse fibre of the liber layer of these 
trees may be made into rope by the same method as that employed in 
dealing with Aibiscus Hiliaveus. Very litle actual use is made of them 
however. A fibre which looks very like that obtained from one species 
of Stereuiia is frequently used by the natives of the Little Andaman 
(and also by the Jarawa) for their personal ornaments, Mr Portman 
says that this fibre is obtained from the Ce/fis cinmamonea, 

A species of Hibiscus, which I believe is Hibiscus scandens, growing 
in the jungles and not along the shore, provides a fibre that is prized by 
the natives of the Great Andaman tribes for making string or fine rope. 
The fibre is less easily obtained than that of the Aibiscus tiliaceus, but 
owing to its quality (it is not so interlacing) is capable of being made 
into finer rope and string. It is often made into string and then used 
for making netted bags. I did hot find this fibre in use in the Little 
Andaman, but as it is not very often met with even in : the Great Anda- 
man, it may possibly be used in the Little Andaman, 

‘There are several species of Jcxs in the Andaman fepeaias and the 
natives know that they can obtain fibre from the bark of these treos, 
The only one that is regularly made use of is the Pcus dates era, The 
. natives of the Great Andaman Division use the bark of this tree for 
making their personal ornaments, In the Little Andaman iis used for 
bow-strings, A fibre called in the Little Andaman w/v, and said by 
Mr Portman to be obtained from the Meus hispida, is used in that 
island, and by the Jarawa, for making personal ornaments, 

The Guetum edule, a climbing plant that is fairly common, is used 
in all parts of the Andamans for thread and string. The creeper ds cut 
into short lengths at the nodes and is dried for a few days. “The outer 
layer of bark is then scraped off with a Cyvena shell, and thé liber layer 
beneath it is peeled off in fine strips and these are made into thread or 
string, This string is used in the Great Andaman Division for making 

netted bags and fishing nets. Jn the Little Andaman it is’ used for 
binding their arrows, as well as for netting. 

The most valuable fibre of the Great Andaman tribes is that of the 
Anadendron panicuatum, which is used for string and thread and for 
bow-strings, Until recent times the method of preparing the fibre was 
not known to the natives of the Little Andaman, but they have now 
learnt it from the natives of the Great Andaman with whom they have 
been brought in contact, and the use of the fibre for string and thread 
is coming in amongst them. 

The fibre is not easy to prepare. Long thin branches of the creeper 
are cut, which must be neither too young nor too old. To obtain these 
it is often necessary to climb up into high trees, for the Azadendyon is a 
climbing plant, The creeper is cut into lengths of from 20 to 40cm. 
The bark (inner and outer layers) is peeled off these in strips of from 
7 to 19 mm, in width. A strip of the bark is taken and placed on the 
thigh, inner surface downwards, and is scraped with a Cyrena shell 
until the outer bark is entirely removed and the fibres remain clean and 
separate, These are dried in the sun or over a fire and, if not needed 
for immediate use, are stored for future occasion, The’ fibre is fine and 
of a light greyish brown colour. In its qualities it somewhat resembles 
ramie fibie. It is extremely strong. 

There are a number of other tregs and plants that are-known by the 
natives to affqrd fibre, but they are not used, ‘or if they are, it is 
extremely rarely!, 

The Andaman jungles have a number of different species of Calamus, 
anid thegcanes or rattang of these are put to all sorts of uses, such as the 
making of baskets, the lashings and furnishings of canoes; and in 
building huts, In the Little Andaman onc species of cane {s used to 
provide the fibre for women’s belts, The outer skin is removed and the 
remainder of the cane is divided into fine strips or threads. A bundle 
of these tigd together constitutes the belt worn by the women of the 
Little Andaman. The outer sheath of the leafstem of the Calamus 
digrinus is used by the natives of the Great Andaman Division for 
making mats, Lengths of the leaf-slem are cut and the outer skin is 
removed in strips of about 3 to 5mm. in width, The still adhering 
pith js removed with a Cyrena shell, and the strips are dried in the sun 
and thten made into mats, 

The leaf-stem of a species of palm is cut while green and is then 
shredded into long strips. The fibre thus obtained really consists of the 
leaflets of the young unopened leaves of the palm. It is used in the 

Little Andaman to make the tassel that women wear ove: the pudenda. 
The women of the North Andaman formerly wore a tassel of this fibie, 
but haye now discontinued the custom, since their contact with the 
South Andaman. In the Great Andaman tribes this matetial has 
important ceremonial uses, It is called 4g70 in Aka-Jeru and ara in 
Aka-Bea, and has been frequently mentioned in this volume, A tassel 
of the fibre is suspended near the grave of a dead peison and at the 
entrance of the village at which the death took place. In the North 
Andaman a suspended cane hung with a fringe of the fibie is erected 
for the peace-making ceremony. (See Plate x1x.) 

Two plants that were not identified aie used in the North Andaman 
for making baskets. The methods of preparing these will be desciibed 
later. ° 

The natiyes of the Great Andaman Division make use of the leaves 
of the Pandanus Andamanensium for making belts fo. women and orna- 
ments that are worn on ceremonial occasions, ‘These leaves do not 
seem to be used in the Little Andaman, 

The pods of one or more species of Dendrobium are collected by 
the natives of both Great Andaman and Little Andaman. They ae 
roasted in the fire, until the outer skin tuns a bright yellow, and this 
is torn off in strips and used for ornamenting nets, baskets, 10pe, etc. 

The above description include§ all the more important vegetable 
substances used by the Andamanese for their rope, string, netting, and 
basket-vork. ‘There aie many other substances that they might use if 
they wished, of the properties of which they are fully awaie. Their 
knowledge of the trees and plants of the forests and of the’peculfar 
properties of each is very extensive. They themselves say that they use 
only those that best serve their purposes. 

The Andamanese make rope and string or thiead, but ia all cases it 

. is only two-ply, Rope 1s made by men only, and is used for the lines 

of turtle haipoons, and was formerly used for turtlennets. ,The ropes 
made from “discus fibre are very strong and durable, being quite 
as good as the best hempen ropes of the same diameter, In rope- 
making the Z/idiscus or other fibre (Stercudia or Grewia) is taken and 
twisted into a long strand, cither with the fingers, or on the thigh by 
rolling beneath the palm of the hand, short lengths of fibre being added 
until a single twisted strand of sufficient length and uniforfi thickness 
1s produced. The middle of this strand is passed over a piece of wood 
held by the toes, one half of it being wound on to a reel (Avéodd in 
Aka-Jeru) made by tying together crossways two pieces of cane or wood 

each about 20 cm. long and 6 ihm. in diameter. ‘The other half of the 
strand is loose, and is held (near the point where it is tied to the wood 
held in the toes) between the finger and thumb of the left hand, the 
rest of it passing across the palm, over the left forearm, under the arm- 
pit, across the back and over the nght shoulder, hanging down loosely 
to the worker’s nght side. This arrangement is in ordei that the loose 
strand shall not become entangled or get in the man’s way as he works, 
The reel is held in the right hand and is passed first under the left 
hand, then back again over it, the two strands being thus twisted into 
a firm two-ply cord. 

The natives of the Little Andaman make rope in much the same 
way, but they pass the reel from right to left over the other strand and 
bagk under it, the twist being thus in the opposite direction from that 
used in the Great Andaman. 

String or thread is made by both men and women, It is put to 
many uses, the chief being for binding the heads of arrows, harpoons 
and spears and the ends of bows, and in making nets, baskets, mats and 
personal ornaments. In making string the man or woman sits down 
with legs outstretched. Thin strands of fibre, varying in thickness 
according to the thickness of the string required, are taken and each 
twisted singly by being rolled between the palm of the right hand 
and the right thigh, the motion being away from the body. When 
a sufficient number of short single strands has been thus made, two 
of them are*tgken and placed together on the thigh, being held at 
one end in the ten hand. The two strands are rolled together beneath 
she" palm of the 1ight hand, the motion being inwards towards the 
body.” A well twisted thread is thus produced. When some, 10 cm, or 
so have been thus twisted, the thread is rolled once beneath the palm 
of the hand in the opposite direction, ie. away from the body, this 
action rendering it more compact. As soon as the end of the two 
strands that are being twisted’is neared, two more are taken and joinede 
on, first one and then the other, by being rolled in with the first two. 
Fresh strands are thus continually added as the string grows in length. 
String of any desired length is made in this way, of considerable 
strength and of surpiisingly uniform thickness. ‘ 

. String is made in this way from the fibre of Anadendron, Guetum 
and - Zidscus scandens in the Great Andaman, Division, and fiom 
Gnetum and wu fibre in the Little Andaman. In the Great Andamun 
string made from Anadendron fibre is rendered more durable by being 
waxed with black bee’s-wax, but this treatment is not considered 

necessary for string made from. Guetum fibre or from Hibiscus 
scandens. ‘ 

Ornamental xope is made for men’s belts j in the Great Andamans 
Hibiscus fibre ig twisted into a single strand. Around this strand, strips 
of Dendrobium skin are wound spirally so that it is entirely covered, and 
the strand itself is twisted into a two-ply cord. 

* Two other forms of cord have been already mentioned, namely the 
bow-string, of twisted fibre of the Fics daccifera in the Litlle Andaman, 
and of wrapped fibre of the Anadendvon in the Great Andanian Division, 
and the special cord used in the Great Andaman for attaching the head 
of a pig-arrow to the shaft. The Andamanese make very little use of 
plaited cord. I have only met with it in personal ornaments made of 
Pandanus \eaf in the Great Andaman. 

Fig. 29. Method of making bamboo mat, Little Andaman 4 

The mat-work of the Andamanese is very simple. The’ natives 
“of the Little Andaman make bamboo nats on which they sleep. Strips 
of bamboo of about 120 cm. in length and ‘75 cm. in width are attached 
by means of thin strips of cane to other strips of bamboo at right angles, 
to the first series. The technique is illustrated in Fig. 29 which shows 
the back and the front of a portion of such a mat. It is that usually 
known as wrapped-twined work. , 

A similar technique is used in both the Little Andamaft and the 
Great Andaman in making thatching of cane-leaves. There is a differ- 
ence, however, the wrapping used in making thatch being that shown 
diagrammatically in Fig. 30. 

1” 

‘ 

| 

The natives of thé Great Andaman make sleeping mats from the 
outer sheath of the leaf-stem of the Calamus figrinus. Lengths of the 
material are prepared ahd cleaned and are cut to a uniform length, 

» generally about 60 to 80 cm,, having a breadth of 3 to 5 mm. A length 

be 

vod 
Fig. 30. Diagram showing the technique used in making mats of thatch’ 

of. thread, generally of the less valuable Gnetwe fibre, but occasionally 
of Anadendron fibre, is made and is wound on to two netting needles, 
one half on each. With this thread the strips of cane-leaf are fastened | 
together. The technique is different in the North Andaman and in the 
South Andaman. 

In the North the technique, witich is represented diagrammatically 
in Fig, 31, Aas that known as wrapped-twined work. One of the two 
threads of whidh the work is composed is held taut, the needle on 

: CT UUM S B 

Fig. 3ly Diagram showing the technique used in Great Andaman mats 
A, North Andaman; 2, South Andaman 

which it is wound being held in the toes, and the other thread is 
wrapped spirally round it, one of the strips of oane-leaf sheath being 
enclosed at every turn. Thus the method is exactly the same as that 
adopted in making mats of thatch. 

‘Th the South the techhique is that known as twined work or fitching. 
The two wefts (ie, the threads) are twisted together in the same direc- 
tion one under the other, enclosing at each half turn one of the strips 
of leaf-sheath. This is shown diagrammatically in Fig. 31,2. 

The mat is made by parallel lines of such twining or wrapped- 
twining. At each side of the mat the line of threading is quite close to 
the ends of the strips of which the mat is made, In the South Andaman 
the work on each side of the mat is different from that in the middle. 
Each of the two threads is alternately given a complete turn rourid one 
of the strips of material. 

Mats may be of any length, and examples vary from 1 metre to 
1o metres. When in use about a metie and a half is unrolled and the 
remainder serves as a pillow, If the mat be short a split log does 
service as a pillow instead, but the full-length mat is certainly a more 
comfortable bed. When a mat begins to wear or fall to pieces in some 
part it is not thrown away, but this part is kept rolled up, and an 
unbroken part of the mat is unrolled to sleep on, the remainder being 
kept rolled up either at the head, where it forms a pillow, or at the foot, 
An old mat may be continually increased in length by additions made 
to it, The work of making these mats is performed by women only. 

The Jarawa and the natives of the Little Andaman make mats of a 

,somewhat similar pattern, but I have not been able to secure one so as 
to see how it is made. 

To explain the different forms of the Andamanese baskets, it is 
most convenient to begin by considering the way in which the natives 
of the North Andaman tie up their pots. The small cooking-pots of the 
North Andaman are fragile things and are not easily made, and it is 
therefore necessary to take care of them. A leaf of thes Licwada palm is 
taken. The leaflets are plaited over one another, close to the point of 
their insertion in the petiole, so as to form a sort ofrosette with leaflets 
radiating from it in every diréction (Fig. 32@). This is laid on the ground, 
the pot is placed on it upside down, and the leaflets are brought up all 
round the pot so as to meet at the point, and are thefe roughly fastened. 
Three strips of cane are then taken and are tied together croSsways in 

" the middle so as to form a sort of six-rayed star with six-approximately 
equal angles, This is laid on the ground with the outer surface of the 
canes downwards, the pot is placed on it upside down, and the strips of 
cane are bent upwargs over the pot so as to meet at the point. The 
ends of two opposite stiips of cane are left projecting for a few centi- 
metres above the point, and the ends of the other four are fastened 
firmly down. Another strip of cane is now fastened round The middle 
of the pot, being applied to the six canes previously mentioned by 
wrapping, ie. a turn is taken with it round each of the six strips in 
turn, The pot is now safely tied up and can be hung in the hut or 

carried on a journey without much fear of its coming to grief. To use 
the pot it is of course necessary to untie it. A pot wrapped up in this 
way is shown in Fig, 32 @ and 4. 

In the South Andaman the pots have rounded bottoms. They are 
not tied up in the same way as in the North Andaman, but for purposes 
of safety and cairiage each pot is provided with a rude basket, The 
basket is made so as to fit the pot, Six-strips of cane are taken and 
tied together in the middle, as previously described. A stout strip of 

Vig. 324 

cane is then taken and is bent round into a circle so as to be just a litile 
larger than the outside rim of the pot. This, which is to form the rim 
of the basket, is placed in position and the six strips of cane before 
mentioned are bent round and attached to it. ‘The manner of atlaching 
the uprights of the basket to the rim is shown in Fig, 33. The strip of 
can@ forthing the upright is thinned down beyond the point where it 
reaches the rim. It is given one turn round the rim, ascending on the 
outside and descending inside, then a half turn round the standing part 
of itself, immediately below the rim from left to right, then another 

complete turn round the rim ascending inside and descending outside, 
a half turn behind its own standing part below the rim, a third complete 
tum round the rim, and the end is fastened with an overhand knot. 

A thinner' strip of cane is now taken and wound round the six 
uptights (the warp of the basket) being given a turn round one after 

Fig. 324, Pot, tied up for carrying, Noth Andaman 

another. The technique is that known as wrapped work. If thé strip 
be{not long enough another is joined to it with a 1eef or sailor's knot, 
The weft (as this thinner strip may be called) is given five orsix spiral 
turns, and thus leaves a very open and rather weak basket. The basket 
is then’further strengthened by other strips of cane attathed by one end 

y 

to the rim and carried downwards, with one turn round each of the 
horizontal canes (weft) and the other end attached to the centre of the 
bottom of the basket’ A strip of cane or bark is attached to the rim by 
its two ends to provide a strap by which the basket with its pot may be 
carried on the back. Before the pot is placed in it the basket is lined 
with the leaflets of the Zicua/a palm. 

We may now turn to the baskets of the Little Andaman, of which 
there are two varieties, one made with more care than the other. As 
regards shape both varieties are the same, and the shape is exactly that 
of the Little Andanian pots. ‘ 

, Fig. 93. Basket for carrying pot, South Andaman 

‘The folldwing is a description of a small but typical specimen of the 
better, varigty' of Little Andaman basket. The foundation consists of ® 
twelve whole canes. A little under 80 cm, of the.cane is left whole, 
and at each end it is thinned down to a strip. The twelve canes are 
taken in four bundles of three each and placed so,as to cross each other 
in the middle. They are bent into a somewhat conical shape, and the 
ends (where the cane is thinned) are attached to a rim composed of a 
whole caffe bent into a circle and tied. The method by which each 
of the uprights or stakes is attached to the rim is shown in Tig, 34. 
It is almost identical with that used in the South Andaman pot basket, 
The weaving is then begun near the bottom of the basket. A thin strip 

| 
of the outside of a cane is taken, and is applied to the uprights (warp 
or stakes) by wrapped work, i.e. it is given a complete turn round each 
of them in tun. This wrapped weaving is continued spirally fiom 
near the bottom of the basket to near the rim. Near the top of the 
basket, between 4 and 5 cm, from the rim, the weaving i$ so arranged 
that for about three-quarters of the way round the basket there is a 
gap of about 2°5 cm. between two rows of weft (see Fig. 34). The 
purpose of this will be mentioned later. The basket now consists of 
a rim to which are attached twelve uprights forming the warp of the 
basket, around which a fine strip of canc has been spirally wrapped 
from the bottom to the top. Twelve fine strips of the outside of a 

Tig. 34 Portion of basket of Lite Andaman 

* 
cane are how taken. One end of each is fastened to the rim ifi between 
" two of the stakes, the mode of fastening being shown,in-Fig. 34, The 
strip is then carried down the basket, on the outside, as far as the 
bottom row of weaving, round which it is doubled, and is then wound 
spirally, from the bottom to the top of the basket, around its own 
standing part, including at each spiral turn one of the wefts. Thus 
each of these twelve strips of cane is attached to the outside of the 
basket by the process known as wrapped-twined work, ‘fhe basket 
i§ furnished with a handle of bark fibre which is attached,by its two 
ends to the rim on that side where there is no gap between the rows 
of weft near the top. i 

In the less carefully made baskets of the Little Andaman there are 
a few important differences, The stakes of the basket are not thin 
whole canes, but are strips of Jarger canes. The weft is applied in 
wrapped work, as in the basket ulready described, but the rows of weft 
are not so close together and are therefore not so numerous. After the 
first process, when the basket consists of stakes and horizontal (spiral) 
weft only, vertical strengthening strips are added, but these are applied, 
not in wrapped-twined work as in the basket described, but in wrapped 
work, in exactly the same way as in the South Andaman pot-basket, 
Thus, apart fiom its shape, which is that of the Little Andaman, pot, 
the Little Andaman basket of this kind is vely similar to the South 
Andaman pot-basket. 

The natives of the Little Andaman make pots that are much larger 
and deeper than those of the South Andaman, and have a more rounded 
bottom than those of the North Andaman. For every pot a basket is 
made that exactly fits it, and in this basket it is stored and carried. 
Every basket that is made in the Little Andaman, whether it be used 
for carrying a pot or for any other purpose, is made of exactly the same 
shape. - : 

The purpose of the gap that is left near the top of the basket as 
described above is in order that strips of string or fibre may be tied 
across the mouth of the basket, ftom side to side, in order to keep its 
contents safe. , 

We may nQw return to the Great Andaman and consider the 
baskets of the South Andaman Group of tribes. These are made from 
tile begt? canes. Ffom 80 to 120 fine strips of cane are taken which are 
to form the stakes or uprights. A slight hollow is made in the ground, 
and the strips of cane are placed crossways across one another in this 
hollow, the inner’ surfaces of the canes being downwards, As the 
strips aré being arranged, and when the weaving is begun, the centre, 
ie, the pqint where the strips cross one another in the middle of the* 
hollow, is pressed firmly beneath the heel so as to maintain them in 
position. The first few strips are sometimes tied together in the 
middle, but this is not always done. When all the strips are arranged 
evenly the weaving of the basket is begun with a length of thread, which 
is slewed in and out between the sttips of cane, beginning as near the 
centre’ as* possible, the stroke being that of ordinary wicker-work, 
After* four, ar five ,spiral turns have been taken with the thread it Ys 
fastened. The bottom of the basket is then reversed, the stakes being 
bent over, and the weaving proper is begun with a fine strip of cane, 

i 

This is applied by wicker-work nearly as far as the top of the basket. 
At the top, the weaving is finished off with three or four spiral turns of 
wrapped-twined work in cane (see Fig. 35). The rim of the basket is 
formed of a thin piece of wood (circular in section) bent round into. 
a circle of the right size and the two ends tied together, The stakes 
or uprights are attached to this rim (after the weaving is finished) 
but a space of about 5 cm. is left between the top of the weaving and 

Fig. 38 Portion of basket of South Andaman 

the rim, The mode of attaching the uprights to the rim is shown in 
Fig. 35: 

The South Andaman basket is really a conical basket® with, the 
bottom reversed or dented inwards to form a “kick” like thé*kick af a 
bottle. If it were not for the kick it would be the same shape as the 
Little Andaman basket, The kick enables it to stand upright, although 
it is inclined to be top-heavy, but renders it unfit for carrying pots. 

The space between the top of the weaving and the rim is to admit of 
strings being tied across the mouth of the basket to keep its contents safe, 

A handle of Hibiscus fibre is attached to the rim and rests across the 
front of the chest when the basket is carried on the back. 

South Andaman baskets are sometimes ornamented, in the process 
of making, with strips of Dendrobium skin, applied houizontally by 
overlaid interlacing. The strip of Dendrobium skin is laid over the weft 
and woven in with it for one tun round the basket. I have never seen 
ornamentation with Devdrobium skin apphed to the South Andaman 
baskets by any method save this one, " 

Patterns of red paint and white clay are occasionally painted on 
baskets when they are newly made. Shells are sometimes attached to 
different parts of the basket by thread, for the purpose of o1nament, 

In the North Andaman, baskets are made that differ in several 
important features from those of the South Andaman. They are not 
made of cane but of two different materials, One of these is the stem 
of a creeper called ¢uf-tg/, Lengths of the creeper are cut and dried 
and then split lengthways into two or three pieces according to their 
size. The outer bark or skin is then scraped off with a Cyrene shell, 
These strips aie to form the stakes o1 warp of the basket. The other 
material is another creeper called 4odé. The long tough tendrils of this 
plant are taken and the soft oute- sheath removed by drawing the 
tendril through, piece of split cane or bamboo bent double so ‘that 
the tendril is scr}ped between the two inner surfaces. The fibre thal 
remains is split longitudinally into two pieces and dried. 

*A byiidle of stfips of the dup-/o is taken, sufficient in length 
and number for the required size of basket, The bundle is divided 
into two equal bundles and these are tied together in the middle 
crossways with thread. ‘This cross forms the beginning of the basket. 
The weaving is begun with thread, which is slewed in and out between 
the warp, frgm 4@to 7 spiral turns being made, During this process 
the centre of the basket, i,e., the cross, is pressed beneath the heel 
into a slight hollow made in the ground, to give it a curve which, 
in the finished basket, will form the “kick.” The thread is tied, 
the bottom is turned upside down, the stakes are bent back and the 
weaving is ‘continued, not with thread but with strips of dos, till a 
short, distarfe from the top of the basket, and then three or four rows 
of wrapped;-#wined work are made, the strip of dodi being coiled round’ 
the basket and attached to the uprights with thread. A rim is made of 
a strip of cane bent into acircle, This is placed inside the uprights and 

BA 

f 

tied to them in two or three places. The remaining portion of each of 
the uprights, projecting above the rim, is bent down outside and 
slightly obliquely, and tied down by a thread - passing over each in wun 
and 1ound the rim. A very rough and untidy rim is thus produced, and 
this is again served or bound over with thread. A handle of Hibiscus 
fibre is added. 

In the North Andaman baskets, as in those of the South Andaman, 
a space of a few centimetres is lef, between the top of the weaving and 
the rim, there being for that space only warp or uprights and no weft. 
This allows string to be tied in any direction across the mouth of the 
basket, so as to keep its contents safe. 

Fig. 36, Pig's skull with basket-woik, Jarawa 4 

. The shape of the North Andaman baskets is different from that of 
the southern baskets, the former having a sort of belly a}, the bottom 
and narrowing somewhat above, The result is that the northern 
baskets will stand more firmly, being less top-heavy when either full or 
empty than those of the south. 

In the North Andaman baskets are ornamented as they are made 
with worked-in stiips of Derdrobium fibre, There are sevevat different 
methods of working this ornamentation, resulting in differént patterns, 
“Baskets are also ornamented, when new, with painted pattarns in white 
and red, though this is not general, and occasionally shells are attached 
to them by thread. . 

‘ 

One more form of basket-work remains to be briefly mentioned. 
The natives of all parts of the islands were formerly in the habit of 
preserving as trophies the skulls of pigs and turtle that were killed in 
the chase. .The natives of the Great Andaman Division do not now 
trouble to preserve all the skulls of the pigs they kill, and they give as 
their reason for this that now that they have dogs the hunting of pigs:is 
not a sport that requires any great skill, The Jarawa however still keep 
up the old custom, and they go so far as carefully to encase every skull 
in basket-woik. As may be seen fiom Fig, 36 the basket-work in 
question is of simple wiapped work, the material being strips of cage. 

It is of some interest to consider the different forms of technique 
used by the Andamanese in dealing with flexible materials, Rope and 
string are only made two-ply. It would seem that the Andamanese 
have not discovered that three-ply cord is stronger for a given diameter 
than two- ply. They have, in the bow- stiing of the Great Andaman, an 
interesting form of cord that may perhaps best be described as wrapped 
cord. The making of a rope involves the twisting of two strands of 
material around one another. The making of a wrapped cord involves 
the spiral wrapping of one strand of material round another, This is 
exactly the same process as “serving,” and it is one that is used’ by the 
Andamanese in all sorts of ways, In serving their arrows with thread 
and in serving the ends of bows and the heads of harpoons the Anda- 
manese have several different methods of making fast the ends, and 
I regret that did not take more detailed notes on this subject. Their 
skill in handling this technique is shown in the strength of the binding 
oh thejr’arrows. 

This spiral wrapping of one strand round a flexible or rigid object 
lies at the base of much else in their technique. We have seer that 
they make®considerable use of wrapped-twined work. In this work 
a strip of material crosses at right angles a number of strips of the same 
or other matbrigl, and a weft is wound round the former, taking in one 
of the latter at each turn. ‘There are two methods of doing this, either 
by simple spiral wrapping, as in the mats of thatch, or by what may be 
called “right and left” or,“ zig-zag” wrapping, as,in the bamboo mat of 
the Little Andaman. <A difference is also made according as the strip 
of material around which the weft is wrapped is rigid, as in the Little 
Andamai? bamboo mat or in thatching, or flexible, as in the North 
Andamanmat, where it is one thread while the weft is another thread. 

Wrapped work, in which a strip of weft is wound successively round 
one after another of a number of rigid stakes, is another very simple 

30~2, 

process that is employed in a number of different ways by the Anda- 
manese, The most impoitant development of wrapped work amongst 
them is seen in the pot-basket of the South Andaman, in the baskets of 
the Jarawa and Little Andaman and in the pig’s-skull baskel-work of 
the Jarawa. 

Simple twined work is rare in the Andamans, ‘There is hardly any 
example of it except in the mats of the South Andaman. It would 
seem probable that the North Andaman mat technique of wrapped- 
twined work is the earlier, being moie in agreement with what we 
may,call the technical habits of the Andamanese, and that the South 
Andaman mat technique is a later elaboration, In this connection 
it may be remembered that plaiting, in which also several wefis are 
twisted one over another, is rarely used in the Andamans. = 

The process of nippering, by which the natives of the Great 
Andaman make the cord of their pig-arrqws, and the somewhat similar 
process used in the Little Andaman in making personal ornaments, are 
quite in accordance with the general trend of the technique, but when 
such a process is applied to a number of parallel strips of material instead 
of to two only it constitutes a step towards wicker-work. It is notable, 
however, that it is only in the Great Andaman that wicker-work is used, 
and this suggests that it has only been invented or adopted since the 
separation of the two divisions of the Andamanese. 

It is very tempting to regard the different forms of basket, in the 
order in which they are described above, as so many stges of a process 
of evolution, It is, at any rate, worth while to slate the argument, 
and to show what the differences between them eactly are.” an the 
North Andaman pot-covering we have (1) the technique simple wrappe' 
work, and (2) the basis six strips of cane ticd together in the middle. 
In the South Andaman pot-basket we have both thesé featu*es, but the 
difference in the shape of the pots allows them to be carried‘in a true 

basket and we have therefore (3) a iim, with (4) a peguliar,method of 
attaching the uprights to the 1im, (5) a number of horizontal (wrapped) 
‘wefts instead of one or two, and (6) strengthening strips applied to the 
horizontal wefts in wrapped work, In the rougher kind of basket made 
in the Little Andaman we haye nearly all the features of the South 
Andaman pol-basket. The only differences, apart from the shépe of, the 
basket, which in each case follows the shape of the pot, ard"(2) mote 
than six uprights may be used, and (5) the number of houizeatal wefts, 
ie. the number of spiral turns taken round the basket, is as a rule 
greater. In the more carefully made Little Andaman basket there are 

several differences. The uprights are fine whole canes instead of strips 
of split cane, It is undoubtedly more difficult to procure whole canes 
of the proper size than simply to split up larger canes, but where the 
technique is wrapped work the circular section of the uprights improves 
the quality of the resulting basket, as a strip of cane is more easily 
wound round a whole cane than round a split cane, and there is less 
chance of it breaking when a strain is put upon it. Another difference 
is that in the bette: Little Andaman baskets the rows of weft are as 
closé together as the peculiar technique will allow. This makes a finer 
and stronger basket, and is an obvious improvement. The third differ- 
ence is that in these baskets the strengthening strips are applied not in 
wrapped work, but in wrapped-twined work, which, however, we have 
seen.~ig a common technique in the Andamans, In the better baskets 
of the Little Andaman we find a special feature of some interest in the 
gap that is left in the weaving near the rim, to allow of strings being 
tied across the mouth. 

When we look at the South Andaman basket the first thing that 
strikes us is that it is really a conical basket of much the same shape as 
the Little Andaman basket, but with the bottom dented in to make a 
kick, so allowing the basket to stand on its bottom. This denting is 
only rendered possible, however, by the fact that the uprights of the 
South Andaman basket are thin strips of cane that can be easily bent, 
and this again depends on the use of wicker-work in the basket instead 
of wrapped work, It must be remembered that the top of the weaving 
is finished off with three rows of wrapped-twined work, and this suggests 
th&t theré may posstbly have been a stage of development between the 
Little Andaman basket and the South Andaman, form, in which the 
uprights were thin strips of cane, and the weft was applied in wrapped- 
twined worlefiom fop to bottom. This, however, is only a surmise, It 
does cerldinly seem probable that the South Andaman basket is derived 
immediately frorg a form of basket similar to that of the Little Andaman, 
the great difference being the change to wicker-woik technique, The 
method of attaching the uprights to the 1im was doubtless introduced 
owing to the fact that the original method is unsatisfactory when the 
uprights are thin and easily broken strips, instead of stout ones, 

-The North Andaman basket seems to have been derived from one 
similar to®that of the South Andaman by the introduction of two 
changes, (1) the use of different materials, and (2) the change of shapé, 
The materials used in the north are such as to give a basket on the 
whole stronger and more durable than that of the south If a heavy 

F 

weight be canjed in a southein basket the pressure of the basket on the 
back tends to clack the canes of which it is composed. In the case of 
a northern basket it may lose its shape, but the materials of which it is 
composed will give or bend without cracking so readily. The shape of 
the northern basket is certainly an improvement, as it avoids the top- 
heaviness of the southern shape. Both the northern and the southern 
baskets have a gap between the top of the weaving and the rim, like the 
basket of the Little Andaman, 

Thus every step, 01 nearly every step, in a hypothetical process of 
eyglution is exhibited in the different forms of basket-work, Tirst we 
have the pot-covering of the Noth Andaman, then the pot-basket of the 
South Andaman, then the rougher kind of Little Andaman basket, of the 
same shape as the pot, then the South Andaman basket of cane with 
a kick and finally the basket of the Noith Andaman, The better kind 
of Little Andaman basket is simply an independent improvement of 
the other, involving no new technique, 

However much or little probability we may attach to this hypo- 
thetical reconstruction of the history of basket-work in the Andamans, 
one thing does seem fairly ce1tain, and that is that the original ancestors 
of the Andamanese were not acquainted with wicker-work, or had no 
use for it. In the Little Andaman Division only wrapped work and 
wrapped-twined work are used, and the wicker-work of the Great 
Andaman Division has almost certainly been adopted since the two 
divisions were separated. The consideration of the ‘general technical 
bias of the Andamanese in their dealings with flexible materials supponts 
the view that in their case wicker-work is later that wrapped'work dhd 
wrapped{wined work. It seems more than likely that the Andamanese 
of the larger island have invented wicker-work in ita simplest form on ° 
the basis of a previous technique of wrapped and wrappedawined work. 
To us wicker-work seems such a simple process as almost to need no 
inventing. It must be 1ecognized however that the general bias, of the 
Andamanese is against using materials in this way. The Andaman 
Islander shows a decided preference for those processes in which he 
uses a single flexible material which he winds or wraps round other 
rigid or flexible material, as in nippering, or wrapped work or wrapped- 
twined work. € a 
It is impossible.to obtain confirmation of this view, hoWever, fom 
‘2 comparison of the Andamanese with the Semang and the Philippine 
Negritos. The Semang make mat-work bags and wallets‘of check, and 
they inake (or use) baskets of hexagonal work. Both check and 

ry 
hexagonal work are used by other 1aces in the Malay Peninsula andein 
Malaysia generally. The present mats and baskets of the Semang 
cannot therefore be 1egaided as o1iginal Negrito productions. They 
have almost certainly been adopted through contact with other cultures, 

The same thing would seem to apply to the present basket-work of 
the Philippine Negritos, of which however we know very litUle, 

Netted bags of sting are made by the women of both the Great 
Andaman and the Little Andaman Divisions, and aie used for carrying 
or storing small objects such as shells, fruit, roots, etc. The string used 
for these is made from the fibre of the Gnetum edule in the Little 

MB 37 Diagram showing nelling needle, and nhethod of netting 

Andamdn, and is generally made from the same fibre in the Great 
Andaman, but, in the latter division the fibre of Atbiscus scandens ig 
prized for this purpose and is used instead of that of the Guetum when 
it is available, Small hand fishing nets are made by the women in both 
divisions from thread of Gnetum fibre, In the Great Andaman 
Division netting is also used for personal ornaments, the thread used 
for this purpose being generally made from Auadendron fibre, 

« ‘The®mode of netting is always the same. Netting needles are 
used, madg fiom slips of bamboo or cane, and varying in sizé according 
to the work for which they are intended. The netting string or thiead 
is wound on to this needle, For the foundation of the net a short 

length of string is taken and the two ends tied together, the loop 
thus formed being placed over the big” toe as the woman sits on the 
ground. 

The knot used in netting is that known as the fisherman’s knot, 
in use all over’ the world, The needle is held in the right hand, 
is passed from above downwards through the loop marked a@ in the 
figure, and is drawn through far enough to leave a new loop 4 of the 
required size. ‘his loop is held between the thumb and forefinger of 
the left hand, the uniformity in mesh being apparently obtained largely 
by the sense of touch. The needle is then passed through the new 
‘Joop’ é again from above and is drawn out leaving a loop ¢, through 
which the needle is passed once more, forming the finished knot, which 
is then drawn taut. ~ 

When netting is made for personal apparel it is generally ornamented 
with strips of Dendrobium skin worked in with the thread in the course 
of the netting, Netting for personal ornaments consists of a sort of bag 
open at both ends. Each end is tied with a string passed through the 
ultimate loops, and this string serves to tie the band of net Hund the 
waist or neck or wrist or knee. 

Fishing nets are attached to a handle. The handles of the Little 
Andaman Division and those of the Great Andaman Division are 
different in shape, The Great Andaman net with its hoop can be 
folded up compactly for carriage, while that of the Little Andaman 
cannot. 

The nets of rope formerly used in the Gr eat-Andaman for catching 
turtle have been already described. 

Domestic IMPLEMENTS AND UTENSILS, 

The Andamanese are perhaps the only people in the world who 
have no method of their own of making fire. At the present time, they 
obtain matches from the Settlement of Port Blair, and a few of them 
have learnt, either from Burmese or from Nicobarese, a method of 
making fire by the friction of pieces of split bamboo, Formerly, how- 
eyer, they had no knowledge of any method by which fire could be 
produced. Fires were and still are carefully kept alive in the village, 
and are carefully carried when travelling. Every hunting party catries 
itsefire with it. The natives are very skilful in selecting wood that will 
smoulder for a long time without going out and without breaking into 
flame, 

® 

‘The most interesting of the Andathanese domestic utensils is ‘in- 
doubtedly the cooking-pot. Pots are made in all parts of the Andamans 
where suitable clay is to be found. The clay is obtained and is freed 
as far as possible from stones and gritty matter with the hands. It is 
then moistened with water and kneaded on a board ‘consisting of a 
portion of a broken canoe. It, is worked very stiff and after kneading 
is rolled beneath the palm of the hand into long thin-tplls» These are 
built up into a pot by coiling, the requisile degree of thickness being 
obtained by pressure of the thumb and first finger. When the pot has 
been built up to the required size and shape, the surface, inside and out, 
is moistened and is scraped over in all directions with an Ayed shell. 
The pot is dried in the sun for a few hours and is then baked by 
placing inside and around it pieces of burning wood. The pot often 
cracks in the baking, and another has to be made, 4 

a 
og. 38 Shape of Noith Andaman pot; actual diameter u cm. 

In the North Andaman the pots are made with pointed bottoms, 
and are gonerally’ small, the largest having a capacity of only six or 
seven pits, They are made by women only, In the South Andaman 
the pots have ounded botloms and, on the average, are larger ands 
thicker than those of the North Andaman. They are made by both 
men and women, the best being made by men, In the Little Andaman 
the pots are larger, and, particularly, deeper than those of the South 
Andaman, and have somewhat pointed bottoms. The pots of the Jarawa 
are similar to those of the Little Andaman. 
tla th® North Andaman pots are not ornamented, but in the South 
Andaman 4hey are decorated with usually simple patterns of dots artd 
lines made with a small pointed stick, The Little Andaman pats that 
T have seen were not decorated, ; 

. 

° 

°*The pots are used for cooking, ie. for boiling meat and vegetables, 
In the North Andaman small pots are specially made for melting the 
composition used for covering the binding on the heads of arrows. 

Neither the Semang nor the Philippine Negritos make any kind of 
pottery. The origin of Andamanese pottery therefore is a problem of 
sonie interest, Jt is almost certain that the early Andamanese weie 
acquainted with pottery before they were divided into the Gteat 
Andaman and Little Andaman Divisions. One of the very few words 
which is the same in all Andamanese languages is the word for pot, 
buéu,in the Little Andaman, du in Aka-Bea and ge in Aka-Jeru. The 
most reasonable hypothesis would therefo1e seem to be that the Anda- 
manese learnt the method of making pottery by coiling before they 
reached the Andaman Islands but after they had become senarated 

———————.. 

Se eee 

’ 

Fig. 39. Shape of South Andaman pot; actual diameter 24. cm. © 

from that,part of the Negrito race fiom which the Semang and the 
Philippine Negritos are descended, Of course it is possible that the 
art of pottery may have been an original possession of the Megritos and 
that the Semang and Philippine Negritos may have lost it. "A people 
“could easily lose the art if they were compelled in the, couse of their 
migrations to spend three or four generations in a region that lacked 
clay suitable for the purpose. 

The Andamanese, make buckets of wood, which they use for carry- 
ing and holding a supply of water. A solid piece is cut from the 
trunk of a soft-wooded tree and is hollowed out with a chise’ made .by 
attaching the blade .of an adze to a stick, The natural féim ef, the 
Wood is retained, only the bark being removed from the owtside while 
the inside is chiselled out to leave sides of about a centimetre thick and 
a bottom of somewhat greater thickness. In order to render the bottom 

of the bucket water-tight the natives of the Little Andaman pow over 
it on the inside melted bees’-wax, The natives of the Great Andaman 
use for this purpose the same composition with which they cover the 
bindings of their anows, which certainly is superior to bees’-wax. 

A bucket of the shape used in the Great Andaman is shown in, 
Plate vu, on the left. A strip of cane is attached 1ound the middle 
of the bucket, and to this in turn is attached another strip of cane 
which, being passed across the front of the chest, enables the bucket 
to be carried on the back. 

The buckets of the Little Andaman are cut with thinner sides than 
those of the Gieat Andaman. A strip of cane is fastened round the 
bucket near the top. From this two other stiips of cane are attached 
by bath ends, passing under the bottom, and a third strip is attached 
which passes over the head and supports the bucket when it is carried 
on the back, In the Littke Andaman the outside of the bucket is 
charred with fire, 

Occasionally pieces of the giant bamboo, which does not grow in 
the Andamans, are found on the shore, having drifted from the Burma 
coast. When a sound piece is found it is made into buckets each 
formed of a single joint. 

Water vessels are made from bamboos that do grow in the islands, 
A length of bamboo of good diameter is cul, containing three joints, 
"The partition of the lowest node is preserved to serve as a bottom, and 
the other patéitions are broken through with an arrow. This is the 
usual vessel used for carrying water on a journey by land or fn a canoe, 
and for" keeping a*supply of drinking water in the hut. 

x single joint of the same kind of bamboo is used ag a cooking 
vessel. It is cleaned, washed, and dried, and is then filled with meat . 
tightly pagked. The top is closed with leaves and the bamboo is placed 
on the fire until the meat is cooked, Meat is nol cooked in this way 
for immediate gonsumption. It will keep for twenty-four hours or ever 
longer if not opened. ‘To obtain the contents the bamboo is split open 
with an adze, 

Trays used for food are cut from soft wood of a species of Stercudia 
with an adze. ‘They ate shallow and somewhat long and narrow, with 
hointed ends, 

<A lai%e Pinna shell is occasionally used as a tray or dish for holding 
food, or foy mixing clay with water for painting. A Navdilus shell fowns 
a fairly convenient cup or drinking vessel and is frequently ysed for 
that purpose, as well as for baling. out wate: from a canoe. 

"Bamboo tongs are made by bending double a piece split from a 
bamboo, and cutting the ends to the iequired shape, They are used 
for lifting from the fie anything too hot to be taken in the hand and 
are chiefly of service in cooking. 

Digging sticks are made from various kinds of wood, being simply 
pointed at one o1 both ends. These sticks are not as a 1ule preserved, 
but made as 1equired with an adze and thrown away after use, They 
are used for digging up edible roots. 

Hooks for picking fruit, such as the Artocarpus, are made by 
attaching a small piece of wood to the end of a bamboo, Hooks for 
catching crabs are made from the wood of the RAtzophora by taking 
advantage of the natural form where a small branch joins a larger one. 

The fan-shaped leaf of a Zicva/a palm is made use of in manyeways, 
The edges of the leaflets are sewn together with fine strips of cane, and 
the sewn leaf is then used either as a sunshade or umbrella for pro- 
tection from sunshine or rain, as a sleeping mat if the proper article be 
lacking, as a scieen to make the roof or sides of a hut more wind or 
rain pioof, as a wiapper for making objects of all sorts into bundles, 
and as a winding sheet foi a corpse. 

Torches are made fiom resin, which is broken into small pieces and 
wiapped up in leaves of a species of Crinum (? lorifolium), a few pieces 
of smouldering charcoal being added ‘before it is tied up. The torch is 
then parcelled by marling with a strip of cane or a length of ‘some 
tough creeper These resin torches aie used in turtfe-hunting and 
fishing expeditions on dak nights, 

Other torches are made of fiagments of rotten Diplerocarprs yood. 
They mie used only in the village, 

PERSONAL ORNAMENT; GREAT ANDAMAN, 

r At the present time the natives of the Great Andaman. Division 
obtain from the Settlement of Poit Blair cloth which both men and 
women wear round the loms. They also obtain beads from which 
they make necklaces, 

The following is a list of the various personal ornaments made by 
the natives of the Great Andaman Division, and worn by thems . , - 

Rope gitdle. Every man weais some soit of girdle rduind>his 
waist, and this was formerly the only object that was constantly worn 
by men, The giidle may consist of a length of rope of Azbiscus fibre 
or a length of ornamental cord made by wrapping the yellow skin of 

© 

the Dendrobium over two stands of Hidiscus fibre and then twisting 
these into a two-ply cord. 

Necklaces and garters of sting, Both men and women ae often 
to be seen with a simplé piece of string, usually of Anadendron fibre, 
tied round the neck or around the leg just below une knee. 

Ornaments of Pendanus leaf. Every mauried wornan always wears 
a belt of Pandanus leaf which she is never without for even a moment, 
When the belt she is weaing needs renewing she puts the new one on 
before taking the other off. To make such a belt two leaves of the 
Pandanus Andamanensium are taken and cut to a sufficient length 
(about 20 cm.). The thorns at the edge of the leaf are removed by 
cutting off a strip of about 3 mth. wide from the edge, leaving a strip of 
leaf aout 4cm. broad, The two leaves are placed one on the other 
and are wound spiially round in three turns so as to give a belt of six 
thicknesses of leaf, the upper surface of the leaf bemg on the outside of 
the belt. The leaves are secured together by tying with thread at the 
back where the two ends just overlap. At the point where the leaves 
are tied one or two bundles of strips of Pandanus leaf are attached with 
thread. The bundle is made ofa number of strips of leaf about 90 cm. 
lgng and 2's cm, broad which are chewed in the mouth to make them 
soft and then placed together and served ove: with thread fo. about 
zz cm. in the middle. Belts of this kind are generally worn by manied 
womef, but precisely similar belts aie woin by men on certain 
ceremonial occasions. ‘They are called soto er-bua in Aka-Jeru, 

A very similar belt is made in exactly the same Way save that the 
tadsel gf “leaves at fhe back consists of nanow stnips of Pandanus leaf 
instead ofsbroad sips, This kind of belt is worn by women only. 
Examples may be, scen in Plate tv (the lower belt of the two) and in 
Plate xvui1® It is “called roto Her-nyarad in Aka-Jeru, 

A belt is made in much the same way out of Pendanus leaves split 
in half down 'thg midrib, giving strips of about 25 cm. broad. Such 
belts have only a scanty tassel of thin strips of leaf at the back. They 
are worn by girls and women only. ‘They are called 4udv in Aka-Jeru, 

Yet another variety of belt is made of whole,leaves in exactly the 
same way as the /ofo #er-dua but has no tassel at the back. An 
example fay be seen in Plate rv (the upper belt), It is worn by 
women, . 

Girdlestwe made of strips of Pandanus leaf of about 1'2§ cm. bioad 
without any tassel, but with strings of Denfalinvm shell attached at 
various points. A girdie of this kind is shown in Plate xv. 

: Girdles ate also made by cutting a number of strips of leaf and 
softening them by chewing them in the mouth. These strips are laid 
together and either served over or marled with thread so as to make a 
girdle of round section. A tassel of leaves similar to that of the dofo 
?'e-bua is attached to the back, and very frequently strings of Denfahium 
shell are attached at various points. Such a girdle may be worn by 
either men ot women. It is called sofo Per-yau in Aka-Jeru. 

Vet another kind of girdle is made by splitting Pandanus leaves into 
thin stiips and making them into a kind of wrapped cord, one strip 
beirtg wrapped spirally round one or more others by the same technique 
as that used in making bow-strings, A number of coils of strands made 
in this way are tied together with thread at various points and a tassel 
similar to that of the ¢ofo #’er-bua is added at the back, Such»girdles 
are usually improved by the addition of a few pendent stiings of 
Dentalium shell. They may be woin by either men or women. Their 
name in Aka-Jenu is ozo f’er-moi. 

Ornaments of Pandanus leaf to be worn either round the leg just 
below the knee or round the wist are made in exactly the same way as 
the belt called soto #’er-bua, each having a tassel of Pandanus leaf strips 
attached, Such garters and bracelets are worn at a dance by men. 

Othe: ornaments for wearing round the wrist or knee when dancing 
are made by the same method as the girdle called zoto Pergat, each 
having a tassel of strips of leaf. 

Similar dancing ornaments are made by plaiting steps of leaf into a 
three-plait cord of the right length, a tassel of loose leaf strips being left 
at each end. These are tied round the wrist or knée. 

Ornaments for the knee or wrist, such as those shown onthe. legs of | 
the man in Plate xu, are made by winding spirally a@ narrow strip 
of leaf and sewing it. A number of pendent strings of Deftalium shell 
are attached round it, and often strings are attached at the end of which 
small shells hang suspended which rattle against ona another as the 
wearer walks or dances, 

Chaplets or headdresses worn by men when dancing, and occasion- 
ally by women, are made of fairly bioad strips of leaf in the same way 
as the /ofo ’erbua. Such a chaplet may have a tassel of nayow strips 
of Pandanus leaf at the back to which are attached shells tifat yattle as 
the wearer moves, or it may have pendent strings of Dentalium’ shells 
round the hinder half of its circumference. ™ 

Id making ornaments of Pandanus leaf such as the éozo f'er-dua the 
upper surface of the strip of leaf i usually ornamented with a design 

scratched on it with a pointed piece of wood. The design usugily 
covers not only the portion of leaf that is visible when the belt o other 
object is finished, but also that portion which is not visible, being 
underneath, Many ornaments of this kind are further decorated when 
finished with the composition used foi covering the bindings of arrows, 
which is applied with # pointed stick in simple geometrical patterns. 
The woman shown in Plate x is wearing two belts that have been 
ornamented with composition in this way. 

Woman's jeaf apion, In the South Andaman the women wear a 
sort of small apron consisting of a number of leaves of the Adivazsops 
ittoralis laid one over the other, the stalk ends of the leaves being 
tucked in between the layers of a belt of Pandanus leaf. The leaves 
thus hang suspended so as to cover, somewhat inadequately, the 
pudenda. ‘The natives say that the leaves of the Mimusofs are chosen 
because they remain gieen longer than those of any other species. As 
soon as the leaves fade and turn yellow they are renewed, The 
appearance of the leaf apron may bé seen in Plates 1v and xv, 

The women of the North Andaman have within recent years 
adopted the fashion of those of the South Andaman in this matter, but 
formerly they made a similar use of a different kind of leaf from a plant 
called cainyo in -Aka-Jeru, and gver the top of the leaves they wore a 
tassel of the fibre called Agro. * 

Ornaments of netting and Dentativm shells. Bands of netting (in 
shape of a cylinder or bag open at both ends) are made of suitable size 
to tie round the waist, the neck, the leg below the knee or “the wrist, 
Such petting is gefierally ornamented as it is being made with strips of 
Dendrobium skin worked in the net, Along the lower edge of the band 
of netting are attached a number of threads each having Dentalium 
shells strugg on to it like beads, Ornaments of this kind are shown in 
Plates v and 1x. They are worn by both men and women, but usually 
only,on the vcgasion of a dance or some other ceremony. 

Ornaments of bone, etc. These are made with human bones, with 
the bones of such animals as pig, turtle, dugong, Paradoxurus, monitor 
lizard, or with pieces of wood or cane, or of coral, of suitable shape. 
A length of cord, of the fibre of the £2ibisces idiaceus or of the Hicus 
dncciferae is taken, and the bones are attached to it by thread, As 
a rule, s(tips of Dendrobiuu skin are worked in, being laid on the bone 
and bound.over with the thread, 

- Ornaments of shell. Various kinds of shells are perforated and 
attached to string and are worn rdund the neck, the head, the knee, or 

the wiist. A necklace of fresh-water shells (t#0 glo fof in Aka-Jeiu) 
is shown in Plate 1x, A necklace of small sea-shells is shown in 
Plate xu, The favourite shell of the Great Andaman tribes is the 
Dentalinm octogonum. The shells are collected from the shore by the 
women. ‘The closed end of each is bitten off with the teeth and the 
shells, which thus form cylindrical beads, are strung on to a piece of 
thread, These strings of shell are woin as necklaces, as shown in 
Plates rv and xu, and are tied round the wiist and knee and ankle as 
shown in Plate 1v. 

@rnaments of seed. The seed-tops of two or three species of 
mangrove are collected and stiung on to 
thread and worn round the neck, Fig, 4o 
shows the two kinds of mangrove seed 
commonly used in this way, 

Bamboo necklaces. A necklace is some- 
times made of a number of shoit pieces of 
bamboo arrow-shaft threaded on to a string, 
The pieces of bamboo are'ornamented with 
simple designs sciatched or cut on them 
with a shell. 

Sling of bark. Another object that may 
perhaps be mentioned amongst objects of 
personal ornament is the sling used in 
carrying children, It is made of+a broad 
strip of the bark of the Bidiscus tliaceus, 
Some slings are covered entirely with netting, 
while others are ornamented with shells in 
various ways. Plate x1v shows one with 
strings of Dentalivm shell sewn on io it. 

Dancing ornaments of Ze/ranthera wood. 

‘A piece of Zésranthera wood, usually part of 

the shaft of an old pig-arrow, about 30 to Fig.4o. Neoklacesofmangiove 
35 cm, long, is taken and made into shavings seed-tops, Great Andaman 
with a Cyrend shell. , The wood is shaved 

carefully round and round, so as to make # continnous sheet of fibre, 
as though unwinding a roll of material. A bundle of these*shavings 
is tied at one end and covered with red paint, and forms an ofiject+that 
is carried in the hand or worn in the belt at dances, 7 

PERSONAL ORNAMENT; LittLE ANDAMAN. ; 

The personal ornaments of the Little Andaman and of the Jarawa 
are different from those of the Great Andaman Division, and therefore 
need to be described separately. 

Ornaments of bark. Strips of bark (? Cedtis cénnamonéa) are won 
by the men round the waist and round the arm. 

Ornamental cord. These are the ornaments most frequently met 
with both in the Little Andaman ‘and amongst the Jarawa. The basis 
is a strip of cane, vatying in breadth in different examples. On one 
side of this are laid strips of the yellow.skin of the Dendrobium, vaiying 
jn number according to the breadth of the cane, and the whole is 
served over or bound with thread, The technique in shown ih Fig.’ 41, 
which ‘tepiesents diagrammaticglly the method adopted when there are 
two strips of Dendvobium skin. Such ornamental cord is made in 
pieces of considerable length. Often tassels of thread (of Aicus hispida 
fibre) are attached to it at intervals, The cord is worn wound ound 
the waist, the neck, or the arm, Both men-and women wear it. 

Woman’s girdle. In the Little Andaman this is made of a number 
of fine strips of cane tied together with thread. At the fiont is attached 

Tig. 40 “Diagram showing method 8f making ornamental cord, , 
a ec Little Andaman 

a tatv@l of fibre made from young unopened palm. leaves (the, fibre 
called Agro in Akon Jeu). X 

‘Womargs shoulder strap. The women of the Little Andaman wear 
a strip of*bark ovet the shoulders, crossirig over the chest and passing 
beneath the .breasts. ‘ ‘ ‘ 

The abbve Brief ‘escription of the ornaments of the Andamanese is 
pethaps sufficient for thé purpose of this appendix, which is to deter- 
mine as far as possible ‘the clements of a primitive Negrito culture, 
Any complete accoun} of thie subject would need a large nutber of 
figures, dad a discussion of many comparatively unimportant details. 
The firstepoint of importance to be noted is that the personal orna- 
ments of the Little Andathan Division differ markedly from those of 
the Great Andaman Division, . One, difference is that the Papdanus 

leaf, which is used so much and in.so many ways i in the Great Andaman, 
BA. 31 

‘ 
seems not to be used at all in the Little Andaman. Another is that 
shélls, which are much used in the Great Andaman, are used to a far 
less extent in the Little Andaman, The natives of the Little Andaman 
told me that they sometimes make ornaments of Dentaliem shell, but 

_I did not see any such ornament, nor any other ornament of shell, in 
use. The ornaments of netting worn in the Great Andaman, and 
forming the usual dancing costume, seem not to be used in the Little 
Andaman. Finally, perhaps most important of all, there is at present 
no evidence that the natives of the Little Andaman make ornaments of 
either human o1 animal bones. In the Little Andaman the'lower jaw 
of a child is preserved by the parents and is worn by them, but I never 
saw a human skull (whether of child or adult) so worn, and T was not 
able to obtain any evidence of the use of strings of human bones such 
as are constantly seen in a camp of the Great Andaman. 

The points of similarity between the ornaments of the Little 

Andaman and those of the Great Andaman are very few. One of the 
nost striking is the great use that is made in both divisions of the 
yellow skin of the Dendrobium. It seems probable that here we have 
evidence of one element of a primitive Negrito culture, for the Negritos 
of the Philippines also are fond of using a yellow vegetable fibre for 
their personal ornaments. So far as it is possible to judge from thé 
figure and description, the armlet given by Meyer in Plate g1, No. 11, 
seems to be very similar to the ornamental cord of the Little Andaman? 
It is described as a “mit schwarz und gelben Grasstretfchen umflock- 
tener Bambus-reif.” ¢ 

Another point of resemblance between the Greal-Andaman*and the 
Little Andaman is that in both very litle use is mnade of feathe MS or 
flowers, The natives of the Great Andaman never make use of the 
feathers of birds, The Jarawa occasionally wear in a*chaplet » feather 
of the king-crow (Dicrurus macrocercus) if we may judge from aspecimen, 
in the British Museum, The natives of the Little Andaman certainly 
do not as a rule make any use of feathers, It would” scerfi, from all 
accounts, that the Semang and the Philippine Negritos do not make 
any considerable use of feathers for personal ornament. We may 
perhaps ‘hazard the conclusion that this is a mark of the Negrito cultwe 
distinguishing them from such people as the Papuans or Austyalians j in 
whose personal ornaments the feathers of birds occupy an impormnt ‘place. 

" In, the Great Andaman flowers are not used as personal ornaments. 
In the British Museum there is an ornament from the Little Andaman 
consisting of a strip of bark-fibre with. a few flowers attached. 

. . 

As regards personal ornament, thetefore, the only elements of a 
primitive Negrito culture that we seem to be able to trace in the 
Andamans at the present day are (1) the use of yellow vegetable fibre, 
and (2) the absence of any considerable use of feathers. 

One element of a primitive Andamanese culture, though not neces 
sarily of a primitive Negrito culture, would scem to be the use of a 
tassel of the fibre obtained from an unopened palm-leaf which is used 
by women to cover their genitals in the Little Andaman, and was 
similarly used until recently in the North Andaman, 

HAIR-DRESSING, SCARIFICATION, AND BoDY-PAINTING. 

At the present time the usual method of hair-dressing in the Great 
Andaman is to shave a portion of the scalp all round so as to leave 
a sort of skull-cap of hair, as may be seen in many of the plates of this 
yolume, Jn some cases a “parting” is made by shaving a narrow 
stip over the crown. (See Plate xv, for example.) When the hair 
grows so long as to be uncomfortable the whole head is shaved, and it 
is then permitted to grow again, In these days the natives cut their 
hair whenever they have an opportunity of obtaining a pair of scissors, 
In the Little Andaman women and old men are frequently to be seen 
With the head entirely shaved. The younger men shave away the lower 
edge of the hair all round i in the same way as the natives of the Great 
Jndaman, but this miy be a recent practice. 

The fashion of hair-dressing, of any rate for women, has changed 
within recent times, for Mr Man wrote in 1882 that “thé majority 
oF the women every week or ten days shave their heads almost entirely, 
leaving oply two narrow parallel lines of hair, termed goa, from the 
crown, to the nape of the neck” At the present time this style of 
hairdressing has fallen entirely into disuse, and the women do their 
‘hair in the same way as the men, 

The operation o of shaving, which is done with a flake of glass ot 
quartz, is performed’ by women, and never, or very rarely, by men. 

Mention has been made in an carlicr part of the work of the way in 
which the natives of the Great Andaman scarify the skin of the body 
and limbs with a flake of glass or quartz. The Semang do nét scarily 
themgelvas in this way, but some, at any rate, of the Negritos of the 
Phikippitles do, ’ 

The natives of the Great Andaman, as described earlier in titis 
work, paint their bodies with a grey clay called od#,or og, with a fine 

1 Man, 4, ctf, p. 77 sels 

white clay, and with red paint made by mixing burnt oxide of iron with 

fat ‘or oil. The natives of the Little Andaman use the same kind of 

clay as that called od or og in the Great Andaman, but instead of 

applying it in patterns they smear it roughly on the back and front of 
nthe trunk, They also use red paint, with which they smear their hair, 
” a practice never met with in the Great Andaman, 

ORNAMENTATION, 
The Andamanese have simple designs which they paint or incise 

Fig. 42. Designs incised or painted on belts of Pandanus feof, 
Great Andaman 

a o 

on their bodies and on a‘great number of the objects that‘they make 
and use, A few typical designs such as are incised or painted on belts of 
Pandanus \eaf are shown in Fig. 4a. A very large number of designs are 
based orrthe zig-zag line. Examples are shown in Fig. 42 ¢,¢, and g. Inall 
parts of the Great Andaman and also in the Little Andaman thé zig-zag 
line is associated with,snakes. Thus in the Little Andaman tiie simple 
zig-zag line is called dodo Awolage (dobo = snake). In tha Ni ort Andaman 
the design of zig-zag lines painted on the body with white clay is called 
oF bubi Pera-bat, or-cubi being the name of a species of large snake. 

A number of other common designs consist of parallel lineg of 
dots or of short strokes, an example of which is shown in Tig, 427 

By far the greater number of the Andamanese designs are based on 
the following elements, (rt) parallel an 
, i : i ee getllay 
lines crossing a surface from side to i! LT Le ty 
side at right angles to the edge or “Ny, wey, wy 
else in a sloping direction (about 45°), u Iyyl 1 

4] 

‘ VER TUEDVOURTCH TATE UPD UEUEE 
(2) parallel lines of dots or of short why, ut itr i a 
lines, i.e, parallel broken fines, as in Hi fil Hitt 4 
Mtr erematent dt tereeny 

Fig. 42 f, (3) zig-ang lines, which may My 
be single, or parallel or opposed so as je Hayat 
to make lines of lozenges. As an 
example of the way in which these 

elements may be combiried two de- ‘ YR M PrP 

signs copied from bamboo necklaces 

are shown in Fig: 43, 
It would perhaps be possible to 

show thal there is a real connection — ™*™xeaOAG 

between the ornamentation of the ig: 43 Designs on bamboo neck- 
Andamanese and that of the Semang, Ince from the North Andaman 
as there is certainly a considerable degree of superficial resemblance, 
eQut at present we understand so little the psychological processes 
undellying hg use of ornament amongst primitive peoples that the 
subject is one, of considerable difficulty. 

Hilly 0y, 
1 Naya! tn, 

CANOES. 

Canoes are in regular use on the coast in all patts of the islands. 
There aresthrec"lypes of canoe, (x) The Lille Andaman canoe, with 
one outtigger, propelled with paddles or with a pole, (2) The Great 
Andaman, small canoe, with one outrigger, propelled with paddles or 
with a pole. (3) The Great Andaman large canoe, without outrigger, 
propelled with oars. 

The third kind of canoe mentioned above is a recent innovation. 
The natives themselves say that’ such canoes’ have only been made _ 
in reréint times, since they have been able to obtain a plentiful supply 
of iron Yools, and so have been able to cut down and hollow out large 
trunks’, “They seem to have been invented by the natives of the South 
Andaman, and ¢opied by those of the Middle and North Andaman. 

1 Man, Journ Antar, Inst, X11, p. 367, nole 4. 

' 
. 

Canoes of this type are propelled by rowing with short oars, except 
in shallow water where they are poled. This method of propulsion 
(rowing as opposed to paddfing) was adopted in imitation of the boats 
with which they have become familiar since the European occupation. 

* For the small canoe of the Great Andaman five or six species of 

© soft-wooded trees are used, of which three are species of Stereulia: A 

r Suitable tree is selected near the shore or a creek, and js felled, Care 
is taken to make it fall in a particular direction, Thus, if the trunk is 
curved, the convex side of the curve will have to be the bottom of the 
canog and the tree should fall so that this side lies on the ground. 
Trees are very rarely regular and before beginning the work of cutting 
the natives have to decide how it should be cut so as to give the best 
result, ie, the greatest stability. a 

After the tree is felled the trunk is cut to the requisite length, The 
inside of the canoe is first roughly hollowed out with the adze, no use 
being made of fire. The bark is then removed from the outside of the 
trunk and the two ends are shaped. Finally, the inside is carefully 
finished with the adze so as to reduce the sides and bottom to the 
requisite thickness, 

Except at the stem and stern, the canoe retains the shape of the 
tree, only the bark being removed, and the sides and bottom being 
formed of the alburnum or sap-wood." At the stern a small platform js, 
cut projecting over the water, which serves as a’ seat for the steersman, 
At the proy a larger platform is cvt, on which the harpooner stands 
when he fs harpooning turtle or fish, Below these two platforms the 
ends ate not cut away squarely but are rounded from Side to side. ,, phe 
prow of the canoe is in every case the lower and therefore broader end 

+ of the trunk. It is only in this way that a sufficiently ewe platform 
can be provided for the harpooner. 

The trees used for canoes have arpithy core and there is seems a 
small patch in both the prow and the stern which wquid admit- the 
water. In former times these two places were caulked with bees’-wax. 
At the present time the natiyes often nail a piece of tin (part of an old 
kerosene tin, for example), with some rags beneath it, on the outside of 

« the canoé at these two places, 

When the hull of the canoe is finished it is moved to thewshdre or 
to the bank of a creek and the outrigger is attached. The float is.a 
strhight spar of light wood. In the North Andaman the w4od of the 
fTibiseus, tidaceus is often used, but Mr Man says that in the South 
Andaman the float is always made from a species of Sterculia (mad in 

e . 
Aka-Bea). The ends of the float are only roughly shaped. ghe 
broader end of the float is forward. 

The float is attached to a number of booms, of which there are 
never less than three in the smallest canoes, while there may be as 
many as eight or nine in a large canoe. A medium-sized cunoe has fivee 
or six booms, The boom is a thin straight piece of tough wood, of® 
which one end is sharpened and thrust right through two holes cut « 
in the gunwales of the canoe opposite Lo one another, the sharpened 
end projecting for a few inches on the port side of the canoc. ‘The 
boom thus projects about three feet on the starboard side on the level 
of the gunwale, 

Where the boom passes through the gunwales of the canoe it is 
bouné with cane, and the cane is bound round the whole of that part 
of the boom that is within the canoe between the two gunwales. (Sve 

. 
« 
fan 

Fig. 4 a4. Transverse svotion of canoe and ontriggers a, hull; 4, hoom;., eane binding 
over boom d, slick attaching baom to float; ¢, stays of cane; f float 

ig. 44.) ‘this gortion of the boom forms it seat for the man paddling 
the ‘tanoe, so that he sils ont level with the yunwale with his feat on 
the floor"of the canoc 

The koom 45 attached to tha float by means of sticks of tough ' 
wood. These sticks, having pointed ends, are driven into the Moat, one 
perpendicular, and the other two @ an angle on each side. ‘Che tops of 
the thred slicks am fastened to the boom a few inches from its end by 
means of a strip of cane, ‘The arrangement of the three sticks is shown 
in Fig. 45. 

The strip of cane with which the sticks are bound to thg boom is 
wound spirally round the boom itself for a few inches and is then* 
chyrfed@lown round the float and back to the boom again on the other 
side, ‘The three sticks provide an efficient resistance against a Jopgi- 
tudinal trust (ie, a thrust in the same direction as the line of the 

4 Many of. cif ps a7. 

cane). The strip of cane passing fiom the boom round the float and 

back to the boom again provides a resistance against any lateral thrust 

on the float, The three sticks, being driven in when the wood of the 

float is dry, do nof readily work loose, as the water in which it is con- 
ostantly immeised keeps the wood swollen. The cane binding, including 
the stays on each side, may work loose, but can readily be tightencd or 
. renewed. Each of the booms is attached to the float in exactly the 

same way, and the whole arrangenient is very efficient in keeping the 

float rigidly attached to the hull in such a position that it rests on the 

surfage of the water when the hull itself rides freely balanced. 

Canoes of this type vary in dimensions within wide limits, A small 

canoe with only three booms, which li 

would cary three persons, measured S 

4°85 metres in length over all with ‘ 

a beam of about 35 centimetres, A 

large canoe may measure as much as 

9 metres with a proportionate beam. 

A well-made canoe will often bal- é 

ance well enough as it stands, but Fig. 45 Showing manner in which 
it is sometimes necessary to balance _ the boom (a) is connected with the 
it with ballast of stones o1 pieces of float (2). ? 

coral, In any case the canoe is easily overturned in a rough seq, 
unless the occupants can maintain the balance with their hodies® As 
the canoe is made of light wood it cannot sink even when full of water, 

and the nitives easily right an overturned canoe, bale it “out, and a in 
again, even in a 1ough sea. 

The furniture of a canoe consists of the ballast (of stone), & piece of 
stone (or sométimes a piece of tin) on which to keep a small fire 
smouldering, an anchoi consisting of a lump of coral or stor attached 
‘to a length of rope, a Mavytilus shell or two for baling out the canoe, 
a bamboo pole of about 18 fect in length for palingnthiencanoe in 
shallow water, and paddles. 

In the platform overhanging the prow a few holes are cut. These 
holes are sometimes used to attach the rope by which the canoe is 
fastened to an anchor. One or mote turtle skulls are often attaghed so 
as to hang down beneath the platform. In tuitle-hunting exfeditions 
on dark nights a toich is slung beneath the fo:ward platform so as to 
shtd its light on the water while the harpooner temains in sh&dow, 
~ _When a canoe is finished it is decorated with designs painted on it 
” with red paint and white clay, patticulmly on, the forward platform and 

q 

) 

4] 
along the gunwale. These designs soon wear off when the canoc isin 
use and are not renewed. ? 

The paddles used by the Andamanese vaty considerably in size 
and to some extent in shape, but the following description 
with its accompanying figme gives a fair idea of a typical 
specimen. The whole paddle has a length of 123'5 centimetres, 
the shaft being 85 centimetres and the blade 385 centimetres, 
The diameter of the shaft from thé blade to the middle is 
2°6 centimeties, and fiom the middie towards the handle end 
it tapers to a point. The shaft is circular in section throughout | , 
its length. The blade is leaf-shaped, pointed bluntly at the 
apex. In section it is plano-convex, with a maximum thickness 
of 1°3 Centimetres and a width of 8'7 centimetres, Paddles 
are cut with an adze from the wood of the Atyristica Zongifolia 
and planed with a boar’s tusk, They are often ornamented, 
when new, with painted designs in red and white, 

In deep, water the canoe is paddled. Each of the occupants 
sits facing forward. The steersman sits on the stern platform. 
The others sit on the seats provided by the outrigger booms. 
Rach man paddles on which side he chooses. It rests with 
the steeisman 1o maintain the canoe in its proper couse. In 
shallow water the cange is propellett with a pole, A man stands ‘ 
on the forwatd. platform and poles the canoe, steering as he 
does so. In a fairly large canoe » man at the stern may also 
take a pple and, standing up, help to propel the canoe, 7 

AS the work Gonnected with the making of canoes and 
paddles ie done by men alone, except the painting, whichsis - 
usually done by women. It issthé men also who make most 
use of candes, 

The large canoe, that is now made by all the tribes of the 
Gieat Andaman Diyjsion, is simply a canoe of the same general shape as* 
the Great Andaman outrigger canoe, cut from a larger tree and without 
the outrigger, The shape of the hull, with its platforms fore and aft, is 
exactly the same, It seems that when the natives obtained a plentiful 
supply of i1on tools (after 1858) they began to cut down and hdllow out 
larger tres than formerly. Having made these larger canocs they 
fourid that they would, when well cut and ballasted with stone, float 
quite well Without an outrigger. (Il may be mentioned that the hull of 
a small canoe is always tested on the water before the ouldgger i is 
attached.) Indeed a well cut canoe of large size floats and balances 

Fig. 46, 
Paddle 

' 
better i in a rough sea than a smaller one with an outrigge. It is 
possible that at fist these large canoes were propelled with paddles just 
as the outijgger canoes are, the paddleis facing forward. Having leaint 
to understand the principle of the oar, through thei contact with the 
Penal Settlement, the natives applied this principle to theik own canoes. 
It could not, of course, be applied to the small canoes, as the shape of 
the canoe and the position of the paddle: make the use of an oar 
impossible. It could be applied very easily, howevei, to the new large 
canoes. In these the oarsman does not sit on a level with the gunwale, 
but gits down in the hull itself on a piece of wood resting on the two 
Sides of the hull a few inches above the floor. The gunwale of the 
canoe is thus about on a level with the bottom of his staanum. A number 
of holes are made in the gunwale on each side, and by means of these, 
loops of cane are attached to the gunwale. The oar, which is shaped 
in imitation of European oars, but with a short shaft, is thrust through 
the loop of cane, which serves as a fulcrum or rowlock. The rowers 
face aft. A man at the’ stern stees with a paddle, In shallow water 
the large canges are propelled with poles in exactly the same way as the 
smaller canoes, 

In the bow, at about the position that would be occupied by the 
foremost boom in an outrigger canoe, holes are made in the gunwale on 
each side and a piece of wood is thrust through them as a sort of 
thwart. This is "to: provide a means of making fast the end Of the 
harpoon line or the anchor line, and thus serves a purpose that is 
served by the foremost boom in the outrigger canoe, 

The Jnrge canoes are not quite so useful in tuftle- hunting as, the 
smaller outrigger variety, as they cannot be so quickly turned when the 
pursued turtle doubles, Very often a large canoes and g small canoe are 
taken together on ati ‘expedition, ‘the harpooning being ntosily done 
from the smaller one while the captured turtles are placed in the lager 
cone. A small canoe with three or four men cannot,hold,moye than one 
or at most two big turtles, whereas as many as ten or a dozen can be 
stowed in one of the large canoes, 

The chief use of the large canoes is to make journeys from place 
to placé, One of the ‘largest will hold as many as thirty men and 
women with their baggage, whercas an outuigger canoe wofidneyer 
carry more than nine or ten, Fuither, there is less chance of .an 
even heavily laden big canoe capsizing in a rough sea than of an 
outrigger canoe doing so. One result of the introduction of the 
ldtge canoe has therefore been ta enable the natives to move much 

* + 
more freely about the islands than formerly, The passage fiom the 
South Andaman to Ritchie’s Archipelago, fo. instance, would onlyve 
attempted in an outrigger canoe on a vety calm day, whereas in a laige 
canoe it can be successfully accomplished even when there is something 
of a sea running, i , 

The small canoe of the Little Andaman is fairly similar to that of 
the Great Andaman. Thete are three differences, (1) The stem and 
stern are squaiely cul in the Little Andaman, instead of being rounded 
off. (2) The outrigger booms are attached to the top of the gunwale 
by cane binding which passes thiough holes made in the gunwales, 
instead of being themselves passed through holes in the gunwale? 
(3) The float is attached to the booms ‘in a different and less efficient 
manners Three pointed hard-wood sticks are diiven into the float, but 
they are all three approximately peipendicular, They are botind at the 
top to the boom, but there are no stays of cane to maintain the float 
rigid against a lateral thrust. In other respects the Little Andaman 
canoe is the same as the Great Andaman cange. 

The Jarawa of the South"Andaman do not at the present time make 
use of canoes. This is apparently because, through their hostility with 
the Aka-Bea, they have been confined to the interior of the island. 
They make rafts of bamboos lashed together for crossing creeks and 
inlets, The forest-dwelleis of the Great ‘Andaman. Division seem also 
to have made  ogcasiofi al use of similar rafts for the same purpose, 

A canoe of the North Sentingl was seen by Mr Gilbert Rogers 
during a. visit to’that island in 19034, It had been hollowed"out of a 
tte and was abou> 15 feat long. . The ends of the canoe were cul off 
perpendicularly to its length leaving a piece of the tree aboyt one inch 
thick projecting for about thiec' inches ,beyond ‘either end to form a 
small but sickety’ seat. ‘The log from which the canoe was cut was 
curved so that the ends were slightly higher than the middle It 
had a float “supported by six booins passing through holes cut ina 
the sides of the Ganoe. ‘These booms were fastened to smaller 
pieces of stick fixed into the sides of the canoe beneath them. 
The’ outrigger was attached to each boom by two small pointed 
sticks driven into the float and tied to the bodrn above with cane. 
There, was one small paddle, a Mawtilus shell for a baler, and five poles 
resting off the outrigger booms. These point to the canoe being poled 
along in the lagoon, which is quite shallow, rather than to its being used 
for long journeys or outside the reefs which surround the island, The 

1 Supplement to the dudaman aiid Nicobar Gaxetie, January 2, 1904 

+ 

canoe was 18 inches in diameter at the smalicr end and pethap! 
o'inches wide at the lager end. 

This description shows that the canoe of the North Sentinel 1s o 
the whole move like that of the Little Andaman than like that of the 
Great Andaman. ’ 

It seems probable that the Andaman Islands wete peopled by sea 
from the coast of Burma, If this were so, then the original ancestors 
of the Andamanese must have been in possession of canoes, A con 
sideration of the present Andaman canoes suggests that thejr ancestors 
had gahoes with a single outrigger on the starboard side, with a number 
8f Booms. Of the different methods of attaching the booms to  , 
float, it is possible that the method now in use in the Little Andar f* 
(and apparently also in the North Sentinel) is primitive, and thar /& 
Great Andaman attachment js an improvement that has been inven *S 
since the separation of the two divisions. On the other hand it is not 
impossible that the Great Andaman attachment is primitive, and tha 
in the Little Andaman we bave a degeneration that might be due to tt + 
fact that the Little Andaman (and equally the North Sentinel) provide 
much less scope for maritime pursuits than the Great Andaman. 

The recent imvention of the laige canoe in the Great Andaman and 
the adoption of the principle of the ont shows that the Andamanese 
1eadily adopt new inventions when these are cleaily of setvice to them, : 

Turning now to the Semang, as these peoplé hive inland they have 
no use for canoes. They make 1afts of bamboos lashed *logether wit] 

* Which théy float down the vets, returning overland. 

. 
Some of the Philippine Negiitos seem to live"on ‘the coagt aif 
possibly have canoes, but nothing is known about these, 

CONCLUSION, 

The examination of the technical culture ol the Andamanese giver” 
above has been sufficient to cnable us to make a few statements as-tc 
what was probably the culture of the Negiitos before they were split uy 
into isotated groups. It is highly probakle that they oblained thei 
subsistence solely by hunting and collecting vegetable producgs. 4, They 
had bows and arrows, the form of bow being probably fairly similar, tc 
that used at the present day in the Little Andaman, while Zo: hunting 
the larger animals they had arrows with detathable heads, They 
possibly had no knowledge of any way of making,implements of stone 

: 

jut made yse only of such materials as wood, bone, and shell. Ib is 
,tot probable that they possessed the ait of making pottery, and (Meir 
" asketry and mat-work were probably confined to very simple forms, 
ya thei: personal ornaments there is 1eason to think that they showed 
: fondness for bright yellow vegetable tibre, and made little or no use 
of the feathers of birds, The oinamentation of then utensils was 

probably confined to the use of the simplest forms of geometiic design 
with a prepondeiance of the zig-zag and the lézenge, Finally their huts 
bonsisted of a single sloping 100f sufficient to afford shelter for a single 
family or larger huts consisting of such small huts joined together, | 

We have seen that since the Andamanese have occupied Their 
sent home, or at any rate since the Gieat Andaman Division and the 

te Andaman Division have been separated fiom one another, many 
. Ages, some of considerable importance, have taken place in the 
andaman technology, In general it would seem that the technical 
culture of the Great Andaman has changed move than that of the Little 

\ndaman. Putting aside the effect on the technology of the mtro- 
action of iron, there is no evidence that any of the changes that haye 
caken place in the Great Andaman have been due to outside influence, 
Important modifications have taken place mn the form of the bow, in 
the forms and technique of baskets, and in personal oinaments, and in 
all these instances there is no 1eason to think that these changes have 
not been brought aboat by the natives themselves without the influence 
‘of contact with” othe: people. Their method of working iron, based 
as at is, ta all appearance, on theh former method of working shell, 
akows that even here, though the iron itself came to them from 
‘outside, and even though they may have learnt its use from seejng it 
jased by aljens, still they have not leant fiom othas how to fashion 
the metal jnto shape by heating it. Thus, so far as thei technical 
cultwe i8 concerned, there is no evidence whatever that the 
\ndamanese have ever been infttionced by contact with any other, 
face sinco‘the “ime? now many centuries ago, when they first reached 
the islands, 

On’the other hand there is'some probability that the ancestors of 
the Andamanese, before they fist reached the islands, or at any rate 
‘before tig isolation of the Little Andaman fiom the Great Andaman, 
had, feartt from some other race how to make pottery, and it is 
possible that at the same time they may have acquired other elements 
of their culture, such as the outtigger canoe. We thay even give a 
guess as to the pailicular cultme from which the ancestois “of the 

. ‘ 
Adamanese may have adopted these elements, which may well hay 
beOn that of a bianch of that people of whom an offshoot people 
the Nicobars, 

Confirmation of these hypotheses, if confirmation be eve1 fortl 
coming, can only be obtained in the study of the history of races and o 
culture in south-eastern Asia. Until we have much fuller knowledge o 
the culture of the Semang and the Negritos of the Philippines, arly 
conclusions that may be drawn from the study of the Andamanese 
alone must be 1egarded as provisional working hypotheses only, and it 
is as, such that they are hete put forward. 

* 
a a

Ma 
| In writing woids of the Andaman languages J have used a slightly 
‘\odifi. » n of the “Anthtopos” Alphabet of Father Schmidt}, which 
" 4COlnw der to be by far the most scientific alphabet foi writing down the 
guages of primitive peoples. The consonants are 

a en ae 
a 
} n 
4 t d n 1 1 
f(r ; pb wom 

|e letter 1) is used-for the nasalised guttural stop (vg in English) which 
should always be written with one letter, since it is a single consonant, 
quite dissiret from the double consonant wg of “ungodly.” The letter 
fistands for.a palatalised 2, something like the sound in French “agneau is 
The & and j, which, in the “Anthropos” Alphabet represent the sounds 
hin English “chuich” and “judge” respectively, should, I think, really 
be wiltten U ahd d’. ‘The t' is a palatalised 4 as heard in & “Tuesday,” 
‘{hvher cas then& is a ficative, often regaided as a compound of ¢ and sh.” 
We i ia nde always easy to distinguish t’ from & and d! fom j, but I believe 
he Aramanese sounds are really t’ and d’, and this is to some extent 
onfirted bythe fact that they have no s, z, sh or zh in their languages. 
[have useg the & and j because former writeis had written these sounds 
ich and j and it seemed worth while to make some sacrifice of scientific 
exactness in order to avoid too gieat a divergence in spelling from 
‘Previous workers in the same field. 
ea “The igmaining consonants may be pronounced as in English. I have 
se astinguished between different varieties of the consonants 1, rt, d, 
k and g. Varther I have not distinguished between prand p (the labial 

1 Published in Vol. 11 of the journal Anti opos, 1907. 

AN, . 

o 

fricative), Many of the words of the Northen languages that I have, 
writtenwwith a p are often pronounced with a p sound. 
The vowels are 

i u 
e a ° 6 
& 2 
a.a 
a 
These may be pronounced as follows: , 

i, intgrmediate between the vowels of “ it” and “eat.” 

8,"as the vowel in “ say.” 

e, as the ¢ in “error” or the @ in “ Mary.” 

a, as the @ in “ man.” 

a, as the @ in French “ pas.’ 

a, as the @ in “ path.” 

9, as the vowel in “not” or in “nought.” 

0, as in “go.” 

u, as the vowel in “fool.” 

©, nearly as the German 6. 

I have not attempted to distinguish all the different varieties of 
vowel sounds that are found’in the different dialects. Slightly different 
but closely related sounds are represented by the same letter’, 

In writing Andamanese words I have followed the practtca, of s@pa- . 
rating by hyphens the affixes from the stems in each word In the 
Andamafese languages there are two main classes of words, The first 
class consists of words each of which is a simple stem (without affixes 
Such words are the names of what the Andaman Islanter regatds as 

” simple independent objects or things, such as 7va, canoe, derada, a mat, 

va,a pig. The second class consists of words each of which isformed 

- of astem and a prefix. In the language of the Littke Andaman and in 

thaf of the Jarawa as far as known) these prefixes ara shuple raivels, 

t, €, a, 0-, and wu. In the languages of the Gieat Andaman Division 

they are such as of, aka-, eva-, ¢-, u-, ab-, etc. Such words are used lo 
denote dependent objects. such as the parts, qualities or actions of a® 

\ 

1 Although I had acquired some knowledge of phonetics before I wept to the, 
Andathans, as a necessary pait of the preliminary traimng of an ethnologist, yet itavas 
not reqjly sufficient to erable me to deal in a thoronghily scientific manner with the 

+ problems of Andampyese phonetics, and my further studies of the sudject give ma 
~, Yeason to believe that my phonetic analysis of the Andaman languages was not as 
.thorough as it might have been. c 

k 

iing, Thus while a pig (ra) or @ canoe (702) is an independent object 
nd is thercfore denoted by a simple stem, the head or prow of aig 
r canoe, being a part of a “thing,” is denoted by a word (otda) con- 
isting of a stem (-Z0) and a prefix (o#-). So also the quality of bigness 
which may belong to a pig or a canoe is denoted by a word (er-Azr0) 
consisting of a stem (-Au70) and a prefix (er-). 

‘Thus the second class includes many woids that we should call 
nouns, all the words we should call adjectives and practically all those 
we should vegaid as verbs, In the Andamanese languages the distinction 
between nouns and adjectives is not very clear and even less so is the 
distinction between adjectives and verbs. Whereas the distinction, be- 
tween things (independent objects) on the one hand, and the parts, 
qualities, actions, etc. of things on the other, is of the utmost importance. 
For this’ reason I have thought it advisable always to sepaate by a 
hyphen the prefix and the stem in words of the second class. 

In “compound words or phrases in which the second word consists 
of prefix and stem it is common to inseit before the prefix a 7 or an /. 
Thus ra Her-huro is “a hig pig” and ra fot-do is “a pig's head.” In 
writing such words I have placed an inverted comma between the ¢ or 2 
and the prefix, This infix ¢ must not be confused with the first personal 
pronoun in the Noith Andaman, 7%, contracted to Z” before a prefix.