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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(MAY, 1925
occur usually then, but they are rare, no one individual being likely to experience more than one or two in his life, whereas in the South West Monsoon storms are constant and on the West Coast of the Andamans very severe.
The Anger of Biliku (Puluga). Mr. Brown now carries on the argument, p. 356 : "the Andaman Islander represents any natural phenomenon having negative social value as though it were the result of the action of a person in anger, this being the one anti-social passion with which he is most familiar in his own life. ... The negative social value of a violent storm is obvious," and they are therefore clearly due to the anger of Biliku.
He next remarks (p. 357): "another law of Andaman Mythology is that a person, such as the Moon, is never angry without cause," and he examines three actions of extreme importance which "cause the anger of Biliku." The first is the melting or burning of bees-wax. The season for doing this is necessarily the hot season, and "year after year the wax-melting season comes to a close in showery weather." So (p. 358) "the anger of Biliku following the melting of bees-wax is in one sense simply a statement of actual observable fact. The second point is the cutting down or digging up in the hot season of certain plants, which include the most valuable vegetable food. Here again, Mr. Brown argues (p. 359) : "there is a definite ground of association (of Biliku's anger] in familiar natural phenomena." The third action that can cause Biliku's anger is (p. 359) “the killing of a Cicada or making & noise while the Cicada is singing in the morning or evening." Here the explanation is (p. 360) that "the grub of the Cicada is eaten during the kimil (danger) season and at no other time of year," i.e., only in the cyclone season.
The Andamanese are represented here as a kind of ceremonial homeopaths. They do ceremonially the very acts that anger Biliku in order to cure or avert her anger E.g., (p. 359): “the efficient way of stopping a storm is to go into the forest and destroy the plants that belong to Biliku," and (p. 361) by performing the ceremony of " killing the Cicada" they insure fine weather.
Reviewing the whole subject, Mr. Brown writes (p. 362): "The explanation that I have to offer of their beliefs relating to Biliku and to the things that offend her is that they are simply the statement in a special form of observable facts of nature."
The Sex of Blliku. On this subject Mr. Brown remarks (p. 365): "There is a lack of agreement... Tarai, (p. 366) rules over the rainy season, in which the chief food is the flesh of animals of the land and of the sea : it is the business of men to provide flesh food. On the contrary Biliku rules over the seasons in which the chief foods are vegetable products of different kinds: it is the business of women to provide such foods .... There is (then) sound reason for calling Tarai male and Biliku female.. This way of thinking of Biliku as female is in harmony with her character as outlined above. Women in the Andamans) are notoriously uncertain, changeable creatures. You can always reckon fairly well what a man will do, but not so with a woman."
After carefully qualifying this statement about women by the words he puts in brackets, Mr. Brown goes on (p. 366): "In the South Andaman, however, both Puluga and Deria are said to be male. It can be shown that this view is also appropriate in its way. The Akar-Bale (Balawa) say that Puluga and Deria were once friends, but have quarrelled and now live at opposite ends of the earth and are perpetually renewing their quarrel." The two monsoons end in unsettled weather. The combat is such as would be fought among men: obyiously therefore Paluga and Deria should be male. All this Mr. Brown qualifies by the remark (p. 367): "I venture to think, however, that the Southern myth is not quite so
