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AUGUST, 1921)
FOLK TALES OF THE CAR NICOBARESE
235
I.-THE DELUGE. There was once a great flood in this land, and all the surface of the earth was covered with water.
Now there was one man who was fortunate enough to swim to a great tree which was not entirely immersed in the water. He climbed the tree and lived up in the branches of it until the waters were assuaged.
When he saw any cocoanuts floating about in the water, or any dead pigs and fowls with distended stomachs, he would swim out to them and bring them in ; and there up among the branches of the tree, he would eat his food.
At last the rain stopped ; and then, little by little, the water decreased, and little by little he got more room, and at last was able to get down to the solid earth.
Then, when the waters had gone down, he spied a bitch perched up on the branches of a tree, its ear being spiked by the great thorn of the lun-hiont (priokly-palm). So he went and released it, and took it, and made it his wife, and they lived together, the bitch and the man; and they had offspring which was human.
So the people of these parts copy the dog in wearing the ki-sdt, 1 for it has tails hanging down like & dog's tail; their turban too has ears standing up like the dog's ears. The people also say of themselves that they are the offspring of that bitch.
II.-THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE SUN AND MOON. Long long ago when the world was new and the skies were still low down and near to the earth, the moon was changed into the sun. The sun too was changed into the moon, and the heat was terrific, so that boards cracked and the ground was cleft asunder.
So one day the ancients who dwelt in these lands of ours met together to take counsel A to what was to be done. As a result of their deliberations, they directed the filetchers to make some long-bows, and they prepared arrows of ta-chöi& and of cha-lūök.
Then they shot at the sky until the sky removed a long way off.
Some of the arrows they shot up at the sky never came down again, but remained stuck up in the sky. Those made of the strands of the cocoanut-leaf burst into flame and became stars. Those made of ta-chöi sticks did not burst into flame.
IIL-ABOUT TREES IN DAYS OF YORE. Long long ago, when this world of ours was young, trees would be obedient to men, and go wherever they were told. People could drive them far away from their original place.
So in the days when the trees were obedient to the commands of men, we did not get Wearied when we travelled, for we would fasten our loads on the branch of a tree, letting the load hang down, duly balanced ; and then we would drive the trees along.
1 The roanty Nicobarese loin-cloth. [In my Oens Report, 1901, 1 remark, pp. 213-216, “The Nicobaron man at home wears only an infinitesimal loin-cloth, or rather string, fastened behind with
waggling tag. This must have been his garment from all time, because of the persistent reports that these people were naked and tailed from the days of Ptolemy onwards to the middle of the 17th century."-R.C.T.)
JA band round the head made of the spathe of the betel nut. (This band may, however, have a pommon origin with the now white cotton cincture round the head worn by royalty, courtiers and elders in Burma and Siam.-R.C.T.)
3 [For s variant form of this story of origin, non Census Report, 1901, p. 211.-R.C.T.) • Or, "changed itself."
Literally, “ for." The bark of the ta-choi (ta-e-ku) is used for tying thatch, and the small twigu, which are very white, light and brittle, are tied by the witeb-doctors to spurgo the devils.
* The stands of the coconut-loal, much used in making brooms.
