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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SEPTEMBER, 1029) REMARKS ON THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS AND THEIR COUNTRY
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South Andaman Jàrawas, are entirely Eremtàga, while the Balawa, the ChAriar, and the Jàrawas of the North Sentinel are entirely Aryto. The Aryoto holds himself to be better than the Eremtåga, but beyond this there seem to be no exclusive distinctions between them, and an Aryoto will marry or adopt an Eremtaga.
With the minuteness in matters concerning their surroundings that is characteristic of all entirely uneducated people, the Andamaneso recognise a third division of themselves by habits into Adajig or creek-dwellers, i.e., those who live on the shores of the many inlets of the sea on the coasts of the Islands. The habits of the Adajig, however, are practically those of the Aryôto.
Distinctions by habits are quickly lost by the Andamanese. The Jarawas have now no canoes in the South Andaman and are quite incapable of constructing or using them, though all Unges have them and so have the Jara was on the North Sentinel. So also had the Jårswas that Colebrooke met a century ago. And in 1902 it was ascertained that the young men, brought up at the Düratang (Kyd Island) Home and occupied chiefly in market gardening, could neither steer nor paddle & canoe, nor take up tracks in the jungles. In one generation, though there was no restriction in communication with their people, they had lost both sea and forest craft.
Before the arrival of the English the tribes, excepting actual neighbours, may be said to have had no general intercourse with each other, and excepting some individuals were entirely unable to converse together, though it can be conclusively shown that all the existing languages are directly descended from one parent tongue. Even septs had but little mutual intercourse and considerable differences in details of dialect and, as has occurred in other island abodes of savages, there must have been a change of dialect or language along about every twenty miles of the coast. The tribes were in fact brought together and made definitely acquainted with each other's separate existence and peculiarities by the influence and exertions of Mr. Man between 1875 and 1880.
The tribal feeling is expressed as follows: friendly within the tribe, courteous to other Andamanese if known, hostile to every stranger, Andamanese or other. The sympathy and antipathy exhibited are strictly natural, i.e., savage, and are governed by descent. The feeling of friendliness lies in an ever-decreasing zone from the family outwards towards sept, tribe, group : hostility to all others. Even septs will fight each other and Aryoto and Eremtaga do not mix much. But there is no “caste" feeling, and tribes will, in circumstances favouring the actions (e.g., living on the tribal borders), intermarry and adopt each other's children. Within the tribe there is so general a custom of adoption that children above six or seven rarely live with their own parents. It is an act of friendliness to give up or adopt a child, and the custom has had the effect of making the various septs of a tribe hang together much better than would otherwise have been possible.
The Andamanese are bad fighters and never attack unless certain of success. During hostilities they never take any precautions as to their own safety by sentries, works, armour, or ruses of any kind, nor in the attack beyond taking advantage of cover. The only ideas of protection yet met with are among the Járawas, who use trunk-armour consisting of a wide belt of bark anıl well devised sentry stations on the paths round their permanent communal huts.
The Jarawas and some Önges kill every stranger at sight, but the Jarawas only are in these days (SDI) entirely hostile, and on the whole the inges are friendly, the friendliness dating from the capture and subsequent judicious treatment of 24 men, women in children on the Cinque Islands in January 1885. The only positively dangerous people are thus the Járawas, and this is to be accounted for in this way. The ancient (as provel by old separate kitchen-middens) incursion from the Little Andaman through Rutland Island of that section of the Unge tribe, which is now known as the Jàrawas, into the South Andaman set up an implacable tribal hostility between them and the Beas, its other occupants, which has been extended to the foreign settlers in Port Blair, and has nowadays become an undying distrust of all strangers and an hereditary hostility towards them.
