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
________________
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[NOVEMBER, 1980
-
-
The use of the flimsy hunting shelters and camp huts of the Andamanese is rendered possible in the wet and stormy weather so common in the Islands by the denseness of the jungle, which prevents the winds from reaching them even when close to the sea beach and Causes the rain to fall vertically upon them.
There is no idea of Government, but to each trihe and to each sept of it there is a recog. nised head, who has attained that position by tacit agreement on account of some admitted superiority, mental or physical, and commands a limited respect and such obedience as the sell interest of the other individual men of the tribe or sept dictates. There is a tendency to hereditary right in the natural selection of chiefs, but there is no social status that is not personally acquired. The social position of a chief's family follows that of the chief himself and admits of many privileges in the shape of tribal influence and immunity from drudgery. His wife is aniong women what he is among men, and at his death, if a mother and not young, she retains his privileges. Age commands respect and the young are deferential to the elders. Offences, i.e., murder, theft, adultery, mischief, assault, are punished by the aggrieved party on his own account by injury to the body and property or by murder, without more active interference on the part of others than is consistent with their own safety, and without any fear of consequences except vengeance from the friends of the other side, and even this is usually avoided by disappearance till the short memory of the people has obliterated wrath.
Property is communal, as is all the lant, and ideas as to individual possessions are but rudimentary, accompanied with an incipient tabu of the property belonging to a chief. An Andamanese will often readily part with ornaments to any one who asks for them. Theft, or the taking of property without leave, is only recognised as to things of absolute necessity, 98 arrows, pig's flesh, fire. A very rude barter exists between tribes of the same group in regard to artioles not locally obtainable or manufactured. This applies especially to cooking pots, which are made of a special clay found only in certain parts of the islands. The barter is really a gift of one article in expectation of another of assumed corresponding value in re. turn, and a row if it is not forthcoming. The territory of other tribes is carefully respected without, however, there being any fized boundaries.
The duties of men and women are clearly defined by custom, but not so as to make that of the women comparatively hard. The women have a tacitly acknowledged inferior posi. tion, but it is not such as to be marked or to leave them without influence.
The religion is simple animism and consists of fear of the evil spirits of the wood, the sea, disease and ancestors, and of avoidance of acts traditionally displeasing to them, and this in spite of an abundance of mythological tales told in a confused, disjointed manner that is most instructive to the student of such things. There is neither ceremonial worship nor propi. tiation. There is an'anthropomorphic deity, Puluga, the cause of all things, whom it is not, however, necessary to propitiate, though sins, i.e., acts displeasing to him, are avoided for fear of damage to the products of the jungle. Puluga dwells now in the sky, but used to live on the top of Saddle Peak, their highest mountain. The Andamanese have an idea that the "soul" will go under the earth by an aerial bridge after death, but there is no heaven nor bell nor any idea of a corporeal resurrection in a religious sense. There is much sctive faith in dreams, which sometimes control subsequent conduct and in the utterances of “wise men," dreamers of prophetio dreams, gifted with second sight and power to communicate with spirits and to bring about good and bad fortune. These practise an embry. onio magio ånd witchoraft to much personal profit, by means of good things tabued to them - selves, as these people appreciate. There are no oaths, covenants and ordeals, nor any forms of appeal to supernatural powers.
Paluga, who is fundamentally with some definiteness identifiable with the storm (wuluga) mixed up with ancostral chiefs, has 80 many attributes of the Deity that it is fair to translate
