Chapter I: The Social Organisation (1)

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

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

When the islands were first occupied by the British, before depopulation had affected their institutions, the natives of the Great Andaman were to be found living in small communities scattered over the islands, mostly on the coast, but some of them in the forest of the interior of the island. Each such community, which will be spoken of as a “local group,” was independent and autonomous, leading its own life and regulating its own affairs. Each group had occasional relations with other neighbouring groups; visitors might pass from one to another; or the two groups might meet together for a few days and join in feasting and dancing. On the other hand there were often quarrels between neighbouring groups, which might result in a state of feud between them for many months. Between communities separated from one another by a distance of only 50 miles or even less there were no direct relations whatever. The members of one community kept to their own part of the country, only leaving it to visit their friends within a narrow radius.

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

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

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

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

The natives of the Great Andaman (leaving aside the J̌a̤rawa, who by language and culture belong to the Little Andaman division of the race) are divided into ten tribes, each occupying a certain area of country. Each tribe consists of a number of persons who speak what is regarded by the natives themselves as one language. That the tribe is fundamentally a linguistic group is shown by the tribal names. These are all formed from a stem with the prefix aka-, which prefix is used in the languages of the Great Andaman to convey a reference to the mouth and thereby to the function of speech. Thus in the Aka-J̌eru language the stem poŋ means “a hole of any kind,” and aka-poŋ means “the mouth,” there being no other word for that part of the body. In the same language the stem -ar- meaning “to talk” can only be used with the prefix aka-, as ak’-ar-ka, “he says.” The prefix which is characteristic of the tribal names, indicates, therefore, that these are really the names of languages.

The meanings or derivations of some of the tribal names have not been ascertained with certainty. The name Aka-Čari is derived from the word čari meaning “salt water,” and therefore means “the salt-water language.” Similarly the name Aka-J̌eru is derived from ǰeru, a species of Sterculia from which canoes are made. In the Northern languages the word ot-bo means “the back” of anything, and oŋ-ko̱ra means “the hand.” It is possible that the names Aka-Bo and Aka-Ko̱ra are derived from these stems (the ot- and the oŋ- being prefixes), but there is no evidence that they are associated with them in the minds of the natives of the present day. Among the Southern tribes the name Akar-Bale is derived from a word meaning “the other side” of a creek or strait, thus referring to their position in the Archipelago. The name A-Pučik-war (of which the Aka-Bea equivalent is Aka-Boǰig-yab) means “those who speak our own language,” from a stem pučik (Aka-Bea, boǰig) which means “belonging to ourselves” as opposed to strangers of the same race. Mr Portman [16] gives the following meanings of the other tribal names of the South and Middle Andaman, but the derivations are somewhat doubtful.

Aka-Bea Fresh water.
O̱ko̱-J̌uwo̱i They cut patterns on their bows.
Aka-Ko̱l Bitter or salt taste.

I may take this opportunity of pointing out two errors in the names of the tribes given in the “Census Report” of 1901. The name Aka-Čari is given as Aka-Chariar; the stem -ar- means “to talk” and is not an essential part of the tribal name; Aka-Čari-ar-bom means “he talks the Čari language.” The name Aka-Bo is given as Aka-Tabo; t’a-Bo means “I (am) Aka-Bo,” just as t’a-J̌eru means “I (am) Aka-J̌eru,” the prefix aka- being contracted to a- after the personal pronoun t’ = I or my.

Although the natives themselves thus recognize and give names to ten distinct languages, all of them are closely related. There is, on the whole, not a great deal of difference between two neighbouring languages. A man of the Aka-J̌eru tribe could understand without any great difficulty a man speaking Aka-Bo. On the other hand many of the languages included two or even more distinct dialects. In the Akar-Bale tribe there were two dialects, one in the southern half of the Archipelago, which was allied to Aka-Bea, and the other in the northern half, showing affinities with A-Pučikwar. Even in such a small tribe as the Aka-Čari it would seem that there were differences of dialect. Thus, even from the point of view of language, the tribe was not entirely homogeneous.

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

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

If the estimate previously given [17] of the former population of the islands be correct, the nine tribes (leaving aside the Aka-Bea) would have formerly contained about 3750 persons of all ages. At the present time the four tribes of the North Andaman number altogether about 400, of whom about 100 or less are children. The other six tribes taken together (including the almost extinct Aka-Bea) number about 200, of whom not more than 30 are children. Mr Man estimated the numbers of the Aka-Bea tribe (called by him Boǰig-ŋiǰi-da) in 1882 at about 400, and supposes them to have numbered about 1000 in 1858. In 1901 that tribe consisted of only 37 persons.

Besides the division into tribes, and independent of it, the Andamanese recognize another division into coast-dwellers and forest-dwellers. In the Aka-Bea language the coast-dwellers are called Ar-yoto, while the forest-dwellers are called Erem-taga. The difference between them is due solely to the difference of their food supply. The Ar-yoto obtain much of their food from the sea. They are expert in fishing and turtle hunting. They make canoes and use them not only for hunting but also for travelling from one camp to another. Some portion of their food they also obtain from the forest, edible roots and fruits and the flesh of the wild pig being the chief. On the other hand the Erem-taga rely solely on the forest and the inland creeks for their food supply. Their only use for canoes is in the creeks. They are entirely ignorant of such matters as turtle or dugong hunting, but they are more at home than the coast-dwellers in the forest, and are generally more skilful at pig-hunting. The advantage certainly rests with the coast-dwellers, for they have both the sea and the forest to draw upon for their sustenance.

Some tribes consist only of coast-dwellers, such as the Aka-Čari, the Akar-Bale and perhaps the Aka-Ko̱l. On the other hand the Aka-Bo, although their territory includes a part of the west coast, are, by their occupations and mode of life, forest-dwellers, and the same seems to have been the case of the O̱ko̱-J̌uwo̱i. The A-Pučikwar, the Aka-Kede, the Aka-J̌eru and perhaps also the Aka-Ko̱ra tribes contained both coast-dwellers and forest-dwellers.

Each tribe formerly consisted of a number of independent local groups. The local group, and not the tribe, was the land-owning group, each one owning or exercising hunting rights over a certain recognized area. At the present time, owing to the breakdown of the local organisation, through the settlement of the islands and the resulting decrease of population, it is difficult to ascertain what area of country was occupied by each of these local groups. In many cases it would seem that the boundaries between two neighbouring groups are not very clearly defined, there being portions of forest over which the members of both hunted when the groups were at peace [18]. There is no doubt that in the more favourable localities, particularly on the coast, the country occupied by a single group was smaller than in places of less abundant food supply. It is probable that the forest-dwelling local groups occupied considerably larger areas in each case than the coast groups. Some of the coast-dwelling groups seem to have occupied areas of less than ten square miles.

It is not easy to discover at this time exactly what number of persons would have been included in one local group. Mouat, who visited the islands in 1857–8, says of the natives, “They are rarely or never seen living alone, several of their little huts being raised in the same locality, where they dwell together in numbers varying between thirty and three hundred [19].” In another passage he states, “They are generally divided into small groups, the numbers of which vary considerably, some not containing more than ten individuals, while in others as many as two or three hundred may be found. The great majority of these groups of the natives consist on an average of from thirty to fifty men, women, and children, although sometimes as many as three hundred are found together [20].” It is probable that, if so small a party as ten were seen, they were a hunting party spending a day or a few days away from the main camp. On the other hand so large a number as three hundred could only be found together on the occasion of one of the periodical meetings of several local groups for purposes of festivity. Mouat’s statement that the groups consisted on the average of from thirty to fifty persons, agrees very well with the statements of the natives themselves, and may be taken as being fairly accurate. Mr Man, writing in 1882, speaks of the Andamanese as divided into communities “each consisting of from twenty to fifty individuals,” and elsewhere says that “permanent encampments vary in size and consist of several huts, which in all are rarely inhabited by more than from fifty to eighty persons [21].”

From the information that I was able to obtain from the natives themselves I came to the conclusion that an average local group consisted of from 40 to 50 persons of all ages, the average number of local groups to a tribe being about 10. This would give the average extent of country occupied by each local group as about 16 square miles, but some groups certainly had a larger territory than this and some had smaller.

Mr M. V. Portman speaks of the tribes of the southern part of the Great Andaman as being divided into what he calls “septs,” but he does not explain what he means by that term. He states that the Aka-Bea were divided into seven septs, the A-Pučikwar into four, the Akar-Bale into two, while the Aka-Ko̱l and O̱ko̱-J̌uwo̱i had no real subdivisions [22]. Whatever Mr Portman may have meant by the term sept, it is clear that he did not use it to denote what is here called a local group, but some larger subdivision of the tribe. What these septs seem to have been are groups consisting each of four or five local groups having friendly relations with one another and meeting together occasionally at the festival gatherings to be described later in the present chapter.

There were, strictly speaking, no distinctive names for the local groups. A local group might be denoted by a reference to the district that it occupied or to one of its chief camping places. Thus, in the Akar-Bale tribe, those occupying the island of Teb-ǰuru were spoken of as Teb-ǰuru-wa, the word wa meaning “people,” and the inhabitants of the east coast of Havelock Island were similarly denoted as Puluga-l’ar-mugu-wa from the name of the district that they occupied. In the tribes of the North Andaman the word equivalent to wa of the South is koloko. Some of the local groups of the Aka-Bo tribe were distinguished as Teraut buliu koloko, Kelera buliu koloko, Teradikili buliu koloko etc., from the names of the creeks (buliu) that they occupied. In the Aka-Čari tribe the local group occupying the island of To̱nmuket and the adjoining mainland were called Taroto̱lo koloko. When a man was asked to what part of the country he belonged he would generally answer by mentioning one of the chief camping places of his local group. Thus a man of the Taroto̱lo koloko might say that he belonged to Laropuli, this being one of the chief camps of that country. A man of the Teraut buliu koloko might similarly say that he belonged to the village of Čaičue.

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

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

Within the territory of each local group there are a number of recognized camping places. During the greater part of every year the members of the local group would be found living together at one or other of these. Some of these camping-grounds have been in use for many centuries, as is shown by the heaps of refuse many feet deep, chiefly consisting of the shells of molluscs and the bones of animals. Such kitchen-middens, as they have been called, are to be found in numbers all around the coasts of the islands.

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

Within their own territory the local group is what we may speak of as semi-nomadic. The coast-dwellers rarely reside continuously at the same spot for more than a few months, but shift from one camp to another, moved by different causes. If a death occurs the camp is deserted for several months and a new one is occupied. A change of camp often takes place at a change of season, some spots presenting particular advantages, such as shelter from the prevailing wind, or better hunting or fishing, at certain times of the year. Another cause of the abandonment of a camp by the coast-dwellers is that all refuse is thrown away close to the camp, and after a few months the decaying animal matter thus accumulated renders the spot uninhabitable. The natives seem to find it easier to move their camp than to clear away their refuse. The truth is, perhaps, that they are so accustomed to change their camp from one spot to another, in order to make the best use of the natural resources available, that there is no necessity for them to take those sanitary measures that would be essential if they wished to remain for many months continuously at the same place.

The forest-dwellers are less nomadic in their habits than the coast-dwellers. One of the reasons for this is that as they cannot convey their belongings from one place to another by canoe, but must carry them overland, the moving of a camp is a more tiresome business with them than it is with the coast-dwellers. During a great part of the year the forest-dwellers were accustomed to remain at one camp, which was thus the chief camp of the group. In particular they would spend there the whole of the rainy season. During the cool and hot seasons they would leave the chief camp for a few months, leading during that time a more nomadic life, living in temporary hunting camps and paying visits to their friends in other groups. At the opening of the rainy season they would return once more to the main camp.

The camps of the natives of the Great Andaman may be distinguished as being of three kinds. Of the first kind are what may be spoken of as permanent encampments. Certainly every group of the forest-dwellers, and probably every group of the coast-dwellers had its permanent encampment, which was, so to speak, the headquarters of the group. At this spot there would be erected either a communal hut, or a carefully built village. Communal huts have in recent times fallen into disuse, as the natives now wander about the islands much more freely than was their wont. I did not see a single one in the Great Andaman during my visit, though I was told of one that was falling to ruins in the interior of the Middle Andaman. One such communal hut was photographed in 1895 by M. L. Lapicque, at a spot called Lekera-l’un-ta [23]. It was perhaps the last that the natives of the Great Andaman erected. What the communal hut was like it is possible to discover both from the statements of the natives and also from the fact that they are still to the present day used by the natives of the Little Andaman and by the J̌a̤rawa. The hut was roughly circular in form and might be as big as 60 feet in diameter and 20 or 30 feet high at the centre. The shape was somewhat that of a beehive. Two concentric circles, one of tall posts near the centre and the other of shorter posts near the circumference, were connected by horizontal and sloping roof-timbers, and on these were laid and fastened a number of mats of palm-leaves. These mats reached, as a rule, as far as the ground, a small doorway being left on one side.

Such communal huts, while still used in the Little Andaman and by the J̌a̤rawa, and formerly used by the forest-dwellers of the Great Andaman, were apparently not often erected by the coast-dwellers of the larger island at the time the islands were occupied in 1858. Mr Man seems to have regarded them as being peculiarly characteristic of the J̌a̤rawa and the natives of the Little Andaman [24]. There is evidence, however, that even the coast-dwellers formerly erected such huts, for in the Akar-Bale tribe there are several places with names such as Paruŋ Bud and Golugma Bud, which show that communal huts existed there at some time. The word bud is used to denote a communal hut, as compared with a village, which is called baraiǰ.

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

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

The village occupied a small clearing in the forest close to the sea-shore at a place called Mo̱i-lepto in the country of the Akar-Bale tribe. A spring or soak close to the village provided the fresh water. The site is a favourite one as it is well sheltered, and is within convenient distance of good fishing and turtle hunting grounds. It was formerly one of the chief camping places of the local group known as the Boroin wa (Hill people).

The village was composed of eight huts, ranged round a central open space, and all of them facing inwards towards the centre. This open space is kept clear and clean for dancing, and is simply the village dancing ground. Each of the single huts was occupied by a family group, consisting of a man and his wife with their children and dependants. One hut was occupied by an old widower and a bachelor.

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

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

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

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

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

The following figure will give an idea of the Andamanese village and its arrangement. In hunting camps which are intended only to be occupied for a few days or a few weeks, this arrangement is not observed, but the huts or shelters are placed so as to give shelter from the prevailing wind with no particular regard to the respective position of the different units.

The constitution of the local group is illustrated by the arrangement of the village. The whole village consists of a number of separate huts, each hut occupied by a family. A family consists of a man and his wife and such of their children own or adopted as are not of an age to be independent. Besides the families each group necessarily contains a small number of unmarried men and widowers and some unmarried girls and widows. The unmarried men and widowers without children occupy a separate hut (or huts) which we may speak of as the bachelors’ hut. Mr Man states that the spinsters (i.e., the unmarried women who are of marriageable age) and widows occupy a hut of their own similarly to the bachelors [25]. In the camps that I visited I did not find any such spinsters’ hut. What unmarried females there were, I found attached to one or other of the families of the village, each one living in the hut of some married relative, generally the parent or foster-parent.

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

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

Thus it may be seen that the arrangement of the camp shows very plainly the constitution of a local group, consisting as it does of a few families. Each group seems to have contained, on an average, about ten families, with a few unmarried males and females.

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

The life of the forest folk is more simple and uniform than that of the coast people and we may therefore consider it first. During the rainy season, which lasts from the middle of May to the end of September, the local group lives at its headquarters camp, which, as we have seen, formerly often took the form of a communal hut. During this season animal food is plentiful, as the jungle animals are in good condition; on the other hand there is not much vegetable food to be obtained. The following brief account will give an idea of how the day is spent in such a camp at that time of year. Some time after sunrise the camp begins to be astir. The various members of the community make a meal of any food that may have been saved from the day before. The men start off for the day’s hunting. At the present time dogs are used for pig-hunting. These dogs were obtained in the first instance from the Settlement of Port Blair, and their use in pig-hunting was learnt from the Burmese convicts. Nowadays every married man has at least one dog [26]. Before the dogs were obtained, hunting was a pursuit requiring a great deal more skill than it does at present. A hunting party consists of from two to five men. Each man carries his bow and two or three pig arrows, and one of the party carries a smouldering fire-brand. They make their way through the jungle until they find the fresh tracks of a pig, or follow up some of the usual pig runs until they come upon the animal feeding. In former days much skill was required to creep noiselessly through the jungle until they were sufficiently near either to discharge an arrow, or, if the jungle were more open, to rush in upon the animal shouting and shoot it before it could escape. At the present day it is the dogs that scent out the pig and bring it to bay, when the natives shoot it with their arrows.

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

If the hunting party should come across a civet cat (Paradoxurus) or a monitor lizard they would endeavour to kill it [27], but the main object of every hunting party is to obtain pork. Snakes and even rats are killed and eaten. Birds, though plentiful in the islands, are not often obtained, for the density of the jungle and the height of the trees in which the birds conceal themselves, make it very difficult for the natives to shoot them with their bows and arrows. A man does not care to risk the loss of his arrow in a chance shot at a bird. The Andamanese do not trap either birds or animals, though some of the birds, particularly the rail, might be very easily caught in traps.

As the hunting party traverses the forest they may come across roots or fruits or seeds, or wild honey, and these are collected and carried home. In the rainy season only small combs of black honey are to be found [28], and these are generally consumed by the hunters on the spot.

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

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

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

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

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

At the end of the rainy season there comes a brief period of unsettled weather, called by the natives of the North Andaman Kimil, and by those of the South, Gumul. During this season some of the vegetable foods begin to be available, though not in any quantities. At this time of the year the natives are able to obtain and feast upon what they regard as great delicacies, the larvae of the cicada and of the great capricornis beetle. The cool season, when fruits and roots are plentiful, begins at the end of November. The forest dwellers leave their main encampment during this season. Some of them go off to pay visits to their friends of other local groups. Such visits may last two or three months. Those who remain occupy temporary camps in convenient places. The men join the women in looking for roots and fruits, and do not spend so much of their time in hunting. Some of the men visit the main camp at intervals of a few days to see that it is all right. As the cool season gives way to the hot season (March to May) honey begins to be plentiful. At that time hunting for pig is almost abandoned. The pigs are in poor condition, and even when one is killed it is often left in the jungle by the natives as not being good enough to eat. On the other hand everyone is busy collecting honey. This is work in which both men and women join, though it is the men who climb up the trees and cut down the honeycomb. The natives have no means of keeping the honey for more than a very short time, as it rapidly ferments. While it is plentiful they almost live on it, supplementing it with roots and fruits and with fish, if they are near a creek. Towards the end of the hot season the fruit of the Artocarpus chaplasha, which is a favourite food of the natives, becomes ripe. The men and women, at this time, spend much of their time collecting the fruit. When it is collected the fruit is broken open and each of the seeds is sucked to obtain the juicy pulp or aril with which it is surrounded, and which has a very pleasant taste. The seeds are then partly boiled and are buried in the ground to remain there for a few weeks, when they will be dug up again and cooked and eaten. Any natives who may have been away from home on a visit, return before the Artocarpus comes into fruit in order to take their share in collecting it and providing a supply of the seeds for consumption in the rainy season. The natives then return to the headquarters camp and make any necessary repairs to the hut in preparation for the rainy season, which begins about the middle of May.

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

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

Besides their food, which they must find from day to day, the natives have need of nothing save their weapons and implements. Of these each person makes his own, each man making his own bow, arrows, adze, etc., while the wife makes her baskets, nets and so on.

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

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

In the village each family erects and keeps in repair its own hut, and the wife provides the hut with the firewood and water needed. In the case of a communal hut it would seem that this is really an example of a possession common to the whole group. This is so, however, only in appearance. The hut is built by all the different families, but each family is regarded as owning a certain portion of the hut when it is finished, and it is the family that keeps this part of the hut in repair.

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

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

It is considered a breach of good manners ever to refuse the request of another. Thus if a man be asked by another to give him anything that he may possess, he will immediately do so. If the two men are equals a return of about the same value will have to be made. As between an older married man and a bachelor or a young married man, however, the younger would not make any request of such a nature, and if the older man asked the younger for anything the latter would give it without always expecting a return.

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

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

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

The division of labour between the sexes is fairly clearly marked. A man hunts and fishes, using the bow and arrow and the harpoon; he makes his own bows and arrows, his adze and knife, cuts canoes and makes rope for harpoon lines. A woman collects fruits and digs up roots with her digging stick; she catches prawns and crabs and small fish with her small fishing net; she provides the firewood and the water of the family and does the cooking (i.e. the family cooking, but not the common cooking, which is entirely done by men); she makes all such objects as baskets, nets of thread, and personal ornaments either for herself or her husband.

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

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

In the tribes of the South Andaman there are exactly similar terms. In the Aka-Bea tribe Maia or Maiola is used in addressing men and Čana or Čanola in speaking to women. In Akar-Bale the equivalent terms are Da and In. Besides these terms there is in these tribes another, Mam, Mama or Mamola, which may be used in speaking to either men or women, and which implies a higher degree of respect than Maia or Čana. In these tribes also there is a special way of showing respect by adding the suffix -la to the name of the person addressed, as Bia, Biala, Woičo, Woičo-la, etc.

In the legends of the Andamanese these titles are nearly always prefixed to the names of the legendary ancestors, as Maia J̌utpu and Mimi Biliku in Aka-J̌eru, or Da Duku and In Bain in Akar-Bale. The moon is similarly spoken of as Sir Moon (Maia Ogar in Aka-Bea) and the sun as Lady Sun (Čana Bodo).