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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[May, 1926
(2) the notion of the animals as having once been one with the ancestors. These two motives are both present in the Legends of the origin of fire that were pre. viously considered."
· The Three Worlds. Mr. Brown now becomes ingenious (pp. 346-347) : “In a number of their Legends it is stated that the ancestors saved themselves by climbing up into a tall tree and into the trees. This is to be explained by the fact that the birds all live up in the trees, and many of them can never be seen save overhead. The top of the forest is where the birds live: it is their world, raised above the world of men and women. The flood drove the inhabitants to the tops of the trees. The birds remained there and only the human beings came down again.... (p. 347). This is, I think, what the Legend really means. The story of the flood gives a picture of a three-fold.world ... For the natives of the Andaman) Islands the top of the forest is an alien world into which they can only penetrate with extreme difficulty by climbing, and with the life of which they have little to do. Similarly the waters of the sea are another world into which they can only penetrate for a few moments at a time by diving."
Mr. Brown then carries the idea further (p. 347): "the same three-fold division of the world is seen in the beliefs about the three kinds of spirits, those of the forest. those of the sea, and the Morua who, while spoken of as spirits of the sky, are often thought of as living in the tops of the tall trees." But he is aware that here he is in a difficulty (p. 347): "it may be said that, on this view, no allowance is made for the existence of terrestrial animals." This he skims over by saying: "That is true, but it must be remembered that there are very few such animals in the Andamans."
The Origin of Animals. Mr. Brown is thug led on to examine " the story of the Origin of Animals in the Akar. Bale (Balawa) Tribe." Comparing the variants of the tale he says (p. 349) :
“The main purpose of the story is to relate how a great storm or cyclone visited the island in the times of the ancestors and turned many of them into animals. The storm was brought about by the action of one of the ancestors, who in anger did some of the things that are known to anger Puluga and cause & storm . . .. The purpose of the elements of the Legend is to explain how the great flood came about, by tracing it to the anti-social action of some or more of the ancestors, just as the night is supposed to have been produced by an ancestor who performed a forbidden action . . The origin of the catastrophe that separated the once united Ancestors into animals and human beings is thus traced to the fact that they could not live together socially and in harmony."
After reasoning at some length on these general statements, Mr. Brown (p. 350) draws the moral from the animals legends thus : "human society is only possible if personal anger be subordinated to the need of good order : the animals are cut off from human society because they could not live peaceably together without quarrelling."
The Personification of a Natural Phenomena. Mr. Brown is next, as it were almost naturally, led on to consider what he (p. 377) calls the Personification of Natural Phenomena, or what Mr. Man would call the Andamanese ideas of God. This point he examines at great length in some 32 pages of his book (pp. 351383). He launches into the mythology of this all-important subject with the statement (p. 350). "In the various stories (of the Fire and Flood) there are two separate elements": viz., firstly " the explanation of how a disastrous flood or storm caused by the non-observance of ritual prohibition connected with Biliku (Puluga)," and secondly "how, through the flood and storm," animals " became separated from the human race."
"The clue to the understanding" of Andamanese mythology (p. 351) "lies in the Andamaneno notions about the weather and the seasons." He then describes the seasong
