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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ AUGUST, 1924
be eaten, the islands are visited with stormy weather, sometimes of exceptional violence." From this constant succession (of storms) the belief is supposed by Brown to have arisen that the eating of these plants during this season draws down Puluga's wrath, which breaks out in the heaviest storms of the transition period (II, p. 358 ff.).
The regularity and clearness of the phenomena cannot be contested here. But there is another difficulty which Brown also saw, without indeed in any way solving it (II, p. 369) : the fact that whilst Puluga's anger and the storm regularly followed the repeated wickedness of the war-burning, here, on the contrary, if one follows Brown's arrangement of time, the crime and the punishment by storins occurred simultaneously. A case has even been known of the storms preceding the crimes ; at any rate it could so happen, according to Brown, who places the criticat transition period, and with it the beginning of the stoms, at the beginning of October, whilst the fruita in question only ripen in the course of October and November, the same with yams (II, p. 358) with caryota sobolifera (I, 269) and Entada scandens (II, p. 358)
Here, however, we may well break off the criticism of Brown's theories on the origin of Puluga's commands in the Andamanese religion, as Brown himself acknowledges on the one hand, that he had not personelly observed the deciding facts of botany and meteorology on which his theories might have been supported, as the importance and complexity of the matter in hand demanded, and on the other hand that formerly he had himself not attributed any particular importance to these theories.
VIII. Wealth and complexity of the Religious Situation of the Andamanese. But to his work on the whole wo attach great importance. He forms the indispensable complement of E. H. Man's representation. For it is first through Brown that we learn that beside the religion of the Southern Andamanese discovered by Man, which already in this restricted region had a true Supreme Being, there are also a great variety of other religious froms among these little tribes in these primitive conditions. We also are given, anyway, a partial insight into the external events and the inner movements and spiritual struggles by which that great difference could have come about. We are surprised at the importance and depth of these struggles which could already be enacted right on the very threshold of human life
Brown also gives us the deeper psychological reason which has made this great variety poseble; it is the extreme individuality which holds sway among these Pygmieg, by virtue of which every Andamanese makes his own songs and melodies and at least every "seer" takes a pride in always telling the myths in a new and original way. In this manner there can be no static forms either in the songs or in the myths.
Thus the worship of the Supreme Being and prayer have also no fixed form, which I have alroady shown to be as much a characteristic of other Pygmies as of the Andamanese 35 There is no trace to be seen here of what the North Amerioan ethnologists call "Ceremonialism" or "Realism." So far no kind or rigidity has developed. Religion as well as the whole spirtiual life is, so to speak, still fluid, in a constant state of individual transformation.
It is hardly necessary to emphasize how extraordinarily interesting & renewed, accurate and judicious observation of this state would be, and how greatly it is to be wished that researches in this direction were still possible and might shortly be carried out.*
36 Schmidt, Pygmdenvolker, pp. 197, ff., 223, 245. # See Anthropos, Vol. XVI-XVII (1921-1922), pp. 1079—1083, in the account of Brown's work.
