Chapter V · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: CEREMONIAL (continued 2)

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.