Chapter V: The Interpretation of Andamanese Customs and Beliefs: Ceremonial (3)

Formerly the Andamanese preserved the skulls of all large animals such as pigs, turtle and dugong. At the present day they no longer preserve the skulls of pigs, giving as their reason that owing to the dogs obtained from Europeans they now have little difficulty in killing pigs; but they still preserve the skulls of dugongs, and a fair proportion of the skulls of turtle. The J̌a̤rawa still seem to preserve with great care the skulls of all the pigs they kill, going to the pains of enclosing each one in a case of basket-work. These skulls, we must conclude, are more than mere trophies of the chase. As visible proofs of the ability of the society in the past to overcome the hostile powers of nature, they form, as it were, the guarantee of a similar ability in the future, and I believe that their preservation is regarded as a means of ensuring success in hunting as well as protection for the hunters. The turtle skulls that are often suspended under the forward platform of a canoe, are, I believe, intended both to protect the occupants of the canoe from the dangers of the sea and to help them to obtain a good catch.

The Andamanese belief in the power of the bones of animals to protect them from danger and to bring them luck, is therefore very similar to their belief in the protective power of the materials used for weapons and implements. The consideration of the apparent contradiction mentioned above has led us to a more exact statement of the real beliefs in these matters. They believe, we may say, that all the things from the jungle and the sea of which they make use as food or as materials, are dangerous unless approached with proper ritual precautions, but when so approached they become sources of strength and well-being and also of protection from unseen dangers.

To return to the main argument, which was concerned with the meaning of the patterns of clay painted on the body after eating the more dangerous foods, it would seem that this action is really a rite or ceremony, of the same general character as other ceremonial customs of the Andamans. It is an action required by custom, the performance of which on appropriate occasions serves to keep alive in the mind of the individual a certain system of sentiments necessary for the regulation of conduct in conformity to the needs of the society. By it the individual is made to feel (or to act as though he felt) that his life is one of continually repeated dangers from which he can only be preserved by conforming to the customs of the society as they have been handed down by tradition. He is made to feel that the eating of food is not merely the satisfaction of an animal appetite, but an act of communion, that the food itself is something “sacred” (if we may use that word in the sense of the original Latin “sacer”). It serves also, like any other rite in which all join, to make the individual feel the solidarity and unity of the community; all share in the common repast and the common danger, and each man sees on his neighbour the clay with which he himself is daubed.

Of course it is probable that the Andamanese custom of painting the body after eating, like our own grace before and after meat, with which it is parallel, tends to become a formality accompanied by little real feeling, but it can be shown, I believe, that such customs do possess a real value—a real psychological function—in keeping alive ideas and sentiments that will on occasion play an important part in influencing conduct.

We have not yet completed the study of the Andamanese beliefs about food. To do so we must examine the initiation ceremonies. I hope to show that these ceremonies are the means by which the society powerfully impresses upon the initiate the sense of the social value of food, and keeps the same sense alive in the minds of the spectators of the ceremony.

The position in the social life occupied by a child is different from that of an adult; the child is dependent upon and closely united to his parents, and is not an independent member of the community. To this difference in social position there corresponds a difference in the attitude of a person towards a child and towards an adult, and also a difference in the attitude of a child and that of an adult towards the society. As the child grows up a change takes place in his position in the social life, and this must be accompanied by a change in the emotional dispositions of the child himself in so far as these regulate his attitude towards the society, and by a change in the attitude towards the child of the other members of the group. The initiation ceremonies are the means by which these changes are brought about, and by which, therefore, the child is made an independent member of the society.

The ceremonies have two aspects according as we regard them from the point of view of the society or from that of the initiate. For the society they are to be described as the recognition of the change of status of the initiate, just as the marriage ceremony is the social recognition of the change of status by marriage. For the initiate they constitute a sort of moral or social education.

To fit a child for his proper place in the community he needs to be educated. Part of the process consists of learning how to hunt, how to make bows and arrows, and so on. This necessary knowledge he acquires gradually by imitation of his elders, in which he is guided and encouraged by them. But in addition to this he has to acquire those sentiments or emotional dispositions which regulate the conduct of members of the society and constitute morality. Part of this education in morality, this education of the sentiments, takes place gradually as the child grows up, less by any actual instruction than by processes of imitation and suggestion; but in this connection an extremely important part is played by the initiation ceremonies. That the long series of abstentions and ceremonies does have a very powerful emotional effect on the youth or girl may be readily observed by an eye-witness; that their permanent effect is to create in his or her mind a number of sentiments that previously existed not at all or only in an undeveloped condition will be shown in the course of the present argument.

Since in the life of the Andamans by far the most important social activity is the getting of food, and it is in connection with food that the social sentiments are most frequently called into action, it is therefore appropriate that it should be through his relation to food that the child should be taught his relation to the society, and thus have those sentiments implanted in him or brought to the necessary degree of strength. During his infancy the child is almost entirely unrestrained and acts with great comparative freedom. He does not realise, in any adequate manner, that the food with which he is freely provided (for children are the last to suffer hunger) is only obtained by skill and effort, nor does he realise that he will one day be required to labour to supply food for others. There follows a period of restraint, during which the growing boy or girl has to give up eating certain relished foods, and has to pass through a number of ceremonies, some of them painful, and all solemn and awe-inspiring. These restraints on the action of the individual are not imposed by one person, but by the whole society backed by the whole force of tradition. Through a series of years, just at what is, for physiological reasons, the most impressionable age, the individual learns to subordinate his own desires to the requirements of the society or of custom, as explained to him by his elders. He is thus impressed, in a forcible manner, with the importance of the moral law, and at the same time he is impressed with a sense of the social value of food. The ceremonies thus afford a moral education adapted to the requirements of life as it is lived in the Andamans. It would need a very lengthy analysis to show all the effects of the ceremonies on the emotional life of those who undergo them, and for the purpose of this chapter such an analysis is unnecessary. It will suffice merely to mention a few of the more important. As stated above, the ceremonies teach the boy or girl self-control or self-restraint, and they do so in relation to one of the two fundamental human instincts,—hunger. The cutting of the boy’s back in the North Andaman gives a still sharper lesson in self-control in the endurance of pain. Secondly the ceremonies teach the initiate, for the first time in life, to view life and its duties and obligations seriously. The various ceremonies are all very solemn affairs for the initiate. Again, the growing boy or girl is made to feel very strongly the importance of conforming to the customs of the community to which he belongs, thus having implanted in his mind what is certainly one of the most powerful of the sentiments that regulate conduct in the Andamans. In this connection there may also be mentioned the respect for elders which is a most important element in the regulation of social life in all savage communities, and which is strongly impressed on the initiate throughout the ceremonies. And yet again, the ceremonies awaken and develop in the adolescent that fear of unseen danger which, as we shall see later, has a very important place in the mental life of the Andamanese and an important function in their moral life. Finally, the whole series of abstentions and ceremonies serves to develop in the mind of every new member of the society that sense of the social value of foods with which our argument has been concerned, which may be briefly described as being a realisation that food is a possession of the society, that not only the power to obtain food, but also the power to use it without danger is something that the individual owes to the society, and that the bestowal upon him of this power involves the acceptance on his part of corresponding obligations.

We may say, to look at the matter under another aspect, that the initiation ceremonies teach the youth or girl to realise what is implied in being a member of the society by putting him or her during the period of adolescence in an exceptional position, and, as it were, outside the society. The youth is no longer a child and may not act as a child; but he is not yet an adult and may not act as adults do. He feels himself cut off, as it were, from the ordinary life of the group, having as yet no share in it. As a child he was not yet aware of what it means to be a member of a society, but now, by means of the ceremonies, his attention is directed to the society and its life, by his being placed in a position of isolation outside it. He begins to look forward to the time when he will take his proper place as an adult, and his share in the common life of the camp. At each step of the ceremonies he feels that he is brought a little closer, until at last he can feel himself a man amongst men. Thus he is brought to a consciousness of all that it must mean to him to be a member of the community; he is taught the significance and value of social communion.

Since the greater part of social life is the getting and eating of food, to place a person outside the social life would be to forbid him from partaking of the food that is obtained by the society and consumed by it. This, however, would result in his starvation. The same object is attained, however, by making the initiate abstain for a period from a number of the most important and relished foods, and then making him abstain for a second period from the others. This is not the only way however in which the initiate is cut off from social communion. A youth or girl who is aka-op is not permitted to dance, nor to be decorated with red paint and white clay. It is in the dance that the community expresses most completely its own unity. Being forbidden to join in the dance is therefore to be excluded from the common life. Painting the body with red paint and white clay is, as we have seen, a way of expressing that the individual is aware of his own position as a member of the group having the approval and good-will of his fellows. Thus these other prohibitions reinforce and supplement the prohibition against eating certain foods during the period of adolescence, and the consideration of them serves to confirm the interpretation just given. I believe that the aka-op is also forbidden to use odu clay as a sign of mourning, and if this be so it is of considerable significance, as will be evident after we have considered the meaning of this use of clay. Unfortunately I am not quite sure of the facts, and so the point must be left.

To discuss in detail all the features of these ceremonies would take much space. I propose therefore to take as typical of the others the ceremony of turtle-eating and to explain its various features. When this ceremony is performed the youth has been compelled for many months to abstain from eating turtle, and has thus learnt to realise the social value of food in general and of turtle in particular. He is now to have the same lesson impressed upon him in a different way. The previous part of his education has been the continuous action over a long period of a not very powerful emotion. He has had to sit quietly while others regaled themselves with turtle meat and to be satisfied with less tasty food. At times he has probably gone hungry because the only food in camp was of kinds that were forbidden to him. The ceremony he is now to go through acts by producing in the space of a few days a very intense emotional experience. We have seen that the sense of the social value of food takes the form of a belief that food is dangerous to eat, and that its dangers may only be avoided by ritual precautions. At the turtle-eating ceremony the initiate is eating turtle for the first time as an adult, and is therefore exposed to great danger which makes it necessary to guard him with every possible ritual precaution. This, at any rate, is what the initiate himself is made to feel, and it is through this that the ceremony has its emotional effects. The initiate is not, of course, himself possessed by a simple feeling of fear, though the emotional state of his mind is built up on the basis of the fear instinct. What he is about to do is a matter of great danger to himself, but at the same time the precautions that are to be taken are such as entirely to remedy that danger if they are properly observed. Thus what he experiences is an intense feeling of the importance and solemnity of the ritual in which he is to take part.

All the details of the ceremony are readily to be explained as so many different ways of warding off the danger that threatens the initiate. He is seated on leaves of the Hibiscus tiliaceus, which, as we have seen, possess special efficacy against dangers connected with turtle. Leaves of the same kind are placed under his arms so as to cover his belly, where, we may suppose, the danger is most intense. A fire is placed near him, between him and the open sea. It has already been shown that fire is believed to afford protection against dangers of this sort, and the appropriateness of the position is due to the fact that in this instance it is from the sea and the things of the sea that danger is to be feared. He may not feed himself with his fingers, but must use a skewer of Hibiscus wood. This is clearly only one more precaution against danger, though the ideas connected with it are somewhat obscure. At the beginning of the ceremony the initiate is fed with turtle by a man who conducts the ceremony and who represents the society, that latter fact being sometimes symbolised by his wearing round his shoulders a bark sling such as is used for carrying children. This means, I think, that it is the society that “gives” the food to the initiate, giving him at the same time the power to use it with safety. The older man hands on to the younger the right and the power to eat which he himself possesses. He makes himself responsible, as it were, for the action of the initiate. At one stage of the performance the initiate is rubbed over with red ochre. This is to be understood by recalling that red ochre and red paint are regarded by the natives as valuable remedies against sickness and against the spirits that cause sickness. Immediately afterwards the body of the initiate is spattered with odu clay. The use of this clay after eating food was explained as a method of avoiding the dangers supposed to result from eating such foods as turtle. It is clear that exactly the same explanation will apply to its use in the initiation ceremonies. I have not found a satisfactory explanation of the peculiar manner in which it is applied. That the youth is not allowed to sleep for the first two days of the ceremony will be explained later in the chapter, when it will be shown that sleep itself is regarded as a condition of danger.

A notable incident is that at the beginning of the ceremony the female relatives of the initiate are required by custom to come and weep over him. An explanation of this has already been given, but may well be repeated. At each stage of the initiation ceremonies the initiate is withdrawn from the position of dependence that the child necessarily occupies, and as children are, for the most part, under the care of their elder female relatives, the ceremonies result in a partial destruction of those bonds that unite the initiate to his mother or his foster-mother and her sisters or to his own elder sisters. The weeping of the female relatives is as it were a reaction against this lessening of solidarity. It is evident why the rite is necessarily one-sided. The female relatives need to feel that they are not being entirely cut off from the initiate, and so they affirm their attachment to him by weeping over him. On the other hand the important thing for the initiate himself is to feel that the bonds that united him as a child to the women who cared for him are now severed or modified; he must no longer depend on them but must learn to depend on himself; hence it is necessary that he should not weep but should remain passive and as it were indifferent under the tears that are shed over him.

The last part of the ceremony consists of a dance, in which the youth dances in the middle surrounded by a ring of men. As we have seen that dancing is in general an affirmation of solidarity between those taking part, and an expression of the unity of the society, we may well regard this dance as an affirmation of the solidarity that now exists between the youth and the other dancers, who are representatives of the society of adults. There is something more in the dance than this however. I pointed out that one of the results of taking part in a dance is to produce in the individual an experience of increased personal force, and it is obvious that this is a very appropriate feeling for the initiate who, by his long abstention from turtle, and by the ceremony he has just been through, has acquired an increase of personal force, an addition to his social personality. Before the dance the initiate is decorated with white clay (the snake pattern) and red paint. I have explained this particular method of painting the body as being a means of expressing and so producing or reinforcing the feeling of elation accompanying the recognition by an individual of his own social value, of the fact that he has deserved and obtained the good-will and regard of his fellows. The youth who has been through the period of restraint and the ordeal of the ceremony has done his duty and has earned the approbation of his friends. It is for this reason that he alone of the dancers is decorated with the painting that serves to express or arouse the elation or self-satisfaction that it is right for him to feel. The painting is the mark of the increase in social value of the initiate brought about by the turtle-eating ceremony.

There is one aspect of the dance that may be mentioned as being of importance, and which will be referred to again later, namely that the movements seem to be in a way imitative of the movements of turtle in the water. The leaves used in the dance are those that possess magical efficacy against dangers from turtle.

I have not been able to satisfy myself as to the meaning of the belt and necklace of Pothos scandens worn by the initiate in the dance and for some days afterwards. It is probable that the clue to this lies in the resemblance of the leaves to the shape of a phallus, but I have no clear evidence that this is the real explanation, and therefore offer it as merely a surmise.

If the natives be asked the reason for these ceremonies they often reply that their purpose is to make the youth or girl grow up strong. By this word “strong” they seem to mean in the first instance able-bodied, skilful (in hunting, etc.) and above all able to avoid or resist disease. They believe that anyone who did not pass through the ceremonies would be certain to die at an early age, and they recall the instance of one young man who refused to submit to the ceremonies who died before reaching maturity. Now, since the danger that they fear in eating food is said to be sickness, we may translate their statement into other terms by saying that the purpose of the initiation ceremonies is to endow the initiate with the power to eat the dangerous foods with comparative safety.

It would seem that an infant, being completely dependent upon his parents, is protected by that dependence from the danger of foods, but the adult is only able to make use of food with safety by reason of the possession within himself of a special power with which it is the purpose of the initiation ceremonies to endow him. Each kind of food has its own kind of dangerous power, and therefore every individual needs to be endowed with the special power to avoid each kind of danger. For this reason there is a separate ceremony for each of the important kinds of food. Thus we see very clearly that, for the Andamanese, food, or the power to make use of food without danger, is essentially a possession of the society, and one function of the initiation ceremonies is to keep alive this sentiment.

But there is a further meaning, I think, lying behind the statement that the initiation ceremonies endow the youth or girl with strength. I have already argued that all the most important social sentiments are closely associated with the sense of the social value of food, and although the initiation ceremonies are chiefly concerned with food, that is only because that is the easiest way by which to get at the main system of social sentiments. So that behind the special meaning of the ceremonies with relation to food we must look for a more general meaning in relation to the social life in general. This may be conveniently stated by saying that the purpose of the ceremonies is to endow the individual with a social personality. By the social personality of a person I mean the sum of those qualities by which he is able to affect the society. It is, in other words, what gives him his social value. The social personality depends in the first place on the social status of the individual. A young child seems to be regarded as having no social personality. He is not an independent member of the society, and therefore has no immediate social value, no direct effect on the general social life. At any rate the social personality of a child is something very different from that of an adult. So, since the initiation ceremonies provide the passage from childhood to manhood or womanhood we may describe them as the means by which the society endows the child with an adult social personality.

But the social personality of an individual also depends on his personal qualities, his strength and intelligence, his skill as a hunter, and on his moral qualities, whether he is mean or generous, quarrelsome or good-tempered, and so on, for all these things help to determine the place he occupies in the social life and the effects he has upon it. Above all, the social personality depends upon the development in the individual of those sentiments by which the social life is regulated and by which the social cohesion is preserved. Now we have seen that the initiation ceremonies do serve to develop these sentiments in the mind of the initiate, and we may therefore say that in this respect also it is true that the initiation ceremonies serve to develop in the child the social personality of an adult.

The consideration of the initiation ceremonies has served to confirm the hypothesis that the Andamanese customs relating to food are all of them different modes of expressing the social value of foods. We have now to consider the nature of the dangers that are supposed to accrue from the eating of food if due precautions be not taken. One statement of the natives is that the danger they fear is sickness. Now sickness of all kinds is believed by the Andamanese to be caused by certain supernatural beings called Lau or Čauga,—the spirits of the dead; and further, we have seen that the danger connected with food is sometimes said to be the danger of an attack by the spirits. So that it is evident that to understand the meaning of the fear of foods it is first of all necessary to understand the notions they have about the spirits, and to do this we shall have to consider the various customs relating to death and burial.

For the society a death is the loss of one of its members, one of its constituent parts. A person occupies a definite position in society, has a certain share in the social life, is one of the supports of the network of social relations. His death constitutes a partial destruction of the social cohesion, the normal social life is disorganised, the social equilibrium is disturbed. After the death the society has to organise itself anew and reach a new condition of equilibrium. In reference to the small community of the Andamans we may translate the above statement into terms of personal feeling by saying that the death removes a person who was the object of feelings of affection and attachment on the part of others and is thus a direct offence against those sentiments in the survivors.

Though the dead man has ceased to exist as a member of the society, it is clear that he has by no means ceased to influence the society. On the contrary he has become the source of intense painful emotions. Where the affection that was felt towards him was previously a source of pleasure it now becomes a source of pain. Defining the “social personality” of an individual as being the sum of characteristics by which he has an effect upon the social life and therefore on the social sentiments of others, we may say that by death the social personality is not annihilated but undergoes a profound change, so that from being an object of pleasurable states of the social sentiments it becomes an object of painful states. This is expressed by the Andamanese by saying that by death a man or woman becomes a Lau.

The burial customs of the Andaman Islanders, however, are not to be regarded as simply the expression of natural personal feeling. They are a collective and ritual expression of a collective feeling. This is evident from the fact that they are regulated in every detail by custom. It is the duty of the relatives and friends to mourn, whether they feel sorrow or not, and it is equally their duty to mourn only for a certain period.

The cohesion of a social group, by which is maintained its existence as a group, depends directly on the existence of a collective system of sentiments or affective dispositions that bind every member to every other. The death, or removal by any other means, of a member of the group is a direct attack against these sentiments. Now whenever a sentiment of any kind is subjected to an attack of such a kind as this there are only two possible alternatives; either the sentiment must suffer a diminution of its intrinsic energy, and thus be less capable of controlling behaviour in the future; or it must find an outlet in an expressive action of some sort which serves as a reaction of defence or compensation and restores the sentiment to its former condition of strength. The typical example of such an emotional reaction is anger; anything that wounds our self-regarding feelings arouses our anger; if it did not do so those feelings would gradually weaken. This law holds true of collective sentiments as well as of individual sentiments. If the society permitted its solidarity to be attacked, whether by death or by any other means, without reacting in such a way as to give relief to wounded social feelings and so to reinstate them in their former condition, these sentiments would lose their strength and the society its cohesion. The burial customs of the Andamanese are to be explained, I believe, as a collective reaction against the attack on the collective feeling of solidarity constituted by the death of a member of the social group.

The man being dead, the first thing that the society does is to sever its connection with him, and the first step in this process is to get rid of the body by burying it or placing it in a tree, to abandon the camp at which he died, and temporarily to drop the use of his name. It is often supposed that customs such as these, which are found in many primitive societies, are due to the fear of the dead man’s spirit. That there is an element of fear present is undoubtedly true, but this fear does not seem to be by any means instinctive, and therefore comparable to the fear that some animals exhibit towards the dead body of one of their species. On the contrary the fear itself needs to be explained, and this will have to be attempted later.

There is one group of facts which show very clearly that the burial customs are not solely due to an instinctive fear of dead bodies, namely that the customs vary according to the social position of the deceased. A child plays very little part in the general life of the community; hence on the death of a child the camp is not deserted and only the parents are subjected to the mourning ritual. Similarly the death of a person who has for long been so ill as not to be able to take any important part in social life has very little effect on the community as a whole; the body of such a one is disposed of with scant ceremony and mourning is perfunctory. On the other hand the death of a noted hunter in the prime of life, of a man who is esteemed as a leader, is a much greater loss; the whole community mourns for him; his body is placed on a tree instead of in the ground, showing that his death is regarded as something different from the death of a person who is interred. The body of a stranger who dies or is killed is not buried, but is thrown into the sea or cut up and burnt. The explanation that the natives give of this custom of burning the body is that it serves to dispel danger that might accrue from the presence of the dead body of a stranger. The blood and the fat of the dead man, from which they appear to fear evil influences, are, they say, driven up to the sky in the smoke of the fire and are thus rendered harmless.

There is, then, a close correspondence between the manner of burial and the social value of the person buried, and it is evident that the differences in the mode of disposing of the body are quite inexplicable on the assumption that the funeral customs are solely due to the fear of the dead.

Before burial the corpse is decorated with white clay and red paint. We have already seen that this is an expression on the part of the survivors of their regard for the deceased. A living man or woman is decorated in this way when, for some special reason, it is desired to express the fact that he or she has the good-will and regard of others, and it is applied to the dead body with exactly the same meaning. Fire and water are placed beside the grave. It is not necessary to suppose that the Andamanese believe that the spirit of the dead man makes any use of these, any more than it is necessary for us to believe that the spirit enjoys the flowers that it is our custom to place upon the grave. The action in each case is symbolical.

The dead man was bound by ties of solidarity to those still living. Now that he is dead those ties have not ceased to exist, but continue until the society has recovered from the effects of the death, for they are based on deep-seated and elaborately organised sentiments. I believe that the mourning customs of the Andamanese are to be explained on this basis, as being the means by which the social sentiments of the survivors are slowly reorganised and adapted to the new condition produced by the death. The severance of the dead man from the society is not a sudden but a gradual process, during which his relatives and friends, being still attached to him by social ties, are in an abnormal condition which may be defined as a partial separation from the world of living men and women and a partial aggregation to the world of the dead (i.e. the spirit world). This abnormal condition of the mourner is shown chiefly in his or her withdrawal from participation in the ordinary life of the society. We have seen that the eating of food is, for the Andamanese, one of the most important of social actions, a kind of communion of the society, and that during the period of adolescence a youth is separated or withdrawn from the common life of the group by being forbidden to eat certain foods. So, in strict conformity with the same set of notions, the mourner is separated from the normal life of the society by being forbidden to eat pork or turtle, these being the most important foods that the Andamanese have [171]. Like the aka-op, also, the mourner is forbidden to take part in a dance, or to decorate himself with red paint and white clay, for by these actions the Andaman Islander becomes conscious of his position as a member of a closely unified group, and it is necessary for the mourner, as for the aka-op, to feel that for the time being he is cut off from the ordinary life of the group. The disuse, during the period of mourning, of the name of a mourner is to be explained, as we shall see more plainly later, on the same principle, the personal name being what marks the person’s position in the social life, so that the temporary dropping of the name shows that for the time being the person is not occupying his normal social position.

The distinctive sign of a mourner is the use of clay, which is smeared over the body and head, and from the name of this clay is derived the term that denotes a mourner (aka-odu). It is possible to explain this also as a symbolic expression of the separation of the mourner from the world of living men and his aggregation to the world of the dead. In his everyday life the Andaman Islander is black from head to foot. During mourning he turns himself as nearly as possible white from head to foot, by covering his body all over with clay. It must be remembered that the spirits of the dead are said to be white or light in colour. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the (light-coloured) natives of India are called spirits (Lau), while men of such a dark-coloured race as the African negroes are not referred to by this term. The use of clay would therefore seem to serve not only to make the mourner unlike his ordinary self, but to make him like the spirits of the dead.

Of course, the natives explain all these customs of mourning as being expressions of sorrow for their loss, and this is, from the simple standpoint of everyday life, an adequate and true explanation. From the standpoint of psychology, however, what we need to know is why the sorrow is expressed in just these ways and no others. Moreover, the natives give as a further reason for the mourning customs that if they did not observe them they would be liable to sickness or even death.

I have said that the Andamanese believe that by death a man or woman becomes a Lau, but there is a little uncertainty in the statements of the natives as to whether he becomes a spirit at once, immediately after the death, or whether he does so only after the flesh of the body has decayed. Both statements are sometimes made, but it seems common to think of the dead person during the period of mourning not as a spirit (Lau) but as a dead man (empilo). We may best express the ideas of the natives by saying that the process by which a man becomes a spirit is one that takes some months to complete, and is only ended when the bones are dug up. An interesting insight into their notions in this matter is afforded by a belief, about which unfortunately I have very scanty information, to the effect that when a man dies he is initiated into the world of the dead by a ceremony resembling the ceremonies by which a youth is initiated into manhood. In the statement of an Aka-Kede informant the ceremony was spoken of by the term kimil, which is generally used for the initiation ceremonies, and was described as a po̱ro̱to-kimil, i.e., a ceremony in which the dead man ate po̱ro̱to (Caryota sobolifera) in just the same way that a youth eats turtle (čokbi) at the čokbi-kimil. There is independent evidence that there is a special connection between the spirits of the dead and the Caryota palm [172].

The description of this ceremony (of initiation into the world of the dead) that was given to me stated that in it the shredded fibre named ko̱ro was used in just the same way as the leaves of the Hibiscus are used in the turtle-eating ceremony. Further, as in the peace-making ceremony men stand against a suspended cane from which depend bunches of this same ko̱ro, so in the initiation into the spirit world the initiate has to stand against the rainbow while the dancing spirits shake it and him. It is this shaking of the rainbow (according to my informant) that causes earthquakes. It may be recalled that the rainbow is regarded as a sort of bridge between this world and the spirit world, and that its name is “the spirit’s cane,” so that it would seem that it is regarded as like a cane with ko̱ro fibre suspended from it, such as is used in the peace-making ceremony.

The explanation of the use of this ko̱ro fibre was postponed earlier in the chapter, and may well be undertaken here. It serves as a sign that the spot where it is placed is tabu, or, in more precise terms, that the spot must be avoided because of the presence there of a force or power that makes things dangerous. This force is present at the grave of a dead man, and therefore the fibre is placed at the grave to mark the fact, while a bunch is similarly suspended at the entrance to a village that is deserted after a death. In the peace-making ceremony the members of the one party stand against a suspended cane to which are attached strips of the fibre. The meaning of this, I think, is that it thus forbids the members of the other party from attacking them. If a man were to leave the screen of ko̱ro, he would, I believe, be liable to be killed by the enemy party; it is only as long as he stands against it with his arms outstretched that he is safe, because while there he is tabu.

How then does this belief in the fibre as a mark of tabu come about? The fibre is worn by the women of the Little Andaman to cover their pudenda, and it was formerly worn in this way by the women of the North Andaman. We may conclude that this was an old element in the Andaman culture dating back to the remote period when the inhabitants of the Little Andaman became separated from those of the Great Andaman. Now in a very special sense the sexual organs of women are tabu, and, without discussing the matter in detail, we may suppose that the Andaman Islander regards the genitals of women as a spot in which resides the same sort of force or power that makes the spirits, or the body of a dead man, dangerous. One point may be mentioned as throwing light on this subject, and helping forward the argument, namely that the natives of the North Andaman often use the expression Lau-buku (meaning literally “spirit-women” or “female spirits”) to denote women collectively instead of the phrase that might be expected—n’e-buku. It would seem that by reason of their sex and the special ideas that are associated with it, women are regarded as having a very special relation with the world of spirits. We may conclude that the ko̱ro fibre, being a convenient material for the purpose, was first used as a covering for the women, and in this way came to be used as a sign of tabu in general, or else that for some unknown reason the fibre was selected as a suitable material to mark any kind of tabu, and so came to be used both as a covering for women and also as a sign of warning at the grave and the village that has been visited by death [173].

To return from this digression to the question of the initiation of the dead man into the world of spirits, it is clear that since such ceremonies take time to accomplish there is a period during which the dead man is in an indeterminate position; he is no longer a member of the society of the living, and has not yet become a member of the society of the dead. As long as he is thus situated his relatives and friends are still attached to him, so that he still remains as it were in partial contact with the living. During this time the society is still suffering the ill effects of the death, and the process of readjustment by means of the customs of mourning is still taking place. At the end of it the dead man becomes completely absorbed in the spirit world, and as a spirit he has no more part in or influence over the social life than any other spirit, and the mourning is brought to a close by means of a ceremony.

This ceremony has two parts. One is the recovery of the bones and their reaggregation to the society, a rite which we may regard as the final settling of the dead man in his proper place. All that is left of him, who was once a source of strength to the community, who had once—as it is here expressed—a social value, are the bones, his name, and the memory of him that his friends retain. We may suppose that the bones still have something of the value that originally attached to their owner, and indeed it is evident that they have, for after they are recovered they are affectionately treasured as relics by the relatives. By the end of the period of mourning the painful feelings aroused by the death have died down, so that the dead man is now the object only of memories that are pleasant, or, at the worst, bitter-sweet. The bones, then, are visible evidences of the fact that the society has recovered from the disruptive shock of the death, and this is why they are dug up as soon as the recovery is complete, or rather in order to complete it, and are thereafter treasured. It should now be clear why the Andamanese attribute to the bones of dead persons the power to protect them from unseen dangers. Like the bones of animals that have been eaten they are visible and wearable signs of past dangers overcome through the protective action of the society itself, and are therefore a guarantee of similar protection in the future. And as the death of a member is an enormously more important event for the community than the mere killing and eating of a dugong, so an enormously greater protective power is attributed to the human bones than to those of any animal.

The bones, then, are dug up, and brought into camp, where they are wept over just as a friend who has been absent is wept over. All that is left of the former person returns to the social life, henceforward to occupy a definite place in it, and the weeping is the rite of aggregation, the expression of the attachment of those who weep to the bones that now return to them from the grave. The skull and jawbone and the long bones are then decorated with red paint and white clay, this being the way in which the relatives express their sense of the value of them. The other bones are made up into strings and distributed to be used on occasion as amulets.

Soon after the digging up of the bones the other part of the ceremony of the end of mourning takes place. We have seen that while the dead man was in an indeterminate position his relatives were still attached to him by social bonds, but now that he has finally become a spirit, and is for ever definitely cut off from the human society, these bonds cease to exist. The mourners, therefore, who have been cut off from the normal social life are free to return to it and even if they should not so desire, yet it is their duty to do so. The return of the mourners to the society is marked by a dance. The clay that has marked their condition is taken off, and they are decorated with white clay and red paint and all the ornaments usual on ceremonial occasions. Thus decorated they dance, the women on this occasion being required to dance as well as the men. The dance is interrupted shortly after it is begun in order that those who have not been mourning may weep with the mourners. The weeping, according to the explanation at the beginning of the chapter is a rite of aggregation by which the mourners are welcomed back to the society, just as returning friends are welcomed after an absence. It has nothing whatever to do, I believe, with the dead person for whom they have been mourning, but is merely an expression of solidarity between those still alive. Dancing and the decorations used in the dance, I have argued, are means by which the society expresses its own unity, and makes the individual realise what it means to be one of a group, so that in this dance we see the society once more coming together to continue its common life, and compelling those who have been cut off from it to feel, even against their inclinations, that they have become once more units of the social body. After this ceremony the mourners are relieved from the restrictions to which they were subjected.

In order to complete this discussion of the burial customs it is necessary to explain why a person’s name should be dropped from use after his death, and although this will require a digression of some length, this seems the most convenient point at which to deal with it. There is a very special relation between the name of anything and its fundamental characteristics, which in logic we describe by saying that the latter are included in the connotation of the name. The way in which the Andamanese represent this relation to themselves is shown in one of the legends. At a time when the ancestors did not know either the names or the uses of the different objects to be found in their country, one of them, Da Teŋat by name, walked through the forest enquiring of the objects he met what were their names. From most of them he received no reply, but the yam and the resin replied to him and gave him their names. The legend shows that as soon as the hero of the tale knew the name of the yam he immediately knew that it was of use as a food and that it required to be cooked in a particular way, although he was till then ignorant of those important properties. Similarly, having discovered the name of the resin he knew that it could be made into a torch and so used to give light.

There is, to the mind of the Andaman Islander, a somewhat similar and very important connection between a person’s name and what is here called his social personality, and this is exhibited in the customs whereby the name is avoided on certain occasions. A consideration of the different instances will show, I think, that the name is always avoided whenever the owner is for any reason prevented from taking his or her usual place in the life of the society. At such times the social personality is as it were suppressed, and the name which represents it is therefore also suppressed.

From the moment of her first menstruation to the date of her marriage, or more strictly to the date of her first parturition, the birth-name of a woman is dropped from use and she is called by her flower-name. A woman only attains her complete social personality as a mother. As a child she has not the power to become a mother. She acquires that power at her first menstruation and therefore from that time until this new virtue is actively exercised she is in a position in which one of her virtues, one of the qualities making up her social personality, is in abeyance. Therefore her name (her birth-name) is not used and she is given a temporary name in its place, a flower-name. She is, as it were, in blossom, and only when her body ripens to its fruit is she a complete woman.