Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 58
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications
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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1929
As regards geography the position and general description of the Islands may be stated as follows: The Andaman Islands, large and small, are said to number 204, and lie in the Bay of Bengal, 590 geographical miles from the Hooghly mouth, 120 miles from Cape Negrais in Burma, the nearest point from the mainland, and about 340 miles from the northern extremity of Sumatra. Between the Adamans and Cape Negrais intervene two small groups, Preparis, and Cocos ; between the Andamans and Sumatra intervene the Nicobar Islands, all indicating a submarine range connected with the Aracan Yoma Range of Burma, stretching in a curve, to which the meridian forms a tangent, between Cape Negrais and Sumatra ; and though this curved line measures 700 miles, the widest sea space is about 91 miles. The extreme length of the Andaman Group is 219 miles, with an extreme width of 32 miles. The principal outlying islands are the North Sentinel, a dangerous island of about 28 square miles, lying about 18 miles off the west coast of the South Andaman ; the remarkable marine volcano, Barren Island, 1,158 feet, quicscent for the last hundred years, 71 miles to the North-East of Port Blair ; and the equally curious isolated mountain, the extinct volcano known as Narcondam, rising 2,330 feet out of the sea, 71 miles east of the North Andaman. The land area of the Andaman Islands is taken as 2,508 square miles.
To the west of the Andamans, distant about 18 miles, are the dangerous Western Banks and Dalrymple Bank, rising to within a few fathoms of the surface of the sea and forming, with the two Sentinel Islands, the tops of a line of submarine hills parallel to the Andamans : to the east, some 40 miles distant, is the Invisible Bank with one rock just awash, and 34 miles south-east of Narcondam is a submarine hill rising to 377 fathoms below the surface of the sea. Narcondam, Barren Island, and the Invisible Bank, a great danger of these seas, are in a line almost parallel to the Andamans inclining somewhat towards them. Certain physiological facts have long been held, in combination with phenomena exhibited by the fauna ond flora of the respective terminal countries, to point to the former existence of a continuous range of mountains, thought to be sub-ærial, from Cape Negrais in Burma on the north to Achin Head in Sumatra on the south. According to the doubtful authority of Wilford, Hindu legends notice this remarkable range, ascribing it to Rama, who first attempted here to bridge the sea, an enterprise afterwards transferred to the south of India, and accomplished by the hero-god at the more practicable point we call Adam's Bridge.
According also to Portman, the tradition of the South Andaman, or Bojigngiji, group of tribes is that Maia Tomola, the ancestral chief of the nation from which they all sprung, dispersed them after a cataclysm, which caused a subsidence of parts of a great island, divid. ed it up into the present Andaman Islands, and drowned large numbers of the old inhabitants together with many large and fierce beasts that have since disappeared. As a matter of physical geography such a subsidence need not have been more than of 20 fathoms or 120 feet to convert one single island into the present Andaman group. Portman also notes, as tending to show the junction of the Andaman Islands with the mainland, that besides the South Andaman tradition, the people of the Little Andaman have names for animals that do not now exist and they cannot describe. The acceptable evidence on this subject that I have been able to gather goes to show, on the assumption that, except in the case of isolated volcanic peaks, 200 fathoms is the extreme limit of the rising and sinking of land on the earth's surface, that it is possible that there was a time when the whole Andaman group with Preparis and the Cocos formed one continuous hill connected with Cape Negrais, and that this hill was separated by a sea of, say, 400 fathoms deep from the Nicobars considered as one island, and the general Nicobar Island again by a sea of, say, 600 fathoms deep from Sumatra.
The accepted conclusive argument proving the isolation of the Andaman Sea from the connected oceans is that of Carpenter, who showed that the temperature of its great depths involved the existence all round it of submarine hills, the greatest depth of which below sea level could not be more than 750 fathoms. I have been at some trouble to draw
3 Records of Geological Survey of India, vol. XX, 1887,
