Chapter I · THE SOCIAL ORGANISATION (continued 2)

From the time that a youth or girl ceases to belong to the family household, his or her duties to the parents are really only the same in kind as the duties that every young man and woman owes to all the older men and women. Though there is no difference in kind, yet a man or woman is expected to show more affection and respect for his or her own parents than to other persons of the same social standing.

The only other relationship, besides that of husband and wife and that of parents and children, which exists inside the family, is that between children of the same parents. The conduct of brothers to one another depends on their respective ages. The younger is expected to give way to the elder, while the latter protects and looks after the former. The relation of sisters to one another is similar.

The duties of a man and woman to his or her relatives, other than those to parents, brothers and sisters, and even to some extent the duties to these near relatives, are not distinguishable in kind from the duties he or she owes to other persons who are not relatives. Thus a young married man owes certain duties to all the older married men of about the age of his father. These duties are the same in kind as those towards his own father and his foster-father, the only difference being that he must defer more to his own father than to other men, and must be more constant in his attentions to him. I could not discover any way in which a man distinguished, in his dealings with them, his father’s brother from his mother’s brother. They are both of them older men whom he must respect and to whom he must make presents of food. Similarly a father’s sister is not distinguished, so far as I could discover, from a mother’s sister. A man treats both of them in much the same way that he treats his own mother, or any other woman of the same age. There is only a slight difference in connection with parents-in-law. A man would not be so familiar with his parents-in-law as he would with his parents or their brothers or sisters, and treats them with more deference and respect. This is borne out by the Akar-Bale custom of applying to a father-in-law or mother-in-law the same term of address (Mama) that is used in speaking to grandparents and others to whom it is required to show particular deference.

In the same way there is very little difference between the way a man conducts himself towards his elder brother and his conduct towards any other man of the same age. Brothers are often close comrades, putting their huts next to one another in the same village, joining together whenever possible in hunting or fishing expeditions, and so on; but a man may have a comrade who is not his brother, whom he will treat in exactly the same way.

The general attitude of a married man to other married men somewhat younger than himself is very much that towards a younger brother. As between men and women one special duty appears in this connection. A married man may not and will not have any close dealings with the wife of a man younger than himself. It is not considered fitting that he should speak to her. If he wished to have any communication with her, he would do so through some third person. It would be regarded as a wrong thing to do if he were ever to touch her. The only explanation that the natives give of this custom is by saying that a man feels “shy” or “ashamed” towards his younger brother’s or friend’s wife. The custom is exactly the same with respect to the wife of any younger man, whether a brother, a cousin, or a stranger.

This custom depends on the distinction between older and younger. A man may be on terms of familiarity with the wife of a man older than himself, whom he would treat much as he would an elder sister.

There is one special relationship which has peculiar duties attaching to it, and this is the relationship between the father and mother of a man on the one hand and the father and mother of the man’s wife on the other. In the Akar-Bale language such persons are said to be aka-yat to one another. A man or a woman will not have any immediate dealings with a person who is his aka-yat. He will not speak to him, and if they should meet or be sitting near to one another they would avoid looking at each other. On the other hand a man is constantly sending presents to his aka-yat. The natives say that two persons in this relation feel “shy” or “ashamed.” (There is only one word in Andamanese for these two English words, ot-ǰete in Aka-J̌eru.) The shyness begins at the moment when a marriage between their respective children is first discussed as a possibility, and lasts apparently till death.

As throwing a little light on this peculiar relation it may be mentioned that a similar relation exists between two men who have been through either the turtle-eating ceremony or the pig-eating ceremony (to be described in the next chapter) on the same occasion. Two such men will avoid any contact with one another, not speaking to nor looking at each other when they chance to meet, but on the other hand they will be constantly giving each other presents of all kinds, sending them through some third person.

The main features of the relationship system of the Andaman Islanders may be briefly summed up. The duties that one person owes to another are determined much less by their relation to one another by consanguinity and marriage, than by their respective ages and social status. Even within the family, which nevertheless is of importance, the duty of a child to a parent is very little different from his duty to any other person of the same age. There is very little of any special customs relating to conduct towards different kinds of relatives. Corresponding to this we find very few terms to denote relationships and a considerable development of the terms which denote age and social status. Thus a man’s duties to his elder brother are much the same as those towards the other men of the same age, and we find that there is no word for “elder brother” but only a term by which a man distinguishes all the men of his own generation older than himself from those who are younger. Similarly there are no duties that a man owes to his father’s brother or to his mother’s brother which he does not also owe, in perhaps a less degree, to other men of the same age, and there is no term by which he can distinguish his father’s brother from those others.

It remains for us only to examine the social relations between the different local groups. Two neighbouring groups, whether of the same tribe or of different tribes, might be either friendly towards one another or unfriendly. Friendly relations were kept alive by several of the customs of the Andamanese, by the intermarriage of members of different groups, by the adoption of children from one group to another, and by the fact that a man of one group might take up his residence more or less permanently with another (particularly when he married a woman of that group, or was adopted when a boy by one of the men belonging to it). All these customs served to bind some persons in the one group to persons in the other, and thus prevent the two groups from becoming entirely unfriendly to one another.

When two neighbouring local groups were friendly to one another communication between them was kept up by visitors from one group to another, and by occasional meetings of the whole of the two groups.

Either a single person or a family might at any time pay a visit to another camp, staying a few days or weeks or even longer. A man would, however, only go visiting when he was sure of a welcome. Such visits were most frequent in the fine months of the year (December to May). As a husband and wife in many instances belonged to different local groups they would, if living with the man’s parents, pay a visit every year to the parents or other relatives of the wife. The parents of a child that had been adopted by a member of another local group would make a point of visiting the child when they could. Visitors to a camp would always take with them presents to be given to their hosts. A visitor was hospitably entertained, being given the best of the food, and joined his hosts in their hunting and fishing expeditions. The duty of hospitality is one upon which the Andamanese lay stress.

The meetings of two or more local groups were organised from time to time by the more prominent men. The time and place of the meeting would be fixed and invitations sent out to the neighbours. The visitors, men, women and children, would arrive at the appointed time, and would be accommodated as well as possible by the hosts. During the first few hours, as the natives themselves told me, everyone would feel a little shy and perhaps frightened, and it would take some time for this feeling to wear off. The visitors would bring with them various objects, such as bows, arrows, adzes, baskets, nets, red paint, white clay, and so on. These were given by the visitors to their hosts, and other presents were received in return. Although the natives themselves regarded the objects thus given as being presents, yet when a man gave a present to another he expected that he would receive something of equal value in return, and would be very angry if the return present did not come up to his expectations. A man would sometimes mention, when giving his present, that he would like some particular object in exchange, but this was the exception and not the rule, and the process cannot be spoken of as barter. In certain cases it undoubtedly served a useful economic purpose. Thus if a local group had no red ochre or white clay in their own country they could obtain these commodities by exchange with others who had. In the case of a meeting between forest and coast dwellers, the former could obtain such things as shells, red paint made with turtle fat, and other objects with which they could not provide themselves in any other way. It was in this way also that the iron obtained from a wreck on one part of the coast would be spread over a large area. For the most part, however, as each local group, and indeed each family, was able to provide itself with everything that it needed in the way of weapons and utensils, the exchange of presents did not serve the same purpose as trade and barter in more developed communities.

The purpose that it did serve was a moral one. The object of the exchange was to produce a friendly feeling between the two persons concerned, and unless it did this it failed of its purpose. It gave great scope for the exercise of tact and courtesy. No one was free to refuse a present that was offered to him. Each man and woman tried to out-do the others in generosity. There was a sort of amiable rivalry as to who could give away the greatest number of valuable presents.

The visitors remained with their hosts for a few days. The time was spent in hunting, feasting and dancing, and in the exchange of presents above described. The hosts made every effort to provide the camp with plenty of good things. The guests took their share in the hunting and fishing expeditions. Every evening was spent in singing and dancing. Some of the men were sure to have composed new songs for such an occasion.

Such meetings as these were sometimes the means of bringing to an end past quarrels between the local groups, but occasionally they were the cause of new quarrels. The hosts, or some of them, might think that they had been shabbily treated in the matter of presents, or the guests might complain that they were not well enough entertained. It often needed a man of strong influence to maintain harmony in the camp. Angry words might lead to the rapid breaking up of a meeting, and even result in a feud between the two groups.

Quarrels between individuals, as we have seen, were often taken up by friends on each side. This was particularly the case when the two opponents belonged to different local groups. Before the days of the settlement of the islands there often arose in this way petty quarrels between neighbouring local groups. In some instances there appear to have been feuds of long standing; in others there was a quarrel, a fight or two, and the enemies made peace with one another, until a fresh cause of disagreement should arise.

Such attacks and counter-attacks might be continued for some years, thus establishing a feud between two neighbouring local groups. More usually, however, after one or two such fights peace would be made. In the tribes of the North Andaman there was a special peace-making ceremony, that will be described in the next chapter. All peace negotiations were conducted through the women. One or two of the women of the one group would be sent to interview the women of the other group to see if they were willing to forget the past and make friends. It seems that it was largely the rancour of the women over their slain relatives that kept the feud alive, the men of the two parties being willing to make friends much more readily than the women.

An example of a long-continued feud, which, to all appearance, has been in existence for several centuries, is that between the Aka-Bea and the J̌a̤rawa of the South Andaman. The J̌a̤rawa have the advantage over the Aka-Bea that their camps are situated in the dense forest and are difficult to find, while the camps of the Aka-Bea are mostly along the sea-coast. At the present day the J̌a̤rawa take some precautions against being surprised in their camp by a hostile party. The camp is often placed on the top of a hill and the trees in the neighbourhood are cut down so that they have a good view. The paths leading to the camp are also cleared and made wider than is usual in a native path. At times it would seem that they keep sentries on the look-out.

Such a thing as fighting on a large scale seems to have been unknown amongst the Andamanese. In the early days of the Penal Settlement of Port Blair, the natives of the South Andaman combined in large numbers to make an attack on the Settlement, but this seems to have been an unusual course of action in order to meet what was to them an altogether unusual contingency, their territory having been invaded by a large force of foreigners. Their only fights amongst themselves seem to have been the brief and far from bloody skirmishes described above, where only a handful of warriors were engaged on each side and rarely more than one or two were killed. Of such a thing as a war in which the whole of one tribe joined to fight with another tribe I could not find any evidence in what the natives were able to tell me of their former customs.

As showing within what narrow limits the different local groups held communication with one another, it may be mentioned that till the year 1875 the Aka-Bea natives of Port Blair did not know of the existence of the Aka-Ko̱l tribe, less than fifty miles distant, nor of any of the tribes further north. As a general rule it may be said that no man knew anything of any of the natives living more than twenty miles from his own part of the country.

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