Chapter VI: The Interpretation of Andamanese Customs and Beliefs: Myths and Legends (4)

There remains one other matter to be dealt with briefly. I have pointed out on several occasions that the legends contain inconsistencies. Some of these only appear when the real meaning of the legend is discovered, but others are on the surface. It is clear that the Andamanese do not always apply to their legends the laws of logical consistency. It must not, however, be supposed that they are equally illogical in other matters, for this is not so. In matters of everyday practical life the Andamanese show just as much sound commonsense as the inhabitants of a civilised country. They are excellent observers of natural phenomena and are capable of putting their observations to practical use. In any attempt to explain their mythology, therefore, it is necessary to show why in this sphere they do not apply their powers of reasoning. We can understand this when we recall the purpose of the legends as here described, which is, not to give rational explanations, but to express sentiments. When there are two alternative rational explanations of a phenomenon between which we cannot definitely choose we say that either one or other is probably true. In those mental processes in which the purpose is to find a symbolic expression for sentiments or desires, the either-or relation is inadmissible owing to the very nature of the thought-process itself. If two expressions of the same sentiment are present, both equally adequate, we must either reject one of them or by making use of both on different occasions admit the possibility of inconsistency. Where the inconsistency becomes more or less obvious we expect the reason to step in and insist that a choice shall be made. But a mind intent on expressing certain feelings, faced with two alternative and equally satisfactory but inconsistent symbols, will hesitate to choose between them even at the command of the desire for logical consistency. It will cling as long as possible to both of them. This is just what the Andaman Islander seems to do in his mythology. The view of lightning as a person who shakes his leg seems to express in some way certain notions of the natives about the lightning. The alternative explanation of lightning as a fire-brand thrown by Biliku also satisfies in some way his need of expressing the impressions that the phenomena make upon him. In spite of the inconsistency he clings to both symbols as best he can.

The very existence of inconsistencies of this kind proves without any doubt that the mental processes underlying the legends of the Andamanese are not similar to those that we ourselves follow when we attempt to understand intelligently the facts of nature and of life, but rather are to be compared to those that are to be found in dreams and in art,—processes of what might conveniently be called symbolic thought. It would perhaps hardly be necessary to point this out were it not that many ethnologists still try to interpret the beliefs of savages as being the result of attempts to understand natural facts, such as dreams, death, birth, etc. Such writers assume that the savage is impelled by the same motive that so strongly dominates themselves, the desire to understand,—scientific curiosity—and that such beliefs as animism or totemism are of the nature of scientific hypotheses invented to explain the facts of dreaming and of death on the one hand and of conception and birth on the other. If this view of the nature of primitive thought were correct it would be impossible to conceive how such inconsistencies as those that we meet with among the Andamanese could be permitted. On the view that the myths of primitive societies are merely the result of an endeavour to express certain ways of thinking and feeling about the facts of life which are brought into existence by the manner in which life is regulated in society, the presence of such inconsistencies need not in the least surprise us, for the myths satisfactorily fulfil their function not by any appeal to the reasoning powers of the intellect but by appealing, through the imagination, to the mind’s affective dispositions.

The thesis of this chapter has been that the legends are the expression of social values of objects of different kinds. By the social value of an object is meant the way in which it affects the life of the society, and therefore, since every one is interested in the welfare of the society to which he belongs, the way in which it affects the social sentiments of the individual. The system of social values of a society obviously depends upon the manner in which the society is constituted, and therefore the legends can only be understood by constant reference to the mode of life of the Andamanese.

The legends give us in the first place a simple and crude valuation of human actions. Anger, quarrelsomeness, carelessness in observing ritual requirements are exhibited as resulting in harm. This is the moral element of the stories strictly so called, and is to be observed in many of them. The young men who failed to observe the rules laid down for those who have recently been through one of the initiation ceremonies were turned to stone. The quarrelsomeness of the lizard led to the ancestors being turned into animals. The bad temper of one of the ancestors resulted in darkness covering the earth, or in a great cyclone in which many were destroyed.

Secondly, the legends as a whole give expression to the social value of the past, of all that is derived from tradition, whether it be the knowledge by which men win their sustenance, or the customs that they observe. In the wonderful times of the ancestors all things were ordered, all necessary knowledge was acquired, and the rules that must guide conduct were discovered. It remains for the individual of the present only to observe the customs with which his elders are familiar.

The legends of a man’s own tribe serve also to give a social value to the places with which he is familiar. The creeks and hills that he knows, the camping sites at which he lives, the reefs and rocks that act as landmarks by reason of any striking feature they may present, are all for him possessed of a historic interest that makes them dear to him. The very names, in many cases, recall events of the far-off legendary epoch.

Again, many of the legends express the social value of natural phenomena. By reference to Biliku and Tarai, for instance, the native can express what he feels with respect to the weather and the seasonal changes that so profoundly affect the common life. Finally, in the legends he is able to express what he feels about the bright plumaged birds and the other creatures with which he is constantly meeting in the jungles, which are a source of perennial interest, and are yet so clearly a part of the world cut off from himself and his life, having no immediately discernible influence upon his welfare.

This system of social values, or rather this system of sentiments, that we find expressed in the legends is an essential part of the life of the Andamanese; without it they could not have organised their social life in the way they have. Moreover the sentiments in question need to be regularly expressed in some way or another if they are to be kept alive and passed on from one generation to another. The legends, which are related by the elders to the young folk, are one of the means (the various ceremonial customs analysed in the last chapter being another) by which they are so expressed, and by which their existence is maintained.

Although the term “social value” has been used as a convenient expression, yet the meaning of the legends might be expressed in other ways. We may say, for instance, that they give a representation of the world as regulated by law. The conception of law which they reveal is not, however, that to which we are accustomed when we think of natural law. We may perhaps adequately state the Andaman notion by saying that moral law and natural law are not distinguished from one another. The welfare of the society depends upon right actions; wrong actions inevitably lead to evil results. Giving way to anger is a wrong action, as being a cause of social disturbance. In the legends the catastrophes that overwhelmed the ancestors are in many instances represented as being caused by some one giving way to anger. There is a right way and a wrong way to set about making such a thing as a bow. We should explain this by saying that the right way will give a good serviceable weapon, whereas the wrong way will give an inferior or useless one. The Andaman Islander tends to look at the matter from a different angle; the right way is right because it is the one that has been followed from time immemorial, and any other way is wrong, is contrary to custom, to law. Law, for the Andaman Islander, means that there is an order of the universe, characterised by absolute uniformity; this order was established once for all in the time of the ancestors, and is not to be interfered with, the results of any such interference being evil, ranging from merely minor ills such as disappointment or discomfort to great calamities. The law of compensation is absolute. Any deviation from law or custom will inevitably bring its results, and inversely any evil that befalls must be the result of some lack of observance. The legends reveal to our analysis a conception of the universe as a moral order.

Here I must conclude my attempt to interpret the customs and beliefs of the Andaman Islanders, but in doing so I wish to point out, though indeed it must already be fairly obvious, that if my interpretation be correct, then the meaning of the customs of other primitive peoples is to be discovered by similar methods and in accordance with the same psychological principles. It is because I have satisfied myself of the soundness of these methods and principles, by applying them to the interpretation of other cultures, that I put forward the hypotheses of these two chapters with an assurance that would not perhaps be justified if I relied solely on a study of the Andamanese. To put the matter in another way, I have assumed a certain working hypothesis, and I have shown that on the basis of this hypothesis there can be built up a satisfactory explanation of the customs and beliefs of the Andamanese. But the hypothesis is of such a nature, stating or involving as it does certain sociological or psychological laws and principles, that if it be true for one primitive people it must be true for others, and indeed, with necessary modifications, must be true of all human society. Such a hypothesis, it is obvious, cannot be adequately tested by reference only to one limited set of facts, and it will therefore be necessary, if it is to become something more than a hypothesis, to test its application over a wider range of ethnological facts.

The matter is so important that it is necessary, even at the risk of wearisome repetition, to give a final statement of the hypothesis that, in this chapter and the last, has been applied to and tested by the facts known to us concerning the Andaman Islanders.

In an enquiry such as this, we are studying, I take it, not isolated facts, but a “culture,” understanding by that word the whole mass of institutions, customs and beliefs of a given people. For a culture to exist at all, and to continue to exist, it must conform to certain conditions. It must provide a mode of subsistence adequate to the environment and the existing density of population; it must provide for the continuance of the society by the proper care of children; it must provide means for maintaining the cohesion of the society. All these things involve the regulation of individual conduct in certain definite ways; they involve, that is, a certain system of moral customs.

Each type of social organisation has its own system of moral customs, and these could be explained by showing how they serve to maintain the society in existence. Such an explanation would be of the psychological, not of the historical type; it would give not the cause of origin of any custom, but its social function. For example it is easy to see the function of the very strong feelings of the Andamanese as to the value of generosity in the distribution of food and of energy in obtaining it, and as to the highly reprehensible nature of laziness and greediness (meaning by the latter word, eating much when others have little). It has only been by the cultivation of these virtues, or by the eradication of the opposite vices, that the Andaman society has maintained itself in existence in an environment where food is only obtainable by individual effort, where it cannot be preserved from day to day, and where there are occasional times of scarcity. It could be shown, to take a further example, how the manner in which the life of the family is organised is closely related to certain fundamental social needs. If we were attempting an explanation of the Andamanese culture as a whole and in all its details it would be necessary to examine all the moral customs of the people and show their relations one to another and to the fundamental basis on which the society is organised.

The necessary regulation of conduct in a given society depends upon the existence in each individual of an organised system of sentiments. That system of sentiments or motives will clearly be different in different cultures, just as the system of moral rules is different in societies of different types. Yet there is, so to speak, a general substratum that is the same in all human societies. No matter how the society may be organised there must be in the individual a strong feeling of attachment to his own group, to the social division (nation, village, clan, tribe, caste, or what not) to which he belongs. The particular way in which that sentiment is revealed in thought and action will depend upon the nature of the group to which it refers. Similarly, no society can exist without the presence in the minds of its members of some form or other of the sentiment of moral obligation—the sentiment that certain things must be done, certain other things must not be done, because those are right, good, virtuous, these are wrong, bad, vicious or sinful. Further, though perhaps less important, yet not less necessary, there is the sentiment of dependence in its various forms—dependence on others, on the society, on tradition or custom.

For a culture to exist, then, these sentiments (and others connected with them, that need not be enumerated) must exist in the minds of individuals in certain definite forms, capable of influencing action in the direction required to maintain the cohesion of the society on its actual basis of organisation. This, we may say, is the social function of these sentiments.

Leaving aside altogether the question of how sentiments of these kinds come into existence, we may note that they involve the existence of an experience of a particular type. The individual experiences the action upon himself of a power or force—constraining him to act in certain ways not always pleasant, supporting him in his weakness, binding him to his fellows, to his group. This force is clearly something not himself—something outside of him therefore, and yet equally clearly it makes itself felt not as mere external compulsion or support, but as something within his own consciousness—within himself, therefore. If we would give a name to this force we can only call it the moral force of society. The very existence of a human society, the argument has run, necessarily involves the existence of this actual experience of a moral force, acting through the society upon the individual, and yet acting within his own consciousness. The experience, then, is there, but it does not follow that the primitive man can analyse his own experience; it is obvious enough that such analysis is beyond him. Still the experience does lead him to form certain notions or representations, and it is possible to show how these notions are psychologically related to the experience of a moral force.

The experience of this moral force comes to the individual in definite concrete experiences only. We first learn to experience our own dependence in our dealings with our parents, and thus we derive the concrete form in which we clothe our later adult feeling of our dependence upon our God. Or, to take an example from the vast number provided by the customs of the Andamanese, the Andaman Islander, like other savages, the main concern of whose lives is the getting and eating of food, inevitably finds his experience of a moral force most intimately associated with the things he uses for food. Inevitably, therefore, he regards food as a substance in which, in some way, the moral force is inherent, since it is often through food that the force actually affects him and his actions. The psychology of the matter can be traced, I hope, in the arguments of the last chapter. From the analysis there given of different customs and beliefs it should be obvious that the way in which the Andaman Islander regards all the things that influence the social life is due to the way in which they are associated with his experience of the moral force of the society.

In this way there arises in the mind of primitive man, as the result of his social life and the play of feeling that it involves, the more or less crude and undefined notion of a power in society and in nature having certain attributes. It is this power that is responsible for all conditions of social euphoria or dysphoria because in all such conditions the power itself is actually experienced. It is the same power that compels the individual to conform to custom in his conduct, acting upon him both within as the force of conscience and without as the force of opinion. It is the same force on which the individual feels himself to be dependent, as a source of inner strength to him in times of need. It is this force also that carries him away during periods of social excitement such as dances, ceremonies or fights, and which gives him the feeling of a sudden great addition to his own personal force.

The Andamanese have not reached the point of recognizing by a special name this power of which they are thus aware. I have shown that in some of its manifestations they regard it, symbolically, as being a sort of heat, or a force similar to that which they know in fire and heat. In more developed societies, however, we find a nearer approach to a definite recognition of this power or force in its different manifestations by means of a single name. The power denoted by the word mana in Melanesia, and by the words orenda, wakan, nauala, etc., amongst different tribes of North America, is this same power of which I have tried to show that the notion arises from the actual experience of the moral force of the society.

These sentiments and the representations connected with them, upon the existence of which, as we have seen, the very existence of the society depends, need to be kept alive, to be maintained at a given degree of intensity. Apart from the necessity that exists of keeping them alive in the mind of the individual, there is the necessity of impressing them upon each new individual added to the society, upon each child as he or she develops into an adult. Even individual sentiments do not remain in existence in the mind unless they are exercised by being expressed. Much more is this the case with collective sentiments, those shared by a number of persons. The only possible way by which such collective sentiments can be maintained is by giving them regular and adequate expression.

Here then, according to the argument of the last chapter, we find the function of the ceremonial customs of primitive peoples such as the Andamanese. All these customs are simply means by which certain ways of feeling about the different aspects of social life are regularly expressed, and, through expression, kept alive and passed on from one generation to another. Thus the customs connected with foods serve to maintain in existence certain ways of feeling about foods and the moral duties connected with them, and similarly with other customs.

Affective modes of experience (sentiments, feelings or emotions) can be expressed not only in bodily movements but also by means of language. I have tried to show that the function of the myths and legends of the Andamanese is exactly parallel to that of the ritual and ceremonial. They serve to express certain ways of thinking and feeling about the society and its relation to the world of nature, and thereby to maintain these ways of thought and feeling and pass them on to succeeding generations. In the case of both ritual and myth the sentiments expressed are those that are essential to the existence of the society.

Throughout these two chapters I have avoided the use of the term religion. My reason for this is that I have not been able to find a definition of this term which would render it suitable for use in a scientific discussion of the beliefs of such primitive peoples as the Andamanese.

When we use the term religion we inevitably think first of what we understand by that term in civilised society. It is not possible, I believe, to give an exact definition which shall retain all the connotations of the word as commonly used and which shall at the same time help us in the study of the customs of undeveloped societies. The definition of religion that seems to me on the whole most satisfactory is that it consists of (1) a belief in a great moral force or power (whether personal or not) existing in nature, and (2) an organised relation between man and this Higher Power. If this definition be accepted it is clear that the Andamanese have religious beliefs and customs. They do believe in a moral power regulating the universe, and they have organised their relations to that power by means of some of their simple ceremonies. Yet it does not seem possible to draw a sharp dividing line between those beliefs and customs that properly deserve to be called religious, and others which do not deserve the adjective. It is not possible, in the Andamans, to separate a definite entity which we can call religion from things that may more appropriately be regarded as art, morality, play, or social ceremonial.

Nevertheless the purpose of these two chapters has been to explain the nature and function of the Andamanese religion. Amongst the fundamental conditions that must be fulfilled if human beings are to live together in society is the existence of this thing that we call religion, the belief in a great Unseen Power, between which and ourselves it must ever be the great concern of life to establish and maintain harmony. The Andaman Islander with his somewhat childish faith, the Australian black-fellow decorated with paint and feathers impersonating his totemic ancestor, the Polynesian sacrificing human victims on the marae of his god, the Buddhist following the Holy Eight-Staged Path, are all following in however different ways the same eternal quest.