Chapter V: The Interpretation of Andamanese Customs and Beliefs: Ceremonial (2)

It was formerly the custom, I was told, always to have 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 group. 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 seen that the chief function of the dance is to arouse in the mind of every individual a sense of the unity of the social group of which he is a member, and its function before setting out to a fight is therefore 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 comparatively 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 provision 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 therefore say that the most important function of any such adorning 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 netting and Dentalium 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 look well.

The occasions on which such personal decoration is 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 expression of personal vanity the society ensures that the individual 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 Dentalium 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 themselves 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 Dentalium 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 importance, 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 increased 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, i.e. 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 rate in the instance of a bridegroom or initiate, realise that he has deserved their regard. So, to express their regard for the dead man they paint the inanimate body. Hence it is that the greater the esteem in which the dead man or woman is held, the greater is the care bestowed on the last painting.

We may conclude therefore that the painting of the body with white clay and the wearing of ornaments of Dentalium 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 ornament and dancing, amongst uncivilised peoples, are connected with sexual emotion. It is, of course, extremely difficult to disprove a statement of this sort. 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 adornment. 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 feelings 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, etc., whereas these are adequately accounted for by the hypothesis that the dance is a method 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 occasions on which it is regarded as obligatory. There is therefore, I believe, no special connection between the dancing and personal ornament of the Andamanese and sexual feeling. 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 outside the scope of this work.

I remarked above that the explanation which I 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 Dentalium 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 improve 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 protective power, and thereby arouse in the person a sense of security. Exactly the same sort of protective power is attributed to things that cannot be worn on the body, such as fire, and it will therefore be convenient 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 sentiment, 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, is the recognition by the individual that for his security and well-being he depends entirely upon the society. Now for the Andaman Islander the society is not sufficiently concrete and particular 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 dependence towards every important possession of the society, towards every object which for the society 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 society 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 on a 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 society 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 disease 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 intrinsic qualities of the materials they 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 demonstrated 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 sea) 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. I 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 therefore 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 to 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. The most important of these are the Anadendron paniculatum (used for bow-strings and for fine string), the Hibiscus tiliaceus (used for rope) and the Gnetum edule (used for string, and inferior to the Anadendron). 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 Hibiscus is used mainly in the hunting of turtle and big fish. Consequently the tree itself from which the 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 uneatable. In the turtle-eating ceremony the initiate who, as we shall see later, is in a condition of danger by reason of having eaten turtle for the first time after a period of abstention, is seated on Hibiscus leaves 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 Hibiscus are not obtainable when the ceremony is performed those of the Myristica longifolia are used instead. Now this is the tree from which the natives always make their canoe paddles, which, like ropes of Hibiscus fibre, are used in hunting turtle. This specialisation is therefore easy to understand; the natives habitually make use of the Hibiscus and the Myristica in turtle-hunting; they use the intrinsic qualities of these trees in their actual struggles with turtle and large fish, and by means of these qualities they are able to succeed 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 protect them from the evil influences that they believe (for reasons to be explained later) result from the eating of its flesh.

This explanation is readily verified by considering an exactly parallel instance. In the pig-eating ceremony at initiation the leaves of the Hibiscus or the Myristica 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 lancæfolia. 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 Hibiscus to turtle. It is by making use of the qualities of the wood that they are 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 Tetranthera 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 Tetranthera 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 carried 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 society depends in its daily life, but the special uses of each of them as amulets are only explicable when we consider the different 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, however, that the plant does 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 Anadendron seems to possess a special power which makes it a source of protection against dangers from the sea. The same is true of the Gnetum edule, though, as this fibre is less valued than that of the Anadendron, 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 seems 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 occupied 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 Gnetum, 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 (Hibiscus, Anadendron, Gnetum), 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 value 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 Andaman make themselves ornaments, which they do not regularly use in any other way, namely that of the Ficus laccifera. We may perhaps regard this as a genuine and demonstrable example of a survival in custom. The natives of the Little Andaman, who, until their recent contact with those of the Great Andaman, did not know the use of the Anadendron, use the fibre of the Ficus for their bow-strings. We are justified in assuming, I believe, 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 Anadendron, because of its service as the material for bow-strings, must then have been attributed to the Ficus. When the substitution of the superior Anadendron fibre came about, the belief in the efficacy of the Ficus 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 Ficus fibre as an amulet is an example of survival. It may be noted that the qualities of the Ficus are supposed to be similar to those of the Anadendron. Thus while one medicine-man stopped a storm with Anadendron, another did the same thing on another occasion with Ficus.

The above examples are sufficient to justify the generalisation 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 cane 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 protective 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 protective power is attributed to human bones, but the discussion of this belief 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 feeling of his dependence 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 either positive or negative, positive 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 already 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 depends 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 value of the painted individual. We will next consider the use of the clay called odu. This clay is painted on the body of a mourner and is the outward sign of mourning; it is used at certain stages of the initiation ceremonies; it is also regularly used for painting the body with the designs known as e̱ra-puli. According to the rule of method laid down at the beginning of the chapter we must seek some common explanation of these different uses of the same substance.

We may consider, first of all, the patterns (e̱ra-puli) 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 smearing 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 [169].” In another place he says: “After eating 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 to detect, and therefore will not be attracted to, them by the savoury smell of the food of which they have partaken. Again, when heated by travelling or by hunting or dancing, they have recourse to the same wash, but in these cases it is applied thinly [170].”

There are here two explanations of fundamentally different character. First the Andamanese 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 statements 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 does 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.

It is easy to explain how Mr Man has fallen into an error in this matter. On many occasions, when I questioned the natives as to their reason for painting themselves with clay I received the answer, “When we have eaten pork or turtle or dugong, we become ot-kimil and so we take clay and paint ourselves.” Now the word ot-kimil in the Aka-J̌eru language is the word that the natives use to express what we mean by the word “hot.” But while “hot” may always be translated by ot-kimil 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.

Let us examine briefly the word in question. In the languages of the North Andaman the stem is -kimil. With the prefix ot- or er- it is used to mean “hot” as in T’ot-kimil-bom, “I am hot,” or Ino ot-kimil bi or Ino er-kimil bi, “The water is hot.” Used by itself the stem kimil 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-kimil, and is addressed or spoken of as Kimil, instead of by his or her proper name. The turtle-eating ceremony is called čokbi-kimil, or čokbi-ǰo or kimil-ǰo, čokbi meaning “turtle” and ǰo 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 or 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 Aka-Bea language the word “hot” is translated by Mr Portman by the stem uya. The stem kimil appears in the form gumul in only some of the uses it has in the Northern languages. Gumul is the name of the latter part of the rainy season. A youth passing through the initiation ceremonies is said to be aka-gumul and is addressed or spoken of as Guma. The turtle-eating ceremony is called gumul-le-ke, le-ke meaning “eating.” The word thus means “the gumul eating” and is the literal equivalent of the kimil-ǰo of the North.

The uses of the word kimil may be summarised as follows:

(1) 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 ceremonies, and to denote the ceremonies themselves;

(6) to denote a condition in a person consequent on eating certain foods, and perhaps sometimes due to other causes, to 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 ot-kimil 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 agrees 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 eaten 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 Anadendron paniculatum by scraping 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 sincere throughout, it is to be presumed that the three different statements are so many different ways of saying one and the same thing. We may therefore conclude that the Andaman Islanders believe that there is a peculiar power in foods (or in some foods) which makes it dangerous to eat them. This danger may be expressed by saying that the person who has eaten food will, unless he takes certain precautions, be liable to be ill. Now sickness is believed to be caused by the spirits of the jungle and the sea, and therefore an alternative 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-kimil, when it is used to describe the condition of a person who has eaten food, denotes simply this condition of danger, and nothing more. For this we shall find ample confirmation later on. Subject to such later confirmation I will here state what has been maintained, which is (1) that the e̱ra-puli patterns are to be explained as being protective, (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 properties of food.

Not all foods are equally dangerous. I was able to establish roughly a sort of scale. The most dangerous foods are dugong; the fish called komar; 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 Plotosus; 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 Artocarpus 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 eat are actually dangerous, such as the sharks, the sting-rays, the armed Plotosus, and the fish komar 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 is a 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 contrary when there is plenty of food the whole society rejoices together. Every one 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 is a member of the community, sharing with others their joys and sorrows, taking part in a common 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 feeling of his relation to his fellows. It is also the source of a very large proportion of his joys and sorrows, his excitements 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 very closely with the feeling of moral obligation; the most valued moral qualities in the Andaman Islands are energy in providing food and generosity in distributing it; among the worst 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 individual 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 end 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 both positive and negative. It is the source of conditions of 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, translated 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 provided him with a means of avoiding the dangers of turtle eating. What he does feel, then, as I have tried to show, is not a fear of food but a sense of the value of food.

This interpretation will, I hope, be amply justified later, and the psychological processes assumed by it will be further illustrated. One point needs to be emphasised here, namely that the suggested 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 precautions. 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 eat 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 country 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, I believe, are so many different expressions of the social value of food.

I have maintained earlier 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 seem, at first sight, to be 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 proceed further.

First, it can 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 such as sharks. This same power, however, 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 driven away by the “smell” of the plant. If a piece of the creeper were burnt in the fire there would be a great storm, according to one statement, or all the turtle would be driven away from the vicinity, according to another. The handling of the plant in the preparation 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 indirectly as a magical protection against evil, it is also dangerous, i.e. it will produce undesirable effects unless treated with the proper ritual precautions.

Now just as materials such as the Anadendron 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 element 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 provided by the custom of wearing ornaments made of the bones of animals that have been eaten. These ornaments are believed to possess protective powers of the same kind as those attributed to 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 those animals that are believed to be most dangerous to 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 precautions are taken, however, then the society 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 eating of food.