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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(JUNE, 1922
APPENDIX V-contd. Just as the coast-people by shooting and netting fish, by harpooning turtles and hunting pigs along the coast and by other means experience no difficulty in regard to food, so also do we who live in the jungle find plenty to eat in every season.
All who live in the jungle remain in their villages during the rainy season. We go our rounds of visits only during the fruit-season when there is no rain. It is then we go to see our kinsfolk at a distance. After an absence of a month or 80 we retum. We again leave our homes towards the close of the dry-season in order to collect and bury jack-fruit seeds (Artocarpus chaplasha) for subsequent consumption. In about a month we return to our homes.
In our tribe those living in the heart of the jungles are more numerous than those living on the coast. tolo-bồicho is larger than bårlâka-bil, but there are several villages in our jungle larger than tölo-boicho. Our huts are also larger than those of the people on the coast, and last several years without renewal.
During the whole year we find plenty of food near our villages. We find it sufficient to go only now and then to get food. We frequently spend our time in dancing and singing.
When any death occurs in our villages we all unigrate to some vacant camping-ground, where we provide ourselves with temporary huts, in which we live according to custom for a few months; after which we recover the bones of the deceased, and return to thlo-bồicho in order to perform the prescribed "tear-shedding " dance. Only under such circumstances is an established village vacated entirely for a certain time.
Women pass the night away from homes only when they accompany us (men) in the fruit-season for the purpose of paying our (annual) visits to our friends; otherwise, they. like the old people and young children, always remain in their own villages.
When engaged in a pig-hunting expédition during the rains, we men pften spend two or more days away from our homes.
As we who live in the jungle, unlike the coast-dwellers, are not in the habit of migrating from one camping-ground to another, we deposit all our rubbish and refuge-matter at a distance from our villages, so that we are not troubled with offensive odours.
There are a few permanent villages among the coast-people, where some of the inmates usually dwell continuously for many months, while the rest of the community are constantly shifting their quarters.
There are large kitchen-middens near our villages as well as those of the permanent coast-dwellers. In the vicinity of the coast the jungle is denser than in the interior.
I have visited the interior of the dka-kede territory, where I observed that there were & considerable number of people. We believe that they are more numerous than ourselves. We have had good jungle paths from remote times. I have now seen all the members of the South Andaman tribe; their number is small.
We are acquainted with the habits and customs of the aka-bôjig-yab and áka kot tribes, they resemble ours. As with us so among them there are both coast-dwellers and jungle-dwellers. There also the latter are in the habit of living for months together in the heart of the jungle, and remaining each one at his own village. As only a small portion of the aka-bôjio-ydb territory is any distance from the sea there are but few jungle-dwellers. in that tribe.
