Chapter VI: The Interpretation of Andamanese Customs and Beliefs: Myths and Legends (3)

In the A-Pučikwar tribe I found an association of Bilik with the spirits. One man of this tribe (a medicine-man or dreamer) stated that the Bilik are a distinct class of spirits, distinct from the Lau and the J̌urua, yet similar to them. It is the Bilik who control the weather. Certain men, when they die, become not Lau or J̌urua, but Bilik. Thus in one of his dreams that he related to me he met and conversed with the spirit of a deceased friend whom he spoke of as Boičo Bilik, Boičo having been his name when he was alive. A medicine-man is able to control the weather through his communication with the Bilik in dreams. In this tribe therefore we find a doctrine according to which Bilik is not the name of a single being but of a class of beings similar in essentials to the other two classes of spirits. It seemed to me possible that these beliefs are a comparatively late introduction by some of the medicine-men of the tribe. The Boičo about whom my informant Tora dreamed seemed to have had some part in the development of the doctrine. This does not, however, in the least detract from its value as affording us an insight into the beliefs of the Andamanese.

These beliefs clearly spring from an attempt to distinguish from one another the different northerly and easterly winds, each of the recognizable winds being regarded as a separate person, and from the merging together of the two contrary beliefs in the weather as regulated by spirits and by Bilik and Teria. The general system of beliefs about spirits as being responsible for all things that may affect human well-being inevitably leads to the notion that the weather is controlled by the spirits, and this is implied also in the belief that a medicine-man (whose power is derived from contact with the spirits) is also able to influence the weather to some extent. This doctrine, however, conflicts with the view of the weather and the seasons as controlled by Biliku and Tarai, who are not spirits but personifications of natural phenomena. It is perhaps this conflict between doctrines, both of them important and indeed necessary, that has led to the elaboration of the peculiar beliefs met with in the A-Pučikwar tribe.

I have dealt with most of the more important details of the Biliku-Tarai myth, and have tried to show that the whole myth is an expression of the social value of the phenomena of the weather and the seasons. These phenomena affect the social life in certain definite ways and thereby become the objects of certain sentiments; these sentiments are expressed in the legends. Biliku and Tarai are personifications of the N.E. and S.W. monsoons; as such they are responsible for the weather; feelings awakened by the weather are therefore referred to Biliku and Tarai; thus the fear of a cyclone at certain periods of the year is expressed as a fear of the anger of Biliku. Since the time when men go in fear of storms is also the time when they are just beginning to dig up yams and eat them, the myth connects the anger of Biliku with the digging up of yams, and similarly in the cases of honey and the cicada. As Biliku is associated with vegetable foods, and these are things with which women chiefly have to do, Biliku (in the North Andaman) is regarded as female; Tarai, being associated with flesh foods, is male; the two are therefore conceived as wife and husband. As the maker of storms Biliku is responsible for the lightning and is therefore possessed of fire. She thus comes to be regarded as the first possessor of fire. This gives rise to stories of how the ancestors obtained their fire from Biliku, and as she is generally regarded as being hostile rather than friendly towards mankind, the stories relate how the fire was stolen from her. But besides being the maker of storms Biliku is also the dispenser of the good things of the season of the N.E. monsoon and when this aspect of the procession of the seasons is prominent before their minds the natives think of Biliku as a benefactress of mankind. As she is the possessor of fire, and as fire is the source of the life of the society, she comes to be regarded as herself the source of life, though there is an alternative myth that gives this position to a being associated with the sun.

Such is a brief outline of the explanation that I have tried to demonstrate. It may be objected that there are a few important details and several minor details that I have not explained. To that extent my explanation is incomplete, but I hope that I have given sufficient evidence for it to justify us in using it as an integral part of the explanation of the meaning and function of the Andaman mythology in general.

It is not necessary, for the purpose of this chapter, to examine one by one all the legends recorded. Indeed, there are many details of the Andaman mythology that I cannot explain, owing simply, I believe, to my lack of insight into the ways of thought of the natives. The examples already considered are sufficient for the argument. If the interpretations given of these be correct we can base on them certain general conclusions.

I have explained some of the more important of the legends as being expressions or statements of the social value of natural phenomena. The alternation of day and night, for example, affects the life of the society in a certain definite manner and this gives rise to a certain way of thinking and feeling about the phenomenon in question. These thoughts and feelings, however, remain vague and without fixity until they are formulated and expressed either in the form of some definite rule of behaviour, such as the prohibition against noise while the cicada is singing, or in some concrete statement, such as that afforded by the legend of the origin of night. Similarly the legends relating to the origin of fire or the saving of the fire during the flood serve to give definite and permanent form to the vague feelings that result from the way in which the possession of fire affects the social life. Finally, I have tried to show that the myths relating to Biliku and Tarai are nothing but the expression in concrete form of the ideas and feelings that result from the effects of the weather and the seasons on the life of the Andaman Islanders. From these examples I now propose to draw a general conclusion. All the legends, I wish to maintain, are simply the expression in concrete form of the feelings and ideas aroused by things of all kinds as the result of the way in which these things affect the moral and social life of the Andaman Islanders. In other words the legends have for their function to express the social values of different objects,—to express in general the system of social values that is characteristic of the Andaman social organisation. To justify this general statement it will be necessary to show how it comes about that these representations are expressed in the form of myths and legends dealing with the ancestors and with such anthropomorphic beings as Biliku and Tarai.

Throughout the myths we meet with examples of what I have called the personification of natural phenomena. It is now necessary to give a more exact definition of this term. By it I mean the association of a natural phenomenon with the idea of a person in such a way that the characteristics of the phenomenon may be regarded as though they were actions or characteristics of the person. The simplest form is that in which the phenomenon itself is spoken of and thought of as if it were an actual person. Thus the sun and the moon are spoken of as Lady Sun and Sir Moon. Similarly, in the North Andaman, the night is personified and is called Lady Night (Mimi Bat). In many cases of personification however, while the person may or may not possess the same name as the phenomenon, the latter is said to be produced by the former. Thus, in the North Andaman, Ele is the name of the lightning, and Ele is spoken of as a person; yet, if we enquire further, we are told that Ele (the person) produces the lightning by shaking his leg. A somewhat similar case is that of Biliku and Tarai. These two beings are said to produce the winds that blow from the different quarters of the compass. But when we enquire as to the names of the winds, we find that in the South Andaman (A-Pučikwar tribe) the S.W. wind is called Teria, and the other winds are all called Bilik. Thus the name of the person is also used as the name of the phenomenon of which he is (in the phraseology here used) the personification. In the North Andaman we find a difference, the winds being called “the Biliku wind” and “the Tarai wind.” It is necessary to insist on this translation of the native Biliku bo̱to and Tarai bo̱to. We should expect, if Biliku were simply a person who produced the winds, that the latter would be called “the wind of Biliku,” a possessive form (Biliku ičo bo̱to) being used, but this is not so, and the phrase habitually used can only be properly translated “the Biliku wind” just as we might say “the north wind.” Thus, even in the North Andaman Biliku and Tarai are used as the names of the two chief winds.

In all these cases, sun and moon, Biliku and Tarai, etc., I propose to use the term personification, as being the most convenient and not liable to be misunderstood after having been carefully defined. We have now to seek an explanation of this process of personification. A great deal has been written on the subject of personification in mythology, and it is therefore not without diffidence that I venture to put forward an explanation which can only be very briefly stated in this place and would require for its full exhibition a lengthy psychological explanation.

An insight into the process of personification is afforded by considering our own use of figurative language. We talk of the angry storm, the raging sea. In such cases we allow ourselves for a moment to regard the natural phenomenon as if it were a person or the action of a person, and we do not even trouble distinctly to express the “as if.” We use such phrases in order to attain a more forcible expression of our thoughts and feelings. How is it that such expressions succeed in the purpose for which they are used?

The reason would seem to be that our knowledge and understanding of persons is much more intimate than our knowledge of things. The fact that we are able, by the action of sympathy, to know what persons with whom we are in contact are feeling, gives us an understanding of them that we can never reach with inanimate objects.

In all human society the most important elements of the experience of the individual are due to his relations with other persons. In the development of the emotional life of the child, persons intervene at every turn, and there is thus built up a system of sentiments and representations which forms the very foundation of the individual’s affective life. In other words the first organised experience that the individual attains is all connected with persons and their relations to himself. This early experience provides a basis on which we may and do organise later experiences. The perception of the leaping waves and lashing spray of a sea in tempest arouses in us a vague emotional reaction, but it is an experience that we have not learned to formulate exactly. The feeling awakened in us is, so to speak, unclassified, there is no exact word by which we can express it. We therefore fall back upon that system of affective experiences that have been classified, and for which we do have adequate words, and we apply the word “angry” to the scene before us. At the utterance of the word, with its appeal to infantile memories and to the long series of experiences that have been associated with it, the emotion becomes more definite, if not more intense. We are thus enabled to classify our present experience, to associate it with past experiences that have been arranged in our minds in an organised system, and to find a place for it in that system.

Applying this to the case of the myths we must first of all note that the Andaman Islander has no interest in nature save in so far as it directly affects the social life. Scientific and artistic interest in nature are products of civilisation. The Andaman Islander has no desire to understand the processes of nature as a scientist would wish to do, nor has he any conception of nature as a subject of esthetic contemplation. Natural phenomena affect him immediately by their influence on his own life and on the life of his fellows, and are thereby the source of a number of emotional experiences. In order to express these he has to make use of that part of his own experience that is already thoroughly organised, namely, that relating to the actions of one person as affecting another or as affecting the society. Only in this way is he able to organise his experiences arising from the processes of nature, to classify and render definite the vague impressions that are aroused in him. He interprets nature in terms of the world with which he is most familiar, the world of persons, being enabled to do so by the presence within him of a regulated and definite body of experience which he has derived from his relations with persons from the time of his first awakening to the consciousness of the external world.

There is a parallelism here, as in many other matters, between the psychological development of the individual and that of the race. The fundamental need for the child is to learn to accommodate himself to his environment. In this environment by far the most important objects are persons—parents and other children—and the first business of the growing child is to learn to adapt his actions to the requirements of this intercourse with persons. This is so overwhelmingly important that the other need (of adapting himself to inanimate objects) is quite overshadowed by it. The child has to make experiments and observations upon persons, to learn how they will act. He meets with such a phenomenon as anger, for example, the anger of a parent, or of another child, and by means of a succession of experiences he comes to a satisfactory understanding of this particular thing, and what it means with reference to himself and his actions. This notion of the anger of a parent becomes the nucleus around which is organised the experience of similar phenomena. In play or sometimes in earnest, the child treats all sorts of inanimate objects and events connected with them as if they were persons or the actions of persons. By this means, and by this means alone, he is able to exercise himself in his newly acquired experience and to extend and organise it yet further.

In the history of the race the development of society depends upon the organisation of personal relations. The task of man in primitive society is therefore similar to the task of the child. The needs of his life compel him above everything else to devote himself to organising that part of his experience that relates to the actions of persons upon one another; all else is subordinated to this supreme need; and just as the child organises and develops his experience by treating inanimate objects as if they were persons in such a way that we can hardly tell if he is in play or in earnest, so primitive man, in exactly the same way, organises and develops his social experience by conceiving the whole universe as if it were the interaction of personal forces.

This explanation of the nature of personification helps us to understand some of the Andamanese beliefs. Natural phenomena such as the alternation of day and night, the changes of the moon, the procession of the seasons, and variations of the weather, have important effects on the welfare of the society. The latter, in so far as it is regulated from within, depends on the adaptation of persons to one another. Men must learn to live in harmony, to sacrifice their own desires at times to the needs of others, to avoid occasions of giving offence, and not readily to give way to anger when offence is given. The Andaman Islander represents this fundamental law of the society as though it were the fundamental law of the whole universe. When any evil befalls the society it is as though some personal power were in question, as though some one were angry at some offence. Thus the moon and Biliku are represented as persons who can be offended and whose anger has unpleasant results. Conversely when all goes well it is because there is harmony or solidarity between men and the nature beings which affect men’s lives. In a word, the forces with which the Andaman Islander is most familiar as affecting his welfare are those of solidarity and opposition; it is solidarity that maintains the harmony of social life, opposition that destroys it. The forces of nature in so far as they affect the society are therefore represented as being of the same nature; there can be either solidarity or opposition between men and nature; the former leads to well-being, the latter to misfortune.

Thus the personification of natural phenomena is one of the methods by which the Andaman Islander projects into the world of nature the moral forces that he experiences in the society. The process is essentially similar to that described in the last chapter in connection with the ceremonial, save that there the forces we were considering were largely impersonal. Perhaps, rather than speaking of it as a projection of moral forces into nature, we should regard it as a process of bringing within the circle of the social life those aspects of nature that are of importance to the well-being of the society, making the moon and the monsoons a part of the social order and therefore subject to the same moral forces that have sway therein.

The personification of natural phenomena is not, however, the only method by which their social value can be expressed. The Akar-Bale legend of the origin of day and night, as we saw at the beginning of the chapter, expresses the social value of the alternation of light and darkness by means of a story of how it originated in the time of the ancestors. If we seek to understand all that this legend means we must ask why the Andaman Islanders believe in the existence of the ancestors, and why they attribute to them the characteristics that are exhibited in the stories they tell about them. The ground of the belief in the ancestors is to be found in the existence of a sentiment fundamental in all human society, which I shall call the feeling of tradition. When an Andaman Islander is asked the question “Why do you do so and so?” he very frequently replies “Because our fathers did so before us.” This answer expresses in its simplest form the feeling of tradition. In all his actions, in the way he obtains and cooks his food, in the way in which he makes his various implements and weapons, in the moral and ritual customs that he is required to observe, the native acts in accordance with tradition. If he should ever feel inclined to deviate from it he finds himself in conflict with a powerful compulsive force. In tradition, therefore, the individual is aware of a force stronger than himself, to which he must submit whether he will or not. Further, he is aware that the power which he possesses, as a member of the society, whereby he is able to face the hostile or at best indifferent forces of nature and provide himself with food and maintain himself in security and happiness, is not simply a product of his own personality, but is derived by him from the past. Towards this past, therefore, on which his own life so obviously depends, he feels a grateful dependence. So long as he acts in conformity with tradition he can enjoy safety and happiness, because he is relying on something much greater than his own qualities of mind and body.

To put the matter in a few words, the individual finds himself in relation with an ordered system—the social order—to which he has to adapt himself. The two chief moments in his affective attitude towards that order are his sense of his own dependence upon it and of the need of conforming to its requirements in his actions. It is this,—his sense of his own relation to the social order,—that the Andaman Islander expresses in the legends about the ancestors, which recount how that order came into existence as the result of actions of anthropomorphic beings.

Some of the legends recount the invention of weapons or implements or the discovery of the uses of natural objects. In one of the North Andaman stories it is said that all the weapons and implements now used by men were invented by the first man, whose name, J̌utpu, probably means “alone,” i.e., the man who was at first by himself. This first man made himself a wife from the nest of the white ant. The regulated society of the ants, and the numerous population that a nest contains, give this story its symbolic meaning.

Besides what may be called general culture legends, of which the story of J̌utpu is an example, there are several special culture legends relating to various discoveries and inventions, such as the tale of how the use of yams for food was first discovered, or that which tells how the monitor lizard discovered quartz and scarified himself with it. By means of these legends the Andaman Islander expresses his sense of his own dependence on the past. He pictures a time when the social order as it now is had not begun, or was just beginning; the knowledge he now possesses was then being acquired, the weapons he uses were being invented, the moral and ritual laws that he obeys were in process of being formulated.

It is obvious that the Andaman Islander cannot regard the ancestors as being persons exactly like himself, for they were responsible for the establishment of the social order to which he merely conforms and of which he has the advantage. He says, therefore, that they were bigger men than himself, meaning by this that they were bigger mentally or spiritually, rather than physically, that they were endowed with powers much greater than those even of the medicine-men of the present time. This explains the magical powers that are attributed to many, or indeed to all, of the ancestors; the belief in the existence in the past of men or beings endowed with what we may almost call supernatural powers is the inevitable result of the way in which the man of to-day feels towards the men of the past on whose inventions and discoveries he is dependent for his daily nourishment [221].

Besides the social order there is another, the order of nature, which is constantly acting upon the social order. To this also the individual has to adapt himself, and his knowledge of how to do so is equally derived from the past. The order of nature only affects him through the social order, and the two therefore necessarily seem to him merely two parts of one whole,—the order of the universe. In the legends he tells how not only the social order but also the order of nature came into existence; an example is the story of the origin of night.

The Andaman Islander finds himself in an ordered world, a world subject to law, controlled by unseen forces. The laws are not to him what natural laws are to the scientist of to-day, they are rather of the nature of moral laws. He recognizes only one meaning of the word right and of the word wrong; right action is that which is in conformity with law, wrong action is that in opposition to the law; it is wrong to give way to anger, it is wrong to kill a cicada, or to have a bright light in camp when the moon is rising in the third quarter, and it is wrong also to try and use unsuitable material for an implement or weapon. Wrong actions always lead to harm; if you use unsuitable wood for your bow it will break and your labour be wasted; if you kill a cicada it will rain heavily; if you give way to anger readily you will earn the dislike of your fellows that may some day lead to your undoing. Right and wrong mean acting in accordance with the laws of the world or in opposition to them, and this means acting in accordance with or in opposition to custom. Custom and law are indeed here two words for the same thing.

The forces of the world, as the Andaman Islander conceives them, are not the blind mechanical forces of modern science: rather are they moral forces. Their action upon human beings is not only to be witnessed in external events, but is to be experienced in the man’s own consciousness or conscience. He feels within himself their compulsion when he would run counter to them, and their support when he leans upon them. The law of the world, then, is a moral law, its forces are moral forces, its values moral values; its order is a moral order.

This view of the world is the immediate and inevitable result of the experience of man in society. It is a philosophy not reached by painful intellectual effort, by the searching out of meanings and reasons and causes; it is impressed upon him in all the happenings of his life, is assumed in all his actions; it needs only to be formulated. And the argument of this chapter has been that it is as the expression or formulation of this view of the world as an order regulated by law that the legends have their meaning, fulfil their function.

The legends of the Andamanese then, as I understand them, set out to give an account of how the order of the world came into existence. But the Andaman Islander has no interest in any part of it except in so far as it affects his own life. He is interested in the procession of the seasons or the alternation of day and night, or the phases of the moon, only in so far as these things have effects upon the community. In other words he is interested in natural phenomena only in so far as such phenomena are really parts of the social order. This I have expressed earlier in the chapter by saying that the legends deal not with all aspects of natural phenomena but only with their social values.

A fundamental character of the natural order (as of the social order) is uniformity; the same processes are for ever repeated. This character of nature the legends take for granted; they assume that if a force is once set into action it will continue to act indefinitely. They assume also a period in which the present order did not exist. Anything that happened in that period has gone on happening ever since. One of the ancestors discovered how to cook yams, and men have been cooking yams in the same way down to the present day. A cicada was crushed and cried out and the night came, and since then the darkness has come every evening as soon as the cicada sings. In one of the legends the tree lizard was quarrelsome, and has remained so. Thus the legends represent the social order, including such natural phenomena as may be said to belong to it, as being due to the interaction of forces of a special character that came into existence in the beginning and have continued to act uniformly ever since. In this way they express two most important conceptions, that of uniformity (or law) and that of the dependence of the present on the past.

It is the need of expressing these two conceptions that gives the legends their function. They are not merely theoretical principles but are both intensely practical. The law of uniformity means that certain actions must be done and others not done if life is to run smoothly; any deviation from uniformity in conduct is dangerous as being contrary to the law that regulates the universe. What actions are to be done and what are to be left undone was determined once for all in the past when the present order came into existence. The knowledge of what to do and what to avoid doing is what constitutes the tradition of the society, to which every individual is required to conform.

The legends, then, set out to express and to justify these two fundamental conceptions. They do so by telling how the social order itself came into existence, and how, also, all those natural phenomena that have any bearing on the social well-being came to be as they are and came to have the relation to the society that they possess.

One group of facts that have an obvious relation to the society consists of the geographical features of the islands. The more notable features of the part of the country in which a man lives, and which he regards as his own, are intimately connected with his moral sentiments. His attachment to his group necessarily involves an attachment to the country of the group. The same sort of thing exists amongst ourselves. This attachment of the members of a group to their own country explains, I think, the part played by what may be called “local motives” in the legends of the Andamanese. Such motives are of considerable importance, of much more importance than would appear from the stories that I have transcribed. The recent changes in their mode of life have had far more influence on the local organisation of the tribes than on any other part of their social organisation, and this has not been without its effect on the legends. We may say, briefly, that the local motives of the legends serve to express the social values of localities. In general each locality has its own versions of the legends, in which the events related are supposed to have taken place at some spot or other in the neighbourhood. Thus all the more prominent features of a locality are associated with the events of the legends. In some cases tales are told that explain these features as having come into existence when the ancestors were alive; a reef of rocks was formerly a canoe, for instance. A few such legends were recorded in an earlier chapter, but it is probable that there were a vast number of similar tales that I did not hear. In some cases a locality has a special social value and therefore a special place in the legends. Thus Wota-Emi was the great meeting-place for the natives who lived on Baratang and on parts of the South Andaman and the Middle Andaman, and was also sometimes visited by the natives of the Archipelago. Consequently Wota-Emi is represented in the legends of the A-Pučikwar tribe as being the great meeting-place or dwelling-place of the ancestors. The effect of these associations between the places with which he is familiar and the events of the legendary epoch in the mind of the Andaman Islander probably is similar to the effect on ourselves of the historical associations of our own country; they serve to make him aware of his attachment to his country or to express his sense of that attachment.

There still remains a most important feature of the legends which has not yet been explained, namely the position of the animals as ancestors. Many of the actors in the legends bear the names of animals but at the same time are spoken of as though they were human beings. Many of the legends explain how some species of animal arose from some one of the ancestors who became an animal and the progenitor of the species. Thus, in the North Andaman, Kolo was one of the ancestors; he made wings for himself out of palm-leaves, and so was able to fly; he lived a solitary life in his home at the top of a tree, and was in the habit of stealing men’s wives; in the end he became the sea-eagle, and this species still bears the name kolo. It is necessary to define as exactly as possible what meaning these stories have to the natives. It is not simply that the legendary person is a man with the name and some of the characteristics of an animal; nor is it simply that the legendary person is the ancestor of the species of which he bears the name. We can only adequately express the thought of the Andamanese by saying that he regards the whole species as if it were a human being. When, in the legends, he speaks of “Sea-eagle” he is thereby personifying the species in the sense in which the word personification has been used throughout this chapter; he is regarding the characteristics of the species as if they were characteristics or actions or results of actions of a person. Admittedly this is a vague description, but the vagueness is in the mental phenomenon described; the Andamanese do not, in this matter, think clearly and analyse their own thoughts. However, we can help ourselves to understand their thoughts by recalling the tales that amused us as children, in which the fox or the rabbit of the tale was an embodiment of the whole species.

The part played in the legends by any particular animal is determined either immediately or indirectly by its observable characteristics. Thus the connection of the kingfisher with fire is due to the fact that he is a fish-eating bird, and that he has a patch of bright red feathers, red being, in the Andamanese mind, always associated with fire. The other birds that are mentioned in the different versions of the fire legend either possess remarkable plumage (as the dove, and the parrot) or are fish-eating birds. The Andamanese regard fish as the fundamental human food, having only one word for “food” and “fish,” and they never eat their fish raw as the kingfisher does. In the Akar-Bale story of the origin of the animals the tree lizard is characterised by his quarrelsomeness, and by the fact that he is very difficult to catch hold of; these are both actual characteristics of the animal itself. The crab appears in the same legend as a person with a very powerful grip, and with a hard shell to his body. The monitor lizard has his place in the legends determined by the fact that he can climb trees, run on the ground and swim in the water, and is thus equally at home at the top of the trees, on the ground, or in the creek. I have already given this as one of the reasons why he is chosen as the first ancestor of all the animals and of human beings. The lizard also seems to be regarded by the Andamanese as a particularly libidinous animal, and is therefore regarded as the inventor of sexual intercourse and of procreation. Why he should have this sexual reputation I do not know [222]. The tale of how the lizard invented scarification depends on the fact that the marks on the lizard’s skin bear a strong resemblance to the marks that the natives make on their own skins with sharp fragments of quartz. The position of the Paradoxurus or civet-cat in the stories in which she appears is due to the fact that while she can live in the trees or on the ground she cannot swim; hence, when the flood came, she fled from the water and climbed a steep hill and thus kept the fire alight. In the light of these examples we are justified, I think, in assuming that in all cases, even when the meaning is not clear, the part played by any animal in the legends is due to some actual characteristic of it.

There is thus a parallelism between the personification of natural phenomena and the personification of animal species. I have shown that the characteristics of such beings as Biliku and Tarai are all to be explained by a consideration of the actual characteristics of the phenomena of which they are the personification (the winds) and of the phenomena immediately connected therewith. The same thing has now been shown to be true with regard to the personified animals. The process of personification is carried out in exactly the same way in the two different classes of cases. I gave as the reason for personifying natural phenomena the fact that in this way, and in this way only, the Andaman Islander is able to express the sentiments that are aroused in him by them. We must see if we can justify the personification of animals by a similar argument.

The habits of observation fostered in the mind of the Andaman Islander by his method of winning his sustenance lead him to take a lively interest in all the creatures of the jungle and the sea, about whose ways he therefore has a great store of knowledge. Every tree and plant of the forest, every bird and insect, every creature that lives in the sea or on the reef has its name. His interest, however, in the case of many of the animals has little or no relation to practical life, for he does not make use of them for food or in any other way. There is here therefore something that contradicts the fundamental assumption of the philosophy that is expressed in the legends, there is a lack of mental unity. These interests in the birds and insects are not correlated with the central mass of interests that control the Andamanese mind and give it its unity. Although his philosophy assumes that everything in which he takes an interest has some meaning in reference to his own life, yet here are things that at first sight have no such meaning. The correlation that is lacking in his experience is brought about by means of the legends; a meaning is provided for the apparently meaningless. The fundamental interest of the Andaman Islander, as of all men in primitive societies, is his interest in persons and personal relations. By regarding the animals as persons and relating stories about them he is able to correlate his interest in them with the fundamental basis of his mental life.

This explanation does not perhaps sound very satisfactory. We do not at present understand the forces that compel the normal mind to strive after unity in its experience. Let us examine the matter a little more closely. All the thoughts and feelings of the Andaman Islander (or at any rate all those that are expressed in the legends) centre in the society; for him the world is merely a stage on which the social drama is perpetually enacted. He coordinates all his thoughts, emotions, and interests around the society, and in the legends he builds up a picture showing the connection between the society and those phenomena of nature that affect it. The majority of the animals (the birds, the insects, and innumerable kinds of fish), not being used for food, or in any other way, bear no apparent relation to the social life. Yet by reason of the woodcraft developed by the necessities of his life he is compelled to take notice of these creatures and to become interested in their ways. Here, therefore, are two conflicting elements in his consciousness, (1) his belief that the whole of nature derives its meaning and interest from its relation to the society, and (2) his consciousness of an alien world (of the birds, etc.) which seems to have no direct relation to the society, and which nevertheless he cannot help being constantly aware of. The Andaman Islander, as I have stated more than once, does not possess any scientific or abstract interest in nature. He never asks himself “What is the meaning of this?” in the same way that a scientist of our own civilisation might do. He asks “What is the meaning of this thing in relation to me and my interests and feelings, and to the social life of which my life is a fragment?” It is because he does feel the need of answers to questions of this kind that the conflict we have noticed arises. This conflict has to be resolved, and there are apparently three alternatives: (1) to admit that there is a meaning in nature apart from its relation to the society, (2) to refuse to take any interest in birds and insects, (3) to explain away the apparent lack of relation. It is this third alternative that is chosen by the Andaman Islander, and there are obvious reasons why it should be so. The explanation is accomplished in a direct and simple manner. In the beginning men and animals were one; then came an event or series of events (the discovery of fire, the great flood, or a great quarrel amongst the ancestors) whereby the men and the animals became cut off from one another, to live henceforward in the same world, but separated by an unseen barrier.

The argument may be put in another way that may perhaps be more convincing. The actual sentiment that is aroused in the mind of the native by the animals is that here is an important and interesting part of the universe that is alien to him, from which he is cut off in some strange way. It is this real sentiment, itself the inevitable result of his life and his surroundings, that is expressed in the belief in the animals as ancestors.

If this explanation be correct we should expect to find that the animals that figure in the legends are those that have no immediate social value either as food or in any other way, while on the other hand the animals that are used for food will not appear in the legends, or will occupy therein a very different place from the others. The only land animal that is regularly used for food is the pig. It is therefore a confirmation of the explanation that we find that the pig is never under any circumstances regarded as one of the ancestors, that is to say, is never personified in the same way that other animals are. One legend about the pig [223] explains, not how the animal came into existence (that seems to be assumed), but how it acquired its senses. Another legend [224] tells how the civet-cat persuaded some of the ancestors to play a game in which they pretended to be pigs, and they were turned into these animals. Here we are clearly dealing with something different from the ordinary process of personification, for we have not one ancestor in whom the species is personified, but a number of persons who were suddenly changed from men and women into pigs by the magical performance of the civet-cat. In the sea there are several animals that are regularly used for food. The dugong is spoken of as an ancestor in an Akar-Bale legend, but in the North Andaman there is a story of how the dugong originated from a pig that Pe̱rǰido tried to roast without first disembowelling it and cutting the joints of its legs. There is also in the North Andaman a story of how turtles originated [225]. The existence of these legends shows that the pig, the turtle and the dugong occupy a different position in the minds of the Andamanese from that of the other animals. This serves, in some measure, to confirm the explanation given above.

We may briefly consider what may be regarded as a kind of negative instance by which to test the argument. The world of the stars constitutes a part of the universe just as alien, just as devoid of apparent meaning as that of the birds. We may ask therefore how it is that the Andaman Islanders have no star myths of the kind that are common in other primitive societies. The answer is, I think, that the Andamanese do not have their attention called to the stars. As their camps are in the dense forest there are very few occasions on which they see the sky at night. When fishing at night on the reefs or in canoes they are too busy to pay much attention to the stars. They have not learnt to relate the procession of the stars and the change of the seasons, nor have they learnt to tell the time at night from their declination. Their navigation is only along the coast and they have therefore no use for the stars as guides of direction. On the contrary, wherever we find a developed star-mythology we find that the stars are studied either as guides to navigation or journeying overland, or as giving indications of the changes of the seasons.

We have considered all the more important aspects of the subject matter of the legends; it remains for us to turn to the form and enquire how it comes about that the representations which analysis reveals are expressed in just the way they are, in a word, why the expression takes the form of a story. It is obvious that in this place no attempt can be made to deal with the general problems of the psychology of story-telling. All that I wish to do is to point out one or two reasons why the legend is an appropriate form (perhaps we might say, the only possible form) for the expression of the view of the world that is revealed in the Andaman mythology.

The Andamanese, like other savages, have not acquired the power of thinking abstractly. All their thought necessarily deals with concrete things. Now the story form provides a means of expressing concretely what could otherwise only be put in an abstract statement. (A large part of the interpretation of the legends, as here undertaken, consists in restating the content of the legends in abstract terms.) Moreover, even if the Andaman Islanders were capable of thinking abstractly, yet, since what they need to express are not thoughts so much as feelings (not intellectual so much as affective processes), they would still need a concrete form of expression. For it is a familiar fact that the concrete has a much greater power of awakening or appealing to our feelings than has the abstract. In particular the story has ever been a popular medium by which to appeal to sentiments of all kinds.

The chief ground for the interest in stories shown by children and by savages is, I believe, that they afford the means of exercising the imagination in certain specific directions and thereby play an important part in enabling the individual to organise his experience. The course of the development of the human mind (from childhood to adolescence, and from the earliest human ancestor to ourselves) depends upon or involves the existence at certain stages of growth (and to a certain extent throughout the whole process) of a conscious egoistic interest. Mankind, to develop what we call character and conscience, must learn to take a conscious interest in himself, in his own actions, and their motives. The development of this self-consciousness in children is a process of great interest to the psychologist and has already been studied in an imperfect fashion. You have only to watch a child playing a game in which he or she enacts some imaginary part to see how such games afford a means by which the child develops and widens his interest in himself. Children, and many grown-up people (particularly during conditions of lessened mental activity), indulge in what are called daydreams, which take the form of an imaginary succession of adventures of which the dreamer is always the hero. The character of daydreams is that they are always frankly egoistic and boastful. Now this sort of interest in stories is found in the Andamanese, though not in the legends. At the end of a day a group of Andamanese may often be seen seated round a fire listening while one of them recounts adventures. The narration may be merely an exaggerated account of real happenings, but is more often purely fictitious. The narrator will tell, with few words, but with many expressive gestures, how he harpooned a turtle or shot a pig. He may, if his hearers are content to remain and listen, as they sometimes are, go on killing pig after pig for an hour or two together. The point to be noted is that these tales are always frankly egoistic and boastful, and it is for this reason that they may well be compared with the daydreams of the more civilised.

Besides this egoistic interest in stories there is another that is closely connected with it in origin and function. The necessities of social life, particularly in childhood and in primitive societies where a small number of people are constantly reacting upon one another, involve an intense degree of interest in persons and personal qualities. This interest is aroused and fostered by the constant play of personal forces in the social life. Its strength accounts, I believe, for the power of appeal to sentiments that is possessed by stories.

It is a commonplace that in many forms of play the child or the adult (and it is also true of animals) exercises faculties that are important parts of the system of habits or dispositions by which the individual adapts himself to his surroundings. We may regard the interest in stories as similar to play-interests in general. Life in society requires the individual to develop a faculty of what may be called character-estimation, whereby he may judge the motives that are likely to influence the conduct of another person. I have myself noticed that savages such as the Andaman Islanders and the Australian aborigines are as a rule good judges of character. They can quickly estimate how to adapt their conduct and conversation to the character of a person they meet for the first time. They are often excellent mimics, being able to imitate exactly the tone of voice or manner of walking or any other idiosyncrasy of a person whom they have only seen for a short time. I believe, then, that the legends of the Andamanese may be regarded as a means whereby they give exercise to their interest in human character, just as in other kinds of play they exercise other interests and faculties that are integral parts of their adaptation to their environment. By means of the personification of natural phenomena and of species of animals, and through the assumption of the existence of the ancestors and their times, they are able to develop a special kind of unwritten literature, which has for them just the same sort of appeal that much of our own literature has for us. Doubtless it is not a very polished form of art; the characterisation that it exhibits is simple and even crude; the story is not told very skilfully, and indeed the story-teller relies much on his use of expressive gesture to convey his meaning; nevertheless it does fulfil amongst the Andamanese the same sort of function that more developed literary art does in civilised society.