The Travels of Marco Polo Volume II Part 175

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

XII., pp. 307 seq.

Sir Richard C. TEMPLE, has kindly sent me the following valuable notes:--

ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS.

_General Note_.

Both the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been very closely studied by Indian Government officials for about fifty years, and they and the people occupying them are now thoroughly understood. There is a considerable literature about them, ethnographical, historical, geographical, and so on.

I have myself been Chief Commissioner, i.e., Administrator, of both groups for the Government of India for ten years, 1894-1903, and went deeply into the subjects connected with them, publis.h.i.+ng a good many papers about them in the _Indian Antiquary_, _Journal of the Royal Society of Arts_, _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, and elsewhere.

A general survey of all information to that date concerning the islands will be found in the _Census of India_, 1901, vol. III., which I wrote; in this volume there is an extensive bibliography. I also wrote the Andaman and Nicobar volumes of the Provincial and District _Gazetteers_, published in 1909, in which current information about them was again summarised. The most complete and reliable book on the subject is E.H. MAN'S _Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands_, London, 1883. KLOSS, _Andamans and Nicobars_, 1902, is a good book. GERINI'S _Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia_, 1909, is valuable for the present purpose.

The best books on the Nicobars are MAN'S _Nicobarese Vocabulary_, published in 1888, and MAN'S _Dictionary of the Central Nicobarese Language_, published in 1889. I am still publis.h.i.+ng Mr. MAN'S _Dictionary of the South Andaman Language in the Indian Antiquary_.

Recent information has so superseded old ideas about both groups of islands that I suggest several of the notes in the 1903 edition of Marco Polo be recast in reference to it.

With reference to the _Census Report_ noted above, I may remark that this was the first Census Report ever made on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and according to the custom of the Government of India, such a report has to summarise all available information under headings called Descriptive, Ethnography, Languages. Under the heading Descriptive are sub-heads, Geography, Meteorology, Geography, History, so that practically my _Census Report_ had to include in a summarised form all the available information there was about the islands at that time. It has a complete index, and I therefore suggest that it should be referred to for any point on which information is required.

NICOBARS.

P. 307. _No king or chief_.--This is incorrect. They have distinct village communities, governed each by its own chief, with definite rules of property and succession and marriage. See _Census Report_ pp. 214, 212.

Pp. 307-308, Note 1. For Pulo Gomez, see BOWREY, _Countries Round the Bay of Bengal_, ed. Temple, Hakluyt Society, p. 287 and footnote 4. Bowrey (c.

1675) calls it Pullo Gomus, and a marine journal of 1675 calls it Polo Gomos.

_Origin of the name Nicobars_.--On this point I quote my paragraph thereon on p. 185, _Census Report_.

"The situation of the Nicobars along the line of a very ancient trade has caused them to be reported by traders and sea-farers through all historical times. Gerini has fixed on Maniola for Car-Nicobar and Agathodaimonos for Great Nicobar as the right ascription of Ptolemy's island names for this region. This ascription agrees generally with the mediaeval editions of Ptolemy. Yule's guess that Ptolemy's Barussae is the Nicobars is corrected by Gerini's statement that it refers to Nias. In the 1490 edition of Ptolemy, the Satyrorum Insulae placed to the south-east of the Malay Peninsula, where the Anamba islands east of Singapore, also on the line of the old route to China, really are, have opposite them the remark:--_qui has inhabitant caudas habere dic.u.n.tur_--no doubt in confusion with the Nicobars. They are without doubt the Lankhabalus of the _Arab Relations_ (851 A.D.), which term may be safely taken as a misapprehension or mistranscription of some form of Nicobar (through Nakkavar, Nankhabar), thus affording the earliest reference to the modern term. But there is an earlier mention of them by I-Tsing, the Chinese Buddhist monk, in his travels, 672 A.D., under the name of the Land of the Naked People (Lo-jen-kuo), and this seems to have been the recognised name for them in China at that time. 'Land of the Naked' translates Nakkavaram, the name by which the islands appear in the great Tanjore inscription of 1050. This name reappears in Marco Polo's Necuveran 1292, in Ras.h.i.+duddin's Nakwaram 1300, and in Friar Odoric's Nicoveran 1322, which are the lineal ancestors of the 15th and 16th Century Portuguese Nacabar and Nicubar and the modern Nicobar. The name has been Nicobar since at least 1560. The fanciful story of the tails is repeated by the Swede Kjoeping as late as 1647."

Nicobar clearly means the Land of the Naked, but that does not correctly describe the people. I have never seen either a naked man or woman in the Nicobars. The men are nearly naked, but they wear a string round the waist with a very small loincloth. The string is so tied as to leave two long streamers behind, which have very much the appearance of a tail as the man walks along, and no doubt this gave rise to the idea that they were tailed men. The women wear a petticoat coming below the knees, generally red.

The Nicobarese are not savages and live in well-built clean villages, are born traders, and can calculate accurately up to very high figures. They deliberately do not cultivate, because by using their cocoanuts as currency they can buy from Chinese, Malay, Burmese, Indian, and other traders all that they want in the way of food and comforts. They are good gardeners of fruit. They seem to have borne their present characteristics through all historical times.

Pp. 307-308, Note 1.--Nancowry is a native name for two adjacent islands, now known as Camorta and Nankauri, and I do not think it has anything to do with the name Nicobar. For a list of the geographical names of the islands, see _Census Report_, pp. 179-180.

_Race and Dialect_.--The Nicobarese are generally cla.s.sed as Malays, i.e., they are "Wild Malays," and probably in reality an overflow of Mon tribes from the mainland of the Malay Peninsula (_Census Report_, p. 250).

They are a finely built race of people, but they have rendered their faces ugly by the habit of chewing betel with lime until they have destroyed their teeth by incrustations of lime, so that they cannot close their lips properly.

I think it is a mistake to cla.s.s the Nicobarese as Rakshasas or demons, a term that would apply in Indian parlance more properly to the Andamanese.

The Nicobarese are all one race, including the Shom Pen, for long a mysterious tribe in the centre of Great Nicobar, but now well known. They speak dialects of one language, though the dialects as spoken are mutually unintelligible. There is no Negrito tribe in the Nicobars. A detailed grammar of the language will be found in the _Census Report_, pp. 255-284.

The Nicobarese have long been pirates, and one of the reasons for the occupation of their islands by the Indian Government was to put down the piracy which had become dangerous to general navigation, but which now no longer exists.

P. 309.--The great article of trade is the cocoanut, of which a detailed account will be found in the _Census Report_, pp. 169-174, 219-220, 243. I would suggest the recasting of the remarks on the products of the Nicobars in your note on p. 309 in view of the statements made in those pages of the Report, bearing in mind that the details of the Nicobar Islands are now practically as well known as those relating to any other part of the East.

P. 312.--The Nicobarese tradition is that they are descended from a man and a dog, but this is only one phase of the ordinary Far Eastern animal-descent story.

The projecting teeth mentioned by Colonel Man are common in the Nicobars in the case of adults only, usually confined to men and women advanced in life. They are not natural, but caused, as stated above, by the excessive use of betel and lime, which forms a dark unsightly incrustation on the teeth and finally destroys them. Children and youth of both s.e.xes have good white normal teeth,

P. 312.

NARCONDAM.

Narcondam, an island I know well, has a separate bibliography of its own.

It belongs to the Sunda group of volcanoes, but it has been so long extinct that there are no obvious signs now of its ever having been active. It has a species of hornbill which I have captured and shot that has differentiated itself from all others. I do not think, therefore, it can have been recognised as a volcano by mariners in historical times, and consequently the derivation of Narakakundam is to my mind doubtful. The obvious volcano in the neighbourhood is Barren Island, which is still alive.

ANDAMANS.

Pp. 309-310, Note 1.--The Andamanese are not an ill-looking race, and are not negroes in any sense, but it is true that they are Negritos in the lowest known state of barbarism, and that they are an isolated race.

Reasons for the isolation will be found in the _Census Report_, p. 51, but I should not call their condition, mentally or physically, degraded. The mental characteristics of the race will be found on pp. 59-61 of the _Census Report_, and for your information I here extract from my remarks thereon the section on character.

"In childhood the Andamanese are possessed of a bright intelligence, which, however, soon reaches its climax, and the adult may be compared in this respect with the civilised child of ten or twelve. He has never had any sort of agriculture, nor until the English taught him the use of dogs did he ever domesticate any kind of animal or bird, nor did he teach himself to turn turtle or to use hook and line in fis.h.i.+ng. He cannot count, and all his ideas are hazy, inaccurate, and ill-defined. He has never developed unaided any idea of drawing or making a tally or record for any purpose, but he readily understands a sketch or plan when shown him. He soon becomes mentally tired, and is apt to break down physically under mental training.

"He retains throughout life the main characteristics of the child: of very short but strong memory, suspicious of but hospitable to strangers, ungrateful, imitative and watchful of his companions and neighbours, vain, and under the spur of vanity industrious and persevering, teachable up to a quickly reached limit, fond of undefined games and practical jokes, too happy and careless to be affected in temperament by his superst.i.tions, too careless indeed to store water even for a voyage, plucky but not courageous, reckless only from ignorance or from inappreciation of danger, selfish but not without generosity, chivalry or a sense of honour, petulant, hasty of temper, entirely irresponsible and childish in action in his wrath, and equally quick to forget, affectionate, lively in his movements, and exceedingly taking in his moments of good temper. At these times the Andamanese are gentle and pleasant to each other, considerate to the aged, the weakly or the helpless, and to captives, kind to their wives and proud of their children, whom they often over-pet; but when angered, cruel, jealous, treacherous and vindictive, and always unstable. They are bright and merry companions, talkative, inquisitive and restless, busy in their own pursuits, keen sportsmen and naturally independent, absorbed in the chase from sheer love of it and other physical occupations, and not l.u.s.tful, indecent, or indecently abusive.

"As the years advance they are apt to become intractable, masterful, and quarrelsome. A people to like but not to trust. Exceedingly conservative and bound up in ancestral custom, not amenable to civilisation, all the teachings of years bestowed upon some of them having introduced no abstract ideas among the tribesmen, and changed no habit in practical matters affecting comfort, health, and mode of life. Irresponsibility is a characteristic, though instances of a keen sense of responsibility are not wanting. Several Andamanese can take charge of the steering of a large steam launch through dangerous channels, exercising then caution, daring, and skill though not to an European extent, and the present (1901) dynamo-man of the electric lighting on Ross Island is an Andamanese, while the wire-man is a Nicobarese, both of whom exhibit the liveliest sense of their responsibilities, though retaining a deep-rooted and unconquerable fear of the dynamo and wires when at work. The Nicobarese shows, as is to be expected, the higher order of intellect. Another Andamanese was used by Portman for years as an accountant and kept his accounts in English accurately and well.

"The intelligence of the women is good, though not as a rule equal to that of the men. In old age, however, they frequently exhibit a considerable mental capacity which is respected. Several women trained in a former local Mission Orphanage from early childhood have shown much mental apt.i.tude and capacity, the 'savagery' in them, however, only dying down as they grew older. They can read and write well, understand and speak English correctly, have acquired European habits completely, and possess much shrewdness and common sense: one has herself taught her Andamanese husband, the dynamo-man above mentioned, to read and write English and induced him to join the Government House Press as a compositor. She writes a well-expressed and correctly-spelt letter in English, and has a shrewd notion of the value of money. Such women, when the instability of youth is past, make good 'ayas,' as their menkind make good waiters at table.

"The highest general type of intelligence yet noticed is in the Jarawa tribe."

P. 310. _The name Andaman_.--To my mind the modern Andaman is the Malay Handuman = Hanuman, representing "monkey" or savage aboriginal antagonist of the Aryans = also the Rakshasa. Individuals of the race, when seen in the streets of Calcutta in 1883, were at once recognised as Rakshasas. It may amuse you to know that the Andamanese returned the compliment, and to them all Orientals are Chauga or Ancestral Ghosts, i.e., demons (see _Census Report_, pp. 44-45 for reasons). I agree with you that Angamanain is an Arabic dual, the Great and the Little Andaman. To a voyager who did not land, the North, Middle, and South Andaman would appear as one great island, whereas the strait separating these three islands from the Little Andaman would be quite distinctly seen.

P. 311. _Cannibalism_.--The charge of cannibalism is entirely untrue. I quote here my paragraph as to how it arose (_Census Report_, p. 48).

"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 murder of one of themselves, and the fear aroused by such occurrences in a far land in ignorant mariners' minds, century after century, and a persistent charge of cannibalism is almost certain to be the result."

The real reason for the Andamanese taking and killing every stranger that they could was that for centuries the Malays had used the islands as one of their pirate bases, and had made a practice of capturing the inhabitants to sell as slaves in the Peninsula and Siam.

P. 311. _Navigation_.--It is true that they do not quit their own coasts in canoes, and I have always doubted the truth of the a.s.sertions that any of them ever found their way to any Nicobar island.

Andamanese men go naked, but the only Andamanese women that I have ever seen entirely naked in their own jungles are of the inland tribe of Jarawas.

R.C. TEMPLE.

Nov. 29, 1919.