Chapter V: The Interpretation of Andamanese Customs and Beliefs: Ceremonial (4)

At certain stages of the initiation 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-eating ceremonies. After a boy’s back is cut he is addressed and spoken of for some time as Eǰido, his own name not being spoken. Similarly during and after the turtle-eating or the pig-eating ceremony he is addressed and spoken of by the name Kimil. 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 ceremony, for example, the youth is not permitted to handle a bow for some weeks (the bow being the typical masculine implement).

The names of a newly-married couple are avoided for a few days 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 dropping the names of a father and mother before and after the birth of a child, particularly the first born.

At the turtle-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-eating 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 those who were present at the ceremony, and therefore serves 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, particularly to turtle, such as Čokbi-čiro, turtle-liver, Čokbi-tei, turtle-blood, etc.

During 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 personality 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 destroy 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 mourning. 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 a new social value, a new personality. During the period of change, while the personality does not exist in the same form as before the death, but does not yet exist in the form in which 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 any 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 periods 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 performed 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 appropriate 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 valued 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 value of individuals 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 beliefs 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 to act upon the society. 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 (i.e. the social personality of a person recently dead) is obviously a source of weakness and disruption to the community, affecting the survivors through their 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 be, I believe, not to shun the dead body of a 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 weak 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 Andamanese 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 influenced 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 were drawn after 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 conceived 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 [174]. 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 to see his brother and by this contact causes the brother’s death. The story implies that it was not because Yaramurud 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 thought 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 Yaramurud’s brother who was the first to die through the influence of the spirits.

The feelings of the living towards the spirits of the dead 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 communities having occasional friendly relations. That the Andamanese themselves look upon it in some such 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 has to make peace with them in the same way that men make peace with one another after they have been at war.

This notion of hostility between the society and the world of spirits is found in other primitive societies, and seems everywhere to have a definite social function. The removal of a member of the community either by death or otherwise is a direct attack on the social solidarity and produces in primitive societies 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 [175]. 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 method 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 at a death from sickness directs itself against some community 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 J̌a̤rawa 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.

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 connection 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 dangerous 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 dead men. Indeed the Andamanese call such bones “spirit-bones” (lau-to̱i, čauga-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 spirits is not intrinsically evil, but may be used to produce both good and evil is afforded by the beliefs about medicine-men or dreamers (oko-ǰumu). 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 medicine-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 ko̱ro 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 returned 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. For 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 with the spirits in one of the three possible ways.

We are justified in concluding that the special power of the medicine-man, by which he is distinguished from his fellows, is simply the same power that is possessed by the spirits, from contact 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. Moreover, 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 enlisting 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 circumstances 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 ceremonies the initiate is required to abstain from sleep after eating pork or turtle, and this would seem to be because sleep is regarded as generally dangerous and therefore 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 life, and is therefore also withdrawn 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 the 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 sick 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 of a child, and by a woman during the menstrual period. All these, as various customs show, are believed by the Andamanese to be conditions of danger in which it is necessary to take ritual or magical precautions. A better example for our purpose is that of an adolescent during the period covered by the initiation ceremonies, 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 conflict 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 conditions of danger tend to be thought of as due to contact with the spirits, and sleep is therefore supposed to be a state in which such contact 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 Andamanese 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 -ǰumu in Aka-J̌eru). 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 cause or cure sickness in his fellows. In this shadow-world the man himself becomes as it were a shadow, a mere reflection of himself; it is not he that lives and acts in his dreams but his ot-ǰumulo, his double, his shadow-self, or, as we might say, his soul. It is but a step from this to the representation of the spirit-world as a similar world of shadows and dream-shapes, and to the conclusion that when a man dies it is his ot-ǰumulo 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 feelings of attachment by his friends, the resulting final attitude towards the spirits is ambivalent. By a simple step the spirits come to be regarded as the cause of sickness and death, and therefore as hostile to living men. Yet, as the beliefs about medicine-men show, it is possible for exceptional 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 concrete 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 make it more concrete. This need of concrete representation of the spirit-world shows itself in other beliefs, in which may be seen the tendency 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 [176]. The spirits must be thought of as somewhere, but there is no consistency 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 belief that food is dangerous, and inevitably the danger comes to be conceived as that of sickness or death, and is therefore associated in their minds with the spirits.

But there is a more fundamental reason than this. I 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 same 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 (i.e., 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 themselves are quite incapable of expressing these beliefs in words and are probably only vaguely conscious of them. (1) There is a power or force in all objects or beings that in any way affect the social life. (2) It is by virtue of this power 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 power is 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 prepare, 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 oko-ǰumu, and 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-ǰumu possesses a very special social value, yet every man and woman has some social value, some of that power which makes any being 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 initiation of the ordinary man or woman is parallel to the initiation of the oko-ǰumu 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 society or the social life itself is the chief source of protection against danger for the individual. If this be so then the society 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 individual. 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.

It 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 principle of opposition the society—the world of the living—comes to be opposed to the spirits—the world of the dead. The society itself is the chief source of protection to the individual; the spirits are the chief source of danger. Hence all protection tends to be referred to the society 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 now 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 produced 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 kimil and is therefore addressed and spoken of by that term, or as we might say “the kimil person.”

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 [177]. This is also the explanation of the use of the word to denote a particular season of the year. The Kimil 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-kimil 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-kimil.

Thus we see that in its various uses the word ot-kimil 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 basis 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 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 Andamanese 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,” etc. and such phrases as “the heat of anger, or enthusiasm,” and there is good ground for thinking that all such associations or symbolisms (sensory metaphors) have a physiological basis. Finally, fire which (as we shall see 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 Andamanese that the world is the arena of a continual struggle of forces present in the society itself, in each 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 dead, is, as I 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 experience the effects of these forces upon himself he uses the same word to denote all conditions of heat and all conditions of the manifestation of this energy, organising around that word as well as he can his somewhat vague conceptions.

In case this symbolism should still seem 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 differing widely from the Andamanese similar uses of the words hot and heat are to be found. In his work on the Achehnese (Vol. I, p. 305) C. Snouck Hurgronje writes thus of the natives of the Malay Archipelago: “In the native language of the E. Archipelago all happiness, rest and well-being are united under the concept of ‘coolness,’ while the words ‘hot’ and ‘heat’ typify 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 methods are also adopted for charming away evil things and baneful influences, the removal of which is regarded as an imperative necessity. For instance, the completion of 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 there 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 responsible 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 imparted 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 use odu 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, are possessed of strong and characteristic odours, and the natives think that it is through the odour that they effect a cure. Similarly the powerful properties attributed to the Anadendron, 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 sensations 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.

In 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 ǰeru 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 [178].

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 generative 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 childhood to an end.

Under the influence of muscular 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 Andamanese see 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 eaten unless he paint himself with clay.

We can now at last return to the rite of painting the body with odu clay after eating. I have suggested that the use of this 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. Hibiscus leaves are efficacious against turtle, but against the pig Tetranthera leaves must be used. In describing the patterns painted on the body after eating 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 longitudinal markings on the pig’s back. This would seem to indicate that when a man has eaten turtle he paints himself so as to identify himself with the animal he has eaten, and similarly with other foods, just as in mourning he paints himself so as to identify himself with the spirit-world. In other words, the painting of the body with odu 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 is in contact with the dangerous 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 consideration 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 kimil-t’e̱ra-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 XI. 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 therefore 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 odu clay is therefore a rite which advertises the fact that an individual is in intimate contact with some source of that power which belongs to the things that affect the social life, and it thereby serves to keep 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 personal ornament in general. It is a 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 sentiments 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 body 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 childhood 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 seen that the pattern of white clay serves to make both the painted individual 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-op, i.e., who is abstaining from certain foods during the initiation period, (2) a mourner, (3) a homicide during 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.