Chapter XIII: Concerning the Island of Angamanain

Angamanain is a very large Island. The people are without a king and are Idolaters, and no better than wild beasts. And I assure you all the men of this Island of Angamanain have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise; in fact, in the face they are all just like big mastiff dogs! They have a quantity of spices; but they are a most cruel generation, and eat everybody that they can catch, if not of their own race.{1} They live on flesh and rice and milk, and have fruits different from any of ours.

Now that I have told you about this race of people, as indeed it was highly proper to do in this our book, I will go on to tell you about an Island called Seilan, as you shall hear.

NOTE 1.—Here Marco speaks of the remarkable population of
the Andaman Islands—Oriental negroes in the lowest state of
barbarism—who have remained in their isolated and degraded
condition, so near the shores of great civilised countries, for so
many ages. “Rice and milk” they have not, and their fruits are only
wild ones.

[From the _Sing-ch’a Shêng-lan_ quoted by Professor Schlegel
(_Geog. Notes_, I. p. 8) we learn that these islanders have neither
“rice or corn, but only descend into the sea and catch fish and
shrimps in their nets; they also plant Banians and Cocoa-trees for
their food.”—H. C.]

I imagine our traveller’s form _Angamanain_ to be an Arabic
(oblique) dual—“The two ANDAMANS,” viz. The Great and The Little,
the former being in truth a chain of three islands, but so close
and nearly continuous as to form apparently one, and to be named as
such.

_Michelet sc._

The Borús. (From a Manuscript.)]

[Professor Schlegel writes (_Geog. Notes._ I. p. 12): “This
etymology is to be rejected because the old Chinese transcription
gives _So_—(or _Sun_) _damân_.... The _Pien-i-tien_ (ch. 107, I.
fol. 30) gives a description of Andaman, here called _An-to-man
kwoh_, quoted from the _San-tsai Tu-hwui_.”—H. C.]

The origin of the name seems to be unknown. The only person to my
knowledge who has given a meaning to it is Nicolo Conti, who says
it means “Island of Gold”; probably a mere sailor’s yarn. The name,
however, is very old, and may perhaps be traced in Ptolemy; for he
names an island of cannibals called that of _Good Fortune_, Ἀγαθοῦ
δαίμονος. It seems probable enough that this was Ἀγδαιμόνος Νῆσος,
or the like, “The Angdaman Island,” misunderstood. His next group
of Islands is the _Barussae_, which seems again to be the Lankha
_Bálús_ of the oldest Arab navigators, since these are certainly
the Nicobars. [The name first appears distinctly in the Arab
narratives of the 9th century. (_Yule, Hobson-Jobson_.)]

The description of the natives of the Andaman Islands in the
early Arab _Relations_ has been often quoted, but it is too like
our traveller’s account to be omitted: “The inhabitants of these
islands eat men alive. They are black with woolly hair, and in
their eyes and countenance there is something quite frightful....
They go naked, and have no boats. If they had they would devour
all who passed near them. Sometimes ships that are wind-bound, and
have exhausted their provision of water, touch here and apply to
the natives for it; in such cases the crew sometimes fall into the
hands of the latter, and most of them are massacred” (p. 9).

The traditional charge of cannibalism against these people used
to be very persistent, though it is generally rejected since our
settlement upon the group in 1858. Mr. Logan supposes the report
was cherished by those who frequented the islands for edible birds’
nests, in order to keep the monopoly. Of their murdering the crews
of wrecked vessels, like their Nicobar neighbours, I believe there
is no doubt; and it has happened in our own day. Cesare Federici,
in Ramusio, speaks of the terrible fate of crews wrecked on the
Andamans; all such were killed and eaten by the natives, who
refused all intercourse with strangers. A. Hamilton mentions a
friend of his who was wrecked on the islands; nothing more was ever
heard of the ship’s company, “which gave ground to conjecture that
they were all devoured by those savage cannibals.”

They do not, in modern times, I believe, in their canoes, quit
their own immediate coast, but Hamilton says they used, in his
time, to come on forays to the Nicobar Islands; and a paper in the
_Asiatic Researches_ mentions a tradition to the same effect as
existing on the Car Nicobar. They have retained all the aversion to
intercourse anciently ascribed to them, and they still go naked as
of old, the utmost exception being a leaf-apron worn by the women
near the British Settlement.

The Dog-head feature is at least as old as Ctesias. The story
originated, I imagine, in the disgust with which “allophylian”
types of countenance are regarded, kindred to the feeling which
makes the Hindus and other eastern nations represent the aborigines
whom they superseded as demons. The Cubans described the Caribs
to Columbus as man-eaters with dogs’ muzzles; and the old Danes
had tales of Cynocephali in Finland. A curious passage from the
Arab geographer Ibn Said pays an ambiguous compliment to the
forefathers of Moltke and Von Roon: “The _Borús_ (Prussians) are
a miserable people, and still more savage than the Russians....
One reads in some books _that the_ Borús _have dogs’ faces; it is
a way of saying that they are very brave_.” Ibn Batuta describes an
Indo-Chinese tribe on the coast of Arakan or Pegu as having dogs’
mouths, but says the _women_ were beautiful. Friar Jordanus had
heard the same of the dog-headed islanders. And one odd form of
the story, found, strange to say, both in China and diffused over
Ethiopia, represents the males as _actual_ dogs whilst the females
are women. Oddly, too, Père Barbe tells us that a tradition of the
Nicobar people themselves represent them as of canine descent, but
on the female side! The like tale in early Portuguese days was told
of the Peguans, viz. that they sprang from a dog and a Chinese
woman. It is mentioned by Camoens (X. 122). Note, however, that in
Colonel Man’s notice of the wilder part of the Nicobar people the
projecting canine teeth are spoken of.

Abraham Roger tells us that the Coromandel Brahmans used to say
that the _Rákshasas_ or Demons had their abode “on the Island
of Andaman lying on the route from Pulicat to Pegu,” and also
that they were man-eaters. This would be very curious if it were
a genuine old Brahmanical _Saga_; but I fear it may have been
gathered from the Arab seamen. Still it is remarkable that a
strange weird-looking island, a steep and regular volcanic cone,
which rises covered with forest to a height of 2150 feet, straight
out of the deep sea to the eastward of the Andaman group, bears the
name _Narkandam_, in which one cannot but recognise नरक, _Narak_,
“Hell”; perhaps _Naraka-kuṇḍam_, “a pit of hell.” Can it be that
in old times, but still contemporary with Hindu navigation, this
volcano was active, and that some Brahman St. Brandon recognised in
it the mouth of Hell, congenial to the Rakshasas of the adjacent
group?

“Si est de saint Brandon le matère furnie;
Qui fu si près d’enfer, à nef et à galie,
Que déable d’enfer issirent, par maistrie,
Getans brandons de feu, pour lui faire hasquie.”
—_Bauduin de Sebourc_, I. 123.

(_Ramusio_, III. 391; _Ham._ II. 65; _Navarrete_ (Fr. Ed.), II.
101; _Cathay_, 467; _Bullet. de la Soc. de Géog._ sér. IV. tom iii.
36–37; _J. A. S. B._ u.s.; _Reinaud’s Abulfeda_, I. 315; _J. Ind.
Arch._, N.S., III. I. 105; _La Porte Ouverte_, p. 188.) [I shall
refer to my edition of _Odoric_, 206–217, for a long notice on
dog-headed barbarians; I reproduce here two of the cuts.—H. C.]