Note 37 — Chapter VI · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: MYTHS AND LEGENDS

For the honour of this position Biliku has, however, a competitor. Besides the lightning there is another natural source of fire, the sun. We find therefore two different (and contrary) developments of the myth of the beginning of the world. In one of these the sun is associated with Biliku, is regarded as belonging to her or made by her. For instance, in an Aka-Kede legend, she is stated to have made the sun by throwing a flaming brand into the sky. By this means Biliku becomes the sole source of fire and therefore of life. This is the position that Puluga occupies in the versions of the legends recorded by Mr Man. In those legends Puluga gives fire to the first human beings by making the sun come down to earth and ignite a pile of wood. The alternative development makes the sun independent of Biliku and it is then the sun, or a mythical person associated directly with the sun, who becomes the maker of the world, the source of life. Unfortunately, I did not obtain much detailed information about this development of the myth. In the North Andaman the being named Čara is associated with the sun and with fine weather, and is certainly sometimes regarded as the maker of the world. In the South Andaman it is Tomo who is associated with the sun. Men and women, when they die, go to live with Tomo in the sky. It is Tomo who is responsible for all things being as they are. He was the first being; it was he who arranged the order of nature; and similarly it was he who created the social order, so that a question as to why some custom is observed is often answered by saying that it was Tomo who made it so. In Mr Man’s account Tomo is degraded to the position of being merely the first man made by Puluga, but in the accounts that were given to me by the natives of the Akar-Bale and A-Pučikwar tribes Tomo was a rival of Puluga; sometimes one and sometimes the other was spoken of as being the supreme maker of all things. An Akar-Bale man of very high intelligence, who had been educated as a Christian, in trying to explain to me statements about Tomo made by another Akar-Bale who was regarded as an authority on the legends of his tribe, said that Tomo was the same thing to the Akar-Bale that God is to the Christian. When I asked him if it was not rather Puluga who was the Andaman equivalent of God, he said that some people might think so, but that according to the old man to whom I was talking it was Tomo and not Puluga who occupied the position37.