Note 40 — Chapter VI · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: MYTHS AND LEGENDS (continued 2)

If this explanation be correct we should expect to find that the animals that figure in the legends are those that have no immediate social value either as food or in any other way, while on the other hand the animals that are used for food will not appear in the legends, or will occupy therein a very different place from the others. The only land animal that is regularly used for food is the pig. It is therefore a confirmation of the explanation that we find that the pig is never under any circumstances regarded as one of the ancestors, that is to say, is never personified in the same way that other animals are. One legend about the pig40 explains, not how the animal came into existence (that seems to be assumed), but how it acquired its senses. Another legend41 tells how the civet-cat persuaded some of the ancestors to play a game in which they pretended to be pigs, and they were turned into these animals. Here we are clearly dealing with something different from the ordinary process of personification, for we have not one ancestor in whom the species is personified, but a number of persons who were suddenly changed from men and women into pigs by the magical performance of the civet-cat. In the sea there are several animals that are regularly used for food. The dugong is spoken of as an ancestor in an Akar-Bale legend, but in the North Andaman there is a story of how the dugong originated from a pig that Pe̱rǰido tried to roast without first disembowelling it and cutting the joints of its legs. There is also in the North Andaman a story of how turtles originated42. The existence of these legends shows that the pig, the turtle and the dugong occupy a different position in the minds of the Andamanese from that of the other animals. This serves, in some measure, to confirm the explanation given above.