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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
MAY, 1925
have an obvious relation to the society consists of the geographical features of the islands ... (p. 387) we may say briefly that the local motives of the Legends serve to express social values of localities .... (p. 386) Such notives are of considerable importance ; of much more importance than would appear from the stories."
. Animals as Ancestors. Mr. Brown next turns his attention to the subject of Animal Ancestors (p. 387): "many of the actors in the Legends bear the names of animals, but at the same time aro spoken of as though they were human beings .... (p. 388) It is not simply that the legendary person is a man with the name and some of the characteristics of an animal ; nor is it simply that the legendary person is the ancestor of the species of which he hears the naine. We can only adequately express the thought of the Andamanese by sa ying that he regards the whole species as if it were a human being." And on p. 389 Mr. Brown remarks: "there is & parallelism between the personification of natural phenomena and the personification of animal species."
Origin of the Legends. After explaining that the Andamanese base no Star Legends because (p. 393) they do not have their attention called to the stars, Mr. Brown sets about accoupting for the existence of the Legends (p. 393) : "the Andamnanese, like other sa vages, have not acquired the power of thinking abstractedly. All their thought necessarily deals with concrete things. Now the story form provides a means of expressing concretely what could otherwise only be put in an abstract statement.. . (p. 394) The chief ground for the interest in stories shown by children and by sa vages is, I believe, that they afford the ineans of exercising the imagination in certain specific directions and thereby play an important part in enabling the individual to organise his experience." And finally he makes some interesting remarks in this connection (p. 394): the point to be noted is that these tales are always frankly egoistic and boastful, and it is for this reason that they may well be con.pareil with the day dreams of the more civilised.... (p. 395) By means of the personification of natural phenomena and of species of aniinals, and through the assumption of the existence of the ancestors and their times, they are able to develop a special kind of unwritten literature, which has for thom just the same sort of appeal that much of our own literature has for us."
Inconsistency in the Legends. Mr. Brown frequently points out that the Legends contain inconsistencies, and he writes on p. 396: "it is clear that the Andamanese do not always apply to these Legends the law of logical necessity." And then on p. 397 he adds :
"The very existence of inconsistencies of this kind proves without any doubt that the mental processes underlying the Legends of the Andamanese are not similar to those that we ourselves follow when we attempt to understand intelligently the facts of nature and of life, but rather are to be compared to those that are to be found in dreams and in art,-processes of what might conveniently be called symbolic thought. It would hardly be necessary to point this out were it not that many ethnologists still try to interpret the beliefs of sa vages as being the results of attempts to understand natural facts, such as dreams, death, birth, eto."
Social Value of the Legends. At length Mr. Brown returns to his main argument, (pp. 397-398) : "The thesis of this Chapter has been that the Legends are the expression of social values of objects of different kinds. By the social value of an object is meant the way in which it affects the life of the Society, and therefore, since every one is interested in the welfare of the society to which he belongs, the way in which it affects the social sentiments of the individual. The system of social values of a Society obviously depends upon the manner in which the society is constituted, and therefore the Legends can only be understood by constant reference to the mode of life of the Andamanese."
