Note 20 — Chapter III · RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL BELIEFS

I do not think that the Andamanese have any such complicated doctrine as this. It seems to me almost certain that Mr Man has received from the natives several different statements, similar to some of those given earlier, and that he has combined and reconciled them as well as he could. Some of his informants, apparently, described the world after death as being beneath the earth, and gave the name of it as Čaitan20. Other informants seem to have spoken of [vJ]ereg or J̌ereg-l’ar-mugu. I think it improbable that any one native should have stated, as Mr Man’s account would seem to imply, that the soul of a dead man goes to one place, while the man himself (now a spirit) goes somewhere else. Mr Man’s description of Čaitan corresponds almost exactly to the descriptions given to me by the Akar-Bale and A-Pučikwar of J̌ereg-l’ar-mugu, and to the descriptions of Maramiku given by the Northern tribes. If Čaitan be really an Aka-Bea word, it would seem to be only another name for J̌ereg-l’ar-mugu.