Chapter V · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: CEREMONIAL (continued 3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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