Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 98

82
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1931
Perhaps the most interesting fact of this population is that it appears to have been stationary through all historical time. That is to say that ages ago its numbers reached the point that the islands could support, according to its method of procuring food, and at that point it ceased to increase. The Nicobarese have resorted to agriculture-excepting fruit trees and vege. tables or cattle-raising or industry, procuring all their domestio wants not producible from the soil by the sale of 0000-nuts to ships that call-a trade of which they are past masters.
In the course of 1883, a careful enumeration of the Nicobarese, for purely local reasons unconnected with any Indian Census, was made by the late Messrs. E. H. Man and de Roepstorff, Officers of the Andaman and Nicobar Commission. Their labour on that cocasion proved of the greatest value afterwards, as they made Reports giving a good deal of information of use to the student of ethnology, and not otherwise procurable, about the islands generally at that time. It was used in the Census Report of 1901, and extracts therefrom will be found attached to the present remarks,
The Census figures of the Nicobarese population for 1883 and 1901 by Dialects are compared below
1901. Car Nicobar
3,500
3,451 Chowra
690 657
702 Central
1,095 Southern
247
192 Shom Pen
348
1883.
522
Teressa
::::::
848
5,942
6,310 But if we su betract from the 1901 figures the 348 Shom Pen, which tribe was unknown in 1883, we reach a total of 5,962 as the Nicobarese population of 1901. The figures for Car Nicobar were furnished by Mr. E. H. Man, who completed the work left undone by Mr. de Roepstorff. It must be also noted that the dialects of Car Nicobar and Chowra are spoken on those Islands only; that of Teressa on Teressa and Bompoka ; the Central Dialect on Camorta, Trinkat, Nancowry and Katchall; the Southern Dialect on Pulo Milo, Little Nicobar, Kondul and Great Nicobar Coasts; while the Shom Pen in the interior of Great Nicobar have a dialeot of their own.
The figures above compared for 1883 and 1901 show the population to be stationary, as one would expeot it to be on the theory already expounded, with reference to the Andamanese, as to the causes which govern the growth and maintenance of the population of savage and semi-savage peoples. They also go to corroborate what is known as to the movement of the population amongst themselves. Shortly before the Census of 1901 there was an emigration from overcrowded Chowra to Camorta North, and many people both in Nanoowry and Camorta owned property in Katchall East, and villages and coco-nut plantations were owned both in Trinkat and Nancowry by the same men. Hence it was quite a chance on which of adjacent islands owners of property on both were to be found on any given day. There was also communication between the coast men of the Southern Group and Katchall West, and, similarly, the people of Great Nicobar would bodily " visit" Kondul, and so would those of Little Nicobar visit Pulo Milo, and vice versd. Indeed, Kondul was an appanage of Great Nicobar East, and so was Pulo Milo of Little Nicobar. So, though the dialect test is perhaps the best division of the Nicobarese into six varieties, by habits of interoommunication they may be well divided into Northern or Car Nicobarese, the Central Nioobarese (Chowra to Nanoowry), Southern or Great Nioobarese, and the isolated Shom Pen of Great Nicobar.
The Nicobarese can also be divided into three Groups,-Northern, Central and Southernby language and a sharply-marked qustom. The Northern (Car Nicobar, Chowra, Teressa