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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AGUST, 1929) REMARKS ON THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS AND THEIR COUNTRY
Points of Difference between Semangs and Andamanese. Face: In the great variation of the Andamanese face. Implements : In the blow-gun and poisoned arrows and spears. Hunting : In trapping game. Feeding : Men before women. Quivers : In having reed quivers ; Andamanese stick their arrows in the waist belt. Ornamentation : In quality and artistic merit. Ornaments : In personal ornaments, and in piercing the nose. Huts : In rock-shelters cave dwellings, tree huts, barricadod huts. Clothing: Of hammered barks ; loin-cloth for men, petticoat for women. Magic: In its practice and in use of magical designs. Music: In nose-pipe and bamboo castanets. Songs : In their nature. Marriage : Based on purchase, and in ceremonies. Beliefs : In Shamanism, metamorphism into tigers of living men, in ideas as to "Cod." Language : In its mixture with Malay and Mon; basis can be proved perhups to be
(Önge-Jarawa) Andamanese, though the specimens I have seen afford
very little hope of this. Also a portion of the Semangs have fixed habitations and a rude agriculture, this latter capacity being entirely absent in the Andamanese.
The antiquity of the Andamanese on their present site is proved by their kitchen-middens, rising from 12 to 15 feet and more in height, some having fossilised shells at the base. As has been already noted, the kitchen-middens show that the Andamancse gets his food at the present time just as he did in the days when the now fossil shells contained living organisms.
The largest and traditionally the oldest, the original, home of the race by a consensus of Andamanese opinion and worth scientific exploration (any other to be greatly deprecated), is the kitchen-midden of Wota-Emi on Bâratâng in Elphinstone Harbour on the east coast of the South Andaman.
In reference to the kitchen-middens it is worth noting that all Andamanese tradition commences with the cataclysm accompanied by a subsidence of a large portion of the surface of their old country already noticed, and the people point to certain ancient kitchen-middens, such as that at Port Mouat, on the sea level to prove it. They say that these were commenced by the survivors of the cataclysm and that the sites were previously high up on the mountain sides, where no one could build a kitchen midden.
I-tsing, the Chinese Buddhist monk, in 672 A.D. (Takakasu's Ed. p. xxx) mixed up in his account of his travels the Andamanese with the Nicobarese, and describes them thus "The men are entirely naked, while the women veil their person with some leaves. If the merchants in joke offer them their clothes, they wave their hands (to tell that) they do not use them."
But the earliest distinct notice of the Andamanese is in that remarkable collection of early Arab notes on India and China (851 A.D.), which was translated by Eus. Renaudot and again in our own time by M. Reinaud. It accurately represents the view entertained of this people by mariners down to our own time." The inhabitants of these islands eat men alive. They are black with woolly hair and in their eyes and countenances there is something quite frightful ** . they go naked and have no boats. If they had they would devour all who passed near them. Sometimes ships that are wind-bound and have exhausted their provision of water touch here and apply to the natives for it. In such cases the crews some. times fall into the hands of the latter and most of them are massacred."
