Indian Antiquary Vol 52

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

Page 172

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ JUNE, 1923
I have even a further note to make here. It will have been observed in the quotation given above that Mr. Browa talks of the "so-called Jarawa," and says that it is the "official" name for the tribe though "probably they call themselves Önge," the name Jarawa being derived from the Akà-Bêa term for them, as if Jarawa was a wrong term to use. But why should it be? The Bêa or Akà-Bêa Tribe was that living in and around the Penal Settlement at Port Blair when the British Officials arrived, and its terms were naturally those adopted by them. Is it wrong for an Englishman to talk of "the French," or for a Frenchman of "Les Anglais"? Or for an Italian of "Inghilterra"? Or again is it wrong to speak of "Deutschland" as Germany or L'Allemagne? And what about using such terms as Burman, Talaing, Siamese, Tibetan and so on for people who do not know themselves by names even approaching these forms? For that matter, what about "Andaman " itself? It is worth while noting this point, because European scholarship got the Andamanese tribal names from Mr. Man, who adopted them from the tribe he worked with the Akà-Bêa. Europeans thus, had a uniform set of names not identified with any English reporter. Then Mr. Portman came along and took to calling some of them by their names for themselves as he heard them, so that the searcher had two sets of names before him, Man's Akà-Bêa names and the set according to Portman. Mr. Brown has followed Portman's plan and created yet a third set -a set according to Brown. He thus extended the confusion created by Portman, which does not work for improvement. It may be said that I myself created a fourth set in the Census Report, but what I did was to leave out the grammatical affixes to the names and so shortened them for the English student.
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To turn to another subject. On p. 15 Mr. Brown says:-"It is not possible to give accurately the area occupied by each tribe, as the boundaries are difficult to discover." That is no doubt true at the present day, as the tribes are all mixed up together, as were the Hottentots before they disappeared, just as the Andamanese are disappearing. But it was not wholly true 50 years ago when Mr. Man began to work. The area of occupation by various tribes has altered from time to time to my personal knowledge. In fact, political geography was always changing in the Andamans, as elsewhere, according to variation in local tribal supremacy. E.g., Colebrooke found Jarawas at Port Blair in 1790, whereas Dr. Mouat and his successors found Aki-B3as there in 1858. The Jarawa area of occupation has since varied greatly in my own experience. Mr. Brown shows here and throughout his observations a tendency to give the impression that his observations in 1906-1908, when the tribes had become all mixed up and were in close friendly contact (except the Önges and Jarawas), were true of the Andamanese Tribes, when they were still separated and largely mutually hostile. His remarks must therefore always be read with caution.
On one point, estimate of population, Mr. Brown differs from all who preceded him. The Census of 1901 was a first attempt it is true, but it was very carefully performed by officers of long experience, including Mr. Man himself, on a definite detailed plan, which is explained at full length in the Report. It involved visits to every available part of the Islands, so thorough that they in turn involved brushes with the Jarawas. Every effort practicable was made to arrive at approximate accuracy, and an estimate was added of the population in pre-contact days on data that were also fully explained. The meaning of all this is that the Census estimates were made, on openly described data, both for the present (1901) and the former population. Mr. Brown thinks them wrong on very much smaller opportunity for judging, and owing to my experience, his strictures on the Jarawa estimate do not impress