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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1926
two alternative explanations of bad weather. One of the explanations is that storms are due to Biliku, while the other is that they are due to the Spirits, particularly the Spirits of the Sea. Both these beliefs, contradictory as they seem, are held by the Andamanese."
The Biliku-Tarai Myth. Mr. Brown winds up his remarks on the Biliku (Puluga) and Tarai (Deria) Legends with these remarks (p. 375): "I have tried to show that the whole myth is an expression of the social value of the phenomena of the weather and the seasons. These phenomena affect the social life in certain definite ways and thereby become the objects of certain sentiments : these sentiments are expressed in the Legends.... (p. 376). I have explained some of the more important of the Legends as being expressions or statements of the social value of natural phenomena." And finally he says : (pp. 376-377) "all the legends I wish to maintain, are simply the expression in concrete form of the feelings and ideas aroused by all things of all kinds as the result of the way in which things affect the moral and social life of the Andaman Islanders. In other words the Legends have for their function to express the social values of different objects,-to express in general the system of social values that is characteristic of Andamanese social organisation."
Personification of Natural Phenomena : Definition. Says Mr. Brown (p. 377): "It is now necessary to give a more exact definition of this term. By it I mean the association of a natural phenomenon with the idea of a person in such a way that the characteristics of the phenomenon may be regarded as though they were actions or characteristics of the person. The simplest form is that in which the phenomenon itself is spoken of and thought of as if it were an actual person. Thus the sun and moon are spoken of as Lady Sun and Sir Moon."
And then a little later on he says : "the name of the person is also used as the name of the phenomenon of which he is in the phraseology used here) the personification."
Process of Personification. After discussing the process of personification in mythology generally in terms of which the key-note of the argument is (p. 378), -"the first organised experience that the individual attains is all connected with persons and their relations to himself,"-Mr. Brown goes on to apply the theory to the Andamanese. He observes (p. 379) that “the Andaman Islander has no interest in nature save in so far as it directly affects the social life," and in order to express his emotional experience "he has to make use of that part of his own experience that is already thoroughly organised, namely, that relating to the actions of ona person as affecting another, or as affecting the society."
The Ancestors : Tradition. Mr. Brown next remarks (p. 381) that "the personification of natural phenomena is not the only method by which their social value can be expressed," which observation leads him on to discuss the question of the existence of ancestors," as to whom he says (p. 382) that "the ground of the belief in the ancestor is to be found in the existence of a sentiment fundamental in all human society, which I shall call the feeling of tradition."
Finally he is led to an opinion, of which one hears more later, relating to an "ordered form : "
"To put the matter (pp. 382-383) in a few words, the individual finds himself in relation to an ordered system-the social order to which he has to adapt himself. The two chief moments in his affective attitude towards that order are his sense of his own dependence upon it and of the need of conforming to its requirements in his actions. It is this his sense of his own relation to the social order,--that the Andaman Islander expresses in the Legends about the ancestors, which recount how that order came into existence as the result of actions of anthropomorphic beings."
