Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 324

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
INTRODUCTION. I think that I can best introduce the reader to the South Andaman language by freely extracting the remarks made thereon by the late Dr. A. J. Ellis, F.R.S., F.S.A., on his retirement from the Chair of the Philological Society for the second time on 19th May 1882: he then gave a " Presidential Address" by way of a "Report on the Researches into the Language of the South Andaman Island" from the papers of Mr. E. H. Man (O.I.E.) and Lt. R. C. Temple (Lt. Col. Sir R. C. Temple, C.B., C.I.E., F.S.A.). From this Report are taken the following paragraphs verbatim, with such textual alterations as are necessary after so many years. It will be observed that in consequence necessary references to myself and my procedure are by name.
The South Andaman language, called by the natives dkà-bea-da, consists in the first place of a series of base forms, reducible to roots. These forms may answer to any part of speech, and in particular to what we call substantives, adjectives or verbs. These forms do not vary in construction, and are not subject to inflexion proper. Hence there is nothing resembling the grammatical gender, declension or conjugation of Aryan languages; but the functions of such Aryan forms are discharged by prefixes, postpositions, and suffixes. It is only in the pronouns and pronominal adjectives that there is anything which simulates declension. And it is only by the use of the prefixes that anything like concord can be established.
The Andamanese have of course words which imply sex, but they are in general quite unrelated forms; thus : àbü lada man à pai'lda woman; akaka dakada boy, aryo ngida giri; àrô dingada father, abê tingada mother. Male' and 'female' are represented even for animals by the above words for 'man' and 'woman,' without the affixes, which are usually omitted in composition, 12 as búla, pail, and when the animals are young by the names abwa'rada bachelor, or abjad.ijó gda spinster, rejecting the affixes as wära, jadijog, see below, letter to Jam bu, sentences 15 and 16. Even in the Aryan languages gender', the Latin 'genus', means only a 'kind', and as it so happened that the kind with one termination included males, with another females, and with a third sexless things, the timehonoured names masculine, feminine and neuter arose. But the classification thus formed has, properly speaking, nothing to do with sex, as may be seen at once from sentinel being feminine in French (la sentinelle) and woman neuter in German (das Weib). We may see from the discussions in Grimm's grammar how difficult, or rather impossible, it is to recover the feeling which led to that grouping in German, and the same difficulty is felt in other languages. The Andamanese grouping which takes the place of gender is, on the contrary, clear enough in the main. The Andamanese consider, first, objects generally, including everything thinkable. Then these are divided into animate and inanimate. Of course the vegetable kingdom is included in the latter. The animate objects are again divided into human and non-human. Of the human objects there is a sevenfold division as to the part of the body referred to, and this division is curiously extended to the inanimate objects which affect or are considered in relation to certain parts of the body. These group distinctions are pointed out by prefixes, and by the form assumed by the pronominal adjectives. So natural and rooted are these distinctions in the minds of the Andamanese that any use of a wrong prefix or wrong possessive form
* This expression includes both prefix and suffix. The suffix-da is occasionally retained at the end of clauses.