Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 171

JONE, 1923)
REMARKS ON THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS AND THEIR COUNTRY
155
I further disouss a list of about 250 Onge words. Next I go into roots and affixes in detail to show (p. 120) how the words reported by Colebrooke are actually made up. Lastly, as a result of this method, I am able to make the following remarks (p. 120): "Colebrooke showed all sorts of impossible things to his Jarawa to name, and one interesting result is the following English. Jarawa.
Onge. Cotton cloth. Papor. Pange--be.
Be-nge—be. Flat-beoome-is.
Flat-become-is. Of course, no Jarawa had ever seen before anything approaching to either object, and this man's one expression for both means 'it is (has been) flattened, which is what the savage meant to convey when asked anything so impossible as to name them."
I then proceed to my concluding remarks on the Onge-Jarawa language (pp. 120-121): "We are now in a position to solve a great puzzle of ethnographists for a century and more : why were the Andamanese called Minoopie by Europeans! What word does this transoription represent ? It can now be split up thus
M-
ongebe. I-man-kind-am.
(I am an Onge.) "Or, as the Jarawas perhaps pronounce the expression 'M-inggo-be' or even M-injo-be,' I am an Inggo (Injo). The name given by the Onges to themselves is a' verbal noun 'ö-nge, man-being. So that wien questioned as to himself by Colebrooke, this Jarawa replied 'M'inggoba,' or something like it, which compound expression by mistranscription and misapprehension has b3come the wall-known Minoopie of the general ethnological books in many languagas for an Andaman9se. Tae Onges oall their own home, the Little Andiman, Gwab3-l'Oaga. Jarawa is a modern Bla torm, possibly radically identical with Yorowa, the Boa name for the Northern Group of Tribes.
"It is just possible that Colebrooke's Jarawa misunderstood what was wanted altogether and simply said, 'I am will be, would be) drinking: m-inggo-be, I-drink-do.'
"I have now to record a great disappointment. The proof that the method herein adopted for recovering the Jarawa language was correct lay in the faot that the word i-nge for water' was asoertained from a little Jarawa boy captured in February, 1902, and the identical word was quite independently unearthed from Colebrooke's and Portman's Vocabularies as Onge-Jarawa for' water. The only other word clearly ascertained from the boy, wilung for 'pig' has not been gathered independently as yet. This little boy was the last of the prisoners left, who were captured on that occasion, as the women and small children and girls were all returned and only two boys kept back for a while in order to get their language, eto., from them. Of these, the elder died of fever and on the very day that their language was fairly recovered, and we were in a position to set to work to learn quickly from him, the younger died very suddenly, without warning illness, of pneumonia."
Although it is 20 years ago since these remarks were made, I well recolleat the sense of satisfaction at baing able, from a long general acquaintance with Andamanese in all its aspects, to explain the fkrat rough tentative reoord of the language, especially as it had been made by so graat an Orientalist as Henry Thomas Colebrooko, and to settle, as far as that is now possible, an old "soiontifo" term for an Andaman Islander. I therefore make no apology for the length of the note on this point, as it brings so interesting a discovery once more to notice.