Note 35 — Chapter VI · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: MYTHS AND LEGENDS

The explanation of lightning as a shell depends not only upon the pearly lustre of this kind of shell, but also on other features of it. The shell in question (be) is used by women alone, and its use is confined to slicing yams and other vegetables in preparing them for food. Its association with Biliku therefore follows from the view of Biliku as female and as being especially associated with yams and other vegetable foods. Granting this fundamental connection, then the brightness of the shell, its keen edge and the way in which it can be made to skim through the air, will explain the statement that lightning is just such a shell thrown by Biliku. In the South Andaman, where Puluga is regarded as male, this belief about the pearl shell would be out of harmony with the rest of the myth, and, as we should expect, it is not found. However, the Aka-Bea word for lightning (be-iŋa, the -iŋa or -ŋa being a suffix) suggests that they may have had a similar belief in the past35.