Note 32 — Chapter IV · MYTHS AND LEGENDS

Mr Portman32 connects the story of the flood with the story of the dispersion of the ancestors over the islands. Referring to the names of the tribes he says, “The Andamanese state that these names were given to the different tribes by Maia Tomo-la when they were dispersed after a cataclysm. They have a tradition that this group of tribes was once all one tribe, and that the Andaman Islands were much larger than at present. Some great cataclysm occurred during which part of the islands subsided and many aborigines were drowned, the remainder being separated into different territories as at present by the orders of Maia Tomo-la, apparently the chief at that time of the collected tribe. (The above is of course a matter-of-fact version of the fanciful and impossible legends of the Andamanese.)”