Note 18 — Chapter III · RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL BELIEFS

It is possible that there are beliefs in other supernatural beings who are neither spirits of the dead nor connected with natural phenomena. The only being of such a nature that I was able to discover anything about is one called Nila or Ńila. This is the name of an evil being who is supposed to live in hollow Pterocarpus trees. When he smells human beings near his tree he comes out and kills them with his knife. I found this belief in the A-Pučikwar tribe, but was not able to find any trace of a similar belief in the North Andaman, though of course I cannot say that it does not exist there. Mr Man mentions this same being. “This spirit Nila is supposed to live in ant-hills, and to have neither wife nor child; he is not regarded as such a malevolent personage as Erem-čauga-la, and, though he is always armed with a knife, he rarely injures human beings with it, or when he does so, it is not in order to feed upon their bodies, for he is said to eat earth only18.” Mr Man adds, in a footnote that “cases have been cited of persons who have been found stabbed, whose deaths have been attributed to Nila: the possibility of the individuals in question having been murdered is scouted.”