Indian Antiquary Vol 58

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 348

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
AUGUST, 1929
This traditional charge of cannibalism still persists, though it is now, and almost certainly has always been, entirely untrue. Of the massacre of shipwrecked crew's up till quite recent times there is no doubt ; but the policy of conciliation, which has been unremittingly pursued for the last forty years before 1901, has made the coasts quite safe for the shipwrecked, except at points where the Jarawas touch the coast and the wilder Onges reside, the south and west of Little Andaman, the North Sentinel Island, south of Rutland Island and Hut Bay on its western coast, Port Campbell and some few miles to the north of it on the west coast of the South Andaman. Everywhere else shipwrecked mariners would find the poople not only friendly and helpful, but likely to give notice to Port Blair at once of their predicament. The charge of cannibalism seems to have arisen from three observations of the old mariners. The Andamanese attacked and murdered without provocation every stranger they could on his landing; they burnt his body (as they did in fact that of every enemy); and they had weird all-night dances round fires. Combine these three observations with the unprovoked murler of one of themselves and the fear aroused by such occurrences in a far larid in ignorant mariners' minde, century after century, and a persistent charge of cannibalism is alınost certain to be the result.
The tribe occupying the shores of the Harbour of Port Blair and its islangis at the British occupation in 1858 was, in its own tongue, the Akà-Bea-da, which became extinct in 1920. Itu language was the first to be studied and its customs the first to be ascertainod. It may still, however, be called the tribe that is the best known and understood.
Every tribe has its own name for itself and its neighbours, and it is therefore necessary for the present purpose to adopt one set of names only throughout, the set most convenient is naturally that of the Aka-Béa-da. In this languago ikd is a profix, with small variations, to nearly all tribal names and da is a suffix used with almost every isolatod noun. For the sake of brevity I shall, as throughout the Census Report, discard both these affixes and uso the roots only of tribal names. But it must be understood that in actual spooch an Aku-Bit would, in answering such a question as "what is your tribe?", roply " Aki-Bôa-da; "and in using his tribal name in the course of a sentence ho would say “Akå-Bea." In this way the full and abbreviated forms of the Andamanege Tribes as named by the Aku-Bea Tribe are as unler:
The Andamanese Tribal Names arcorling to the Aka-Bell Language. l'ull.
Abbreviatod. Aku-Châriár-(la) ..
Châriár. Aki-Kora-(da)
Kôra. Akà-Tabo (da)
Tábó. AkàYère (da) (also Akà-Jiroda)
Yere. Okò-Juwai-ila)
Jowai. Aka-Kol-(la)..
Kol: Aka-Bôjigyáb-(dla) ..
Bôjigyáb. Akà-Balawa-(da)
Balawa. Akd-Béa-(da)
.. Önge. Jarawa-(da) ..
.. Járawa. Below is given a table of the names given to themselves and each other by the five South Andaman Tribes or Bôjigngiji Group, traditionally sprung from one tribe. It brings out the following facts in each language of the Group the prefixes and suffixes differ much and the roots remain practically the same throughout for the same sense. These facts strongly indicate one fundamental tongue for this group of languages.
Bea.
Onge