Note 7 — Chapter I · THE SOCIAL ORGANISATION

Mr M. V. Portman speaks of the tribes of the southern part of the Great Andaman as being divided into what he calls “septs,” but he does not explain what he means by that term. He states that the Aka-Bea were divided into seven septs, the A-Pučikwar into four, the Akar-Bale into two, while the Aka-Ko̱l and O̱ko̱-J̌uwo̱i had no real subdivisions7. Whatever Mr Portman may have meant by the term sept, it is clear that he did not use it to denote what is here called a local group, but some larger subdivision of the tribe. What these septs seem to have been are groups consisting each of four or five local groups having friendly relations with one another and meeting together occasionally at the festival gatherings to be described later in the present chapter.