Note 29 — Chapter V · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: CEREMONIAL (continued 2)

The occasions on which this style of painting is used or forbidden are thus all satisfactorily explained by our hypothesis. It remains to consider the nature of the painting itself, and how far it is an appropriate means of expression. To do this we must discuss very briefly some of the processes of symbolic thought of the Andamanese. Conditions of well-being (both individual and social) are associated in the minds of the Andamanese with fine weather, both directly (through physiological action) and indirectly (through the effect of fine weather on the social life). Hence Tomo, who, as we shall see in the next chapter, is a personification of fine weather, is a being who is connected with goodness and happiness. With fine weather, and therefore with individual and social well-being, the Andamanese associate brightness and whiteness (for which they have only one word) and any bright or light colour. The association of light and dark with euphoric and dysphoric conditions respectively has a psycho-physical basis, for it seems to be universal in human nature. Now the clay that the Andamanese call to̱l-odu is the whitest substance they know, and is for this reason fitted to be symbolical of conditions of well-being. Fine weather is associated, in the minds of the Andamanese with honey, because in the season of fine weather honey is plentiful, and is also associated for a similar reason with snakes. Sweetness itself is universally associated with pleasant things, again through a psycho-physical link. The Andamanese believe in a special connection between honey and a species of large snake called wara-ǰobo or or-čubi29, so that this snake comes to be representative of fine weather and sweetness and therefore generally of states of well-being. Now, throughout the Great Andaman the pattern in which white clay is painted on the body is called after this snake, and the zig-zags of which the pattern is composed may be supposed to be representative of the snake itself. When, therefore, a man paints himself with white clay in a pattern which he regards as representing the snake wara-ǰobo, it is evident that the painting is meant to express a condition of well-being, with which the snake itself, and whiteness, are, by a number of links, closely associated. This is not all, however. The Andamanese, we may not doubt, derive from the painted pattern an esthetic pleasure due to its rhythmical character, its shape as an arrangement of lines and spaces. Further it provides the pleasure that we obtain from a thing elegantly and skilfully made, and this explains why so much care is taken in the making of the pattern. This pleasure at what we may call the beauty of the pattern heightens the effect produced by its symbolic references. The real value of the pattern, its pleasure-giving quality, is transferred to the man on whose body it is executed. He himself is pleased with it, proud of it, and so becomes pleased with and proud of himself, for the pattern by being imprinted on his body becomes part of him. The sense of self attaches to it, as with us the sense of self attaches to our clothes.