CHAPTER V

THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: CEREMONIAL

The present chapter is devoted to an attempt to interpret some of the beliefs and customs of the Andaman Islanders, as they have been described in the earlier part of this work. By the interpretation of a custom is meant the discovery, not of its origin, but of its meaning. The system of beliefs and customs that exists to-day in the Andamans is the result of a long process of evolution. To seek the origin of these customs, as the word origin is here used, is to seek to know the details of the historical process by which they have come into existence. In the absence of all historical records, the most that we could do would be to attempt to make a hypothetical reconstruction of the past, which, in the present state of ethnological science, would be of very doubtful utility [151].

It is otherwise with the meaning of these customs. Every custom and belief of a primitive society plays some determinate part in the social life of the community, just as every organ of a living body plays some part in the general life of the organism. The mass of institutions, customs and beliefs forms a single whole or system that determines the life of the society, and the life of a society is not less real, or less subject to natural laws, than the life of an organism. To continue the analogy, the study of the meaning of savage customs is a sort of social physiology, and is to be distinguished from the study of origins, or changes of custom in just the same way that animal physiology is distinguished from the biology that deals with the origin of species, the causes of variation, and the general laws of evolution.

The problems that this chapter presents are therefore not historical but psychological or sociological. We have to explain why it is that the Andamanese think and act in certain ways. The explanation of each single custom is provided by showing what is its relation to the other customs of the Andamanese and to their general system of ideas and sentiments.

Thus the subject of the present chapter is not in any way affected by questions of the historical origin of the customs with which it deals, but is concerned only with those customs as they exist at the present day. Nor are we concerned with the comparison of the customs of the Andamanese with those of other savage races. Such comparisons are not only valueless for our purpose, but might be misleading. To draw any valid conclusion from the comparison of two apparently similar customs in two different societies, we must be sure that they are really similar, and to do this we need to know the true meaning of each of them considered by itself. The true comparative method consists of the comparison, not of one isolated custom of one society with a similar custom of another, but of the whole system of institutions, customs and beliefs of one society with that of another. In a word, what we need to compare is not institutions but social systems or types.

It is often urged that in ethnology description and interpretation should be most carefully separated. So far as this means that the facts observed by the ethnologist should be recorded free from all bias of interpretation, the necessity cannot be too often or too strongly urged. If, however, it is meant to imply that efforts at interpretation are to be excluded from works of descriptive ethnology, there is much to be said against such an opinion. In trying to interpret the institutions of a primitive society the field ethnologist has a great advantage over those who know the facts only at second hand. However exact and detailed the description of a primitive people may be, there remains much that cannot be put into such a description. Living, as he must, in daily contact with the people he is studying, the field ethnologist comes gradually to “understand” them, if we may use the term. He acquires a series of multitudinous impressions, each slight and often vague, that guide him in his dealings with them. The better the observer the more accurate will be his general impression of the mental peculiarities of the race. This general impression it is impossible to analyse, and so to record and convey to others. Yet it may be of the greatest service when it comes to interpreting the beliefs and practices of a primitive society. If it does not give any positive aid towards a correct interpretation, it at least prevents errors into which it is only too easy for those to fall who have not the same immediate knowledge of the people and their ways. Indeed it may be urged, with some reason, that attempts to interpret the beliefs of savages without any first-hand knowledge of the people whose beliefs are in question, are at the best unsatisfactory and open to many possibilities of error.

The present position of ethnological studies may well be regarded as anomalous. Many of the observers engaged in recording the customs of primitive people are very imperfectly acquainted with modern theories of sociology. One result of this is that they often neglect to record anything concerning matters that are of fundamental importance for the theorist [152]. On the other hand those engaged in elaborating hypotheses do not, as a rule, observe for themselves the facts to be explained, but have to rely on what are in many cases imperfect documents, being thus unwittingly led into errors that might have been avoided. In this science, as in others, if progress is to be made, the elaboration of hypotheses and the observation and classification of facts must be carried on as interdependent parts of one process, and no advantage, but rather great disadvantage, results from the false division of labour whereby theorists and observers work independently and without systematic cooperation. The most urgent need of ethnology at the present time is a series of investigations of the kind here attempted, in which the observation and the analysis and interpretation of the institutions of some one primitive people are carried on together by the ethnologist working in the field.

It is clear that such studies need to be based on a scientific and carefully elaborated method. Unfortunately ethnologists are not yet agreed as to the methods of their science. The question of method is therefore, at the present time, of the greatest importance, and for this reason I have tried, in the present chapter, to present the argument in such a way that the various steps of the analysis shall be immediately apparent, so that the reader may be able not only to judge the value of the conclusions, but also to form a clear idea of the psychological methods by which they are reached.

Any attempt to explain or interpret the particular beliefs and customs of a savage people is necessarily based on some general psychological hypothesis as to the real nature of the phenomena to be explained. The sound rule of method is therefore to formulate clearly and explicitly the working hypothesis on which the interpretation is based. It is only in this way that its value can be properly tested.

The hypothesis that seems to be most usually adopted by English writers on anthropology is that the beliefs of savage peoples are due to attempts on the part of primitive man to explain to himself the phenomena of life and nature. The student of human customs, examining his own mind, finds that one of the motives most constantly present in his consciousness is the desire to understand, to explain—in other words what we call scientific curiosity. He concludes that this motive is equally insistent in the mind of primitive man. Thus he supposes that primitive man, wishing to explain the phenomena of death and of sleep and dreams, framed a hypothesis that every man possesses a soul or spiritual double [153]. The hypothesis, once formulated, is supposed to have been accepted and believed because it satisfied this need of comprehension. On this view the belief in a soul (animism) is exactly similar in character to the scientific belief in atoms, let us say. The same general hypothesis appears in the explanation of totemism as having arisen as a theory invented by primitive man in order to explain the phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth [154].

On this hypothesis the beliefs are primary, arising first merely as beliefs and then acquiring the power to influence action and so giving rise to all sorts of ceremonies and customs. Thus these customs are only to be explained by showing that they depend on particular beliefs. This hypothesis, which we may call the intellectualist hypothesis, has never, so far as I am aware, been very clearly formulated or defended, but it does seem to underlie many of the explanations of the customs of primitive man to be found in works on ethnology.

A second hypothesis explains the beliefs of primitive man as being due to emotions of surprise and terror [155], or of awe and wonder [156] aroused by the contemplation of the phenomena of nature.

Both these hypotheses may be held together, one being used to explain some primitive beliefs and the other to explain others [157].

Doubtless there are other psychological hypotheses underlying the many attempts that have been made to explain the customs of primitive peoples, but these two seem to be the most important and the most widespread. They are mentioned here, not in order to criticise them, but in order to contrast them with the hypothesis to be formulated in the present chapter [158].

Stated as briefly as possible the working hypothesis here adopted is as follows. (1) A society depends for its existence on the presence in the minds of its members of a certain system of sentiments [159] by which the conduct of the individual is regulated in conformity with the needs of the society. (2) Every feature of the social system itself and every event or object that in any way affects the well-being or the cohesion of the society becomes an object of this system of sentiments. (3) In human society the sentiments in question are not innate but are developed in the individual by the action of the society upon him. (4) The ceremonial customs of a society are a means by which the sentiments in question are given collective expression on appropriate occasions. (5) The ceremonial (i.e. collective) expression of any sentiment serves both to maintain it at the requisite degree of intensity in the mind of the individual and to transmit it from one generation to another. Without such expression the sentiments involved could not exist.

Using the term “social function” to denote the effects of an institution (custom or belief) in so far as they concern the society and its solidarity or cohesion, the hypothesis of this chapter may be more briefly resumed in the statement that the social function of the ceremonial customs of the Andaman Islanders is to maintain and to transmit from one generation to another the emotional dispositions on which the society (as it is constituted) depends for its existence.

The present chapter contains an attempt to apply this hypothesis to the ceremonial customs of the Andaman Islanders. An attempt will be made to show that there is a correspondence between the customs and beliefs of the Andamanese and a certain system of social sentiments, and that there is also a correspondence between these sentiments and the manner in which the society is constituted. It is an attempt to discover necessary connections between the different characters of a society as they exist in the present. No attempt will be made to discover or imagine the historical process by which these customs have come into existence.

For the clearer understanding of the argument it is necessary to draw attention to a few rules of method that will be observed. (1) In explaining any given custom it is necessary to take into account the explanation given by the natives themselves. Although these explanations are not of the same kind as the scientific explanations that are the objects of our search yet they are of great importance as data. Like the civilised man of Western Europe the savage of the Andamans seeks to rationalise his behaviour; being impelled to certain actions by mental dispositions of whose origin and real nature he is unaware, he seeks to formulate reasons for his conduct, or even if he does not so when left to himself he is compelled to when the enquiring ethnologist attacks him with questions. Such a reason as is produced by this process of rationalisation is rarely if ever identical with the psychological cause of the action that it justifies, yet it will nearly always help us in our search for the cause. At any rate the reason given as explaining an action is so intimately connected with the action itself that we cannot regard any hypothesis as to the meaning of a custom as being satisfactory unless it explains not only the custom but also the reasons that the natives give for following it. (2) The assumption is made that when the same or a similar custom is practised on different occasions it has the same or a similar meaning in all of them. For example, there are different occasions on which a personal name is avoided; it is assumed that there is something in common to all these occasions and that the meaning of the custom is to be discovered by ascertaining what that common element is. (3) It is assumed that when different customs are practised together on one and the same occasion there is a common element in the customs. This rule is the inverse of the last. As an example may be mentioned the different customs observed by mourners, which may be assumed to be all related to one another. The discovery of what is common to them all will explain the meaning of each. (4) I have avoided, as being misleading as well as unnecessary, any comparison of Andamanese customs with similar customs of other races. Only in one or two instances have I broken this rule, and in those I believe I am justified by special considerations.

We can conveniently begin by considering the Andamanese marriage ceremony, which is one of the simplest and most easily understood. The main feature of it is that the bride and bridegroom are required publicly to embrace each other. In the North Andaman the embrace is made gradually, by stages as it were, each stage being more intimate than the preceding. At first the two sit side by side, then their arms are placed around each other, and finally the bridegroom is made to sit on the bride’s lap [160].

Everywhere in human life the embrace is employed as an expression of such feelings as love, affection, friendship, i.e. of feelings of attachment between persons. There is no need to enquire into the psycho-physical basis of this expression. It is probably intimately related to the nursing of the infant by the mother, and is certainly very closely connected with the development of the sex instinct. It is sufficient for our purpose to satisfy ourselves that the embrace in all its forms does always express feelings of one generic kind. Nor is it necessary for us to consider the peculiar form of the Andamanese embrace, in which one person sits down and extends his or her legs, while the other person sits on the lap so formed and the two wrap their arms round one another’s necks and shoulders.

The meaning of the marriage ceremony is readily seen. By marriage the man and woman are brought into a special and intimate relation to one another; they are, as we say, united. The social union is symbolised or expressed by the physical union of the embrace. The ceremony brings vividly to the minds of the young couple and also to those of the spectators the consciousness that the two are entering upon a new social relation of which the essential feature is the affection in which they must hold one another.

The rite has two aspects according as we regard it from the standpoint of the witnesses or from that of the couple themselves. The witnesses, by their presence, give their sanction to the union that is thus enacted before them. The man who conducts the ceremony is merely the active representative of the community; in what he does and says he acts as a deputy and not as a private individual. Thus the ceremony serves to make it clear that the marriage is a matter which concerns not only those who are entering into it, but the whole community, and its occasional performance serves to keep alive this sentiment with regard to marriage in general. The existence of the sentiment is shown in the reprobation felt and often expressed at an irregular marriage, in which the couple unite without a ceremony; such a union showing a contemptuous or careless thrusting aside of an important social principle.

For the witnesses, then, the ceremony serves to awaken to activity and to express this sentiment; but it also serves as a recognition on their part of the change of status of the marrying pair. It makes them realise that henceforward the young couple must be treated no longer as children but as responsible adults, and it is thus the occasion of a change of sentiment towards those whose social position is being changed. For in the society of the Andamans there is a very marked division between married and unmarried persons in the way in which they are regarded by others, and in respect of their place in the community.

The married couple are made to realise, in a different way and with a much greater intensity of feeling, these same two things; first, that their union in marriage is a matter that concerns the whole community, and second, that they are entering a new condition, with new privileges but also with new duties and obligations. For them, indeed, the ceremony is a sort of ordeal from which they would only too gladly escape, and which, by the powerful emotions it evokes in them very vividly impresses upon them what their marriage means.

The wedding gifts that are bestowed upon the young couple are an expression of the general good-will towards them. The giving of presents is a common method of expressing friendship in the Andamans. Thus when two friends meet after separation, the first thing they do after having embraced and wept together, is to give one another presents. In most instances the giving is reciprocal, and is therefore really an exchange. If a present be given as a sign of good-will the giver expects to receive a present of about equal value in return. The reason for this is obvious; the one has expressed his good-will towards the other, and if the feeling is reciprocated a return present must be given in order to express it. So also it would be an insult to refuse a present offered, for to do so would be equivalent to rejecting the good-will it represents. At marriage the giving is one-sided, no return being expected, for it is an expression not of personal friendship on the part of the givers, but of the general social good-will and approval. It is for this reason that it is the duty of everybody who is present to make some gift to the newly-married pair.

In another simple ceremony, the peace-making ceremony of the North Andaman [161], the meaning is again easily discovered; the symbolism of the dance being indeed at once obvious to a witness, though perhaps not quite so obvious from the description given. The dancers are divided into two parties. The actions of the one party throughout are expressions of their aggressive feelings towards the other. This is clear enough in the shouting, the threatening gestures, and the way in which each member of the “attacking” party gives a good shaking to each member of the other party. On the other side what is expressed may be described as complete passivity; the performers stand quite still throughout the whole dance, taking care to show neither fear nor resentment at the treatment to which they have to submit. Thus those of the one side give collective expression to their collective anger, which is thereby appeased. The others, by passively submitting to this, humbling themselves before the just wrath of their enemies, expiate their wrongs. Anger appeased dies down; wrongs expiated are forgiven and forgotten; the enmity is at an end.

The screen of fibre against which the passive participants in the ceremony stand has a peculiar symbolic meaning that will be explained later in the chapter. The only other elements of the ceremony are the weeping together, which will be dealt with very soon, and the exchange of weapons, which is simply a special form of the rite of exchanging presents as an expression of good-will. The special form is particularly appropriate as it would seem to ensure at least some months of friendship, for you cannot go out to fight a man with his weapons while he has yours.

The purpose of the ceremony is clearly to produce a change in the feelings of the two parties towards one another, feelings of enmity being replaced through it by feelings of friendship and solidarity. It depends for its effect on the fact that anger and similar aggressive feelings may be appeased by being freely expressed. Its social function is to restore the condition of solidarity between two local groups that has been destroyed by some act of offence.

The marriage ceremony and the peace-making dance both afford examples of the custom which the Andamanese have of weeping together under certain circumstances. The principal occasions of this ceremonial weeping are as follows: (1) when two friends or relatives meet after having been for some time parted, they embrace each other and weep together; (2) at the peace-making ceremony the two parties of former enemies weep together, embracing each other; (3) at the end of the period of mourning the friends of the mourners (who have not themselves been mourning) weep with the latter; (4) after a death the relatives and friends embrace the corpse and weep over it; (5) when the bones of a dead man or woman are recovered from the grave they are wept over; (6) on the occasion of a marriage the relatives of each weep over the bride and bridegroom; (7) at various stages of the initiation ceremonies the female relatives of a youth or girl weep over him or her.

First of all it is necessary to note that not in any of the above-mentioned instances is the weeping simply a spontaneous expression of feeling. It is always a rite the proper performance of which is demanded by custom. (As mentioned in an earlier chapter, the Andamanese are able to sit down and shed tears at will.) Nor can we explain the weeping as being an expression of sorrow. It is true that some of the occasions are such as to produce sorrowful feelings (4 and 5, for example), but there are others on which there would seem to be no reason for sorrow but rather for joy. The Andamanese do weep from sorrow and spontaneously. A child cries when he is scolded or hurt; a widow weeps thinking of her recently dead husband. Men rarely weep spontaneously for any reason, though they shed tears abundantly when taking part in the rite. The weeping on the occasions enumerated is therefore not a spontaneous expression of individual emotion but is an example of what I have called ceremonial customs. In certain circumstances men and women are required by custom to embrace one another and weep, and if they neglected to do so it would be an offence condemned by all right-thinking persons.

According to the postulate of method laid down at the beginning of the chapter we have to seek such an explanation of this custom as will account for all the different occasions on which the rite is performed, since we must assume that one and the same rite has the same meaning in whatever circumstances it may take place. It must be noted, however, that there are two varieties of the rite. In the first three instances enumerated above the rite is reciprocal, i.e. two persons or two distinct groups of persons weep together and embrace each other, both parties to the rite being active. In the other four instances it is one-sided; a person or group of persons weeps over another person (or the relics of a person) who has only a passive part in the ceremony. Any explanation, to be satisfactory, must take account of the difference between these two varieties.

I would explain the rite as being an expression of that feeling of attachment between persons which is of such importance in the almost domestic life of the Andaman society. In other words the purpose of the rite is to affirm the existence of a social bond between two or more persons.

There are two elements in the ceremony, the embrace and the weeping. We have already seen that the embrace is an expression, in the Andamans as elsewhere, of the feeling of attachment, i.e. the feeling of which love, friendship, affection are varieties. Turning to the second element of the ceremony, we are accustomed to think of weeping as more particularly an expression of sorrow. We are familiar, however, with tears of joy, and I have myself observed tears that were the result neither of joy nor of sorrow but of a sudden overwhelming feeling of affection. I believe that we may describe weeping as being a means by which the mind obtains relief from a condition of emotional tension, and that it is because such conditions of tension are most common in feelings of grief and pain that weeping comes to be associated with painful feelings. It is impossible here to discuss this subject, and I am therefore compelled to assume without proof this proposition on which my explanation of the rite is based [162]. My own conclusion, based on careful observation, is that in this rite the weeping is an expression of what has been called the tender emotion [163]. Without doubt, on some of the occasions of the rite, as when weeping over a dead friend, the participants are suffering a painful emotion, but this is evidently not so on all occasions. It is true, however, as I shall show, that on every occasion of the rite there is a condition of emotional tension due to the sudden calling into activity of the sentiment of personal attachment.

When two friends or relatives meet after having been separated, the social relation between them that has been interrupted is about to be renewed. This social relation implies or depends upon the existence of a specific bond of solidarity between them. The weeping rite (together with the subsequent exchange of presents) is the affirmation of this bond. The rite, which, it must be remembered, is obligatory, compels the two participants to act as though they felt certain emotions, and thereby does, to some extent, produce those emotions in them. When the two friends meet their first feeling seems to be one of shyness mingled with pleasure at seeing each other again. This is according to the statements of the natives as well as my own observation. Now this shyness (the Andamanese use the same word as they do for “shame”) is itself a condition of emotional tension, which has to be relieved in some way. The embrace awakens to full activity that feeling of affection or friendship that has been dormant and which it is the business of the rite to renew. The weeping gives relief to the emotional tension just noted, and also reinforces the effect of the embrace. This it does owing to the fact that a strong feeling of personal attachment is always produced when two persons join together in sharing and simultaneously expressing one and the same emotion [164]. The little ceremony thus serves to dispel the initial feeling of shyness and to reinstate the condition of intimacy and affection that existed before the separation.

In the peace-making ceremony the purpose of the whole rite is to abolish a condition of enmity and replace it by one of friendship. The once friendly relations between the two groups have been interrupted by a longer or shorter period of antagonism. We have seen that the effect of the dance is to dispel the wrath of the one group by giving it free expression. The weeping that follows is the renewal of the friendship. The rite is here exactly parallel to that on the meeting of two friends, except that not two individuals but two groups are concerned, and that owing to the number of persons involved the emotional condition is one of much greater intensity [165]. Here therefore also we see that the rite is an affirmation of solidarity or social union, in this instance between the groups, and that the rule is in its nature such as to make the participants feel that they are bound to each other by ties of friendship.

We now come to a more difficult example of the rite, that at the end of mourning. It will be shown later in the chapter that during the period of mourning the mourners are cut off from the ordinary life of the community. By reason of the ties that still bind them to the dead person they are placed, as it were, outside the society and the bonds that unite them to their group are temporarily loosened. At the end of the mourning period they re-enter the society and take up once more their place in the social life. Their return to the community is the occasion on which they and their friends weep together. In this instance also, therefore, the rite may be explained as having for its purpose the renewal of the social relations that have been interrupted. This explanation will seem more convincing when we have considered in detail the customs of mourning. If it be accepted, then it may be seen that in the first three instances of the rite of weeping (those in which the action is reciprocal) we have conditions in which social relations that have been interrupted are about to be renewed, and the rite serves as a ceremony of aggregation.

Let us now consider the second variety of the rite, and first of all its meaning as part of the ceremony of marriage. By marriage the social bonds that have to that time united the bride and bridegroom to their respective relatives, particularly their female relatives such as mother, mother’s sister, father’s sister and adopted mother, are modified. The unmarried youth or girl is in a position of dependence upon his or her older relatives, and by the marriage this dependence is partly abolished. Whereas the principal duties of the bride were formerly those towards her mother and older female relatives, henceforth her chief duties in life will be towards her husband. The position of the bridegroom is similar, and it must be noted that his social relations with his male relatives are less affected by his marriage than those with his female relatives. Yet, though the ties that have bound the bride and bridegroom to their relatives are about to be modified or partially destroyed by the new ties of marriage with its new duties and rights they will still continue to exist in a weakened and changed condition. The rite of weeping is the expression of this. It serves to make real (by feeling), in those taking part in it, the presence of the social ties that are being modified.

When the mother of the bride or bridegroom weeps at a marriage she feels that her son or daughter is being taken from her care. She has the sorrow of a partial separation and she consoles herself by expressing in the rite her continued feeling of tenderness and affection towards him in the new condition that he is entering upon. For her the chief result of the rite is to make her feel that her child is still an object of her affection, still bound to her by close ties, in spite of the fact that he or she is being taken from her care.

Exactly the same explanation holds with regard to the weeping at the initiation ceremonies. By these ceremonies the youth (or girl) is gradually withdrawn from a condition of dependence on his mother and older female relatives and is made an independent member of the community. The initiation is a long process that is only completed by marriage. At every stage of the lengthy ceremonies therefore, the social ties that unite the initiate to these relatives are modified or weakened, and the rite of weeping is the means by which the significance of the change is impressed upon those taking part in it. For the mother the weeping expresses her resignation at her necessary loss, and acts as a consolation by making her feel that her son is still hers, though now being withdrawn from her care. For the boy the rite has a different meaning. He realises that he is no longer merely a child, dependent upon his mother, but is now entering upon manhood. His former feelings towards his mother must be modified. That he is being separated from her is, for him, the most important aspect of the matter, and therefore while she weeps he must give no sign of tenderness in return but must sit passive and silent. So also in the marriage ceremony, the rite serves to impress upon the young man and woman that they are, by reason of the new ties that they are forming with one another, severing their ties with their families.

When a person dies the social bonds that unite him to the survivors are profoundly modified. They are not in an instant utterly destroyed, as we shall see better when we deal with the funeral and mourning customs, for the friends and relatives still feel towards the dead person that affection in which they held him when alive, and this has now become a source of deep grief. It is this affection still binding them to him that they express in the rite of weeping over the corpse. Here rite and natural expression of emotion coincide, but it must be noted that the weeping is obligatory, a matter of duty. In this instance, then, the rite is similar to that at marriage and initiation. The man is by death cut off from the society to which he belonged, and from association with his friends, but the latter still feel towards him that attachment that bound them together while he lived, and it is this attachment that they express when they embrace the lifeless corpse and weep over it.

There remains only one more instance of the rite to be considered. When the period of mourning for a dead person is over and the bones are recovered the modification in the relations between the dead and the living, which begins at death, and is, as we shall see, carried out by the mourning customs and ceremonies, is finally accomplished. The dead person is now entirely cut off from the world of the living, save that his bones are to be treasured as relics and amulets. The weeping over the bones must be taken, I think, as a rite of aggregation whereby the bones as representative of the dead person (all that is left of him) are received back into the society henceforth to fill a special place in the social life. It really constitutes a renewal of social relations with the dead person, after a period during which all active social relations have been interrupted owing to the danger in all contact between the living and the dead. By the rite the affection that was once felt towards the dead person is revived and is now directed to the skeletal relics of the man or woman that once was their object. If this explanation seem unsatisfactory, I would ask the reader to suspend his judgment until the funeral customs of the Andamans have been discussed, and then to return to this point.

The proffered explanation of the rite of weeping should now be plain. I regard it as being the affirmation of a bond of social solidarity between those taking part in it, and as producing in them a realisation of that bond by arousing the sentiment of attachment. In some instances the rite therefore serves to renew social relations when they have been interrupted, and in such instances the rite is reciprocal. In others it serves to show the continued existence of the social bond when it is being weakened or modified, as by marriage, initiation or death. In all instances we may say that the purpose of the rite is to bring about a new state of the affective dispositions that regulate the conduct of persons to one another, either by reviving sentiments that have lain dormant, or producing a recognition of a change in the condition of personal relations.

The study of these simple ceremonies has shown us several things of importance. (1) In every instance the ceremony is the expression of an affective state of mind shared by two or more persons. Thus the weeping rite expresses feelings of solidarity, the exchange of presents expresses good-will. (2) But the ceremonies are not spontaneous expressions of feeling; they are all customary actions to which the sentiment of obligation attaches, which it is the duty of persons to perform on certain definite occasions. It is the duty of everyone in a community to give presents at a wedding; it is the duty of relatives to weep together when they meet. (3) In every instance the ceremony is to be explained by reference to fundamental laws regulating the affective life of human beings. It is not our business here to analyse these phenomena but only to satisfy ourselves that they are real. That weeping is an outlet for emotional excitement, that the free expression of aggressive feelings causes them to die out instead of smouldering on, that an embrace is an expression of feelings of attachment between persons: these are the psychological generalisations upon which are based the explanations given above of various ceremonies of the Andamanese. (4) Finally, we have seen that each of the ceremonies serves to renew or to modify in the minds of those taking part in it some one or more of the social sentiments. The peace-making ceremony is a method by which feelings of enmity are exchanged for feelings of friendship. The marriage rite serves to arouse in the minds of the marrying pair a sense of their obligations as married folk, and to bring about in the minds of the witnesses a change of feeling towards the young people such as should properly accompany their change of social status. The weeping and exchange of presents when friends come together is a means of renewing their feelings of attachment to one another. The weeping at marriage, at initiation, and on the occasion of a death is a reaction of defence or compensation when feelings of solidarity are attacked by a partial breaking of the social ties that bind persons to one another.

In the ceremonial life of the Andamans some part is played by dancing, and it will be convenient to consider next the meaning and function of the dance. It is necessary, however, to deal very briefly with this subject and omit much that would have to be included in an exhaustive study. Thus the ordinary Andaman dance may be looked upon as a form of play; it also shows us the beginnings of the arts of dancing, music and poetry; and therefore in any study pretending to completeness it would be necessary to discuss the difficult problem of the relation between art, play and ceremonial in social life, a subject of too wide a scope to be handled in such an essay as this. For our present purpose we are concerned with the dance only as a form of social ceremonial.

If an Andaman Islander is asked why he dances he gives an answer that amounts to saying that he does so because he enjoys it. Dancing is therefore in general a means of enjoyment. It is frequently a rejoicing. The Andaman Islanders dance after a successful day of hunting; they do not dance if their day has been one of disappointment.

Pleasurable mental excitement finds its natural expression in bodily activity, as we see most plainly in young children and in some animals. And in its turn mere muscular activity is itself a source of pleasure. The individual shouts and jumps for joy; the society turns the jump into a dance, the shout into a song.

The essential character of all dancing is that it is rhythmical, and it is fairly evident that the primary function of this rhythmical nature of the dance is to enable a number of persons to join in the same actions and perform them as one body. In the Andamans at any rate it is clear that the spectacular dance (such as the performance described on page 164) is a late development out of the common dance. And it is probable that the history of the dance is everywhere the same, that it began as a common dance in which all present take some active part, and from this first form (still surviving in our ball-room dances) arose the spectacular dance in which one or more dancers perform before spectators who take no part themselves.

In the Andamans the song is an accompaniment of the dance. The dancing and singing and the marking of the rhythm by clapping and by stamping on the sounding-board are all parts of the one common action in which all join and which for convenience is here spoken of as the dance. It is probable that here again the Andamanese practice shows us the earliest stage in the development of the song, that song and music at first had no independent existence but together with dancing formed one activity. It is reasonable to suppose that the song first came into general use in human society because it provides a means by which a number of persons can utter the same series of sounds together and as with one voice, this being made possible by the fixed rhythm and the fixed pitch of the whole song and of each part of it (i.e. by melody). Once the art of song was in existence its further development was doubtless largely dependent upon the esthetic pleasure that it is able to give. But in the Andamans the esthetic pleasure that the natives get from their simple and monotonous songs seems to me of quite secondary importance as compared with the value of the song as a joint social activity.

The movements of the ordinary Great Andaman dance do not seem to me to be in themselves expressive, or at any rate they are not obviously mimetic like the movements of the dances of many primitive folk. Their function seems to be to bring into activity as many of the muscles of the body as possible. The bending of the body at the hips and of the legs at the knees, with the slightly backward poise of the head and the common position of the arms held in line with the shoulders with the elbows crooked and the thumb and first finger of each hand clasping those of the other, produce a condition of tension of a great number of the muscles of the trunk and limbs. The attitude is one in which all the main joints of the body are between complete flexion and complete extension so that there is approximately an equal tension in the opposing groups of flexor and extensor muscles. Thus the whole body of the dancer is full of active forces balanced one against another, resulting in a condition of flexibility and alertness without strain.

While the dance thus brings into play the whole muscular system of the dancer it also requires the activity of the two chief senses, that of sight to guide the dancer in his movements amongst the others and that of hearing to enable him to keep time with the music. Thus the dancer is in a condition in which all the bodily and mental activities are harmoniously directed to one end.

Finally, in order to understand the function of the Andamanese dance it must be noted that every adult member of the community takes some part in it. All the able-bodied men join in the dance itself; all the women join in the chorus. If anyone through ill-health or old age is unable to take any active part, he or she is at least necessarily a spectator, for the dance takes place in the centre of the village in the open space towards which the huts usually face [166].

The Andamanese dance (with its accompanying song) may therefore be described as an activity in which, by virtue of the effects of rhythm and melody, all the members of a community are able harmoniously to cooperate and act in unity; which requires on the part of the dancer a continual condition of tension free from strain; and which produces in those taking part in it a high degree of pleasure. We must now proceed to examine very briefly the chief effects on the mental condition of those taking part [167].

First let us consider some of the effects of rhythm. Any marked rhythm exercises over those submitted to its influence a constraint, impelling them to yield to it and to permit it to direct and regulate the movements of the body and even those of the mind. If one does not yield to this constraining influence it produces a state of restlessness that may become markedly unpleasant. One who yields himself utterly to it, as does the dancer when he joins in the dance, still continues to feel the constraint, but so far from being unpleasant it now produces a pleasure of a quite distinct quality. The first point for us to note therefore is that through the effect of rhythm the dance affords an experience of a constraint or force of a peculiar kind acting upon the individual and inducing in him when he yields himself to it a pleasure of self-surrender. The peculiarity of the force in question is that it seems to act upon the individual both from without (since it is the sight of his friends dancing and the sound of the singing and marking time that occasions it), and also from within (since the impulse to yield himself to the constraining rhythm comes from his own organism).

A second effect of the rhythm of the dance is due to the well-known fact that a series of actions performed rhythmically produces very much less fatigue than actions not rhythmical requiring the same expenditure of muscular energy. So the dancer feels that in and through the dance he obtains such an increase of his personal energy that he is able to accomplish strenuous exertions with a minimum of fatigue. This effect of rhythm is reinforced by the excitement produced by the rapid movements of the dancers, the loud sounds of the song and clapping and sounding-board, and intensified, as all collective states of emotion are intensified, by reason of being collective; with the result that the Andaman Islanders are able to continue their strenuous dancing through many hours of the night [168].

There is yet a third most important effect of rhythm. Recent psychology shows that what are called the esthetic emotions are largely dependent upon motor images. We call a form beautiful when, through the movements of the eye in following it, we feel it as movement, and as movement of a particular kind which we can only describe at present by using such a word as ‘harmonious.’ Similarly our esthetic appreciation of music seems to be largely dependent on our feeling the music as movement, the sounds appealing not to the ear only but to stored-up unconscious motor memories. With regard to dancing, our pleasure in watching the graceful, rhythmical and harmonious movements of the dancer is an esthetic pleasure of similar nature to that obtained from the contemplation of beautiful shapes or listening to music. But when the individual is himself dancing it does not seem quite fitting to call his pleasure esthetic. Yet the dance, even the simple dance of the Andamans, does make, in the dancer himself, partly by the effect of rhythm, partly by the effect of the harmonious and balanced tension of the muscles, a direct appeal to that motor sense to which the contemplation of beautiful forms and movements makes only an indirect appeal. In other words the dancer actually feels within himself that harmonious action of balanced and directed forces which, in the contemplation of a beautiful form we feel as though it were in the object at which we look. Hence such dancing as that of the Andaman Islanders may be looked upon as an early step in the training of the esthetic sense, and to recognize all that the dance means we must make allowance for this fact that the mental state of the dancer is closely related to the mental state that we call esthetic enjoyment.

Let us now consider the effects of the dance as a social or collective activity. First, the dance affords an opportunity for the individual to exhibit before others his skill and agility and so to gratify his personal vanity. It is very easy to observe the action of this harmless vanity in the dancers, and particularly in the man who takes the place at the sounding-board and acts as soloist or leader of the chorus. The dancer seeks to feel, and does feel, that he is the object of the approbation and admiration of his friends. His self-regarding sentiments are pleasantly stimulated, so that he becomes conscious, in a state of self-satisfaction and elation, of his own personal value. This stimulation of the self-regarding sentiment is an important factor in the total effect produced by the dance.

Secondly, the dance, at the same time that it stimulates pleasantly the self-regarding sentiment, also affects the sentiments of the dancer towards his fellows. The pleasure that the dancer feels irradiates itself over everything around him and he is filled with geniality and good-will towards his companions. The sharing with others of an intense pleasure, or rather the sharing in a collective expression of pleasure, must ever incline us to such expansive feelings. It is certainly a readily observable fact that in the Andamans the dance does produce a condition of warm good-fellowship in those taking part in it. There is no need to enquire more closely into the mental mechanisms by which this is brought about.

The Andaman dance, then, is a complete activity of the whole community, in which every able-bodied adult takes some part, and is also an activity in which, so far as the dancer himself is concerned, the whole personality is involved, by the innervation of all the muscles of the body, by the concentration of attention required, and by its action on the personal sentiments. In the dance the individual submits to the action upon him of the community; he is constrained, by the immediate effect of rhythm as well as by custom, to join in, and he is required to conform in his own actions and movements to the needs of the common activity. The surrender of the individual to this constraint or obligation is not felt as painful, but on the contrary as highly pleasurable. As the dancer loses himself in the dance, as he becomes absorbed in the unified community, he reaches a state of elation in which he feels himself filled with energy or force immensely beyond his ordinary state, and so finds himself able to perform prodigies of exertion. This state of intoxication, as it might almost be called, is accompanied by a pleasant stimulation of the self-regarding sentiment, so that the dancer comes to feel a great increase in his personal force and value. And at the same time, finding himself in complete and ecstatic harmony with all the fellow-members of his community, experiences a great increase in his feelings of amity and attachment towards them.

In this way the dance produces a condition in which the unity, harmony and concord of the community are at a maximum, and in which they are intensely felt by every member. It is to produce this condition, I would maintain, that is the primary social function of the dance. The well-being, or indeed the existence, of the society depends on the unity and harmony that obtain in it, and the dance, by making that unity intensely felt, is a means of maintaining it. For the dance affords an opportunity for the direct action of the community upon the individual, and we have seen that it exercises in the individual those sentiments by which the social harmony is maintained.

It was formerly the custom, I was told, always to have a dance before setting out to a fight. The reason for this should now be clear. When a group engages in a fight with another it is to revenge some injury that has been done to the whole group. The group is to act as a group and not merely as a collection of individuals, and it is therefore necessary that the group should be conscious of its unity and solidarity. Now we have seen that the chief function of the dance is to arouse in the mind of every individual a sense of the unity of the social group of which he is a member, and its function before setting out to a fight is therefore apparent. A secondary effect of the dance before a fight is to intensify the collective anger against the hostile group, and thereby and in other ways to produce a state of excitement and elation which has an important influence on the fighting quality of the Andaman warrior.

An important feature of the social life of the Andamans in former times was the dance-meetings that were regularly held and at which two or more local groups met together for a few days. Each local group lived for the greater part of the year comparatively isolated from others. What little solidarity there was between neighbouring groups therefore tended to become weakened. Social relations between two groups were for the most part only kept up by visits of individuals from one group to another, but such visits did not constitute a relation between group and group. The function of the dance-meetings was therefore to bring the two groups into contact and renew the social relations between them and in that way to maintain the solidarity between them. Those meetings, apart from the provision of the necessary food, were entirely devoted to the exchange of presents and to dancing, the two or more parties of men and women joining together every night in a dance. We have already seen that the exchange of presents is a means of expressing solidarity or mutual good-will. It is now clear that the dance serves to unite the two or more groups into one body, and to make that unity felt by every individual, so creating for a few days a condition of close solidarity. The effects of the meeting would gradually wear out as months went by, and therefore it was necessary to repeat the meeting at suitable intervals.

Thus it appears that not only the ordinary dance, but also the war-dance, and the dance-meetings owe their place in the life of the Andaman Islanders to the fact that dancing is a means of uniting individuals into a harmonious whole and at the same time making them actually and intensely experience their relation to that unity of which they are the members. The special dances at initiation ceremonies and on other occasions will be dealt with later in the chapter, on the basis of the general explanation given above.

On the occasion of a dance, particularly if it be a dance of some importance, such as a war-dance, or a dance of two groups together, the dancers decorate themselves by putting on various ornaments and by painting their bodies with red paint and white clay. The explanation of the dance cannot therefore be regarded as complete till we have considered the meaning of this personal adornment connected with it.

If the Andaman Islander be asked why he adorns himself for the dance, his reply is invariably that he wishes to look well, to improve his personal appearance. In other words his conscious motive is personal vanity.

One of the features of the dance, and a not unimportant one, is that it offers an opportunity for the gratification of personal vanity. The dancer, painted, and hung over with ornaments, becomes pleasantly conscious of himself, of his own skill and agility, and of his striking or at least satisfactory appearance, and so he becomes also conscious of his relation to others, of their admiration, actual or possible, and of the approval and good-will that go with admiration. In brief, the ornamented dancer is pleasantly conscious of his own personal value. We may therefore say that the most important function of any such adorning of the body is to express or mark the personal value of the decorated individual.

This explanation only applies to certain bodily ornaments and to certain ways of painting the body. It applies to the painting of white clay, with or without red paint, that is adopted at dances and on other ceremonial occasions. It applies to such personal ornaments as those made of netting and Dentalium shell which constitute what may be called the ceremonial costume of the Andamanese. It is of these that the natives say that they use them in order to look well.

The occasions on which such personal decoration is used are strictly defined by custom. In other words the society dictates to the individual when and how he shall be permitted to express his own personal value. It is obvious that personal vanity is of great importance in directing the conduct of the individual in his dealings with his fellows, and much more amongst a primitive people such as the Andamanese than amongst ourselves, and it is therefore necessary that the society should have some means of controlling the sentiment and directing it towards social ends. We have seen that the dance is the expression of the unity and harmony of the society, and by permitting at the dance the free expression of personal vanity the society ensures that the individual shall learn to feel, even if only subconsciously, that his personal value depends upon the harmony between himself and his fellows.

The bride and bridegroom are painted with white clay, and wear ornaments of Dentalium shell on the day following their marriage. We have seen that marriage involves a change of social status, and we may say that it gives an increased social value to the married pair, the social position of a married man or woman being of greater importance and dignity than that of a bachelor or spinster. They are, after marriage, the objects of higher regard on the part of their fellows than they were before. It is therefore appropriate that the personal value of the bride and bridegroom should be expressed so that both they themselves and their fellows should have their attention drawn to it, and this is clearly the function of the painting and ornaments.

After the completion of any of the more important of the initiation ceremonies, such as the eating of turtle, the initiate is painted with white clay and red paint and wears ornaments of Dentalium shell. This is exactly parallel to the painting of the bride and bridegroom. The initiate, by reason of the ceremony he has been through, has acquired new dignity and importance, and by having fulfilled the requirements of custom has deserved the approval of his fellows. The decoration of his body after the ceremony is thus the expression of his increased social value.

A corpse, before burial, is decorated in the same manner as the body of a dancer. This, we may take it, is the means by which the surviving relatives and friends express their regard for the dead, i.e. their sense of his value. We need not suppose that they believe the dead man to be conscious of what they are doing. It is to satisfy themselves that they decorate the corpse, not to satisfy the spirit. When a man is painted he feels that he has the regard and good-will of his fellows, and those who see him, at any rate in the instance of a bridegroom or initiate, realise that he has deserved their regard. So, to express their regard for the dead man they paint the inanimate body. Hence it is that the greater the esteem in which the dead man or woman is held, the greater is the care bestowed on the last painting.

We may conclude therefore that the painting of the body with white clay and the wearing of ornaments of Dentalium shell is a rite or ceremony by which the value of the individual to the society is expressed on appropriate occasions. We shall find confirmation of this later in the chapter.

Before passing on to consider the meaning of other methods of decorating the body there is one matter that is worthy of mention. It is often assumed or stated that both personal ornament and dancing, amongst uncivilised peoples, are connected with sexual emotion. It is, of course, extremely difficult to disprove a statement of this sort. So far as the Andamanese are concerned I was unable to find any trace whatever of a definitely sexual element in either their dances or their personal adornment. It may be recalled that both men and women wear exactly the same ornaments on ceremonial occasions, and this is to some extent evidence that such have no sexual value. It is possible that some observers might see in the dance of the women (which is only performed on rare occasions) a suggestion of something of a sexual nature. I was unable to find that the natives themselves consider that there is anything suggestive of sex in either the dance of the men or that of the women. If it were true that the most important feature of the dance was that it appealed in some way to sexual feelings it is difficult to see how we are to explain the different occasions on which dancing takes place, as before a fight, at the end of mourning, etc., whereas these are adequately accounted for by the hypothesis that the dance is a method of expressing the unity and harmony of the society. Similarly the explanation of personal ornament as being connected with sexual feeling would fail to account for the occasions on which it is regarded as obligatory. There is therefore, I believe, no special connection between the dancing and personal ornament of the Andamanese and sexual feeling. It would still be possible to hold that there is a general connection of great importance between the affective dispositions underlying these and other customs and the complex affective disposition that we call the sex instinct. The nature of that connection, important as it is, lies outside the scope of this work.

I remarked above that the explanation which I have given of the meaning of personal ornament does not apply to all the objects that the Andaman Islanders wear on their body, but only to certain of them. If an Andaman Islander be asked why he paints himself with white clay, or why he wears a belt or necklace of Dentalium shell he replies that he does so in order to look well; but if he be asked why he wears a string of human bones round his head or neck or waist, he gives quite a different answer, to the effect that he does so in order to protect himself from dangers of a special kind. According to circumstances he will say either that he is wearing the bones to cure himself of illness, or else that he wears them as a protection against spirits. Thus while some things are worn on the body in order to improve the personal appearance, and consequently, as explained above, to give the individual a sense of his own value, others are worn because they are believed to have a protective power, and thereby arouse in the person a sense of security. Exactly the same sort of protective power is attributed to things that cannot be worn on the body, such as fire, and it will therefore be convenient to consider together all the things that afford this kind of protection, whether they can be worn on the body or not.

The interpretation here offered is that the customs connected with this belief in the protective power of objects of various kinds are means by which is expressed and thereby maintained at the necessary degree of energy a very important social sentiment, which, for lack of a better term, I shall call the sentiment of dependence. In such a primitive society as that of the Andamans one of the most powerful means of maintaining the cohesion of the society and of enforcing that conformity to custom and tradition without which social life is impossible, is the recognition by the individual that for his security and well-being he depends entirely upon the society. Now for the Andaman Islander the society is not sufficiently concrete and particular to act as the object of such a sentiment, and he therefore feels his dependence upon the society not directly but in a number of indirect ways. The particular way with which we are now concerned is that the individual experiences this feeling of dependence towards every important possession of the society, towards every object which for the society has constant and important uses.

The most prominent example of such an object is fire. It may be said to be the one object on which the society most of all depends for its well-being. It provides warmth on cold nights; it is the means whereby they prepare their food, for they eat nothing raw save a few fruits; it is a possession that has to be constantly guarded, for they have no means of producing it, and must therefore take care to keep it always alight; it is the first thing they think of carrying with them when they go on a journey by land or sea; it is the centre around which the social life moves, the family hearth being the centre of the family life, while the communal cooking place is the centre round which the men often gather after the day’s hunting is over. To the mind of the Andaman Islander, therefore, the social life of which his own life is a fragment, the social well-being which is the source of his own happiness, depend upon the possession of fire, without which the society could not exist. In this way it comes about that his dependence on the society appears in his consciousness as a sense of dependence upon fire and a belief that it possesses power to protect him from dangers of all kinds.

The belief in the protective power of fire is very strong. A man would never move even a few yards out of camp at night without a fire-stick. More than any other object fire is believed to keep away the spirits that cause disease and death. This belief, it is here maintained, is one of the ways in which the individual is made to feel his dependence upon the society.

Now this hypothesis is capable of being very strictly tested by the facts, for if it is true we must expect to find that the same protective power is attributed to every object on which the social life depends. An examination of the Andamanese beliefs shows that this is so, and thereby confirms the hypothesis.

In their daily life the Andamanese depend on the intrinsic qualities of the materials they use for their bows and arrows and harpoons and other hunting implements, and it can be shown that they do attribute to these implements and to the materials from which they are made powers of protection against evil. Moreover it is even possible to apply a quantitative test and show that the more important the place a thing occupies in the social life the greater is the degree of protective power attributed to it. Finally I shall be able to show that as different materials are used for special purposes so they are supposed to have certain special powers of protection against certain sorts of danger. Thus the hypothesis I have stated is capable of being as nearly demonstrated as is possible in such psychological enquiries as the one we are engaged in.

A man carrying his bow and arrows is supposed to be less likely to fall a victim to the spirits than one who has no weapons with him. One way of stopping a violent storm is to go into the sea (storms being supposed to be due to the spirits of the sea) and swish the water about with arrows. The natives sometimes wear a necklace formed of short lengths of the bamboo shaft of a fish-arrow. All the examples of such necklaces that I met with had been made from an old arrow. I asked a native to make one for me, and although he could readily have made one from bamboo that had never served as an arrow he did not do so, but used the shaft of one of his arrows. Such a necklace may therefore be described as an arrow in such a form that it can be worn round the neck and thus carried continually without trouble. The protective power of the bow is at first sight not quite so evident, but the material used for the string is regarded as possessing protective power, and to this I shall return shortly.

The best demonstration of the truth of the explanation offered is to be found by considering the different vegetable fibres of which use is made. The most important of these are the Anadendron paniculatum (used for bow-strings and for fine string), the Hibiscus tiliaceus (used for rope) and the Gnetum edule (used for string, and inferior to the Anadendron). All these fibres are believed to possess power to keep away dangers, but there is a sort of specialisation in their use.

The fibre of the Hibiscus is used mainly in the hunting of turtle and big fish. Consequently the tree itself from which the fibre is obtained is believed to possess the power of warding off all dangers connected with turtle and the sea. There is a custom that turtle flesh may only be cooked with wood of the Hibiscus, otherwise it will be uneatable. In the turtle-eating ceremony the initiate who, as we shall see later, is in a condition of danger by reason of having eaten turtle for the first time after a period of abstention, is seated on Hibiscus leaves and holds a bundle of the same leaves before him. At the same ceremony the leaves of this tree are used in the dance, and the initiate is given a skewer made from its wood with which to feed himself. If for any reason the leaves of the Hibiscus are not obtainable when the ceremony is performed those of the Myristica longifolia are used instead. Now this is the tree from which the natives always make their canoe paddles, which, like ropes of Hibiscus fibre, are used in hunting turtle. This specialisation is therefore easy to understand; the natives habitually make use of the Hibiscus and the Myristica in turtle-hunting; they use the intrinsic qualities of these trees in their actual struggles with turtle and large fish, and by means of these qualities they are able to succeed in overcoming their prey; they therefore come to believe that these trees possess special powers which not only enable them to conquer the turtle itself but also are able to protect them from the evil influences that they believe (for reasons to be explained later) result from the eating of its flesh.

This explanation is readily verified by considering an exactly parallel instance. In the pig-eating ceremony at initiation the leaves of the Hibiscus or the Myristica are not used, and are regarded as valueless. Paddles and ropes are of no use in hunting pigs. The leaves that are used in this ceremony are those of the Tetranthera lancæfolia. It is from this tree that are obtained the shafts of pig-arrows. Hence the relation of the tree to the pig is exactly parallel to that of the Hibiscus to turtle. It is by making use of the qualities of the wood that they are able to destroy the pig and so they believe that its leaves will enable them to destroy the dangers that result from the eating of the animal.

The leaves of the Tetranthera are also used, however, in the ceremony at a girl’s first menstruation, and I cannot pass over this without an explanation. It is to be found in the fact that pig-arrows are used in fighting, so that the tree comes to have a special relation to the shedding of blood. Plumes of shredded Tetranthera wood (made from an old arrow-shaft) must be worn by a homicide during the period of “purification” as a protection against the dangers that are believed to threaten him because he has shed blood. The same plumes were formerly always carried in a dance preceding a fight, and at such times the natives used to rub their bows with the shredded wood in order to ensure success in battle. Thus it is clear that there is a special connection between this tree and the shedding of blood, due to the fact that pig-arrows, of which the shafts are made from it, are used in fighting as well as for killing pigs and other animals. It is probable that this is the explanation of the use of the leaves during the ceremony at a girl’s first menstruation.

These examples afford a crucial test of the hypothesis here maintained. Not only is the protective power of these substances explicable by the fact that they are things on which the society depends in its daily life, but the special uses of each of them as amulets are only explicable when we consider the different uses to which they are put as materials.

The fibre of the Anadendron paniculatum is used for making thread, bow-strings, the cords of pig-arrows, and for binding the heads and barbs of harpoons and arrows. It has therefore no special relation to either pig or turtle. There is a belief, however, that the plant does possess special protective powers that make it efficacious against certain dangers coming from the sea. A piece of the plant tied round the neck or worn in the belt of a swimmer is believed to protect him from sharks and other dangerous fish. A piece of it crushed and placed in the sea is said to have stopped a violent storm on one occasion. Thus the Anadendron seems to possess a special power which makes it a source of protection against dangers from the sea. The same is true of the Gnetum edule, though, as this fibre is less valued than that of the Anadendron, it is not supposed to be so powerful in its effects. In regard to the specialisation in the use of these two plants as amulets it seems likely that it is due to a notion of opposition between the things of the forest and the things of the sea. The Andamanese live in a double environment; the jungle-dwellers live entirely in the forest and have dealings with forest things; they develop knowledge and powers that make them better woodsmen than the coast-dwellers. The latter live by the sea and are chiefly occupied with things of the sea, being skilled in the occupations of fishing and canoeing. There is thus a contrast or opposition between the life of the forest and the life of the shore that runs through all the social life, and I believe that it is this opposition which explains the belief that the Anadendron and the Gnetum, which are essentially forest things, are possessed of a quality that makes them contrary or opposed to all things of the sea.

Personal ornaments are made from the fibres that have been mentioned (Hibiscus, Anadendron, Gnetum), and we are justified, I think, in regarding such ornaments as being to some extent amulets. I purchased from a man in the Little Andaman a charm that was hanging round his neck, which he seemed to value highly. I imagined that it might contain a human bone, but when I had unwound the ornamental thread with which it was bound and opened out the covering of bark I found inside the parcel only a carefully folded length of rope made from Hibiscus fibre.

There is one fibre from which the natives of the Great Andaman make themselves ornaments, which they do not regularly use in any other way, namely that of the Ficus laccifera. We may perhaps regard this as a genuine and demonstrable example of a survival in custom. The natives of the Little Andaman, who, until their recent contact with those of the Great Andaman, did not know the use of the Anadendron, use the fibre of the Ficus for their bow-strings. We are justified in assuming, I believe, that the natives of the Great Andaman made a similar use of the same fibre before they had learnt to use the Anadendron. In those days much of the power that is now attributed to the Anadendron, because of its service as the material for bow-strings, must then have been attributed to the Ficus. When the substitution of the superior Anadendron fibre came about, the belief in the efficacy of the Ficus did not disappear, although the ground of the belief (if we may call it so) had ceased to exist. If this be so, then the present use of the Ficus fibre as an amulet is an example of survival. It may be noted that the qualities of the Ficus are supposed to be similar to those of the Anadendron. Thus while one medicine-man stopped a storm with Anadendron, another did the same thing on another occasion with Ficus.

The above examples are sufficient to justify the generalisation that the Andamanese attribute protective power to all those substances on the strength and other qualities of which they rely in order to obtain their food or overcome their enemies. There are one or two other positive instances that have not been mentioned. Bees’-wax, which is used for waxing thread and bow-strings, is believed to have power to keep spirits away and to cure sickness. Cane, which is used by the natives for many different purposes, seems also to have its use as an amulet, for belts and other personal ornaments are made of pieces of cane attached to a length of rope.

Negative instances are more difficult to discover. When I was in the Andamans I had not formulated the explanation that is offered here, and I therefore did not make any search for negative instances that might have afforded a means of testing the value of the hypothesis. I have no satisfactory evidence that protective power is attributed to iron, or to the shells that were formerly used, as iron now is, for the heads and barbs of arrows, but it is quite possible that I may have overlooked evidence that was really there. I do not think that any particular protective properties are attributed to such things as the materials from which baskets are made and the clay that is used for pottery. These things, however, may be regarded as luxuries rather than necessities; they are not of the same immediate service to the society in its fundamental activity (that of providing food) as are weapons and the materials used in them.

There are still two important kinds of amulets that remain to be considered. First, protective power is attributed to the bones of animals, which are made into personal ornaments; these cannot be dealt with until we have considered some of the beliefs relating to food. Secondly, a very high degree of protective power is attributed to human bones, but the discussion of this belief must wait till we have discovered the meaning of the funeral customs of the Andamanese.

To conclude the present argument, it would seem that the function of the belief in the protective power of such things as fire and the materials from which weapons are made is to maintain in the mind of the individual the feeling of his dependence upon the society; but viewed from another aspect the beliefs in question may be regarded as expressing the social value of the things to which they relate. This term—social value—will be used repeatedly in the later part of this chapter, and it is therefore necessary to give an exact definition. By the social value of anything I mean the way in which that thing affects or is capable of affecting the social life. Value may be either positive or negative, positive value being possessed by any thing that contributes to the well-being of the society, negative value by anything that can adversely affect that well-being.

The social value of a thing (such as fire) is a matter of immediate experience to every member of the society, but the individual does not of necessity consciously and directly realise that value. He is made to realise it indirectly through the belief, impressed upon him by tradition, that the thing in question affords protection against danger. A belief or sentiment which finds regular outlet in action is a very different thing from a belief which rarely or never influences conduct. Thus, though the Andaman Islander might have a vague realisation of the value of Hibiscus, for example, that would be something very different from the result on the mind of the individual of the regular use of the leaves of that tree in initiation ceremonies as a protection against unseen dangers. So that the protective uses of such things are really rites or ceremonies by means of which the individual is made to realise (1) his own dependence on the society and its possessions, and (2) the social value of the things in question.

I have had to postpone to the later parts of the chapter the consideration of some of the objects possessing protective power, but I venture to state here three propositions some part of the evidence for which has already been examined, and which will be sufficiently demonstrated, I hope, before the end of the chapter. They are as follows: (1) any object that contributes to the well-being of the society is believed to afford protection against evil; (2) the degree of protective power it is believed to possess depends on the importance of the services it actually renders to the society; (3) the kind of special protection it is supposed to afford is often related to the kind of special service that it does actually render.

We were led to the consideration of the protective power of objects through an attempt to understand the meaning of the methods of ornamenting the body in the Andamans. We have seen that some ornaments are worn in order to express the personal value of the individual, while others are worn for the sake of the protection they are believed to afford. We have also seen that one method of painting the body (with white clay) is a means of expressing the personal value of the painted individual. We will next consider the use of the clay called odu. This clay is painted on the body of a mourner and is the outward sign of mourning; it is used at certain stages of the initiation ceremonies; it is also regularly used for painting the body with the designs known as e̱ra-puli. According to the rule of method laid down at the beginning of the chapter we must seek some common explanation of these different uses of the same substance.

We may consider, first of all, the patterns (e̱ra-puli) that are made with this clay on the body and face after eating certain foods such as pork and turtle.

Mr Man gives two explanations of the use of these paintings of clay. During the hot season, he says, the natives “endeavour to lessen the discomfort caused by the heat by smearing their bodies with a white-wash of common white clay and water.” He adds: “it has long been erroneously believed that they have recourse to this expedient in order to allay the inconvenience which they would otherwise suffer from the bites of mosquitoes and other jungle pests; but the true reason for the practice is, I am well assured, that which I have given above [169].” In another place he says: “After eating pork or turtle they are in the habit of smearing og over their bodies with their fingers, in the belief that it affects their breath, and that evil spirits will be unable to detect, and therefore will not be attracted to, them by the savoury smell of the food of which they have partaken. Again, when heated by travelling or by hunting or dancing, they have recourse to the same wash, but in these cases it is applied thinly [170].”

There are here two explanations of fundamentally different character. First the Andamanese practice of painting their bodies with clay is explained as having a purely utilitarian purpose, being intended to cool them when they are heated. In the second statement the explanation given is that the custom is intended to protect them from danger.

My own observations do not altogether agree with the statements of Mr Man. I found that the natives painted themselves just as much in the cold season as in the hot season. The principal, if not the sole, occasion on which the clay is used is after or immediately before a meal, and therefore generally in the late afternoon or evening when the heat of the day is past. I do not feel so satisfied as Mr Man appears to be, that the clay really has the effect of keeping a person cool, particularly when it is remembered that the painting may consist of a few lines each as broad as a finger. Moreover, Mr Man’s explanation does not afford any reason for the fact that the clay is always applied in some sort of pattern. If it were merely to keep himself cool, we should expect to see a man cover himself all over with a plain coating evenly spread over the body. Such an even coating is never used, in the Great Andaman tribes, except by persons mourning for the dead, and is the essential mark of a mourner.

It is easy to explain how Mr Man has fallen into an error in this matter. On many occasions, when I questioned the natives as to their reason for painting themselves with clay I received the answer, “When we have eaten pork or turtle or dugong, we become ot-kimil and so we take clay and paint ourselves.” Now the word ot-kimil in the Aka-J̌eru language is the word that the natives use to express what we mean by the word “hot.” But while “hot” may always be translated by ot-kimil or er-kimil, the latter word cannot always be adequately rendered in English by the word “hot.” Mr Man seems to have supposed that when an Andaman Islander says “hot” he means by the word only what we mean, whereas he really means a great deal more.

Let us examine briefly the word in question. In the languages of the North Andaman the stem is -kimil. With the prefix ot- or er- it is used to mean “hot” as in T’ot-kimil-bom, “I am hot,” or Ino ot-kimil bi or Ino er-kimil bi, “The water is hot.” Used by itself the stem kimil is the name of the latter part of the rainy season, when the weather is not hot but cool. A youth or girl who is passing through the initiation ceremonies is said to be aka-kimil, and is addressed or spoken of as Kimil, instead of by his or her proper name. The turtle-eating ceremony is called čokbi-kimil, or čokbi-ǰo or kimil-ǰo, čokbi meaning “turtle” and ǰo meaning “eating.” The word “hot” is used by the natives in several unusual ways when they are talking their own language or Hindustani. Thus a stormy or rough sea is said to be “hot,” and one native in describing to me (in Hindustani) the cessation of a cyclone said “the sea became cold.” A person who is ill is said to be hot, and getting well is expressed by the phrase “getting cool.”

In the Aka-Bea language the word “hot” is translated by Mr Portman by the stem uya. The stem kimil appears in the form gumul in only some of the uses it has in the Northern languages. Gumul is the name of the latter part of the rainy season. A youth passing through the initiation ceremonies is said to be aka-gumul and is addressed or spoken of as Guma. The turtle-eating ceremony is called gumul-le-ke, le-ke meaning “eating.” The word thus means “the gumul eating” and is the literal equivalent of the kimil-ǰo of the North.

The uses of the word kimil may be summarised as follows:

(1) to mean “hot” in the sense of the English word;

(2) in connection with illness;

(3) in speaking of stormy weather;

(4) as the name of the latter part of the rainy season;

(5) to denote the condition of a youth or girl who is passing through or has recently passed through the initiation ceremonies, and to denote the ceremonies themselves;

(6) to denote a condition in a person consequent on eating certain foods, and perhaps sometimes due to other causes, to remedy or obviate which the natives make use of clay painted in patterns on their bodies.

It is probable, then, that when a native says that after eating food he is ot-kimil and therefore paints himself with clay he does not mean simply that he is hot. This will be still more evident when we consider the second explanation of the custom that is given by the natives. Many of those whom I questioned stated that after eating dugong, pork, turtle, etc., the body emits an odour, that this odour may attract the spirits of the jungle or the sea, and that to obviate this they paint themselves with clay. This agrees exactly with what Mr Man says in the second passage quoted above. It is confirmed by other customs. I was told that a man who has eaten dugong will not leave the camp until some time after the dugong meat is all finished, for fear that the spirits may smell him and do him harm. It is to be noted in passing that painting the body with clay does not by any means remove the odour that does actually characterise a native after he has been eating fat meat of any kind. We must be careful, in this instance also, not to assume that an Andaman Islander means by “smell” exactly what we mean by it and nothing more. It will be shown later in the chapter that the Andamanese identify the smell of an object with its active magical principle. One example may be given here to show this. The origin of rheumatism in the legs is explained by the natives as being the result of the common practice of preparing the fibre of the Anadendron paniculatum by scraping it on the thigh. During this process, they say, the “smell” of the plant enters the thigh and is the cause of rheumatic or sciatic pains.

The natives give yet a third statement of their reasons for using clay. On many occasions I asked them what would happen if they ate pork or turtle and did not paint themselves. In every case I received the reply that any man who did such a thing would almost certainly be ill.

When a number of persons give three different reasons for one and the same action, and are equally sincere throughout, it is to be presumed that the three different statements are so many different ways of saying one and the same thing. We may therefore conclude that the Andaman Islanders believe that there is a peculiar power in foods (or in some foods) which makes it dangerous to eat them. This danger may be expressed by saying that the person who has eaten food will, unless he takes certain precautions, be liable to be ill. Now sickness is believed to be caused by the spirits of the jungle and the sea, and therefore an alternative or equivalent statement of the same belief is that after a person has eaten food he is in danger from the spirits. We may therefore conclude that the word ot-kimil, when it is used to describe the condition of a person who has eaten food, denotes simply this condition of danger, and nothing more. For this we shall find ample confirmation later on. Subject to such later confirmation I will here state what has been maintained, which is (1) that the e̱ra-puli patterns are to be explained as being protective, (2) that the eating of food is regarded as dangerous, and (3) that this danger is associated in the minds of the natives with sickness and with the spirits. It will be convenient to leave the first of these three propositions for later discussion and take up the second, seeking to find the meaning of this belief in the dangerous properties of food.

Not all foods are equally dangerous. I was able to establish roughly a sort of scale. The most dangerous foods are dugong; the fish called komar; some of the snakes; the internal fat such as the kidney-fat or the intestinal fat of pig, turtle, monitor lizard and Paradoxurus; the liver of sharks, sting-rays and Plotosus; and honey. Next in order come the flesh of pigs, turtle, monitor lizard and Paradoxurus and of the fishes mentioned above; also the eggs of turtle. To these should perhaps be added the edible grubs and some vegetable foods such as the yams and the Artocarpus fruit and seed. Lowest in the scale, that is, least dangerous, are molluscs and the commoner sorts of fish and vegetable foods.

The principles underlying this grading of foods are two. Those foods that are difficult or dangerous to procure are considered more dangerous than others. Thus all the fishes that are thought most dangerous to eat are actually dangerous, such as the sharks, the sting-rays, the armed Plotosus, and the fish komar that has a powerful spike on its head with which it can inflict a dangerous wound. Secondly the foods that are most prized are regarded as being more dangerous than those that are less prized. The internal fat of animals is regarded as a great delicacy and therefore occupies a high place in the scale. It is this also that explains the position of honey and of the edible grubs. The dugong, which is of all foods the most difficult and dangerous to procure, and is at the same time more highly prized than any other, is regarded as more dangerous to eat than any other.

It is this difference in the danger attributed to different foods that gives the clue to the explanation of the beliefs relating to them. The hypothesis I wish to put forward is that the custom of painting the body after eating food is an expression of the social value of food.

In a simple community such as that of the Andaman Islands, in which the necessary food has to be provided from day to day, food occupies a predominant position, and is the chief source of those variations or oscillations between conditions of euphoria and dysphoria that constitute the emotional life of the society. Food is obtainable only by the expenditure of effort, and the effort is a communal one. The obtaining of food is the principal social activity and it is an activity in which every able-bodied member of the community is required by custom to join. A man’s first duty to the society may be defined as the duty of providing food for himself and others, and no one is looked on with more contempt than one who is lazy or careless in this respect. On the contrary the man who stands highest in the esteem of others is the skilful hunter who is generous in distributing to others the food he obtains. The food provides the community with its chief joys and sorrows. When food is scarce the whole community suffers. The men spend all their time in hunting but are disappointed. They have to fall back upon foods that are little relished, such as the commoner kinds of molluscs. On the contrary when there is plenty of food the whole society rejoices together. Every one has as much as he or she can eat. Hunting and fishing become pleasant sports instead of arduous labour.

Viewing the matter from its relation to the feelings of the individual we may say that it is particularly in connection with food that he is made to feel that he is a member of the community, sharing with others their joys and sorrows, taking part in a common activity, often dependent upon others for the satisfaction of his hunger, and obliged by custom to share with those others what he himself obtains. Thus food is, for the Andaman Islander, the one object above all others that serves to awaken in him day after day the feeling of his relation to his fellows. It is also the source of a very large proportion of his joys and sorrows, his excitements and disappointments. Thus it is that when the natives wish to amuse each other it is by tales of hunting that they do so, and a large proportion of their songs relate to the getting of food.

It is thus clear that food becomes an important secondary object of the fundamental affective dispositions that regulate the emotional attitude of the individual to the society to which he belongs. It is connected very closely with the feeling of moral obligation; the most valued moral qualities in the Andaman Islands are energy in providing food and generosity in distributing it; among the worst faults are laziness in hunting and meanness in giving to others. Similarly food is closely associated with the feeling of dependence. During childhood, particularly, the individual has to depend on others for his food; even later in life the food that a man eats is more often provided by others than by himself; he depends on the community even for his daily nourishment.

Different foods have different social values. Thus a dugong provides a large supply of a highly-prized delicacy, but on the other hand can only be obtained by strenuous and dangerous efforts of skilful hunters. At the other end of the scale the social value of shell-fish is very little. They are not relished and are only eaten when there is nothing better, while the labour of obtaining them is simply one of drudgery requiring little skill.

Finally it must be pointed out that the value of food is both positive and negative. It is the source of conditions of social euphoria when it is plentiful; while it is equally the source of social dysphoria when it is lacking. In other words, on different occasions it is the source of both pleasurable and painful states of the fundamental social sentiments.

All these experiences connected with food organise themselves around the notion that foods, or the animals that are used for food, are things to be treated carefully, with respect, or, in other words, with ritual precautions. The sense of the social value of food reveals itself as a belief that food may be a source of danger unless it is approached with circumspection, and this belief, translated into action, gives rise to the rite of painting the body after eating. This does not mean that when the Andaman Islander eats turtle he is actually in a state of fear; he feels that he would have reason to be afraid if it were not that the society has provided him with a means of avoiding the dangers of turtle eating. What he does feel, then, as I have tried to show, is not a fear of food but a sense of the value of food.

This interpretation will, I hope, be amply justified later, and the psychological processes assumed by it will be further illustrated. One point needs to be emphasised here, namely that the suggested interpretation affords, as no other would seem to do, an explanation of the fact that some foods are believed to be more dangerous than others, and that while it is obligatory to paint the body after eating the more dangerous foods, it is not necessary to do so after eating those that are less dangerous. If the rite is simply the expression of the social value of foods, it will follow that different food substances, having different social values, must be subject to differences in ritual treatment.

There are a few other customs connected with food, recorded in an earlier chapter, which show that in general food is regarded as something that may only be approached with ritual precautions. A turtle must be killed with its head towards the open sea, and must be cut up in one particular way, otherwise the meat would be “bad.” A pig must also be cut up in a particular way, and must be stuffed with certain leaves before it is roasted. A man will not eat certain foods when he is away from his own country, as he is afraid that to do so might make him ill. (This corresponds to the belief that there is less chance of illness in one’s own country than away from it, and that the spirits of a strange place are more dangerous than those that haunt the jungles and the waters of a man’s own home.) All these customs, I believe, are so many different expressions of the social value of food.

I have maintained earlier in the chapter that the sense of the social value of such things as fire and the materials used for weapons translates itself into the belief that these things afford protection against danger. This would seem, at first sight, to be contradicted by the explanation that I have just given of the belief in the danger of food. The apparent contradiction must be faced and resolved before we can proceed further.

First, it can be shown that the various things that are regarded as affording protection when used according to custom, are also believed to be dangerous, just in the same way that food is dangerous. One example of this will suffice. The fibre of the Anadendron paniculatum, which is used for bow-strings and other purposes, has been shown to possess a power which gives it efficacy against dangers of the sea such as sharks. This same power, however, may have injurious effects if the plant is handled without proper precautions. Thus, if a piece of the green creeper, or a person who has recently been handling it, should be in a canoe, it would be impossible to capture turtle from that canoe, as they would be driven away by the “smell” of the plant. If a piece of the creeper were burnt in the fire there would be a great storm, according to one statement, or all the turtle would be driven away from the vicinity, according to another. The handling of the plant in the preparation of the fibre, by scraping it on the thigh, is believed to be the cause of rheumatism. Turtle meat that might by accident come in contact with the plant would be dangerous and would therefore not be eaten. These different beliefs show us that while this plant possesses powers that make it of service to the society, both directly as a material for weapons, and indirectly as a magical protection against evil, it is also dangerous, i.e. it will produce undesirable effects unless treated with the proper ritual precautions.

Now just as materials such as the Anadendron are dangerous but may yet be used protectively, so it can be shown that the things used for food are also capable of affording protection against evil. It may be recalled that an important element of the treatment of sickness is by the use of special foods. Yams, honey, the fat of turtle and dugong and other foods are believed to possess curative properties. The flesh of the flying-fox is used as a remedy for rheumatism. But the clearest evidence is provided by the custom of wearing ornaments made of the bones of animals that have been eaten. These ornaments are believed to possess protective powers of the same kind as those attributed to human bones, but they are considered to be more particularly of value to the hunter when he is in the forest or on the sea. They are made chiefly from the bones of those animals that are believed to be most dangerous to eat. These animals are difficult and often dangerous to capture or kill. When obtained they become very important sources of well-being to the society. The Andamanese express their sense of the social value of these animals in the belief that it is necessary to adopt certain measures of ritual precaution in dealing with them. When these due precautions are taken, however, then the society is able to make use of the flesh to serve its own ends. So, when an animal has been eaten, and has thus been made to serve as a source of advantage, of strength, the bones, which are the permanent remains of the feast, acquire a symbolic value as evidence of past social well-being, and omens of future security. They are a visible proof of the ability of the society to protect itself and its members from the dangers that are believed to threaten the human being in the most important activity of his life, the obtaining and eating of food.

Formerly the Andamanese preserved the skulls of all large animals such as pigs, turtle and dugong. At the present day they no longer preserve the skulls of pigs, giving as their reason that owing to the dogs obtained from Europeans they now have little difficulty in killing pigs; but they still preserve the skulls of dugongs, and a fair proportion of the skulls of turtle. The J̌a̤rawa still seem to preserve with great care the skulls of all the pigs they kill, going to the pains of enclosing each one in a case of basket-work. These skulls, we must conclude, are more than mere trophies of the chase. As visible proofs of the ability of the society in the past to overcome the hostile powers of nature, they form, as it were, the guarantee of a similar ability in the future, and I believe that their preservation is regarded as a means of ensuring success in hunting as well as protection for the hunters. The turtle skulls that are often suspended under the forward platform of a canoe, are, I believe, intended both to protect the occupants of the canoe from the dangers of the sea and to help them to obtain a good catch.

The Andamanese belief in the power of the bones of animals to protect them from danger and to bring them luck, is therefore very similar to their belief in the protective power of the materials used for weapons and implements. The consideration of the apparent contradiction mentioned above has led us to a more exact statement of the real beliefs in these matters. They believe, we may say, that all the things from the jungle and the sea of which they make use as food or as materials, are dangerous unless approached with proper ritual precautions, but when so approached they become sources of strength and well-being and also of protection from unseen dangers.

To return to the main argument, which was concerned with the meaning of the patterns of clay painted on the body after eating the more dangerous foods, it would seem that this action is really a rite or ceremony, of the same general character as other ceremonial customs of the Andamans. It is an action required by custom, the performance of which on appropriate occasions serves to keep alive in the mind of the individual a certain system of sentiments necessary for the regulation of conduct in conformity to the needs of the society. By it the individual is made to feel (or to act as though he felt) that his life is one of continually repeated dangers from which he can only be preserved by conforming to the customs of the society as they have been handed down by tradition. He is made to feel that the eating of food is not merely the satisfaction of an animal appetite, but an act of communion, that the food itself is something “sacred” (if we may use that word in the sense of the original Latin “sacer”). It serves also, like any other rite in which all join, to make the individual feel the solidarity and unity of the community; all share in the common repast and the common danger, and each man sees on his neighbour the clay with which he himself is daubed.

Of course it is probable that the Andamanese custom of painting the body after eating, like our own grace before and after meat, with which it is parallel, tends to become a formality accompanied by little real feeling, but it can be shown, I believe, that such customs do possess a real value—a real psychological function—in keeping alive ideas and sentiments that will on occasion play an important part in influencing conduct.

We have not yet completed the study of the Andamanese beliefs about food. To do so we must examine the initiation ceremonies. I hope to show that these ceremonies are the means by which the society powerfully impresses upon the initiate the sense of the social value of food, and keeps the same sense alive in the minds of the spectators of the ceremony.

The position in the social life occupied by a child is different from that of an adult; the child is dependent upon and closely united to his parents, and is not an independent member of the community. To this difference in social position there corresponds a difference in the attitude of a person towards a child and towards an adult, and also a difference in the attitude of a child and that of an adult towards the society. As the child grows up a change takes place in his position in the social life, and this must be accompanied by a change in the emotional dispositions of the child himself in so far as these regulate his attitude towards the society, and by a change in the attitude towards the child of the other members of the group. The initiation ceremonies are the means by which these changes are brought about, and by which, therefore, the child is made an independent member of the society.

The ceremonies have two aspects according as we regard them from the point of view of the society or from that of the initiate. For the society they are to be described as the recognition of the change of status of the initiate, just as the marriage ceremony is the social recognition of the change of status by marriage. For the initiate they constitute a sort of moral or social education.

To fit a child for his proper place in the community he needs to be educated. Part of the process consists of learning how to hunt, how to make bows and arrows, and so on. This necessary knowledge he acquires gradually by imitation of his elders, in which he is guided and encouraged by them. But in addition to this he has to acquire those sentiments or emotional dispositions which regulate the conduct of members of the society and constitute morality. Part of this education in morality, this education of the sentiments, takes place gradually as the child grows up, less by any actual instruction than by processes of imitation and suggestion; but in this connection an extremely important part is played by the initiation ceremonies. That the long series of abstentions and ceremonies does have a very powerful emotional effect on the youth or girl may be readily observed by an eye-witness; that their permanent effect is to create in his or her mind a number of sentiments that previously existed not at all or only in an undeveloped condition will be shown in the course of the present argument.

Since in the life of the Andamans by far the most important social activity is the getting of food, and it is in connection with food that the social sentiments are most frequently called into action, it is therefore appropriate that it should be through his relation to food that the child should be taught his relation to the society, and thus have those sentiments implanted in him or brought to the necessary degree of strength. During his infancy the child is almost entirely unrestrained and acts with great comparative freedom. He does not realise, in any adequate manner, that the food with which he is freely provided (for children are the last to suffer hunger) is only obtained by skill and effort, nor does he realise that he will one day be required to labour to supply food for others. There follows a period of restraint, during which the growing boy or girl has to give up eating certain relished foods, and has to pass through a number of ceremonies, some of them painful, and all solemn and awe-inspiring. These restraints on the action of the individual are not imposed by one person, but by the whole society backed by the whole force of tradition. Through a series of years, just at what is, for physiological reasons, the most impressionable age, the individual learns to subordinate his own desires to the requirements of the society or of custom, as explained to him by his elders. He is thus impressed, in a forcible manner, with the importance of the moral law, and at the same time he is impressed with a sense of the social value of food. The ceremonies thus afford a moral education adapted to the requirements of life as it is lived in the Andamans. It would need a very lengthy analysis to show all the effects of the ceremonies on the emotional life of those who undergo them, and for the purpose of this chapter such an analysis is unnecessary. It will suffice merely to mention a few of the more important. As stated above, the ceremonies teach the boy or girl self-control or self-restraint, and they do so in relation to one of the two fundamental human instincts,—hunger. The cutting of the boy’s back in the North Andaman gives a still sharper lesson in self-control in the endurance of pain. Secondly the ceremonies teach the initiate, for the first time in life, to view life and its duties and obligations seriously. The various ceremonies are all very solemn affairs for the initiate. Again, the growing boy or girl is made to feel very strongly the importance of conforming to the customs of the community to which he belongs, thus having implanted in his mind what is certainly one of the most powerful of the sentiments that regulate conduct in the Andamans. In this connection there may also be mentioned the respect for elders which is a most important element in the regulation of social life in all savage communities, and which is strongly impressed on the initiate throughout the ceremonies. And yet again, the ceremonies awaken and develop in the adolescent that fear of unseen danger which, as we shall see later, has a very important place in the mental life of the Andamanese and an important function in their moral life. Finally, the whole series of abstentions and ceremonies serves to develop in the mind of every new member of the society that sense of the social value of foods with which our argument has been concerned, which may be briefly described as being a realisation that food is a possession of the society, that not only the power to obtain food, but also the power to use it without danger is something that the individual owes to the society, and that the bestowal upon him of this power involves the acceptance on his part of corresponding obligations.

We may say, to look at the matter under another aspect, that the initiation ceremonies teach the youth or girl to realise what is implied in being a member of the society by putting him or her during the period of adolescence in an exceptional position, and, as it were, outside the society. The youth is no longer a child and may not act as a child; but he is not yet an adult and may not act as adults do. He feels himself cut off, as it were, from the ordinary life of the group, having as yet no share in it. As a child he was not yet aware of what it means to be a member of a society, but now, by means of the ceremonies, his attention is directed to the society and its life, by his being placed in a position of isolation outside it. He begins to look forward to the time when he will take his proper place as an adult, and his share in the common life of the camp. At each step of the ceremonies he feels that he is brought a little closer, until at last he can feel himself a man amongst men. Thus he is brought to a consciousness of all that it must mean to him to be a member of the community; he is taught the significance and value of social communion.

Since the greater part of social life is the getting and eating of food, to place a person outside the social life would be to forbid him from partaking of the food that is obtained by the society and consumed by it. This, however, would result in his starvation. The same object is attained, however, by making the initiate abstain for a period from a number of the most important and relished foods, and then making him abstain for a second period from the others. This is not the only way however in which the initiate is cut off from social communion. A youth or girl who is aka-op is not permitted to dance, nor to be decorated with red paint and white clay. It is in the dance that the community expresses most completely its own unity. Being forbidden to join in the dance is therefore to be excluded from the common life. Painting the body with red paint and white clay is, as we have seen, a way of expressing that the individual is aware of his own position as a member of the group having the approval and good-will of his fellows. Thus these other prohibitions reinforce and supplement the prohibition against eating certain foods during the period of adolescence, and the consideration of them serves to confirm the interpretation just given. I believe that the aka-op is also forbidden to use odu clay as a sign of mourning, and if this be so it is of considerable significance, as will be evident after we have considered the meaning of this use of clay. Unfortunately I am not quite sure of the facts, and so the point must be left.

To discuss in detail all the features of these ceremonies would take much space. I propose therefore to take as typical of the others the ceremony of turtle-eating and to explain its various features. When this ceremony is performed the youth has been compelled for many months to abstain from eating turtle, and has thus learnt to realise the social value of food in general and of turtle in particular. He is now to have the same lesson impressed upon him in a different way. The previous part of his education has been the continuous action over a long period of a not very powerful emotion. He has had to sit quietly while others regaled themselves with turtle meat and to be satisfied with less tasty food. At times he has probably gone hungry because the only food in camp was of kinds that were forbidden to him. The ceremony he is now to go through acts by producing in the space of a few days a very intense emotional experience. We have seen that the sense of the social value of food takes the form of a belief that food is dangerous to eat, and that its dangers may only be avoided by ritual precautions. At the turtle-eating ceremony the initiate is eating turtle for the first time as an adult, and is therefore exposed to great danger which makes it necessary to guard him with every possible ritual precaution. This, at any rate, is what the initiate himself is made to feel, and it is through this that the ceremony has its emotional effects. The initiate is not, of course, himself possessed by a simple feeling of fear, though the emotional state of his mind is built up on the basis of the fear instinct. What he is about to do is a matter of great danger to himself, but at the same time the precautions that are to be taken are such as entirely to remedy that danger if they are properly observed. Thus what he experiences is an intense feeling of the importance and solemnity of the ritual in which he is to take part.

All the details of the ceremony are readily to be explained as so many different ways of warding off the danger that threatens the initiate. He is seated on leaves of the Hibiscus tiliaceus, which, as we have seen, possess special efficacy against dangers connected with turtle. Leaves of the same kind are placed under his arms so as to cover his belly, where, we may suppose, the danger is most intense. A fire is placed near him, between him and the open sea. It has already been shown that fire is believed to afford protection against dangers of this sort, and the appropriateness of the position is due to the fact that in this instance it is from the sea and the things of the sea that danger is to be feared. He may not feed himself with his fingers, but must use a skewer of Hibiscus wood. This is clearly only one more precaution against danger, though the ideas connected with it are somewhat obscure. At the beginning of the ceremony the initiate is fed with turtle by a man who conducts the ceremony and who represents the society, that latter fact being sometimes symbolised by his wearing round his shoulders a bark sling such as is used for carrying children. This means, I think, that it is the society that “gives” the food to the initiate, giving him at the same time the power to use it with safety. The older man hands on to the younger the right and the power to eat which he himself possesses. He makes himself responsible, as it were, for the action of the initiate. At one stage of the performance the initiate is rubbed over with red ochre. This is to be understood by recalling that red ochre and red paint are regarded by the natives as valuable remedies against sickness and against the spirits that cause sickness. Immediately afterwards the body of the initiate is spattered with odu clay. The use of this clay after eating food was explained as a method of avoiding the dangers supposed to result from eating such foods as turtle. It is clear that exactly the same explanation will apply to its use in the initiation ceremonies. I have not found a satisfactory explanation of the peculiar manner in which it is applied. That the youth is not allowed to sleep for the first two days of the ceremony will be explained later in the chapter, when it will be shown that sleep itself is regarded as a condition of danger.

A notable incident is that at the beginning of the ceremony the female relatives of the initiate are required by custom to come and weep over him. An explanation of this has already been given, but may well be repeated. At each stage of the initiation ceremonies the initiate is withdrawn from the position of dependence that the child necessarily occupies, and as children are, for the most part, under the care of their elder female relatives, the ceremonies result in a partial destruction of those bonds that unite the initiate to his mother or his foster-mother and her sisters or to his own elder sisters. The weeping of the female relatives is as it were a reaction against this lessening of solidarity. It is evident why the rite is necessarily one-sided. The female relatives need to feel that they are not being entirely cut off from the initiate, and so they affirm their attachment to him by weeping over him. On the other hand the important thing for the initiate himself is to feel that the bonds that united him as a child to the women who cared for him are now severed or modified; he must no longer depend on them but must learn to depend on himself; hence it is necessary that he should not weep but should remain passive and as it were indifferent under the tears that are shed over him.

The last part of the ceremony consists of a dance, in which the youth dances in the middle surrounded by a ring of men. As we have seen that dancing is in general an affirmation of solidarity between those taking part, and an expression of the unity of the society, we may well regard this dance as an affirmation of the solidarity that now exists between the youth and the other dancers, who are representatives of the society of adults. There is something more in the dance than this however. I pointed out that one of the results of taking part in a dance is to produce in the individual an experience of increased personal force, and it is obvious that this is a very appropriate feeling for the initiate who, by his long abstention from turtle, and by the ceremony he has just been through, has acquired an increase of personal force, an addition to his social personality. Before the dance the initiate is decorated with white clay (the snake pattern) and red paint. I have explained this particular method of painting the body as being a means of expressing and so producing or reinforcing the feeling of elation accompanying the recognition by an individual of his own social value, of the fact that he has deserved and obtained the good-will and regard of his fellows. The youth who has been through the period of restraint and the ordeal of the ceremony has done his duty and has earned the approbation of his friends. It is for this reason that he alone of the dancers is decorated with the painting that serves to express or arouse the elation or self-satisfaction that it is right for him to feel. The painting is the mark of the increase in social value of the initiate brought about by the turtle-eating ceremony.

There is one aspect of the dance that may be mentioned as being of importance, and which will be referred to again later, namely that the movements seem to be in a way imitative of the movements of turtle in the water. The leaves used in the dance are those that possess magical efficacy against dangers from turtle.

I have not been able to satisfy myself as to the meaning of the belt and necklace of Pothos scandens worn by the initiate in the dance and for some days afterwards. It is probable that the clue to this lies in the resemblance of the leaves to the shape of a phallus, but I have no clear evidence that this is the real explanation, and therefore offer it as merely a surmise.

If the natives be asked the reason for these ceremonies they often reply that their purpose is to make the youth or girl grow up strong. By this word “strong” they seem to mean in the first instance able-bodied, skilful (in hunting, etc.) and above all able to avoid or resist disease. They believe that anyone who did not pass through the ceremonies would be certain to die at an early age, and they recall the instance of one young man who refused to submit to the ceremonies who died before reaching maturity. Now, since the danger that they fear in eating food is said to be sickness, we may translate their statement into other terms by saying that the purpose of the initiation ceremonies is to endow the initiate with the power to eat the dangerous foods with comparative safety.

It would seem that an infant, being completely dependent upon his parents, is protected by that dependence from the danger of foods, but the adult is only able to make use of food with safety by reason of the possession within himself of a special power with which it is the purpose of the initiation ceremonies to endow him. Each kind of food has its own kind of dangerous power, and therefore every individual needs to be endowed with the special power to avoid each kind of danger. For this reason there is a separate ceremony for each of the important kinds of food. Thus we see very clearly that, for the Andamanese, food, or the power to make use of food without danger, is essentially a possession of the society, and one function of the initiation ceremonies is to keep alive this sentiment.

But there is a further meaning, I think, lying behind the statement that the initiation ceremonies endow the youth or girl with strength. I have already argued that all the most important social sentiments are closely associated with the sense of the social value of food, and although the initiation ceremonies are chiefly concerned with food, that is only because that is the easiest way by which to get at the main system of social sentiments. So that behind the special meaning of the ceremonies with relation to food we must look for a more general meaning in relation to the social life in general. This may be conveniently stated by saying that the purpose of the ceremonies is to endow the individual with a social personality. By the social personality of a person I mean the sum of those qualities by which he is able to affect the society. It is, in other words, what gives him his social value. The social personality depends in the first place on the social status of the individual. A young child seems to be regarded as having no social personality. He is not an independent member of the society, and therefore has no immediate social value, no direct effect on the general social life. At any rate the social personality of a child is something very different from that of an adult. So, since the initiation ceremonies provide the passage from childhood to manhood or womanhood we may describe them as the means by which the society endows the child with an adult social personality.

But the social personality of an individual also depends on his personal qualities, his strength and intelligence, his skill as a hunter, and on his moral qualities, whether he is mean or generous, quarrelsome or good-tempered, and so on, for all these things help to determine the place he occupies in the social life and the effects he has upon it. Above all, the social personality depends upon the development in the individual of those sentiments by which the social life is regulated and by which the social cohesion is preserved. Now we have seen that the initiation ceremonies do serve to develop these sentiments in the mind of the initiate, and we may therefore say that in this respect also it is true that the initiation ceremonies serve to develop in the child the social personality of an adult.

The consideration of the initiation ceremonies has served to confirm the hypothesis that the Andamanese customs relating to food are all of them different modes of expressing the social value of foods. We have now to consider the nature of the dangers that are supposed to accrue from the eating of food if due precautions be not taken. One statement of the natives is that the danger they fear is sickness. Now sickness of all kinds is believed by the Andamanese to be caused by certain supernatural beings called Lau or Čauga,—the spirits of the dead; and further, we have seen that the danger connected with food is sometimes said to be the danger of an attack by the spirits. So that it is evident that to understand the meaning of the fear of foods it is first of all necessary to understand the notions they have about the spirits, and to do this we shall have to consider the various customs relating to death and burial.

For the society a death is the loss of one of its members, one of its constituent parts. A person occupies a definite position in society, has a certain share in the social life, is one of the supports of the network of social relations. His death constitutes a partial destruction of the social cohesion, the normal social life is disorganised, the social equilibrium is disturbed. After the death the society has to organise itself anew and reach a new condition of equilibrium. In reference to the small community of the Andamans we may translate the above statement into terms of personal feeling by saying that the death removes a person who was the object of feelings of affection and attachment on the part of others and is thus a direct offence against those sentiments in the survivors.

Though the dead man has ceased to exist as a member of the society, it is clear that he has by no means ceased to influence the society. On the contrary he has become the source of intense painful emotions. Where the affection that was felt towards him was previously a source of pleasure it now becomes a source of pain. Defining the “social personality” of an individual as being the sum of characteristics by which he has an effect upon the social life and therefore on the social sentiments of others, we may say that by death the social personality is not annihilated but undergoes a profound change, so that from being an object of pleasurable states of the social sentiments it becomes an object of painful states. This is expressed by the Andamanese by saying that by death a man or woman becomes a Lau.

The burial customs of the Andaman Islanders, however, are not to be regarded as simply the expression of natural personal feeling. They are a collective and ritual expression of a collective feeling. This is evident from the fact that they are regulated in every detail by custom. It is the duty of the relatives and friends to mourn, whether they feel sorrow or not, and it is equally their duty to mourn only for a certain period.

The cohesion of a social group, by which is maintained its existence as a group, depends directly on the existence of a collective system of sentiments or affective dispositions that bind every member to every other. The death, or removal by any other means, of a member of the group is a direct attack against these sentiments. Now whenever a sentiment of any kind is subjected to an attack of such a kind as this there are only two possible alternatives; either the sentiment must suffer a diminution of its intrinsic energy, and thus be less capable of controlling behaviour in the future; or it must find an outlet in an expressive action of some sort which serves as a reaction of defence or compensation and restores the sentiment to its former condition of strength. The typical example of such an emotional reaction is anger; anything that wounds our self-regarding feelings arouses our anger; if it did not do so those feelings would gradually weaken. This law holds true of collective sentiments as well as of individual sentiments. If the society permitted its solidarity to be attacked, whether by death or by any other means, without reacting in such a way as to give relief to wounded social feelings and so to reinstate them in their former condition, these sentiments would lose their strength and the society its cohesion. The burial customs of the Andamanese are to be explained, I believe, as a collective reaction against the attack on the collective feeling of solidarity constituted by the death of a member of the social group.

The man being dead, the first thing that the society does is to sever its connection with him, and the first step in this process is to get rid of the body by burying it or placing it in a tree, to abandon the camp at which he died, and temporarily to drop the use of his name. It is often supposed that customs such as these, which are found in many primitive societies, are due to the fear of the dead man’s spirit. That there is an element of fear present is undoubtedly true, but this fear does not seem to be by any means instinctive, and therefore comparable to the fear that some animals exhibit towards the dead body of one of their species. On the contrary the fear itself needs to be explained, and this will have to be attempted later.

There is one group of facts which show very clearly that the burial customs are not solely due to an instinctive fear of dead bodies, namely that the customs vary according to the social position of the deceased. A child plays very little part in the general life of the community; hence on the death of a child the camp is not deserted and only the parents are subjected to the mourning ritual. Similarly the death of a person who has for long been so ill as not to be able to take any important part in social life has very little effect on the community as a whole; the body of such a one is disposed of with scant ceremony and mourning is perfunctory. On the other hand the death of a noted hunter in the prime of life, of a man who is esteemed as a leader, is a much greater loss; the whole community mourns for him; his body is placed on a tree instead of in the ground, showing that his death is regarded as something different from the death of a person who is interred. The body of a stranger who dies or is killed is not buried, but is thrown into the sea or cut up and burnt. The explanation that the natives give of this custom of burning the body is that it serves to dispel danger that might accrue from the presence of the dead body of a stranger. The blood and the fat of the dead man, from which they appear to fear evil influences, are, they say, driven up to the sky in the smoke of the fire and are thus rendered harmless.

There is, then, a close correspondence between the manner of burial and the social value of the person buried, and it is evident that the differences in the mode of disposing of the body are quite inexplicable on the assumption that the funeral customs are solely due to the fear of the dead.

Before burial the corpse is decorated with white clay and red paint. We have already seen that this is an expression on the part of the survivors of their regard for the deceased. A living man or woman is decorated in this way when, for some special reason, it is desired to express the fact that he or she has the good-will and regard of others, and it is applied to the dead body with exactly the same meaning. Fire and water are placed beside the grave. It is not necessary to suppose that the Andamanese believe that the spirit of the dead man makes any use of these, any more than it is necessary for us to believe that the spirit enjoys the flowers that it is our custom to place upon the grave. The action in each case is symbolical.

The dead man was bound by ties of solidarity to those still living. Now that he is dead those ties have not ceased to exist, but continue until the society has recovered from the effects of the death, for they are based on deep-seated and elaborately organised sentiments. I believe that the mourning customs of the Andamanese are to be explained on this basis, as being the means by which the social sentiments of the survivors are slowly reorganised and adapted to the new condition produced by the death. The severance of the dead man from the society is not a sudden but a gradual process, during which his relatives and friends, being still attached to him by social ties, are in an abnormal condition which may be defined as a partial separation from the world of living men and women and a partial aggregation to the world of the dead (i.e. the spirit world). This abnormal condition of the mourner is shown chiefly in his or her withdrawal from participation in the ordinary life of the society. We have seen that the eating of food is, for the Andamanese, one of the most important of social actions, a kind of communion of the society, and that during the period of adolescence a youth is separated or withdrawn from the common life of the group by being forbidden to eat certain foods. So, in strict conformity with the same set of notions, the mourner is separated from the normal life of the society by being forbidden to eat pork or turtle, these being the most important foods that the Andamanese have [171]. Like the aka-op, also, the mourner is forbidden to take part in a dance, or to decorate himself with red paint and white clay, for by these actions the Andaman Islander becomes conscious of his position as a member of a closely unified group, and it is necessary for the mourner, as for the aka-op, to feel that for the time being he is cut off from the ordinary life of the group. The disuse, during the period of mourning, of the name of a mourner is to be explained, as we shall see more plainly later, on the same principle, the personal name being what marks the person’s position in the social life, so that the temporary dropping of the name shows that for the time being the person is not occupying his normal social position.

The distinctive sign of a mourner is the use of clay, which is smeared over the body and head, and from the name of this clay is derived the term that denotes a mourner (aka-odu). It is possible to explain this also as a symbolic expression of the separation of the mourner from the world of living men and his aggregation to the world of the dead. In his everyday life the Andaman Islander is black from head to foot. During mourning he turns himself as nearly as possible white from head to foot, by covering his body all over with clay. It must be remembered that the spirits of the dead are said to be white or light in colour. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the (light-coloured) natives of India are called spirits (Lau), while men of such a dark-coloured race as the African negroes are not referred to by this term. The use of clay would therefore seem to serve not only to make the mourner unlike his ordinary self, but to make him like the spirits of the dead.

Of course, the natives explain all these customs of mourning as being expressions of sorrow for their loss, and this is, from the simple standpoint of everyday life, an adequate and true explanation. From the standpoint of psychology, however, what we need to know is why the sorrow is expressed in just these ways and no others. Moreover, the natives give as a further reason for the mourning customs that if they did not observe them they would be liable to sickness or even death.

I have said that the Andamanese believe that by death a man or woman becomes a Lau, but there is a little uncertainty in the statements of the natives as to whether he becomes a spirit at once, immediately after the death, or whether he does so only after the flesh of the body has decayed. Both statements are sometimes made, but it seems common to think of the dead person during the period of mourning not as a spirit (Lau) but as a dead man (empilo). We may best express the ideas of the natives by saying that the process by which a man becomes a spirit is one that takes some months to complete, and is only ended when the bones are dug up. An interesting insight into their notions in this matter is afforded by a belief, about which unfortunately I have very scanty information, to the effect that when a man dies he is initiated into the world of the dead by a ceremony resembling the ceremonies by which a youth is initiated into manhood. In the statement of an Aka-Kede informant the ceremony was spoken of by the term kimil, which is generally used for the initiation ceremonies, and was described as a po̱ro̱to-kimil, i.e., a ceremony in which the dead man ate po̱ro̱to (Caryota sobolifera) in just the same way that a youth eats turtle (čokbi) at the čokbi-kimil. There is independent evidence that there is a special connection between the spirits of the dead and the Caryota palm [172].

The description of this ceremony (of initiation into the world of the dead) that was given to me stated that in it the shredded fibre named ko̱ro was used in just the same way as the leaves of the Hibiscus are used in the turtle-eating ceremony. Further, as in the peace-making ceremony men stand against a suspended cane from which depend bunches of this same ko̱ro, so in the initiation into the spirit world the initiate has to stand against the rainbow while the dancing spirits shake it and him. It is this shaking of the rainbow (according to my informant) that causes earthquakes. It may be recalled that the rainbow is regarded as a sort of bridge between this world and the spirit world, and that its name is “the spirit’s cane,” so that it would seem that it is regarded as like a cane with ko̱ro fibre suspended from it, such as is used in the peace-making ceremony.

The explanation of the use of this ko̱ro fibre was postponed earlier in the chapter, and may well be undertaken here. It serves as a sign that the spot where it is placed is tabu, or, in more precise terms, that the spot must be avoided because of the presence there of a force or power that makes things dangerous. This force is present at the grave of a dead man, and therefore the fibre is placed at the grave to mark the fact, while a bunch is similarly suspended at the entrance to a village that is deserted after a death. In the peace-making ceremony the members of the one party stand against a suspended cane to which are attached strips of the fibre. The meaning of this, I think, is that it thus forbids the members of the other party from attacking them. If a man were to leave the screen of ko̱ro, he would, I believe, be liable to be killed by the enemy party; it is only as long as he stands against it with his arms outstretched that he is safe, because while there he is tabu.

How then does this belief in the fibre as a mark of tabu come about? The fibre is worn by the women of the Little Andaman to cover their pudenda, and it was formerly worn in this way by the women of the North Andaman. We may conclude that this was an old element in the Andaman culture dating back to the remote period when the inhabitants of the Little Andaman became separated from those of the Great Andaman. Now in a very special sense the sexual organs of women are tabu, and, without discussing the matter in detail, we may suppose that the Andaman Islander regards the genitals of women as a spot in which resides the same sort of force or power that makes the spirits, or the body of a dead man, dangerous. One point may be mentioned as throwing light on this subject, and helping forward the argument, namely that the natives of the North Andaman often use the expression Lau-buku (meaning literally “spirit-women” or “female spirits”) to denote women collectively instead of the phrase that might be expected—n’e-buku. It would seem that by reason of their sex and the special ideas that are associated with it, women are regarded as having a very special relation with the world of spirits. We may conclude that the ko̱ro fibre, being a convenient material for the purpose, was first used as a covering for the women, and in this way came to be used as a sign of tabu in general, or else that for some unknown reason the fibre was selected as a suitable material to mark any kind of tabu, and so came to be used both as a covering for women and also as a sign of warning at the grave and the village that has been visited by death [173].

To return from this digression to the question of the initiation of the dead man into the world of spirits, it is clear that since such ceremonies take time to accomplish there is a period during which the dead man is in an indeterminate position; he is no longer a member of the society of the living, and has not yet become a member of the society of the dead. As long as he is thus situated his relatives and friends are still attached to him, so that he still remains as it were in partial contact with the living. During this time the society is still suffering the ill effects of the death, and the process of readjustment by means of the customs of mourning is still taking place. At the end of it the dead man becomes completely absorbed in the spirit world, and as a spirit he has no more part in or influence over the social life than any other spirit, and the mourning is brought to a close by means of a ceremony.

This ceremony has two parts. One is the recovery of the bones and their reaggregation to the society, a rite which we may regard as the final settling of the dead man in his proper place. All that is left of him, who was once a source of strength to the community, who had once—as it is here expressed—a social value, are the bones, his name, and the memory of him that his friends retain. We may suppose that the bones still have something of the value that originally attached to their owner, and indeed it is evident that they have, for after they are recovered they are affectionately treasured as relics by the relatives. By the end of the period of mourning the painful feelings aroused by the death have died down, so that the dead man is now the object only of memories that are pleasant, or, at the worst, bitter-sweet. The bones, then, are visible evidences of the fact that the society has recovered from the disruptive shock of the death, and this is why they are dug up as soon as the recovery is complete, or rather in order to complete it, and are thereafter treasured. It should now be clear why the Andamanese attribute to the bones of dead persons the power to protect them from unseen dangers. Like the bones of animals that have been eaten they are visible and wearable signs of past dangers overcome through the protective action of the society itself, and are therefore a guarantee of similar protection in the future. And as the death of a member is an enormously more important event for the community than the mere killing and eating of a dugong, so an enormously greater protective power is attributed to the human bones than to those of any animal.

The bones, then, are dug up, and brought into camp, where they are wept over just as a friend who has been absent is wept over. All that is left of the former person returns to the social life, henceforward to occupy a definite place in it, and the weeping is the rite of aggregation, the expression of the attachment of those who weep to the bones that now return to them from the grave. The skull and jawbone and the long bones are then decorated with red paint and white clay, this being the way in which the relatives express their sense of the value of them. The other bones are made up into strings and distributed to be used on occasion as amulets.

Soon after the digging up of the bones the other part of the ceremony of the end of mourning takes place. We have seen that while the dead man was in an indeterminate position his relatives were still attached to him by social bonds, but now that he has finally become a spirit, and is for ever definitely cut off from the human society, these bonds cease to exist. The mourners, therefore, who have been cut off from the normal social life are free to return to it and even if they should not so desire, yet it is their duty to do so. The return of the mourners to the society is marked by a dance. The clay that has marked their condition is taken off, and they are decorated with white clay and red paint and all the ornaments usual on ceremonial occasions. Thus decorated they dance, the women on this occasion being required to dance as well as the men. The dance is interrupted shortly after it is begun in order that those who have not been mourning may weep with the mourners. The weeping, according to the explanation at the beginning of the chapter is a rite of aggregation by which the mourners are welcomed back to the society, just as returning friends are welcomed after an absence. It has nothing whatever to do, I believe, with the dead person for whom they have been mourning, but is merely an expression of solidarity between those still alive. Dancing and the decorations used in the dance, I have argued, are means by which the society expresses its own unity, and makes the individual realise what it means to be one of a group, so that in this dance we see the society once more coming together to continue its common life, and compelling those who have been cut off from it to feel, even against their inclinations, that they have become once more units of the social body. After this ceremony the mourners are relieved from the restrictions to which they were subjected.

In order to complete this discussion of the burial customs it is necessary to explain why a person’s name should be dropped from use after his death, and although this will require a digression of some length, this seems the most convenient point at which to deal with it. There is a very special relation between the name of anything and its fundamental characteristics, which in logic we describe by saying that the latter are included in the connotation of the name. The way in which the Andamanese represent this relation to themselves is shown in one of the legends. At a time when the ancestors did not know either the names or the uses of the different objects to be found in their country, one of them, Da Teŋat by name, walked through the forest enquiring of the objects he met what were their names. From most of them he received no reply, but the yam and the resin replied to him and gave him their names. The legend shows that as soon as the hero of the tale knew the name of the yam he immediately knew that it was of use as a food and that it required to be cooked in a particular way, although he was till then ignorant of those important properties. Similarly, having discovered the name of the resin he knew that it could be made into a torch and so used to give light.

There is, to the mind of the Andaman Islander, a somewhat similar and very important connection between a person’s name and what is here called his social personality, and this is exhibited in the customs whereby the name is avoided on certain occasions. A consideration of the different instances will show, I think, that the name is always avoided whenever the owner is for any reason prevented from taking his or her usual place in the life of the society. At such times the social personality is as it were suppressed, and the name which represents it is therefore also suppressed.

From the moment of her first menstruation to the date of her marriage, or more strictly to the date of her first parturition, the birth-name of a woman is dropped from use and she is called by her flower-name. A woman only attains her complete social personality as a mother. As a child she has not the power to become a mother. She acquires that power at her first menstruation and therefore from that time until this new virtue is actively exercised she is in a position in which one of her virtues, one of the qualities making up her social personality, is in abeyance. Therefore her name (her birth-name) is not used and she is given a temporary name in its place, a flower-name. She is, as it were, in blossom, and only when her body ripens to its fruit is she a complete woman.

At certain stages of the initiation ceremonies the name of a youth or of a girl (the flower-name in this instance) is avoided for a certain period. Such occasions are during, and for some time after, any of the more important ceremonies, such as the cutting of the boy’s back, the puberty ceremony of the girl, the turtle-eating and pig-eating ceremonies. After a boy’s back is cut he is addressed and spoken of for some time as Eǰido, his own name not being spoken. Similarly during and after the turtle-eating or the pig-eating ceremony he is addressed and spoken of by the name Kimil. The explanation of these customs is that at these times the initiate is in an abnormal position by reason of the ceremony that has taken place, and is not permitted to take an ordinary part in social life. After the initiation ceremony, for example, the youth is not permitted to handle a bow for some weeks (the bow being the typical masculine implement).

The names of a newly-married couple are avoided for a few days after their marriage. Marriage produces an important change in the social personality, and this change is expressed in the marriage ceremony, but all such changes take time, and it is some days at least before the married couple can be expected to have settled down in their new positions. For these days, therefore, their names are not used. The same sort of explanation will hold for the custom of dropping the names of a father and mother before and after the birth of a child, particularly the first born.

At the turtle-eating ceremony of the North Andaman coast-dwellers the youth is given a new name. It is possible that a girl is also given a new name at this time, and that another name is also given to the youth at the pig-eating ceremony, but on these points I neglected to make sufficient enquiry. The name given at the turtle-eating ceremony is never used and is not likely to be known except to those who were present at the ceremony, and therefore serves no such purpose as the flower-name of the girl. The giving of the name is simply the mark of the change of social personality brought about by the ceremony. The youth receives an addition to his personality and therefore receives an additional name. It is significant that all the names given at this ceremony have reference to the sea and to things of the sea, particularly to turtle, such as Čokbi-čiro, turtle-liver, Čokbi-tei, turtle-blood, etc.

During the period of mourning, when, as we have seen, the mourner is withdrawn from the ordinary life of the society, his name is not used, showing that during this period his social personality is in a state of partial suppression. After the mourning period is over the mourner, when he resumes his social personality, resumes at the same time his name.

Now death is the most fundamental modification of the social personality that is possible and therefore the name of a person recently dead is strictly avoided. Death, however, does not destroy the social personality utterly and for ever, but produces in it a profound change, which begins at the death itself and is only completed at the end of and by means of the customs of mourning. After the mourning is over the virtues of the dead man affect the survivors through memory, and his bones form a precious possession of the community, thus constituting for him a new social value, a new personality. During the period of change, while the personality does not exist in the same form as before the death, but does not yet exist in the form in which it will when he lives only in the memory of his friends, the name is not used. After the mourning period is over the name may again be used.

In general then, it may be said that at any period in which a person is undergoing a critical change in his condition in so far as it affects the society his name falls out of use, to be resumed when the period of change is over. The reason for this is that during such periods of change the social personality is suppressed or latent and therefore the name which is closely associated with the social personality must be suppressed also.

The customs of burial and mourning are therefore seen to be not simply the result of natural feelings of fear and sorrow but ritual actions performed under a sense of obligation and strictly regulated by tradition. They are means by which the society acts upon its members, compelling them to feel emotions appropriate to the occasion. Since the dead person has, by his death, become a cause of social disruption, all contact with him must be avoided. But the dead man had a certain value to the society, and as a thing of any kind cannot be valued unless its loss is felt as a source of pain, so if the community did not mourn when it lost one of its members that feeling of the social value of individuals on which the existence of the society depends would soon diminish in strength, thereby weakening the social cohesion.

It is now possible for us to understand the Andamanese beliefs about the spirits. The basis of these beliefs, I wish to maintain, is the fact that at the death of an individual his social personality (as defined above) is not annihilated, but is suddenly changed. This continuance after death is a fact of immediate experience to the Andaman Islanders and not in any way a deduction. The person has not ceased to exist. For one thing his body is still there. But above all he is still the object of the social sentiments of the survivors, and thereby he continues to act upon the society. The removal of a member of the group is felt not as something negative but as the positive cause of great social disturbance.

The spirits are feared or regarded as dangerous. The basis of this fear is the fact that the spirit (i.e. the social personality of a person recently dead) is obviously a source of weakness and disruption to the community, affecting the survivors through their attachment to him, and producing a condition of dysphoria, of diminished social activity. The natural impulse of the Andaman Islander or of any other human being, would be, I believe, not to shun the dead body of a loved one, but to remain near it as long as possible. It is the society, acting under a quite different set of impulses, that compels the relatives to separate themselves from the remains of the one they loved. The death of a small child has very little influence on the general activity of the community, and the motive for severing connection with the dead that is present in the case of an adult, either does not exist or is so weak as to be overruled by the private feelings of affection, and so the child is buried in the hut of the parents, that they may continue to keep it near them. This affords a good test of the hypothesis, and gives strong support to the view that the fear of the dead man (his body and his spirit) is a collective feeling induced in the society by the fact that by death he has become the object of a dysphoric condition of the collective consciousness.

If the Andamanese are asked what they fear from the spirit of a dead man they reply that they fear sickness or death, and that if the burial and mourning customs are not properly observed the relatives of the dead person will fall sick and perhaps die.

The basis of this notion of the spirits is that the near relatives of the deceased, being bound to him by close social ties, are influenced by everything that happens to him, and share in his good or evil fortune. So that when by sickness and resulting death he is removed from the community, they are as it were drawn after him. For this reason they are, during the period of mourning, between life and death, being still attached to the dead man. Contact with the world of the dead is therefore regarded as dangerous for the living because it is believed that they may be drawn completely into that world. Death is a process by which a person leaves the living world and enters the world of the spirits, and since no one dies willingly he is conceived as being under a compulsive force acting from the world of spirits. Now sickness is a condition that often ends in death, a first stage of the way leading to the world of spirits. Hence sickness is conceived by the Andamanese as a condition of partial contact with that world. This is what is meant by the statement that sickness and death come from the spirits.

The way the Andamanese think about the spirits is shown in the Akar-Bale legend of the origin of death [174]. Yaramurud, having died through an accident, self-caused, becomes a spirit, but he does so only under the compulsion exercised upon him by his mother, who, now that he is dead, insists that he must go away from the world of the living and become a spirit. The spirit then comes back to see his brother and by this contact causes the brother’s death. The story implies that it was not because Yaramurud was evilly disposed towards his brother that he killed him, but on the contrary it was his attachment to his relative that caused him to return to visit him, and death followed as a result of this contact of the living man with the spirit. Since that time deaths have continued to occur in the same way. Thus it appears that the Andamanese conceive that the spirits do not cause death and sickness through evil intention, but through their mere proximity, and, as the legend very clearly shows, the burial customs are intended to cut off the unwilling spirit from contact with the living. This explains also why during the period of mourning the relatives of a dead person are thought to be in danger of sickness, and have more to fear from the spirit than others, for since it is they who were most attached to him during life it is they who are most likely to suffer from contact with him after he is dead. It was Yaramurud’s brother who was the first to die through the influence of the spirits.

The feelings of the living towards the spirits of the dead are therefore ambivalent, compounded of affection and fear, and this must be clearly recognized if we are to understand all the Andamanese beliefs and customs. We may compare the relation between the society of the living and the society of the dead to that between two hostile communities having occasional friendly relations. That the Andamanese themselves look upon it in some such way is shown by the belief that the ceremony by which a dead man is initiated into the world of spirits resembles the peace-making ceremony. The dead man, up to the time of his death, has been living in a state of enmity with the spirits, and before he can enter their community and share their life he has to make peace with them in the same way that men make peace with one another after they have been at war.

This notion of hostility between the society and the world of spirits is found in other primitive societies, and seems everywhere to have a definite social function. The removal of a member of the community either by death or otherwise is a direct attack on the social solidarity and produces in primitive societies an emotional reaction of the same general character as anger. This collective anger, if freely expressed, serves as a compensating mechanism, satisfying and restoring the damaged sentiment [175]. But this can only happen if there is some object against which the anger can be directed. In the instance of homicide the social anger is directed against the person responsible for the death and against the social group to which he belongs. In the instance of death from sickness some other object has to be found, and amongst primitive peoples there are two chief ways in which this is done. An example of one method is afforded by the tribes of Australia, amongst whom there is a strong and constant hostility between neighbouring local groups, with a result that the anger at a death from sickness directs itself against some community with which the group of the dead man is at enmity and it is believed that some member of that community has caused the death by magic. The Andamans afford an example of the second method. Amongst them it would seem that the enmity between different local groups (except as concerns the J̌a̤rawa in the South Andaman) was never very strong and the belief in evil magic was not highly developed, so that the anger at a death is directed against the spirits, and sometimes find expression in violent railings against them, accompanied by all the bodily manifestations of extreme rage and hatred.

Now though the Andamanese regard the spirits with fear and hatred, and believe that all contact with them is dangerous for living men, yet they do not look on them as essentially evil, for that would conflict with their own feelings of attachment to their dead friends.

I gathered a few hints that they even believe that at times the spirits can and will help them. Thus a man will call on the sea-spirits of his own country to send plenty of turtle (over which the spirits seem to be assumed to have power) when he is going hunting. A very important fact in this connection is the different way in which a native regards the spirits of his own country and of other parts, the latter being thought to be much more dangerous than the former because presumably they are the spirits not of relatives and friends but of strangers at the best or enemies at the worst.

There is other evidence that the Andamanese do not regard the power that is possessed by the spirits as being essentially evil. This power, whereby the spirits are able to cause sickness, seems to be shared by the bones of dead men. Indeed the Andamanese call such bones “spirit-bones” (lau-to̱i, čauga-ta). Now this power in the bones (though it may at times be supposed to cause sickness) is more commonly made use of in order to prevent or cure it.

The most conclusive evidence that the power of the spirits is not intrinsically evil, but may be used to produce both good and evil is afforded by the beliefs about medicine-men or dreamers (oko-ǰumu). There are three ways in which a man can become a medicine-man. The first is (as the natives put it) by dying and coming back to life. Now when a man dies he becomes a spirit and therefore acquires the peculiar powers and qualities of a spirit, which he retains if he returns to life. Secondly, if a man straying in the jungle by himself be affronted by the spirits, and if he show no fear (for if he is afraid they will kill him) they may keep him with them for a time and then let him go. Such a man, on his return, is regarded as being a medicine-man, and possessing all the powers of medicine-men. I was told of one man who became a medicine-man in this way within living memory, and it was stated that when he returned from the forest where he had been kept by the spirits for two or three days he was decorated with ko̱ro fibre. We have seen that this fibre is used by the spirits in the ceremony by which they initiate dead men, and its presence on the returned warrior was perhaps accepted by his friends as evidence that he had been initiated by the spirits. The third and last way in which a man may become a medicine-man is by having intercourse with the spirits in his dreams. This is a point to which it will be necessary to return later. For the present it is sufficient to note that in every instance the power of the medicine-man is believed to be derived from his contact with the spirits in one of the three possible ways.

We are justified in concluding that the special power of the medicine-man, by which he is distinguished from his fellows, is simply the same power that is possessed by the spirits, from contact with whom he has obtained it. The medicine-man is believed to be able both to cause and to cure sickness, to arouse and to dispel storms. In other words he has power for both good and evil, and we must conclude that the spirits have the same. Moreover, it is commonly said that the medicine-man is able to produce the effects he does, whether they be harmful or beneficial to his fellows, by communicating with the spirits in dreams and enlisting their aid. This would seem to prove the point that I am here concerned with, that the power possessed by the spirits, though contact with it is always dangerous, may yet in certain circumstances be of benefit to the society, and is therefore not essentially evil in nature.

The Andamanese believe that a medicine-man communicates with the spirits in sleep, and this is not the only evidence that they believe sleep to be a condition in which contact with the world of spirits is easier than in waking life. It is believed that sickness is more likely to begin during sleep than when awake. During the initiation ceremonies the initiate is required to abstain from sleep after eating pork or turtle, and this would seem to be because sleep is regarded as generally dangerous and therefore to be avoided on such occasions as this when every precaution needs to be taken.

The explanation of this belief seems to lie in the fact that sleep is a condition of diminished social activity, in which the individual is withdrawn from active social life, and is therefore also withdrawn from the protection of the society. After eating turtle the initiate is in urgent need of the protection of the society, which would be lost to him if he were permitted to sleep. After a death, when the corpse remains in the camp all night the people remain awake, and since there is no other common activity in which they can join, they sing, and thus protect themselves from the spirits that are present as the cause of the death.

This explanation implies that all conditions of diminished social activity on the part of an individual are dangerous. One example of such a condition is sickness, in which the sick person is unable to pursue his ordinary occupations. Other examples are afforded by a mother, and to a certain extent a father during the period preceding and following the birth of a child, and by a woman during the menstrual period. All these, as various customs show, are believed by the Andamanese to be conditions of danger in which it is necessary to take ritual or magical precautions. A better example for our purpose is that of an adolescent during the period covered by the initiation ceremonies, when, as we have seen, he is as it were cut off from the society, and there is abundant evidence that the Andamanese believe this to be a state of danger. Another example is the condition of a homicide during the period of his isolation. Lastly, we have seen that a mourner is cut off from the ordinary social life, and it may now be noted that the native explanation of the restrictions observed in that state is that if things were not done thus the mourner would be ill; in other words the condition of mourning is one of danger, and the ritual referring to it is the means by which the danger (from the spirit world) is avoided. This explanation does not conflict with the one previously given but on the contrary we can now see that the notion that the mourner is in a position partly withdrawn from active participation in social life necessarily involves the belief that he is in a condition of danger.

We may conclude that every condition in which the individual is withdrawn from full participation in active social life is regarded as dangerous for him, and that this is at least one of the reasons why sleep is so regarded. We have already noted that all conditions of danger tend to be thought of as due to contact with the spirits, and sleep is therefore supposed to be a state in which such contact is easier than in waking life. Now sleep is visited by dreams and it comes about that the dream-life, by reason of its contrast with waking-life, is seized upon by the Andamanese as a means by which the nature of the spirit world may be represented to the imagination.

The Andaman Islander seems to regard the dream-world as a world of shadows or reflections, for he uses the same word to denote a shadow, a reflection in a mirror, and a dream (the stem -ǰumu in Aka-J̌eru). Now when a man enters this shadow-world in sleep he is, as we have seen, conceived as coming into partial contact with the world of spirits. Hence the Andaman Islander believes that in dreams he may communicate with the spirits, that dreams may be a cause of sickness, and that in dreams a medicine-man can cause or cure sickness in his fellows. In this shadow-world the man himself becomes as it were a shadow, a mere reflection of himself; it is not he that lives and acts in his dreams but his ot-ǰumulo, his double, his shadow-self, or, as we might say, his soul. It is but a step from this to the representation of the spirit-world as a similar world of shadows and dream-shapes, and to the conclusion that when a man dies it is his ot-ǰumulo that becomes the spirit.

To summarise the argument, the belief in the world of spirits rests on the actual fact that a dead person continues to affect the society. As the effect is one of disorganisation, whereby the social sentiments are wounded, the dead are avoided and the spirits are regarded with fear. But as a recently dead person is still regarded with feelings of attachment by his friends, the resulting final attitude towards the spirits is ambivalent. By a simple step the spirits come to be regarded as the cause of sickness and death, and therefore as hostile to living men. Yet, as the beliefs about medicine-men show, it is possible for exceptional individuals to be on terms of friendship with the spirits. Finally, the dream-life affords a means by which the spirit-world may be represented in a simple and concrete manner. This last feature (the association of the spirits with dreams) I believe to be a secondary elaboration of the primary or fundamental belief which shows itself in the ritual of death and mourning, serving only to rationalise it and make it more concrete. This need of concrete representation of the spirit-world shows itself in other beliefs, in which may be seen the tendency to become self-contradictory that is often the mark of ideas that arise as the result of attempts to rationalise conative and affective impulses. The spirits are, on the one hand, as it were shadows or images of living men, and yet, since they are feared and disliked, they are often represented as being repulsive and inhuman, with long legs and short bodies, with long beards and ugly faces [176]. The spirits must be thought of as somewhere, but there is no consistency in the statements as to where that somewhere is; one man will say that they live in the sky, another that they are under the earth, a third will point to a particular island as their home; at the same time it is evident from other statements that they vaguely conceive them as being everywhere, in the forest and the sea.

We are now in a position to understand what the Andaman Islander means when he says that the danger he fears from food is from the spirits. The greatest evil that can happen to the community is the sickness or death of its members, and these are believed to be the work of the spirits. The sense of the social value of food takes the form of a belief that food is dangerous, and inevitably the danger comes to be conceived as that of sickness or death, and is therefore associated in their minds with the spirits.

But there is a more fundamental reason than this. I have tried to show that it is because food has such important effects for good and evil on the social life that it is believed to be endued with a peculiar power which makes it necessary to approach it with ritual precautions. If this thesis be valid it should be capable of generalisation, and we should find the same power attributed to every object or being that is capable of affecting in important ways the well-being of the society. We should expect that the Andamanese would attribute this power not only to the more important things used for food but also to such things as the weather and dead men (i.e., the spirits). Now this, if the argument has been correct, is exactly what we do find, and we have here the reason why the Andaman Islander, when asked what he fears from eating dangerous foods, replies that he fears sickness or the spirits of the dead.

We may formulate in precise language the beliefs that underlie the ceremonial, remembering always that the Andaman Islanders themselves are quite incapable of expressing these beliefs in words and are probably only vaguely conscious of them. (1) There is a power or force in all objects or beings that in any way affect the social life. (2) It is by virtue of this power that such things are able to aid or harm the society. (3) The power, no matter what may be the object or being in which it is present, is never either essentially good or essentially evil, but is able to produce both good and evil results. (4) Any contact with the power is dangerous, but the danger is avoided by ritual precautions. (5) The degree of power possessed by anything is directly proportioned to the importance of the effects that it has on the social life. (6) The power in one thing may be used to counteract the danger due to contact with the power in some other thing.

We have studied this power in the animals and plants used for food and the things used as materials. It is this that makes turtle dangerous to eat and Anadendron fibre dangerous to prepare, and it is this also that makes animal bones or the leaves of Hibiscus available for protection. We have now seen that the same power is present in dead men, in their bodies, their bones, and in the spirit-world to which dead men go. All contact with the world of the dead is highly dangerous, and yet we have seen that human bones may be used for protection and that even the spirits may be induced to heal sickness or allay storms. We have also seen that the same power is present in the oko-ǰumu, and we have made the important discovery that it is through contact with the spirits that he acquires the power. This reveals another important principle. (7) If an individual comes into contact with the power in any thing and successfully avoids the danger of such contact, he becomes himself endowed with power of the same kind as that with which he is in contact. Now although the oko-ǰumu possesses a very special social value, yet every man and woman has some social value, some of that power which makes any being capable of affecting the society for good or ill, and we can now see that the initiation ceremonies are the means by which the individual is endowed with power (or, as the natives say, made strong) by being brought into contact with the special power present in each of the important kinds of food. The initiation of the ordinary man or woman is parallel to the initiation of the oko-ǰumu save that in one instance it is the power in foods and in the other that in the spirits with which the initiation is concerned.

It has been held in this chapter that the society or the social life itself is the chief source of protection against danger for the individual. If this be so then the society itself possesses this same power with which we are dealing, and we must expect to find that contact with this power is also dangerous for the individual. Now the occasion on which the individual comes into contact with the power in the society is in the dance, and I found evidence that the natives believe that dancing is dangerous in exactly the same way as eating food. Confirmation of this will appear later.

It would seem that for the Andaman Islander the social life is a process of complex interaction of powers or forces present in the society itself, in each individual, in animals and plants and the phenomena of nature, and in the world of spirits, and on these powers the well-being of the society and its members depends. By the action of the principle of opposition the society—the world of the living—comes to be opposed to the spirits—the world of the dead. The society itself is the chief source of protection to the individual; the spirits are the chief source of danger. Hence all protection tends to be referred to the society and all danger to the spirits. In the initiation ceremonies it is the society that protects the initiate against the dangers of food, and those dangers are referred, generally if not quite consistently, to the spirits, with which at first sight they would seem to have nothing to do.

It is now at last possible to understand the uses of the word ot-kimil which were first discussed on page 267 above. When the word is used in reference to a person who has just partaken of food it denotes a condition of danger produced by contact with the power in foods. This condition results at any time from the eating of any of the more important foods, but is clearly produced in an extreme form when a food such as turtle or pork is being eaten for the first time at a ceremony of initiation. Hence the initiate is most intensely kimil and is therefore addressed and spoken of by that term, or as we might say “the kimil person.”

Used in reference to sickness the word denotes a condition of danger due to contact with that power (in the spirits or in food) which is the cause of sickness. Used in reference to storms it again denotes a condition of danger for the society. Storms are sometimes said to be caused by the spirits [177]. This is also the explanation of the use of the word to denote a particular season of the year. The Kimil season is by no means hot, but cool; it is, however, the season at which violent cyclones are most likely to occur, being the period of the change from the south-west to the north-east monsoon. It is therefore a season of danger to the society from that power which produces storms.

Finally, a man who has joined in a dance is said to be ot-kimil and seems to be regarded as being in a condition of danger similar to that produced by food. It might be thought that in this instance the word is only used in its literal meaning of “hot,” but I believe that this is not so. The dance is the occasion on which the individual comes most closely into contact with the power in the society itself, and I believe that this contact is regarded as dangerous and therefore as making the individual ot-kimil.

Thus we see that in its various uses the word ot-kimil denotes a condition of danger due to contact with that power on the interaction of the different manifestations of which the well-being of the society depends.

How is it then that to denote this condition the Andamanese use a word which, primarily, seems to mean “heat”? The answer is that they conceive the qualities that give to objects their social values as being the manifestations of a kind of energy, and as being similar to the kind of energy which they know best, that of heat. The psychological basis of this is not difficult to discover. The eating of food is productive of bodily heat (the Andamanese live in a hot climate and eat much fat, it must be remembered), so that the power present in foods is inevitably thought of as a sort of heat or heat-producing energy. In the dance the Andaman Islander experiences, as we have seen, an increase in his own personal force or energy, and this also is associated with the sensation of bodily heat produced by dancing. All other bodily activities result in the sensation of heat (in hunting and work of all kinds) and as it is in his activities that the social value of the individual is manifested this value is itself conceived as a sort of heat-producing energy. Further the Andamanese seem to associate with the idea of heat all conditions of mental activity and excitement. We ourselves do the same, as shown by such words as “ardour,” “zeal,” etc. and such phrases as “the heat of anger, or enthusiasm,” and there is good ground for thinking that all such associations or symbolisms (sensory metaphors) have a physiological basis. Finally, fire which (as we shall see better in the next chapter) is regarded by the Andamanese as the most important possession of the society, and which (as we have already seen) has in a very high degree the power that makes objects capable of affecting the society, is for this reason in a suitable position to become the archetype of all forms of energy, activity or force. This system of notions of the Andamanese that the world is the arena of a continual struggle of forces present in the society itself, in each individual, in the substances that are used for foods and materials, in fire, in storms and sunshine, and in the spirits and bones of the dead, is, as I have tried to show, the result not of any process of reasoning but of the immediate social experience, and as it is in the heat of his own body, and in states of excitement of his own mind, that the individual does actually experience the effects of these forces upon himself he uses the same word to denote all conditions of heat and all conditions of the manifestation of this energy, organising around that word as well as he can his somewhat vague conceptions.

In case this symbolism should still seem strange, and the explanation of it unsatisfactory, it is as well to show by means of a couple of quotations that in other primitive societies differing widely from the Andamanese similar uses of the words hot and heat are to be found. In his work on the Achehnese (Vol. I, p. 305) C. Snouck Hurgronje writes thus of the natives of the Malay Archipelago: “In the native language of the E. Archipelago all happiness, rest and well-being are united under the concept of ‘coolness,’ while the words ‘hot’ and ‘heat’ typify all the powers of evil. Thus when a person has either just endured the attack of a ‘hot’ influence or has luckily contrived to escape it, the adat prescribes methods of ‘cooling’ in order to confirm him in the well-being which he has recovered or escaped losing. The same methods are also adopted for charming away evil things and baneful influences, the removal of which is regarded as an imperative necessity. For instance, the completion of a house, and various domestic festivities, are made the occasion for a process of ‘cooling’; so also with a ship when newly built or after holding of a kanduri on board; and before the padi is planted out the ground must be purified from ‘hot’ or dangerous influences.” In this instance we find the word “hot” used only in reference to evil forces. In the Andamans there is no line drawn between good and evil forces. In spite of the differences between them it is clear that the same mental process is responsible for the symbolic use of the word “hot” in the Andamans and in the Malay Archipelago.

In Codrington’s The Melanesians, p. 191, we find an example of the same mode of thought. “That invisible power which is believed by the natives to cause all such effects as transcend their conception of the regular course of nature and to reside in spiritual beings, whether in the spiritual part of living men or in the ghosts of the dead, being imparted by them to their names and to various things that belong to them, such as stones, snakes, and indeed objects of all sorts, is that generally known as mana. By means of this men are able to control or direct the forces of nature, to make rain or sunshine, wind or calm, to cause sickness or remove it, to know what is far off in time and space, to bring good luck or prosperity or to blast and curse. In the New Hebrides, the Banks’ Islands, the Solomon Islands about Florida as in New Zealand and many of the Pacific Islands the word in use is mana. In Santa Cruz a different word malete is used, which bears however the same meaning. At Saa in Malanta all persons and things in which this supernatural power resides are said to be saka, that is, hot. Ghosts that are powerful are saka; a man who has knowledge of the things which have spiritual power is himself saka; one who knows a charm which is saka mutters it over water, saru’e and makes the water ‘hot,’ ha’asaka. The people of Mala Masiki, the lesser part of the island, which is cut in two not far from its south-eastern end by a narrow channel, think that the men of the larger part, Mala Paina, are very saka. If one of these visiting the Saa people points with his finger, suisui, there is danger of death or calamity; if one of them spits on a man he dies at once.” Here again there are important differences, as might be expected in such different cultures as those of Melanesia and the Andamans, and yet it is clear that there is a fundamental similarity of mental process.

The nature of this symbolic representation of the forces that affect the social life may be made clear by considering another example. The natives say that they use odu clay after eating because their bodies give off an odour which would attract the spirits if they did not paint themselves. The power of an object, by virtue of which it has what may be called magical efficacy, is sometimes identified with its odour. A number of the plants that are used as remedies for sickness, such as the Trigonostemon, are possessed of strong and characteristic odours, and the natives think that it is through the odour that they effect a cure. Similarly the powerful properties attributed to the Anadendron, whereby it will cause rheumatism, keep away sharks and spirits, and turn turtle-meat bad, or stop a storm, are all said to be the results of its “smell.” The stimulating power of olfactory sensations probably has much to do with the development of these beliefs, but the discussion of their psycho-physiological basis would lead us too far away from the main subject, interesting as it would be.

In the jungles of the Andamans it is possible to recognize a distinct succession of odours during a considerable part of the year as one after another the commoner trees and lianas come into flower. When, for example, the species of Sterculia called in the North Andaman ǰeru comes into blossom, it is almost impossible to get away from the smell of it except on the sea-shore when the wind is from the sea. Moreover these various flowers give their scent to the honey that is made from them, so that there is also a succession of differently flavoured kinds of honey. The Andamanese have therefore adopted an original method of marking the different periods of the year by means of the different odoriferous flowers that are in bloom at different times. Their calendar is a calendar of scents [178].

Now they seem to regard each flower-period as possessing its own particular kind of force, of which the scent is the manifest sign, and to think that the succession of these different forces produces the succession of different fruits, the whole generative energy of nature being conceived as the result not of one force but of many, following one another in regular rotation. When a girl reaches puberty the natives think of her as having blossomed as it were, the later ripening being the birth of her children, and so she, like the plants of the jungle, is under the influence of the same natural forces that produce the successive blossoming and fruiting of the different species. Therefore, when a girl reaches her blossoming time she is given, for a name, to be used until she bears her fruit, the name of that particular odoriferous plant that is in flower at the time, it being this particular one of the successive forces of the forest life that has brought her childhood to an end.

Under the influence of muscular exertion the human body gives off a characteristic odour, of one generic kind, but differing somewhat in every individual. The odour of the body, being the immediate result of activity, may therefore well be regarded by the Andamanese as being closely connected with the virtue or energy of the person. Further, the eating of certain foods, such as dugong, turtle and pork, causes the body of the Andaman Islander to give out a noticeable and recognizable odour, different from that of mere perspiration. The natives themselves seem to distinguish different odours for these different foods, but I was not myself able to appreciate such differences. The Andamanese see in this odour given off after eating a manifestation of the energy that has been absorbed with the food, which energy it is that makes the food both necessary for life and also a source of danger. This seems to be the meaning of the belief that the spirits are attracted to a man by the odour of the food he has eaten unless he paint himself with clay.

We can now at last return to the rite of painting the body with odu clay after eating. I have suggested that the use of this clay in mourning is a means by which the mourner marks the fact that he is in a peculiar relation to the spirit-world, spirits being believed to be light in colour. The mourner is in contact with the spirit-world through his connection with the dead person, and to mark his condition he paints himself to resemble the spirits, thereby affirming his solidarity with them. The clay protects him from the danger that results from any contact with the spirit-world. According to the rule of method laid down at the beginning of the chapter we must find a similar explanation of the use of odu after eating.

We have seen that it is the same kind of force in the spirits and in the animals used for food that makes them both dangerous. Yet at the same time there is a sense in which it is true that each kind of thing has its own peculiar kind of force. The ceremony of turtle-eating endows a youth with power to avoid the dangers of turtle but it does not give him the power to avoid the dangers of pork. Hibiscus leaves are efficacious against turtle, but against the pig Tetranthera leaves must be used. In describing the patterns painted on the body after eating it was stated that there is a tendency to connect particular types of pattern with particular kinds of food. Thus a design commonly used after eating turtle suggests the plates of the turtle’s carapace, and a pattern used after eating pork similarly suggests the longitudinal markings on the pig’s back. This would seem to indicate that when a man has eaten turtle he paints himself so as to identify himself with the animal he has eaten, and similarly with other foods, just as in mourning he paints himself so as to identify himself with the spirit-world. In other words, the painting of the body with odu serves to show that there is a relation between the individual and some source of power, which relation can best be described as one of solidarity with the species, whether of animals or supernatural beings, in which the power resides. The mourner is in contact with the dangerous powers of the world of death, and by expressing his solidarity with that world he avoids the dangers that might result from his condition. For the fear of any being and a feeling of solidarity towards that being are incompatible with one another. Similarly a man who has eaten turtle is in contact with the power that resides in the turtle species, a power that may be dangerous, but which when mastered and made use of by proper precautions is a source of well-being, of strength. By painting himself with a pattern that reminds him in some way of the turtle he expresses his solidarity with the turtle species and so obviates the dangers of his condition.

This interpretation is made more probable by the consideration of the dances of the initiation ceremonies. In the dance at the turtle-eating ceremony the movements of the dancers suggest the movements of a turtle swimming. If the resemblance be not imaginary we may regard this as another method of affirming the solidarity of the dancers with the turtle species. We should then have to conclude that the dance at the pig-eating ceremony is similarly imitative of the movements of a pig, and though this is quite possible it is not so obvious.

This same kind of clay is used in the initiation ceremonies. At the turtle-eating and pig-eating ceremonies it is spattered over the body of the initiate from head to foot. I have no explanation to offer for this peculiar method of application. After the ceremony is over the initiate is painted with clay in a pattern called kimil-t’e̱ra-puli which consists of a background of the clay on which a pattern of separate spirals is made with the finger. The pattern is to be seen in Plate XI. I cannot put forward with any confidence the explanation I have to offer of this pattern, for I have no means of confirming it, and it is therefore little more than a guess. It is that the spiral or circle is a symbol of the camp and therefore of the society and the social life in general, the basis of the symbolism being the roughly circular or elliptical form of the village or communal hut, and the circular form of the dance (more noticeable in the Little Andaman than in the Great Andaman). If this be really the meaning of the symbol then the explanation of its use in the initiation ceremonies would be that in these ceremonies the youth is preserved from danger by the force inherent in the society, which affords protection to all its members, and the use of the symbol of the society would therefore be most appropriate.

The act of painting the body with odu clay is therefore a rite which advertises the fact that an individual is in intimate contact with some source of that power which belongs to the things that affect the social life, and it thereby serves to keep alive the sentiments associated with that notion of power. The painting after eating reminds the individual of his dependence upon and obligation towards the society, and, since all join in the rite, it serves also to maintain the unity of the community.

We may now return to the question of the meaning of personal ornament in general. It is a commonplace of psychology that the development of the sense of self is closely connected with the perception of one’s own body. It is also generally recognized that the development of the moral and social sentiments in man is dependent upon the development of self-consciousness, of the sense of self. These two important principles will help us to appreciate the hypothesis to which the discussion has now led, that in the Andamans the customary regulation of personal ornament is a means by which the society acts upon, modifies, and regulates the sense of self in the individual.

There are three methods of ornamenting the body in the Andamans, (1) by scarification, (2) by painting, and (3) by the putting on of ornaments.

The natives give two reasons for the custom of scarification, that it improves the personal appearance and that it makes the boy or girl grow up strong. Both these mean that scarification gives or marks an added value. The explanation of the rite would therefore seem to be that it marks the passage from childhood to manhood and is a means by which the society bestows upon the individual that power, or social value, which is possessed by the adult but not by the child. The individual is made to feel that his value—his strength and the qualities of which he may be proud—is not his by nature but is received by him from the society to which he is admitted. The scars on his body are the visible marks of his admission. The individual is proud or vain of the scars which are the mark of his manhood, and thus the society makes use of the very powerful sentiment of personal vanity to strengthen the social sentiments.

Turning now to the painting of the body, we have seen that the pattern of white clay serves to make both the painted individual and those who see him feel his social value, and we have seen that this interpretation explains the occasions on which such painting is used. To complete the argument it is necessary to consider the occasions on which the use of white clay is forbidden.

Those to whom this prohibition applies are (1) a youth or girl who is aka-op, i.e., who is abstaining from certain foods during the initiation period, (2) a mourner, (3) a homicide during the period of isolation, and (4) a person who is ill. All these persons are excluded from full participation in the active social life, and therefore the social value of each of them is diminished. It would obviously be wrong for a person in such a condition to express by decorating himself a social value that he did not at the time possess.

The occasions on which this style of painting is used or forbidden are thus all satisfactorily explained by our hypothesis. It remains to consider the nature of the painting itself, and how far it is an appropriate means of expression. To do this we must discuss very briefly some of the processes of symbolic thought of the Andamanese. Conditions of well-being (both individual and social) are associated in the minds of the Andamanese with fine weather, both directly (through physiological action) and indirectly (through the effect of fine weather on the social life). Hence Tomo, who, as we shall see in the next chapter, is a personification of fine weather, is a being who is connected with goodness and happiness. With fine weather, and therefore with individual and social well-being, the Andamanese associate brightness and whiteness (for which they have only one word) and any bright or light colour. The association of light and dark with euphoric and dysphoric conditions respectively has a psycho-physical basis, for it seems to be universal in human nature. Now the clay that the Andamanese call to̱l-odu is the whitest substance they know, and is for this reason fitted to be symbolical of conditions of well-being. Fine weather is associated, in the minds of the Andamanese with honey, because in the season of fine weather honey is plentiful, and is also associated for a similar reason with snakes. Sweetness itself is universally associated with pleasant things, again through a psycho-physical link. The Andamanese believe in a special connection between honey and a species of large snake called wara-ǰobo or or-čubi [179], so that this snake comes to be representative of fine weather and sweetness and therefore generally of states of well-being. Now, throughout the Great Andaman the pattern in which white clay is painted on the body is called after this snake, and the zig-zags of which the pattern is composed may be supposed to be representative of the snake itself. When, therefore, a man paints himself with white clay in a pattern which he regards as representing the snake wara-ǰobo, it is evident that the painting is meant to express a condition of well-being, with which the snake itself, and whiteness, are, by a number of links, closely associated. This is not all, however. The Andamanese, we may not doubt, derive from the painted pattern an esthetic pleasure due to its rhythmical character, its shape as an arrangement of lines and spaces. Further it provides the pleasure that we obtain from a thing elegantly and skilfully made, and this explains why so much care is taken in the making of the pattern. This pleasure at what we may call the beauty of the pattern heightens the effect produced by its symbolic references. The real value of the pattern, its pleasure-giving quality, is transferred to the man on whose body it is executed. He himself is pleased with it, proud of it, and so becomes pleased with and proud of himself, for the pattern by being imprinted on his body becomes part of him. The sense of self attaches to it, as with us the sense of self attaches to our clothes.

It would be interesting to carry the analysis of the mental processes involved in all this a stage or two further, but enough has been said, I hope, to show that the nature of the painting with clay is appropriate to its use as marking or expressing value.

Patterns are sometimes painted with this same white clay on the face alone, such patterns being built up either of the zig-zags of the snake pattern, or of rhythmically arranged series of short lines. The use of such paintings is regulated by a sort of etiquette. By so having his face decorated a man expresses that he is pleased with himself, and obviously there are occasions on which it is appropriate and others on which it is inappropriate that he should feel thus. A man who has been successful in the day’s hunting, for example, is quite justified in having his face ornamented in this way, and it is on such occasions as this that the custom is observed.

When a man is painted for a dance, or on any other ceremonial occasion, with white clay, he is also painted at the same time with red paint. In these instances we must suppose that the red paint serves the same purpose as the pattern of white clay with which it is combined, namely to make the decorated person pleasantly aware of his or her social value. Red paint is also used, however, in sickness, and on other occasions, as affording protection against evil, particularly evil from the spirit-world.

This double use of red paint is to be explained by reference to the colour symbolism of the Andaman Islanders. For them the colour red is pre-eminently the colour of blood and of fire. There is ample evidence of this which it is perhaps not necessary to state. Now blood is identified with the warmth of the body and with life; the blood and the fat are sometimes spoken of as the two vital principles. Fire, as I have already shown, is taken as a symbol of activity and of mental excitement. Thus the colour comes to be associated in the minds of the Andamanese with all euphoric conditions, with excitement, vitality, mental and bodily activity, and with energy or force in general. It is possible that this symbolism, which seems to be much the same in all divisions of mankind, has a psycho-physical basis in the stimulating dynamogenic power of sensations of redness.

When a person is sick he is in need of vitality, of energy, and so his body is daubed with the red paint that is a symbol of the things that he needs, and by a simple mental process he comes to believe that by applying the paint to his body he increases his energy and vitality, and so helps himself to get rid of the sickness. At a dance, or on other ceremonial occasions, it is required that the individual shall have a sense of his own value, and for this he must experience that sense of personal force and vitality that is produced, as we have seen, by the action of the dance. This effect is reinforced by the use of the red paint which is the symbol of that condition of energy and vitality that it is (for some special reason) necessary for him to feel. As the value of the individual depends upon his strength or force, the red paint is thus a suitable means of expressing the value of him on whose body it is painted, and really expresses, though by different means, exactly the same thing as the pattern of white clay with which it is combined.

We are now in a position to understand the use of white clay and red paint in the purification of a homicide. This takes place at the end of a period of isolation, during which the man is entirely cut off from the social life, and lives in a condition of supposed extreme danger on account of the blood that he has shed. During this time he may not use his hands to touch food, and at the end his hands are purified by the application to them of red paint and white clay. It is clearly because these two substances are both of them in different ways symbols of conditions of well-being that magical virtue is ascribed to their use in this instance. It is perhaps worth while to recall that both red ochre and white clay are sometimes given internally as remedies against sickness.

For the sake of the argument it has been necessary to separate the two motives underlying the use of personal ornament, the desire for protection and the desire for display. But we now see that these two motives are very intimately related and are really both involved in every kind of ornament. All ornament in some way marks the relation of the individual to the society and to that force or power in the society to which he owes his well-being and happiness. When painting or ornament is used to give protection, it is, as we have seen, the protective power of the society itself that is appealed to, and what is expressed is the dependence of the individual on the society. When ornament or paint is used for display it is again the dependence on the society that is expressed, though in a different way and on occasions of a different kind. We have seen that scarification is also a means of marking the dependence of the individual on the society, and it is very important to note that the Andamanese sometimes explain it as due to the desire for display and sometimes to the need of protection (enabling the child to grow strong and so avoid the dangers of sickness), showing very clearly that there is some intimate connection between these two motives, or at any rate that one and the same method of ornamentation can satisfy both. There is the further example of red paint, which is combined with the pattern of white clay for purposes of display, and is also constantly used in many ways as affording protection.

We are thus brought to the final conclusion that the scarification and painting of the body and the wearing of most if not all of the customary ornaments are rites which have the function of marking the fact that the individual is in a particular permanent or temporary relation to that power in the society and in all things that affect the social life, the notion of which we have seen to underlie so much of the Andaman ceremonial.

The scarification of a boy or girl leaves permanent marks of the permanent relation between the adult and the society. By means of it and the initiation ceremonies that follow or accompany it, and of which it may really be considered to be a part, the society gives the individual his social value, of which the scars remain as a visible sign for him to be proud of, and at the same time endows him with the power to avoid the dangers with which his life is beset.

The paintings of clay after food mark the temporary relation between the individual and the power present in the food he has eaten. It is chiefly thought of by the natives themselves as protective, as we have seen, but it also gives an opportunity for the exercise of personal vanity, for much care is taken in the designing and execution of the pattern, which therefore affords the painted individual much the same sort of satisfaction as the snake pattern of white clay. It calls his attention to his own appearance, and makes him feel pleased or satisfied with himself, conscious of his own personal value. A condition of unity and harmony is produced in the community by a feast as well as by a dance, and in each instance that harmony is expressed by the painting of every member with the same material in a similar design. The relation of the individual to the society is made visible on his body. By means of the paintings after food the society not only protects itself from danger but also rejoices in the well-being that is produced by a supply of relished food. Inversely it can now also be shown that the painting of white clay and red paint worn at a dance and after marriage and initiation is not only a means of display but is also protective. Both red paint and white clay are used to give protection in sickness, and they are similarly used in the purification of the hands of a homicide. Moreover we have seen, in reference to the word ot-kimil, that the dance is a condition of danger by reason of the contact it involves between the individual and the power of the society. The few days following an initiation ceremony are definitely believed to be a period of danger for the initiate, and during this time the pattern of white clay and red paint must not be washed off but must be allowed to wear off. By the time the last traces of the pattern have disappeared the danger is considered to be over. There is evidence that the first few days of marriage are regarded as a period of danger. It would seem that the natives do attribute to the painting with white clay and red paint some power of protection, but this is hidden under the importance of such painting as a means of display.

Of the various ornaments that are worn on the body some would seem to be worn almost solely for purposes of display, because they are pleasing to the eye. Such are the necklaces and other ornaments of small shells. It would seem that the same motive is also responsible for the use of the yellow skin of the Dendrobium of which the Andamanese are so fond. The ornaments of netting and shell seem to be worn primarily for display, but it is quite possible that some protective power is attributed to them, as to the paintings of white clay with which they are regularly worn. The belts of Pandanus leaf that are worn by women are a mark of the sex, and the style of belt worn differs with the social status of the woman. They thus serve to exhibit the special social value of the woman in so far as it depends upon her sex and her social status, but I believe that the Andamanese attribute to the belt and to the apron of leaves worn with it a power of protection against the special dangers to which women are believed to be subject. This is suggested by the use of the Pandanus leaf in the ceremony at a girl’s first menstruation [180]. I failed to discover any special ideas connected with the ornaments of Pandanus leaf that are sometimes worn by both men and women at dances. The ornaments that are worn primarily for their protective power are those made of human and animal bones and those of pieces of canes or of fibres of Hibiscus or Ficus. These are always made decorative by the addition of shells and yellow Dendrobium skin, and therefore besides their primary function also serve as means of display.

It is clear then that in the various methods of ornamenting the body the two chief motives that we have considered are so combined that they can hardly be estimated separately, and it is this mingling of motives that has led us to the final understanding of the meaning and social function of bodily ornament. Each of the different kinds of ornament serves to make manifest the existence of some special relation between the individual and the society, and therefore of some special relation between him and that system of powers on which the welfare of the society and of the individual depends. One of the most important aspects of the relation of the individual to the society is his dependence upon it for his safety and well-being and this is revealed in all painting and ornament worn for protection. But the society not only protects the individual from danger; it is the direct source of his well-being; and this makes itself felt in the customary regulation by which the use of the more important ornaments used for display is confined to occasions on which it is quite clear that his happiness is directly due to the society, such as a dance or feast. Thus the customs relating to the ornamentation of the body are of the kind that I have here called ceremonial. They are means by which the society exercises on appropriate occasions some of the important social sentiments, thereby maintaining them at the necessary degree of energy required to maintain the social cohesion.

To complete the discussion of ornament in general it is necessary to refer very briefly to the ornamentation of objects such as bows, canoes and baskets. Such ornamentation consists of (1) incised patterns (on bows, etc.), which may be compared with the scarification of the body, (2) painting with red paint and white clay (bows, canoes, skulls, etc.), or with prepared wax (Nautilus shell cups, etc.), (3) patterns made with the yellow skin of the Dendrobium (baskets, etc.), and (4) shells attached by thread (baskets, baby-sling, etc.). The important point to note is that the decoration applied to utensils is of the same character throughout as that which, when applied to the body, has been shown to be an expression of the social value of the person. Thus the pattern painted on a canoe with white clay and red paint is the same as that on the body of a dancer. It would seem, therefore, that the ornamentation of utensils is a means of expressing or marking the social value of the decorated object, and it might even be held that the application of ornament to utensils is really a matter of ceremonial. Just as a newly married man is painted with the snake pattern which wears off and is not renewed, so a new canoe or a new South Andaman bow is painted with the same pattern as soon as it is finished, and after this pattern wears off it is not renewed. It is the act of bringing a new canoe or bow into use that is the occasion of the ceremonial expression of its value, if we may so regard the painting. A new relation is established between the society and an object, which thereby acquires a special social value, just as a youth acquires a special new social value at the conclusion of one of the initiation ceremonies. This example is sufficient to show that at least there is nothing in the ornamentation of utensils that conflicts with the explanation of bodily ornament given in this chapter [181].

It is time to bring the argument to a conclusion. It should now, I hope, be evident that the ceremonial customs of the Andaman Islands form a closely connected system, and that we cannot understand their meaning if we only consider each one by itself, but must study the whole system to arrive at an interpretation. This in itself I regard as a most important conclusion, for it justifies the contention that we must substitute for the old method of dealing with the customs of primitive people,—the comparative method by which isolated customs from different social types were brought together and conclusions drawn from their similarity,—a new method by which all the institutions of one society or social type are studied together so as to exhibit their intimate relations as parts of an organic system.

I have tried to show that the ceremonial customs are the means by which the society acts upon its individual members and keeps alive in their minds a certain system of sentiments. Without the ceremonial those sentiments would not exist, and without them the social organisation in its actual form could not exist. There is great difficulty, however, in finding a suitable method of describing these sentiments. In attempting to put into precise words the vague feelings of the Andaman Islander there is always the danger that we may attribute to him conceptions that he does not possess. For he is not himself capable of thinking about his own sentiments.

In the attempt to exhibit the meaning of the ceremonial I have shown that it implies a complex system of beliefs about what I have called power, and have stated those beliefs in more or less precise terms. But the Andaman Islander is of course quite incapable of making similar statements or even of understanding them. In his consciousness appear only the very vaguest conceptions, such as those associated with the word kimil or with odours. We, in order to understand his customs must substitute for such vague notions others capable of precise statement, must formulate in words the beliefs that are revealed in his actions, but we must be careful not to fall into the error of attributing to him the conceptions by which we make clear to ourselves his indefinite sentiments and notions and the ceremonies in which they are expressed.

With this qualification, then, the ceremonial of the Andaman Islands may be said to involve the assumption of a power of a peculiar kind, and we have been able to formulate certain principles which, although the native is quite incapable of stating them as principles, are revealed in the ceremonial. This power, though in itself neither good nor evil, is the source of all good and all evil in human life. It is present in the society itself and in everything that can affect in important ways the social life. All occasions of special contact with it are dangerous, i.e., are subject to ritual precautions.

It should already, from the course of the argument, be plain that this power or force, the interaction of whose different manifestations constitutes the process of social life, is not imaginary, is not even something the existence of which is surmised as the result of intellectual processes, but is real, an object of actual experience. It is, in a few words, the moral power of the society acting upon the individual directly or indirectly and felt by him in innumerable ways throughout the whole course of his life [182].

One of the most important ways in which the individual experiences the moral force of the society of which he is a member is through the feeling of moral obligation, which gives him the experience of a power compelling him to subordinate his egoistic desires to the demands of social custom. The individual feels this force acting upon him both from outside and from inside himself. For he recognizes that it is the society with its traditions and customs that constrains him through the force of public opinion, and yet the conflict between customary duty and selfish inclination takes place in his own mind and is experienced as the clash of antagonistic mental forces. The moral sense within impels towards the same end as the social opinion without.

This force of moral obligation is felt not only in relation to right and wrong conduct towards other persons, but is also felt in all ritual, whether negative or positive.

The moral force of the society is also felt, in a quite different way, in all states of intense collective emotion, of which the dance affords a good example. I have shown how in the dance the individual feels the society acting upon him, constraining him to join in the common activity and regulate his actions to conform with those of others, and, when he so acts in harmony with them, giving him the experience of a great increase of his own personal force or energy. All ceremonies in which the whole community takes part give the individual the experience of the moral force of the society acting upon him in somewhat the same way as the dance.

Thus in these and other ways the individual does experience the action of the society upon himself as a sort of force, not however as a physical force, but as a moral force, acting directly in his own mind and yet clearly felt as something outside his own self, and with which that self may be in conflict.

How is it, then, that this force comes to be projected into the world of nature? The answer to that question, which can only be very briefly indicated here, is to be found in the conclusions at which we have arrived with regard to social values. The moral force of the society is experienced by the individual not only directly but also as acting upon him indirectly through every object that has social value. The best example of this process is found in the things used for food. Thus, in the Andamans, food is very closely connected with the feeling of moral obligation, as we have seen. Further, food is one of the principal sources of those alternations of social euphoria and dysphoria in which, through the action of the collective emotion, the individual experiences the action of the society upon his own well-being. When food is plentiful happiness spreads through the community and the time is spent in dancing and feasting so that the individual feels a great increase in his own personal force coming to him from the society or from the food. On the other hand, when food is scarce and hunting unsuccessful the community feels itself thwarted and restrained and experiences a sense of weakness, which collective feeling has for its immediate object the food the lack of which is its origin.

Similarly with the phenomena of the weather and all other objects that have social value, they are all associated in the mind of the individual with his experience of the action of the society upon himself, so that the moral force of the society is actually felt as acting through them.

But it is really through the ceremonial that this is mainly brought about. It is in the initiation ceremonies that the moral force of the society acting through foods is chiefly felt, and the same experience is repeated in a less intense form in the rite of painting the body after food. It is similarly through the protective use of the materials used for weapons and through the various ritual prohibitions connected with them that the moral force of the society acting through them is chiefly felt. The argument has been that it is by means of the ceremonial that the individual is made to feel the social value of the various things with which the ceremonial is concerned. Putting this in other words we can now define the ceremonial as the means by which the individual is made to feel the moral force of the society acting upon him either directly, or in some instances indirectly through those things that have important effects on the social life. By its action upon the individual the ceremonial develops and maintains in existence in his mind an organised system of dispositions by which the social life, in the particular form it takes in the Andamans, is made possible, using for the purpose of maintaining the social cohesion all the instinctive tendencies of human nature, modifying and combining them according to its needs.

As an example of such modification of primary instincts let us briefly consider that of fear, to which, from the time of Petronius [183] to the present day, so much importance has been attributed in relation to the origin of religion. In childhood any fear of danger makes the child run to its mother or father for protection, and thus the instinct of fear becomes an important component of that feeling of dependence that the child has towards its parents. The primitive society uses the fear instinct in much the same way. The Andaman Islander, through the ceremonies and customs of his people, is made to feel that he is in a world full of unseen dangers,—dangers from the foods he eats, from the sea, the weather, the forest and its animals, but above all from the spirits of the dead,—which can only be avoided by the help of the society and by conformity with social custom. As men press close to one another in danger, the belief in and fear of the spirit-world make the Andaman Islander cling more firmly to his fellows, and make him feel more intensely his own dependence on the society to which he belongs, just as the fear of danger makes the child feel its dependence upon its parents. So the belief in the spirit-world serves directly to increase the cohesion of the society through its action on the mind of the individual. An important law of sociology is that the solidarity of a group is increased when the group as a whole finds itself opposed to some other group; so, enmity between two tribes or nations increases the solidarity of each; and so also, the antagonism between the society of the living and the world of the dead increases the solidarity of the former.

The argument is now concluded. I have examined, as fully as space would permit, all the more important features of the Andaman ceremonial, and have tried to show what part they play in the social life of the Andamans. At the end of our enquiry it is well to ask if any definition of ceremonial can be given more exact than the vague one with which we started. The chapter has shown that what I have denoted as ceremonial consists of (1) collective actions, (2) required by custom, (3) performed on occasions of changes in the course of social life, and (4) expressing the collective sentiments relating to such social change. By the first part of the definition we exclude the magical practices of the medicine-men, which however it has been convenient to consider in connection with the ceremonial, as it has helped us to understand some of the ideas underlying both magic and ceremonial. If we are not to exclude the rite of painting after eating food we must regard the obtaining of a good supply of food as being a change in the course of social life even though it occurs very frequently, and even every day for weeks together. It must be admitted, however, that the definition does not give us any very clear dividing line between ceremonial and art, play, or morals. The painting of the body with white clay after marriage or initiation must, I think, be regarded as ceremonial, while the painting of a new bow or canoe with the same clay in the same pattern should perhaps more conveniently be called art. But what are we to say of the painting worn at a dance or the face-painting that a man occasionally wears when there is no special reason? The dance at the end of mourning is clearly a ceremony, but can we say the same of the ordinary dance after a successful hunt? And if it be not ceremonial, shall we call it art or play? When friends are required to give presents to a newly-married couple are we to call this obligation one of ceremonial, of etiquette or of morals? These and similar questions are perhaps incapable of a satisfactory answer, nor does it seem necessary to attempt to find one. Those elements of culture that we now differentiate and call by different names were, in primitive societies, undifferentiated and not clearly to be distinguished from one another, and a striving after too great a precision of definition in dealing with such a culture as that of the Andamans leads, I think, not to a clearer understanding, but to the opposite. The main thing is to keep close to the facts. In this chapter I have examined a number of facts which are plainly related and the question of how we are to label them is one that may well be left till such time as we shall have acquired a more profound insight into the nature of culture in general and the complex forces involved in its existence and growth. For the present, some vagueness in our provisional classifications need not greatly perturb us.