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.

At certain stages of the initiation ceremonies the name of a youth or

of a girl (the flower-name in this instance) is avoided for a certain

period. Such occasions are during, and for some time after, any of the

more important ceremonies, such as the cutting of the boy’s back, the

puberty ceremony of the girl, the turtle-eating and pig-eating

ceremonies. After a boy’s back is cut he is addressed and spoken of for

some time as Eǰido, his own name not being spoken. Similarly during and

after the turtle-eating or the pig-eating ceremony he is addressed and

spoken of by the name Kimil. The explanation of these customs is that

at these times the initiate is in an abnormal position by reason of the

ceremony that has taken place, and is not permitted to take an ordinary

part in social life. After the initiation ceremony, for example, the

youth is not permitted to handle a bow for some weeks (the bow being

the typical masculine implement).

The names of a newly-married couple are avoided for a few days after

their marriage. Marriage produces an important change in the social

personality, and this change is expressed in the marriage ceremony, but

all such changes take time, and it is some days at least before the

married couple can be expected to have settled down in their new

positions. For these days, therefore, their names are not used. The

same sort of explanation will hold for the custom of dropping the names

of a father and mother before and after the birth of a child,

particularly the first born.

At the turtle-eating ceremony of the North Andaman coast-dwellers the

youth is given a new name. It is possible that a girl is also given a

new name at this time, and that another name is also given to the youth

at the pig-eating ceremony, but on these points I neglected to make

sufficient enquiry. The name given at the turtle-eating ceremony is

never used and is not likely to be known except to those who were

present at the ceremony, and therefore serves no such purpose as the

flower-name of the girl. The giving of the name is simply the mark of

the change of social personality brought about by the ceremony. The

youth receives an addition to his personality and therefore receives an

additional name. It is significant that all the names given at this

ceremony have reference to the sea and to things of the sea,

particularly to turtle, such as Čokbi-čiro, turtle-liver, Čokbi-tei,

turtle-blood, etc.

During the period of mourning, when, as we have seen, the mourner is

withdrawn from the ordinary life of the society, his name is not used,

showing that during this period his social personality is in a state of

partial suppression. After the mourning period is over the mourner,

when he resumes his social personality, resumes at the same time his

name.

Now death is the most fundamental modification of the social

personality that is possible and therefore the name of a person

recently dead is strictly avoided. Death, however, does not destroy the

social personality utterly and for ever, but produces in it a profound

change, which begins at the death itself and is only completed at the

end of and by means of the customs of mourning. After the mourning is

over the virtues of the dead man affect the survivors through memory,

and his bones form a precious possession of the community, thus

constituting for him a new social value, a new personality. During the

period of change, while the personality does not exist in the same form

as before the death, but does not yet exist in the form in which it

will when he lives only in the memory of his friends, the name is not

used. After the mourning period is over the name may again be used.

In general then, it may be said that at any period in which a person is

undergoing a critical change in his condition in so far as it affects

the society his name falls out of use, to be resumed when the period of

change is over. The reason for this is that during such periods of

change the social personality is suppressed or latent and therefore the

name which is closely associated with the social personality must be

suppressed also.

The customs of burial and mourning are therefore seen to be not simply

the result of natural feelings of fear and sorrow but ritual actions

performed under a sense of obligation and strictly regulated by

tradition. They are means by which the society acts upon its members,

compelling them to feel emotions appropriate to the occasion. Since the

dead person has, by his death, become a cause of social disruption, all

contact with him must be avoided. But the dead man had a certain value

to the society, and as a thing of any kind cannot be valued unless its

loss is felt as a source of pain, so if the community did not mourn

when it lost one of its members that feeling of the social value of

individuals on which the existence of the society depends would soon

diminish in strength, thereby weakening the social cohesion.

It is now possible for us to understand the Andamanese beliefs about

the spirits. The basis of these beliefs, I wish to maintain, is the

fact that at the death of an individual his social personality (as

defined above) is not annihilated, but is suddenly changed. This

continuance after death is a fact of immediate experience to the

Andaman Islanders and not in any way a deduction. The person has not

ceased to exist. For one thing his body is still there. But above all

he is still the object of the social sentiments of the survivors, and

thereby he continues to act upon the society. The removal of a member

of the group is felt not as something negative but as the positive

cause of great social disturbance.

The spirits are feared or regarded as dangerous. The basis of this fear

is the fact that the spirit (i.e. the social personality of a person

recently dead) is obviously a source of weakness and disruption to the

community, affecting the survivors through their attachment to him, and

producing a condition of dysphoria, of diminished social activity. The

natural impulse of the Andaman Islander or of any other human being,

would be, I believe, not to shun the dead body of a loved one, but to

remain near it as long as possible. It is the society, acting under a

quite different set of impulses, that compels the relatives to separate

themselves from the remains of the one they loved. The death of a small

child has very little influence on the general activity of the

community, and the motive for severing connection with the dead that is

present in the case of an adult, either does not exist or is so weak as

to be overruled by the private feelings of affection, and so the child

is buried in the hut of the parents, that they may continue to keep it

near them. This affords a good test of the hypothesis, and gives strong

support to the view that the fear of the dead man (his body and his

spirit) is a collective feeling induced in the society by the fact that

by death he has become the object of a dysphoric condition of the

collective consciousness.

If the Andamanese are asked what they fear from the spirit of a dead

man they reply that they fear sickness or death, and that if the burial

and mourning customs are not properly observed the relatives of the

dead person will fall sick and perhaps die.

The basis of this notion of the spirits is that the near relatives of

the deceased, being bound to him by close social ties, are influenced

by everything that happens to him, and share in his good or evil

fortune. So that when by sickness and resulting death he is removed

from the community, they are as it were drawn after him. For this

reason they are, during the period of mourning, between life and death,

being still attached to the dead man. Contact with the world of the

dead is therefore regarded as dangerous for the living because it is

believed that they may be drawn completely into that world. Death is a

process by which a person leaves the living world and enters the world

of the spirits, and since no one dies willingly he is conceived as

being under a compulsive force acting from the world of spirits. Now

sickness is a condition that often ends in death, a first stage of the

way leading to the world of spirits. Hence sickness is conceived by the

Andamanese as a condition of partial contact with that world. This is

what is meant by the statement that sickness and death come from the

spirits.

The way the Andamanese think about the spirits is shown in the

Akar-Bale legend of the origin of death [174]. Yaramurud, having died

through an accident, self-caused, becomes a spirit, but he does so only

under the compulsion exercised upon him by his mother, who, now that he

is dead, insists that he must go away from the world of the living and

become a spirit. The spirit then comes back to see his brother and by

this contact causes the brother’s death. The story implies that it was

not because Yaramurud was evilly disposed towards his brother that he

killed him, but on the contrary it was his attachment to his relative

that caused him to return to visit him, and death followed as a result

of this contact of the living man with the spirit. Since that time

deaths have continued to occur in the same way. Thus it appears that

the Andamanese conceive that the spirits do not cause death and

sickness through evil intention, but through their mere proximity, and,

as the legend very clearly shows, the burial customs are intended to

cut off the unwilling spirit from contact with the living. This

explains also why during the period of mourning the relatives of a dead

person are thought to be in danger of sickness, and have more to fear

from the spirit than others, for since it is they who were most

attached to him during life it is they who are most likely to suffer

from contact with him after he is dead. It was Yaramurud’s brother who

was the first to die through the influence of the spirits.

The feelings of the living towards the spirits of the dead are

therefore ambivalent, compounded of affection and fear, and this must

be clearly recognized if we are to understand all the Andamanese

beliefs and customs. We may compare the relation between the society of

the living and the society of the dead to that between two hostile

communities having occasional friendly relations. That the Andamanese

themselves look upon it in some such way is shown by the belief that

the ceremony by which a dead man is initiated into the world of spirits

resembles the peace-making ceremony. The dead man, up to the time of

his death, has been living in a state of enmity with the spirits, and

before he can enter their community and share their life he has to make

peace with them in the same way that men make peace with one another

after they have been at war.

This notion of hostility between the society and the world of spirits

is found in other primitive societies, and seems everywhere to have a

definite social function. The removal of a member of the community

either by death or otherwise is a direct attack on the social

solidarity and produces in primitive societies an emotional reaction of

the same general character as anger. This collective anger, if freely

expressed, serves as a compensating mechanism, satisfying and restoring

the damaged sentiment [175]. But this can only happen if there is some

object against which the anger can be directed. In the instance of

homicide the social anger is directed against the person responsible

for the death and against the social group to which he belongs. In the

instance of death from sickness some other object has to be found, and

amongst primitive peoples there are two chief ways in which this is

done. An example of one method is afforded by the tribes of Australia,

amongst whom there is a strong and constant hostility between

neighbouring local groups, with a result that the anger at a death from

sickness directs itself against some community with which the group of

the dead man is at enmity and it is believed that some member of that

community has caused the death by magic. The Andamans afford an example

of the second method. Amongst them it would seem that the enmity

between different local groups (except as concerns the J̌a̤rawa in the

South Andaman) was never very strong and the belief in evil magic was

not highly developed, so that the anger at a death is directed against

the spirits, and sometimes find expression in violent railings against

them, accompanied by all the bodily manifestations of extreme rage and

hatred.

Now though the Andamanese regard the spirits with fear and hatred, and

believe that all contact with them is dangerous for living men, yet

they do not look on them as essentially evil, for that would conflict

with their own feelings of attachment to their dead friends.

I gathered a few hints that they even believe that at times the spirits

can and will help them. Thus a man will call on the sea-spirits of his

own country to send plenty of turtle (over which the spirits seem to be

assumed to have power) when he is going hunting. A very important fact

in this connection is the different way in which a native regards the

spirits of his own country and of other parts, the latter being thought

to be much more dangerous than the former because presumably they are

the spirits not of relatives and friends but of strangers at the best

or enemies at the worst.

There is other evidence that the Andamanese do not regard the power

that is possessed by the spirits as being essentially evil. This power,

whereby the spirits are able to cause sickness, seems to be shared by

the bones of dead men. Indeed the Andamanese call such bones

“spirit-bones” (lau-to̱i, čauga-ta). Now this power in the bones (though

it may at times be supposed to cause sickness) is more commonly made

use of in order to prevent or cure it.

The most conclusive evidence that the power of the spirits is not

intrinsically evil, but may be used to produce both good and evil is

afforded by the beliefs about medicine-men or dreamers (oko-ǰumu).

There are three ways in which a man can become a medicine-man. The

first is (as the natives put it) by dying and coming back to life. Now

when a man dies he becomes a spirit and therefore acquires the peculiar

powers and qualities of a spirit, which he retains if he returns to

life. Secondly, if a man straying in the jungle by himself be affronted

by the spirits, and if he show no fear (for if he is afraid they will

kill him) they may keep him with them for a time and then let him go.

Such a man, on his return, is regarded as being a medicine-man, and

possessing all the powers of medicine-men. I was told of one man who

became a medicine-man in this way within living memory, and it was

stated that when he returned from the forest where he had been kept by

the spirits for two or three days he was decorated with ko̱ro fibre. We

have seen that this fibre is used by the spirits in the ceremony by

which they initiate dead men, and its presence on the returned warrior

was perhaps accepted by his friends as evidence that he had been

initiated by the spirits. The third and last way in which a man may

become a medicine-man is by having intercourse with the spirits in his

dreams. This is a point to which it will be necessary to return later.

For the present it is sufficient to note that in every instance the

power of the medicine-man is believed to be derived from his contact

with the spirits in one of the three possible ways.

We are justified in concluding that the special power of the

medicine-man, by which he is distinguished from his fellows, is simply

the same power that is possessed by the spirits, from contact with whom

he has obtained it. The medicine-man is believed to be able both to

cause and to cure sickness, to arouse and to dispel storms. In other

words he has power for both good and evil, and we must conclude that

the spirits have the same. Moreover, it is commonly said that the

medicine-man is able to produce the effects he does, whether they be

harmful or beneficial to his fellows, by communicating with the spirits

in dreams and enlisting their aid. This would seem to prove the point

that I am here concerned with, that the power possessed by the spirits,

though contact with it is always dangerous, may yet in certain

circumstances be of benefit to the society, and is therefore not

essentially evil in nature.

The Andamanese believe that a medicine-man communicates with the

spirits in sleep, and this is not the only evidence that they believe

sleep to be a condition in which contact with the world of spirits is

easier than in waking life. It is believed that sickness is more likely

to begin during sleep than when awake. During the initiation ceremonies

the initiate is required to abstain from sleep after eating pork or

turtle, and this would seem to be because sleep is regarded as

generally dangerous and therefore to be avoided on such occasions as

this when every precaution needs to be taken.

The explanation of this belief seems to lie in the fact that sleep is a

condition of diminished social activity, in which the individual is

withdrawn from active social life, and is therefore also withdrawn from

the protection of the society. After eating turtle the initiate is in

urgent need of the protection of the society, which would be lost to

him if he were permitted to sleep. After a death, when the corpse

remains in the camp all night the people remain awake, and since there

is no other common activity in which they can join, they sing, and thus

protect themselves from the spirits that are present as the cause of

the death.

This explanation implies that all conditions of diminished social

activity on the part of an individual are dangerous. One example of

such a condition is sickness, in which the sick person is unable to

pursue his ordinary occupations. Other examples are afforded by a

mother, and to a certain extent a father during the period preceding

and following the birth of a child, and by a woman during the menstrual

period. All these, as various customs show, are believed by the

Andamanese to be conditions of danger in which it is necessary to take

ritual or magical precautions. A better example for our purpose is that

of an adolescent during the period covered by the initiation

ceremonies, when, as we have seen, he is as it were cut off from the

society, and there is abundant evidence that the Andamanese believe

this to be a state of danger. Another example is the condition of a

homicide during the period of his isolation. Lastly, we have seen that

a mourner is cut off from the ordinary social life, and it may now be

noted that the native explanation of the restrictions observed in that

state is that if things were not done thus the mourner would be ill; in

other words the condition of mourning is one of danger, and the ritual

referring to it is the means by which the danger (from the spirit

world) is avoided. This explanation does not conflict with the one

previously given but on the contrary we can now see that the notion

that the mourner is in a position partly withdrawn from active

participation in social life necessarily involves the belief that he is

in a condition of danger.

We may conclude that every condition in which the individual is

withdrawn from full participation in active social life is regarded as

dangerous for him, and that this is at least one of the reasons why

sleep is so regarded. We have already noted that all conditions of

danger tend to be thought of as due to contact with the spirits, and

sleep is therefore supposed to be a state in which such contact is

easier than in waking life. Now sleep is visited by dreams and it comes

about that the dream-life, by reason of its contrast with waking-life,

is seized upon by the Andamanese as a means by which the nature of the

spirit world may be represented to the imagination.

The Andaman Islander seems to regard the dream-world as a world of

shadows or reflections, for he uses the same word to denote a shadow, a

reflection in a mirror, and a dream (the stem -ǰumu in Aka-J̌eru). Now

when a man enters this shadow-world in sleep he is, as we have seen,

conceived as coming into partial contact with the world of spirits.

Hence the Andaman Islander believes that in dreams he may communicate

with the spirits, that dreams may be a cause of sickness, and that in

dreams a medicine-man can cause or cure sickness in his fellows. In

this shadow-world the man himself becomes as it were a shadow, a mere

reflection of himself; it is not he that lives and acts in his dreams

but his ot-ǰumulo, his double, his shadow-self, or, as we might say,

his soul. It is but a step from this to the representation of the

spirit-world as a similar world of shadows and dream-shapes, and to the

conclusion that when a man dies it is his ot-ǰumulo that becomes the

spirit.

To summarise the argument, the belief in the world of spirits rests on

the actual fact that a dead person continues to affect the society. As

the effect is one of disorganisation, whereby the social sentiments are

wounded, the dead are avoided and the spirits are regarded with fear.

But as a recently dead person is still regarded with feelings of

attachment by his friends, the resulting final attitude towards the

spirits is ambivalent. By a simple step the spirits come to be regarded

as the cause of sickness and death, and therefore as hostile to living

men. Yet, as the beliefs about medicine-men show, it is possible for

exceptional individuals to be on terms of friendship with the spirits.

Finally, the dream-life affords a means by which the spirit-world may

be represented in a simple and concrete manner. This last feature (the

association of the spirits with dreams) I believe to be a secondary

elaboration of the primary or fundamental belief which shows itself in

the ritual of death and mourning, serving only to rationalise it and

make it more concrete. This need of concrete representation of the

spirit-world shows itself in other beliefs, in which may be seen the

tendency to become self-contradictory that is often the mark of ideas

that arise as the result of attempts to rationalise conative and

affective impulses. The spirits are, on the one hand, as it were

shadows or images of living men, and yet, since they are feared and

disliked, they are often represented as being repulsive and inhuman,

with long legs and short bodies, with long beards and ugly faces [176].

The spirits must be thought of as somewhere, but there is no

consistency in the statements as to where that somewhere is; one man

will say that they live in the sky, another that they are under the

earth, a third will point to a particular island as their home; at the

same time it is evident from other statements that they vaguely

conceive them as being everywhere, in the forest and the sea.

We are now in a position to understand what the Andaman Islander means

when he says that the danger he fears from food is from the spirits.

The greatest evil that can happen to the community is the sickness or

death of its members, and these are believed to be the work of the

spirits. The sense of the social value of food takes the form of a

belief that food is dangerous, and inevitably the danger comes to be

conceived as that of sickness or death, and is therefore associated in

their minds with the spirits.

But there is a more fundamental reason than this. I have tried to show

that it is because food has such important effects for good and evil on

the social life that it is believed to be endued with a peculiar power

which makes it necessary to approach it with ritual precautions. If

this thesis be valid it should be capable of generalisation, and we

should find the same power attributed to every object or being that is

capable of affecting in important ways the well-being of the society.

We should expect that the Andamanese would attribute this power not

only to the more important things used for food but also to such things

as the weather and dead men (i.e., the spirits). Now this, if the

argument has been correct, is exactly what we do find, and we have here

the reason why the Andaman Islander, when asked what he fears from

eating dangerous foods, replies that he fears sickness or the spirits

of the dead.

We may formulate in precise language the beliefs that underlie the

ceremonial, remembering always that the Andaman Islanders themselves

are quite incapable of expressing these beliefs in words and are

probably only vaguely conscious of them. (1) There is a power or force

in all objects or beings that in any way affect the social life. (2) It

is by virtue of this power that such things are able to aid or harm the

society. (3) The power, no matter what may be the object or being in

which it is present, is never either essentially good or essentially

evil, but is able to produce both good and evil results. (4) Any

contact with the power is dangerous, but the danger is avoided by

ritual precautions. (5) The degree of power possessed by anything is

directly proportioned to the importance of the effects that it has on

the social life. (6) The power in one thing may be used to counteract

the danger due to contact with the power in some other thing.

We have studied this power in the animals and plants used for food and

the things used as materials. It is this that makes turtle dangerous to

eat and Anadendron fibre dangerous to prepare, and it is this also that

makes animal bones or the leaves of Hibiscus available for protection.

We have now seen that the same power is present in dead men, in their

bodies, their bones, and in the spirit-world to which dead men go. All

contact with the world of the dead is highly dangerous, and yet we have

seen that human bones may be used for protection and that even the

spirits may be induced to heal sickness or allay storms. We have also

seen that the same power is present in the oko-ǰumu, and we have made

the important discovery that it is through contact with the spirits

that he acquires the power. This reveals another important principle.

(7) If an individual comes into contact with the power in any thing and

successfully avoids the danger of such contact, he becomes himself

endowed with power of the same kind as that with which he is in

contact. Now although the oko-ǰumu possesses a very special social

value, yet every man and woman has some social value, some of that

power which makes any being capable of affecting the society for good

or ill, and we can now see that the initiation ceremonies are the means

by which the individual is endowed with power (or, as the natives say,

made strong) by being brought into contact with the special power

present in each of the important kinds of food. The initiation of the

ordinary man or woman is parallel to the initiation of the oko-ǰumu

save that in one instance it is the power in foods and in the other

that in the spirits with which the initiation is concerned.

It has been held in this chapter that the society or the social life

itself is the chief source of protection against danger for the

individual. If this be so then the society itself possesses this same

power with which we are dealing, and we must expect to find that

contact with this power is also dangerous for the individual. Now the

occasion on which the individual comes into contact with the power in

the society is in the dance, and I found evidence that the natives

believe that dancing is dangerous in exactly the same way as eating

food. Confirmation of this will appear later.

It would seem that for the Andaman Islander the social life is a

process of complex interaction of powers or forces present in the

society itself, in each individual, in animals and plants and the

phenomena of nature, and in the world of spirits, and on these powers

the well-being of the society and its members depends. By the action of

the principle of opposition the society—the world of the living—comes

to be opposed to the spirits—the world of the dead. The society itself

is the chief source of protection to the individual; the spirits are

the chief source of danger. Hence all protection tends to be referred

to the society and all danger to the spirits. In the initiation

ceremonies it is the society that protects the initiate against the

dangers of food, and those dangers are referred, generally if not quite

consistently, to the spirits, with which at first sight they would seem

to have nothing to do.

It is now at last possible to understand the uses of the word ot-kimil

which were first discussed on page 267 above. When the word is used in

reference to a person who has just partaken of food it denotes a

condition of danger produced by contact with the power in foods. This

condition results at any time from the eating of any of the more

important foods, but is clearly produced in an extreme form when a food

such as turtle or pork is being eaten for the first time at a ceremony

of initiation. Hence the initiate is most intensely kimil and is

therefore addressed and spoken of by that term, or as we might say “the

kimil person.”

Used in reference to sickness the word denotes a condition of danger

due to contact with that power (in the spirits or in food) which is the

cause of sickness. Used in reference to storms it again denotes a

condition of danger for the society. Storms are sometimes said to be

caused by the spirits [177]. This is also the explanation of the use of

the word to denote a particular season of the year. The Kimil season is

by no means hot, but cool; it is, however, the season at which violent

cyclones are most likely to occur, being the period of the change from

the south-west to the north-east monsoon. It is therefore a season of

danger to the society from that power which produces storms.

Finally, a man who has joined in a dance is said to be ot-kimil and

seems to be regarded as being in a condition of danger similar to that

produced by food. It might be thought that in this instance the word is

only used in its literal meaning of “hot,” but I believe that this is

not so. The dance is the occasion on which the individual comes most

closely into contact with the power in the society itself, and I

believe that this contact is regarded as dangerous and therefore as

making the individual ot-kimil.

Thus we see that in its various uses the word ot-kimil denotes a

condition of danger due to contact with that power on the interaction

of the different manifestations of which the well-being of the society

depends.

How is it then that to denote this condition the Andamanese use a word

which, primarily, seems to mean “heat”? The answer is that they

conceive the qualities that give to objects their social values as

being the manifestations of a kind of energy, and as being similar to

the kind of energy which they know best, that of heat. The

psychological basis of this is not difficult to discover. The eating of

food is productive of bodily heat (the Andamanese live in a hot climate

and eat much fat, it must be remembered), so that the power present in

foods is inevitably thought of as a sort of heat or heat-producing

energy. In the dance the Andaman Islander experiences, as we have seen,

an increase in his own personal force or energy, and this also is

associated with the sensation of bodily heat produced by dancing. All

other bodily activities result in the sensation of heat (in hunting and

work of all kinds) and as it is in his activities that the social value

of the individual is manifested this value is itself conceived as a

sort of heat-producing energy. Further the Andamanese seem to associate

with the idea of heat all conditions of mental activity and excitement.

We ourselves do the same, as shown by such words as “ardour,” “zeal,”

etc. and such phrases as “the heat of anger, or enthusiasm,” and there

is good ground for thinking that all such associations or symbolisms

(sensory metaphors) have a physiological basis. Finally, fire which (as

we shall see better in the next chapter) is regarded by the Andamanese

as the most important possession of the society, and which (as we have

already seen) has in a very high degree the power that makes objects

capable of affecting the society, is for this reason in a suitable

position to become the archetype of all forms of energy, activity or

force. This system of notions of the Andamanese that the world is the

arena of a continual struggle of forces present in the society itself,

in each individual, in the substances that are used for foods and

materials, in fire, in storms and sunshine, and in the spirits and

bones of the dead, is, as I have tried to show, the result not of any

process of reasoning but of the immediate social experience, and as it

is in the heat of his own body, and in states of excitement of his own

mind, that the individual does actually experience the effects of these

forces upon himself he uses the same word to denote all conditions of

heat and all conditions of the manifestation of this energy, organising

around that word as well as he can his somewhat vague conceptions.

In case this symbolism should still seem strange, and the explanation

of it unsatisfactory, it is as well to show by means of a couple of

quotations that in other primitive societies differing widely from the

Andamanese similar uses of the words hot and heat are to be found. In

his work on the Achehnese (Vol. I, p. 305) C. Snouck Hurgronje writes

thus of the natives of the Malay Archipelago: “In the native language

of the E. Archipelago all happiness, rest and well-being are united

under the concept of ‘coolness,’ while the words ‘hot’ and ‘heat’

typify all the powers of evil. Thus when a person has either just

endured the attack of a ‘hot’ influence or has luckily contrived to

escape it, the adat prescribes methods of ‘cooling’ in order to confirm

him in the well-being which he has recovered or escaped losing. The

same methods are also adopted for charming away evil things and baneful

influences, the removal of which is regarded as an imperative

necessity. For instance, the completion of a house, and various

domestic festivities, are made the occasion for a process of ‘cooling’;

so also with a ship when newly built or after holding of a kanduri on

board; and before the padi is planted out the ground must be purified

from ‘hot’ or dangerous influences.” In this instance we find the word

“hot” used only in reference to evil forces. In the Andamans there is

no line drawn between good and evil forces. In spite of the differences

between them it is clear that the same mental process is responsible

for the symbolic use of the word “hot” in the Andamans and in the Malay

Archipelago.

In Codrington’s The Melanesians, p. 191, we find an example of the same

mode of thought. “That invisible power which is believed by the natives

to cause all such effects as transcend their conception of the regular

course of nature and to reside in spiritual beings, whether in the

spiritual part of living men or in the ghosts of the dead, being

imparted by them to their names and to various things that belong to

them, such as stones, snakes, and indeed objects of all sorts, is that

generally known as mana. By means of this men are able to control or

direct the forces of nature, to make rain or sunshine, wind or calm, to

cause sickness or remove it, to know what is far off in time and space,

to bring good luck or prosperity or to blast and curse. In the New

Hebrides, the Banks’ Islands, the Solomon Islands about Florida as in

New Zealand and many of the Pacific Islands the word in use is mana. In

Santa Cruz a different word malete is used, which bears however the

same meaning. At Saa in Malanta all persons and things in which this

supernatural power resides are said to be saka, that is, hot. Ghosts

that are powerful are saka; a man who has knowledge of the things which

have spiritual power is himself saka; one who knows a charm which is

saka mutters it over water, saru’e and makes the water ‘hot,’ ha’asaka.

The people of Mala Masiki, the lesser part of the island, which is cut

in two not far from its south-eastern end by a narrow channel, think

that the men of the larger part, Mala Paina, are very saka. If one of

these visiting the Saa people points with his finger, suisui, there is

danger of death or calamity; if one of them spits on a man he dies at

once.” Here again there are important differences, as might be expected

in such different cultures as those of Melanesia and the Andamans, and

yet it is clear that there is a fundamental similarity of mental

process.

The nature of this symbolic representation of the forces that affect

the social life may be made clear by considering another example. The

natives say that they use odu clay after eating because their bodies

give off an odour which would attract the spirits if they did not paint

themselves. The power of an object, by virtue of which it has what may

be called magical efficacy, is sometimes identified with its odour. A

number of the plants that are used as remedies for sickness, such as

the Trigonostemon, are possessed of strong and characteristic odours,

and the natives think that it is through the odour that they effect a

cure. Similarly the powerful properties attributed to the Anadendron,

whereby it will cause rheumatism, keep away sharks and spirits, and

turn turtle-meat bad, or stop a storm, are all said to be the results

of its “smell.” The stimulating power of olfactory sensations probably

has much to do with the development of these beliefs, but the

discussion of their psycho-physiological basis would lead us too far

away from the main subject, interesting as it would be.

In the jungles of the Andamans it is possible to recognize a distinct

succession of odours during a considerable part of the year as one

after another the commoner trees and lianas come into flower. When, for

example, the species of Sterculia called in the North Andaman ǰeru

comes into blossom, it is almost impossible to get away from the smell

of it except on the sea-shore when the wind is from the sea. Moreover

these various flowers give their scent to the honey that is made from

them, so that there is also a succession of differently flavoured kinds

of honey. The Andamanese have therefore adopted an original method of

marking the different periods of the year by means of the different

odoriferous flowers that are in bloom at different times. Their

calendar is a calendar of scents [178].

Now they seem to regard each flower-period as possessing its own

particular kind of force, of which the scent is the manifest sign, and

to think that the succession of these different forces produces the

succession of different fruits, the whole generative energy of nature

being conceived as the result not of one force but of many, following

one another in regular rotation. When a girl reaches puberty the

natives think of her as having blossomed as it were, the later ripening

being the birth of her children, and so she, like the plants of the

jungle, is under the influence of the same natural forces that produce

the successive blossoming and fruiting of the different species.

Therefore, when a girl reaches her blossoming time she is given, for a

name, to be used until she bears her fruit, the name of that particular

odoriferous plant that is in flower at the time, it being this

particular one of the successive forces of the forest life that has

brought her childhood to an end.

Under the influence of muscular exertion the human body gives off a

characteristic odour, of one generic kind, but differing somewhat in

every individual. The odour of the body, being the immediate result of

activity, may therefore well be regarded by the Andamanese as being

closely connected with the virtue or energy of the person. Further, the

eating of certain foods, such as dugong, turtle and pork, causes the

body of the Andaman Islander to give out a noticeable and recognizable

odour, different from that of mere perspiration. The natives themselves

seem to distinguish different odours for these different foods, but I

was not myself able to appreciate such differences. The Andamanese see

in this odour given off after eating a manifestation of the energy that

has been absorbed with the food, which energy it is that makes the food

both necessary for life and also a source of danger. This seems to be

the meaning of the belief that the spirits are attracted to a man by

the odour of the food he has eaten unless he paint himself with clay.

We can now at last return to the rite of painting the body with odu

clay after eating. I have suggested that the use of this clay in

mourning is a means by which the mourner marks the fact that he is in a

peculiar relation to the spirit-world, spirits being believed to be

light in colour. The mourner is in contact with the spirit-world

through his connection with the dead person, and to mark his condition

he paints himself to resemble the spirits, thereby affirming his

solidarity with them. The clay protects him from the danger that

results from any contact with the spirit-world. According to the rule

of method laid down at the beginning of the chapter we must find a

similar explanation of the use of odu after eating.

We have seen that it is the same kind of force in the spirits and in

the animals used for food that makes them both dangerous. Yet at the

same time there is a sense in which it is true that each kind of thing

has its own peculiar kind of force. The ceremony of turtle-eating

endows a youth with power to avoid the dangers of turtle but it does

not give him the power to avoid the dangers of pork. Hibiscus leaves

are efficacious against turtle, but against the pig Tetranthera leaves

must be used. In describing the patterns painted on the body after

eating it was stated that there is a tendency to connect particular

types of pattern with particular kinds of food. Thus a design commonly

used after eating turtle suggests the plates of the turtle’s carapace,

and a pattern used after eating pork similarly suggests the

longitudinal markings on the pig’s back. This would seem to indicate

that when a man has eaten turtle he paints himself so as to identify

himself with the animal he has eaten, and similarly with other foods,

just as in mourning he paints himself so as to identify himself with

the spirit-world. In other words, the painting of the body with odu

serves to show that there is a relation between the individual and some

source of power, which relation can best be described as one of

solidarity with the species, whether of animals or supernatural beings,

in which the power resides. The mourner is in contact with the

dangerous powers of the world of death, and by expressing his

solidarity with that world he avoids the dangers that might result from

his condition. For the fear of any being and a feeling of solidarity

towards that being are incompatible with one another. Similarly a man

who has eaten turtle is in contact with the power that resides in the

turtle species, a power that may be dangerous, but which when mastered

and made use of by proper precautions is a source of well-being, of

strength. By painting himself with a pattern that reminds him in some

way of the turtle he expresses his solidarity with the turtle species

and so obviates the dangers of his condition.

This interpretation is made more probable by the consideration of the

dances of the initiation ceremonies. In the dance at the turtle-eating

ceremony the movements of the dancers suggest the movements of a turtle

swimming. If the resemblance be not imaginary we may regard this as

another method of affirming the solidarity of the dancers with the

turtle species. We should then have to conclude that the dance at the

pig-eating ceremony is similarly imitative of the movements of a pig,

and though this is quite possible it is not so obvious.

This same kind of clay is used in the initiation ceremonies. At the

turtle-eating and pig-eating ceremonies it is spattered over the body

of the initiate from head to foot. I have no explanation to offer for

this peculiar method of application. After the ceremony is over the

initiate is painted with clay in a pattern called kimil-t’e̱ra-puli

which consists of a background of the clay on which a pattern of

separate spirals is made with the finger. The pattern is to be seen in

Plate XI. I cannot put forward with any confidence the explanation I

have to offer of this pattern, for I have no means of confirming it,

and it is therefore little more than a guess. It is that the spiral or

circle is a symbol of the camp and therefore of the society and the

social life in general, the basis of the symbolism being the roughly

circular or elliptical form of the village or communal hut, and the

circular form of the dance (more noticeable in the Little Andaman than

in the Great Andaman). If this be really the meaning of the symbol then

the explanation of its use in the initiation ceremonies would be that

in these ceremonies the youth is preserved from danger by the force

inherent in the society, which affords protection to all its members,

and the use of the symbol of the society would therefore be most

appropriate.

The act of painting the body with odu clay is therefore a rite which

advertises the fact that an individual is in intimate contact with some

source of that power which belongs to the things that affect the social

life, and it thereby serves to keep alive the sentiments associated

with that notion of power. The painting after eating reminds the

individual of his dependence upon and obligation towards the society,

and, since all join in the rite, it serves also to maintain the unity

of the community.

We may now return to the question of the meaning of personal ornament

in general. It is a commonplace of psychology that the development of

the sense of self is closely connected with the perception of one’s own

body. It is also generally recognized that the development of the moral

and social sentiments in man is dependent upon the development of

self-consciousness, of the sense of self. These two important

principles will help us to appreciate the hypothesis to which the

discussion has now led, that in the Andamans the customary regulation

of personal ornament is a means by which the society acts upon,

modifies, and regulates the sense of self in the individual.

There are three methods of ornamenting the body in the Andamans, (1) by

scarification, (2) by painting, and (3) by the putting on of ornaments.

The natives give two reasons for the custom of scarification, that it

improves the personal appearance and that it makes the boy or girl grow

up strong. Both these mean that scarification gives or marks an added

value. The explanation of the rite would therefore seem to be that it

marks the passage from childhood to manhood and is a means by which the

society bestows upon the individual that power, or social value, which

is possessed by the adult but not by the child. The individual is made

to feel that his value—his strength and the qualities of which he may

be proud—is not his by nature but is received by him from the society

to which he is admitted. The scars on his body are the visible marks of

his admission. The individual is proud or vain of the scars which are

the mark of his manhood, and thus the society makes use of the very

powerful sentiment of personal vanity to strengthen the social

sentiments.

Turning now to the painting of the body, we have seen that the pattern

of white clay serves to make both the painted individual and those who

see him feel his social value, and we have seen that this

interpretation explains the occasions on which such painting is used.

To complete the argument it is necessary to consider the occasions on

which the use of white clay is forbidden.

Those to whom this prohibition applies are (1) a youth or girl who is

aka-op, i.e., who is abstaining from certain foods during the

initiation period, (2) a mourner, (3) a homicide during the period of

isolation, and (4) a person who is ill. All these persons are excluded

from full participation in the active social life, and therefore the

social value of each of them is diminished. It would obviously be wrong

for a person in such a condition to express by decorating himself a

social value that he did not at the time possess.

The occasions on which this style of painting is used or forbidden are

thus all satisfactorily explained by our hypothesis. It remains to

consider the nature of the painting itself, and how far it is an

appropriate means of expression. To do this we must discuss very

briefly some of the processes of symbolic thought of the Andamanese.

Conditions of well-being (both individual and social) are associated in

the minds of the Andamanese with fine weather, both directly (through

physiological action) and indirectly (through the effect of fine

weather on the social life). Hence Tomo, who, as we shall see in the

next chapter, is a personification of fine weather, is a being who is

connected with goodness and happiness. With fine weather, and therefore

with individual and social well-being, the Andamanese associate

brightness and whiteness (for which they have only one word) and any

bright or light colour. The association of light and dark with euphoric

and dysphoric conditions respectively has a psycho-physical basis, for

it seems to be universal in human nature. Now the clay that the

Andamanese call to̱l-odu is the whitest substance they know, and is for

this reason fitted to be symbolical of conditions of well-being. Fine

weather is associated, in the minds of the Andamanese with honey,

because in the season of fine weather honey is plentiful, and is also

associated for a similar reason with snakes. Sweetness itself is

universally associated with pleasant things, again through a

psycho-physical link. The Andamanese believe in a special connection

between honey and a species of large snake called wara-ǰobo or or-čubi

[179], so that this snake comes to be representative of fine weather

and sweetness and therefore generally of states of well-being. Now,

throughout the Great Andaman the pattern in which white clay is painted

on the body is called after this snake, and the zig-zags of which the

pattern is composed may be supposed to be representative of the snake

itself. When, therefore, a man paints himself with white clay in a

pattern which he regards as representing the snake wara-ǰobo, it is

evident that the painting is meant to express a condition of

well-being, with which the snake itself, and whiteness, are, by a

number of links, closely associated. This is not all, however. The

Andamanese, we may not doubt, derive from the painted pattern an

esthetic pleasure due to its rhythmical character, its shape as an

arrangement of lines and spaces. Further it provides the pleasure that

we obtain from a thing elegantly and skilfully made, and this explains

why so much care is taken in the making of the pattern. This pleasure

at what we may call the beauty of the pattern heightens the effect

produced by its symbolic references. The real value of the pattern, its

pleasure-giving quality, is transferred to the man on whose body it is

executed. He himself is pleased with it, proud of it, and so becomes

pleased with and proud of himself, for the pattern by being imprinted

on his body becomes part of him. The sense of self attaches to it, as

with us the sense of self attaches to our clothes.

It would be interesting to carry the analysis of the mental processes

involved in all this a stage or two further, but enough has been said,

I hope, to show that the nature of the painting with clay is

appropriate to its use as marking or expressing value.

Patterns are sometimes painted with this same white clay on the face

alone, such patterns being built up either of the zig-zags of the snake

pattern, or of rhythmically arranged series of short lines. The use of

such paintings is regulated by a sort of etiquette. By so having his

face decorated a man expresses that he is pleased with himself, and

obviously there are occasions on which it is appropriate and others on

which it is inappropriate that he should feel thus. A man who has been

successful in the day’s hunting, for example, is quite justified in

having his face ornamented in this way, and it is on such occasions as

this that the custom is observed.

When a man is painted for a dance, or on any other ceremonial occasion,

with white clay, he is also painted at the same time with red paint. In

these instances we must suppose that the red paint serves the same

purpose as the pattern of white clay with which it is combined, namely

to make the decorated person pleasantly aware of his or her social

value. Red paint is also used, however, in sickness, and on other

occasions, as affording protection against evil, particularly evil from

the spirit-world.

This double use of red paint is to be explained by reference to the

colour symbolism of the Andaman Islanders. For them the colour red is

pre-eminently the colour of blood and of fire. There is ample evidence

of this which it is perhaps not necessary to state. Now blood is

identified with the warmth of the body and with life; the blood and the

fat are sometimes spoken of as the two vital principles. Fire, as I

have already shown, is taken as a symbol of activity and of mental

excitement. Thus the colour comes to be associated in the minds of the

Andamanese with all euphoric conditions, with excitement, vitality,

mental and bodily activity, and with energy or force in general. It is

possible that this symbolism, which seems to be much the same in all

divisions of mankind, has a psycho-physical basis in the stimulating

dynamogenic power of sensations of redness.

When a person is sick he is in need of vitality, of energy, and so his

body is daubed with the red paint that is a symbol of the things that

he needs, and by a simple mental process he comes to believe that by

applying the paint to his body he increases his energy and vitality,

and so helps himself to get rid of the sickness. At a dance, or on

other ceremonial occasions, it is required that the individual shall

have a sense of his own value, and for this he must experience that

sense of personal force and vitality that is produced, as we have seen,

by the action of the dance. This effect is reinforced by the use of the

red paint which is the symbol of that condition of energy and vitality

that it is (for some special reason) necessary for him to feel. As the

value of the individual depends upon his strength or force, the red

paint is thus a suitable means of expressing the value of him on whose

body it is painted, and really expresses, though by different means,

exactly the same thing as the pattern of white clay with which it is

combined.

We are now in a position to understand the use of white clay and red

paint in the purification of a homicide. This takes place at the end of

a period of isolation, during which the man is entirely cut off from

the social life, and lives in a condition of supposed extreme danger on

account of the blood that he has shed. During this time he may not use

his hands to touch food, and at the end his hands are purified by the

application to them of red paint and white clay. It is clearly because

these two substances are both of them in different ways symbols of

conditions of well-being that magical virtue is ascribed to their use

in this instance. It is perhaps worth while to recall that both red

ochre and white clay are sometimes given internally as remedies against

sickness.

For the sake of the argument it has been necessary to separate the two

motives underlying the use of personal ornament, the desire for

protection and the desire for display. But we now see that these two

motives are very intimately related and are really both involved in

every kind of ornament. All ornament in some way marks the relation of

the individual to the society and to that force or power in the society

to which he owes his well-being and happiness. When painting or

ornament is used to give protection, it is, as we have seen, the

protective power of the society itself that is appealed to, and what is

expressed is the dependence of the individual on the society. When

ornament or paint is used for display it is again the dependence on the

society that is expressed, though in a different way and on occasions

of a different kind. We have seen that scarification is also a means of

marking the dependence of the individual on the society, and it is very

important to note that the Andamanese sometimes explain it as due to

the desire for display and sometimes to the need of protection

(enabling the child to grow strong and so avoid the dangers of

sickness), showing very clearly that there is some intimate connection

between these two motives, or at any rate that one and the same method

of ornamentation can satisfy both. There is the further example of red

paint, which is combined with the pattern of white clay for purposes of

display, and is also constantly used in many ways as affording

protection.

We are thus brought to the final conclusion that the scarification and

painting of the body and the wearing of most if not all of the

customary ornaments are rites which have the function of marking the

fact that the individual is in a particular permanent or temporary

relation to that power in the society and in all things that affect the

social life, the notion of which we have seen to underlie so much of

the Andaman ceremonial.

The scarification of a boy or girl leaves permanent marks of the

permanent relation between the adult and the society. By means of it

and the initiation ceremonies that follow or accompany it, and of which

it may really be considered to be a part, the society gives the

individual his social value, of which the scars remain as a visible

sign for him to be proud of, and at the same time endows him with the

power to avoid the dangers with which his life is beset.

The paintings of clay after food mark the temporary relation between

the individual and the power present in the food he has eaten. It is

chiefly thought of by the natives themselves as protective, as we have

seen, but it also gives an opportunity for the exercise of personal

vanity, for much care is taken in the designing and execution of the

pattern, which therefore affords the painted individual much the same

sort of satisfaction as the snake pattern of white clay. It calls his

attention to his own appearance, and makes him feel pleased or

satisfied with himself, conscious of his own personal value. A

condition of unity and harmony is produced in the community by a feast

as well as by a dance, and in each instance that harmony is expressed

by the painting of every member with the same material in a similar

design. The relation of the individual to the society is made visible

on his body. By means of the paintings after food the society not only

protects itself from danger but also rejoices in the well-being that is

produced by a supply of relished food. Inversely it can now also be

shown that the painting of white clay and red paint worn at a dance and

after marriage and initiation is not only a means of display but is

also protective. Both red paint and white clay are used to give

protection in sickness, and they are similarly used in the purification

of the hands of a homicide. Moreover we have seen, in reference to the

word ot-kimil, that the dance is a condition of danger by reason of the

contact it involves between the individual and the power of the

society. The few days following an initiation ceremony are definitely

believed to be a period of danger for the initiate, and during this

time the pattern of white clay and red paint must not be washed off but

must be allowed to wear off. By the time the last traces of the pattern

have disappeared the danger is considered to be over. There is evidence

that the first few days of marriage are regarded as a period of danger.

It would seem that the natives do attribute to the painting with white

clay and red paint some power of protection, but this is hidden under

the importance of such painting as a means of display.

Of the various ornaments that are worn on the body some would seem to

be worn almost solely for purposes of display, because they are

pleasing to the eye. Such are the necklaces and other ornaments of

small shells. It would seem that the same motive is also responsible

for the use of the yellow skin of the Dendrobium of which the

Andamanese are so fond. The ornaments of netting and shell seem to be

worn primarily for display, but it is quite possible that some

protective power is attributed to them, as to the paintings of white

clay with which they are regularly worn. The belts of Pandanus leaf

that are worn by women are a mark of the sex, and the style of belt

worn differs with the social status of the woman. They thus serve to

exhibit the special social value of the woman in so far as it depends

upon her sex and her social status, but I believe that the Andamanese

attribute to the belt and to the apron of leaves worn with it a power

of protection against the special dangers to which women are believed

to be subject. This is suggested by the use of the Pandanus leaf in the

ceremony at a girl’s first menstruation [180]. I failed to discover any

special ideas connected with the ornaments of Pandanus leaf that are

sometimes worn by both men and women at dances. The ornaments that are

worn primarily for their protective power are those made of human and

animal bones and those of pieces of canes or of fibres of Hibiscus or

Ficus. These are always made decorative by the addition of shells and

yellow Dendrobium skin, and therefore besides their primary function

also serve as means of display.

It is clear then that in the various methods of ornamenting the body

the two chief motives that we have considered are so combined that they

can hardly be estimated separately, and it is this mingling of motives

that has led us to the final understanding of the meaning and social

function of bodily ornament. Each of the different kinds of ornament

serves to make manifest the existence of some special relation between

the individual and the society, and therefore of some special relation

between him and that system of powers on which the welfare of the

society and of the individual depends. One of the most important

aspects of the relation of the individual to the society is his

dependence upon it for his safety and well-being and this is revealed

in all painting and ornament worn for protection. But the society not

only protects the individual from danger; it is the direct source of

his well-being; and this makes itself felt in the customary regulation

by which the use of the more important ornaments used for display is

confined to occasions on which it is quite clear that his happiness is

directly due to the society, such as a dance or feast. Thus the customs

relating to the ornamentation of the body are of the kind that I have

here called ceremonial. They are means by which the society exercises

on appropriate occasions some of the important social sentiments,

thereby maintaining them at the necessary degree of energy required to

maintain the social cohesion.

To complete the discussion of ornament in general it is necessary to

refer very briefly to the ornamentation of objects such as bows, canoes

and baskets. Such ornamentation consists of (1) incised patterns (on

bows, etc.), which may be compared with the scarification of the body,

(2) painting with red paint and white clay (bows, canoes, skulls,

etc.), or with prepared wax (Nautilus shell cups, etc.), (3) patterns

made with the yellow skin of the Dendrobium (baskets, etc.), and (4)

shells attached by thread (baskets, baby-sling, etc.). The important

point to note is that the decoration applied to utensils is of the same

character throughout as that which, when applied to the body, has been

shown to be an expression of the social value of the person. Thus the

pattern painted on a canoe with white clay and red paint is the same as

that on the body of a dancer. It would seem, therefore, that the

ornamentation of utensils is a means of expressing or marking the

social value of the decorated object, and it might even be held that

the application of ornament to utensils is really a matter of

ceremonial. Just as a newly married man is painted with the snake

pattern which wears off and is not renewed, so a new canoe or a new

South Andaman bow is painted with the same pattern as soon as it is

finished, and after this pattern wears off it is not renewed. It is the

act of bringing a new canoe or bow into use that is the occasion of the

ceremonial expression of its value, if we may so regard the painting. A

new relation is established between the society and an object, which

thereby acquires a special social value, just as a youth acquires a

special new social value at the conclusion of one of the initiation

ceremonies. This example is sufficient to show that at least there is

nothing in the ornamentation of utensils that conflicts with the

explanation of bodily ornament given in this chapter [181].

It is time to bring the argument to a conclusion. It should now, I

hope, be evident that the ceremonial customs of the Andaman Islands

form a closely connected system, and that we cannot understand their

meaning if we only consider each one by itself, but must study the

whole system to arrive at an interpretation. This in itself I regard as

a most important conclusion, for it justifies the contention that we

must substitute for the old method of dealing with the customs of

primitive people,—the comparative method by which isolated customs from

different social types were brought together and conclusions drawn from

their similarity,—a new method by which all the institutions of one

society or social type are studied together so as to exhibit their

intimate relations as parts of an organic system.

I have tried to show that the ceremonial customs are the means by which

the society acts upon its individual members and keeps alive in their

minds a certain system of sentiments. Without the ceremonial those

sentiments would not exist, and without them the social organisation in

its actual form could not exist. There is great difficulty, however, in

finding a suitable method of describing these sentiments. In attempting

to put into precise words the vague feelings of the Andaman Islander

there is always the danger that we may attribute to him conceptions

that he does not possess. For he is not himself capable of thinking

about his own sentiments.

In the attempt to exhibit the meaning of the ceremonial I have shown

that it implies a complex system of beliefs about what I have called

power, and have stated those beliefs in more or less precise terms. But

the Andaman Islander is of course quite incapable of making similar

statements or even of understanding them. In his consciousness appear

only the very vaguest conceptions, such as those associated with the

word kimil or with odours. We, in order to understand his customs must

substitute for such vague notions others capable of precise statement,

must formulate in words the beliefs that are revealed in his actions,

but we must be careful not to fall into the error of attributing to him

the conceptions by which we make clear to ourselves his indefinite

sentiments and notions and the ceremonies in which they are expressed.

With this qualification, then, the ceremonial of the Andaman Islands

may be said to involve the assumption of a power of a peculiar kind,

and we have been able to formulate certain principles which, although

the native is quite incapable of stating them as principles, are

revealed in the ceremonial. This power, though in itself neither good

nor evil, is the source of all good and all evil in human life. It is

present in the society itself and in everything that can affect in

important ways the social life. All occasions of special contact with

it are dangerous, i.e., are subject to ritual precautions.

It should already, from the course of the argument, be plain that this

power or force, the interaction of whose different manifestations

constitutes the process of social life, is not imaginary, is not even

something the existence of which is surmised as the result of

intellectual processes, but is real, an object of actual experience. It

is, in a few words, the moral power of the society acting upon the

individual directly or indirectly and felt by him in innumerable ways

throughout the whole course of his life [182].

One of the most important ways in which the individual experiences the

moral force of the society of which he is a member is through the

feeling of moral obligation, which gives him the experience of a power

compelling him to subordinate his egoistic desires to the demands of

social custom. The individual feels this force acting upon him both

from outside and from inside himself. For he recognizes that it is the

society with its traditions and customs that constrains him through the

force of public opinion, and yet the conflict between customary duty

and selfish inclination takes place in his own mind and is experienced

as the clash of antagonistic mental forces. The moral sense within

impels towards the same end as the social opinion without.

This force of moral obligation is felt not only in relation to right

and wrong conduct towards other persons, but is also felt in all

ritual, whether negative or positive.

The moral force of the society is also felt, in a quite different way,

in all states of intense collective emotion, of which the dance affords

a good example. I have shown how in the dance the individual feels the

society acting upon him, constraining him to join in the common

activity and regulate his actions to conform with those of others, and,

when he so acts in harmony with them, giving him the experience of a

great increase of his own personal force or energy. All ceremonies in

which the whole community takes part give the individual the experience

of the moral force of the society acting upon him in somewhat the same

way as the dance.

Thus in these and other ways the individual does experience the action

of the society upon himself as a sort of force, not however as a

physical force, but as a moral force, acting directly in his own mind

and yet clearly felt as something outside his own self, and with which

that self may be in conflict.

How is it, then, that this force comes to be projected into the world

of nature? The answer to that question, which can only be very briefly

indicated here, is to be found in the conclusions at which we have

arrived with regard to social values. The moral force of the society is

experienced by the individual not only directly but also as acting upon

him indirectly through every object that has social value. The best

example of this process is found in the things used for food. Thus, in

the Andamans, food is very closely connected with the feeling of moral

obligation, as we have seen. Further, food is one of the principal

sources of those alternations of social euphoria and dysphoria in

which, through the action of the collective emotion, the individual

experiences the action of the society upon his own well-being. When

food is plentiful happiness spreads through the community and the time

is spent in dancing and feasting so that the individual feels a great

increase in his own personal force coming to him from the society or

from the food. On the other hand, when food is scarce and hunting

unsuccessful the community feels itself thwarted and restrained and

experiences a sense of weakness, which collective feeling has for its

immediate object the food the lack of which is its origin.

Similarly with the phenomena of the weather and all other objects that

have social value, they are all associated in the mind of the

individual with his experience of the action of the society upon

himself, so that the moral force of the society is actually felt as

acting through them.

But it is really through the ceremonial that this is mainly brought

about. It is in the initiation ceremonies that the moral force of the

society acting through foods is chiefly felt, and the same experience

is repeated in a less intense form in the rite of painting the body

after food. It is similarly through the protective use of the materials

used for weapons and through the various ritual prohibitions connected

with them that the moral force of the society acting through them is

chiefly felt. The argument has been that it is by means of the

ceremonial that the individual is made to feel the social value of the

various things with which the ceremonial is concerned. Putting this in

other words we can now define the ceremonial as the means by which the

individual is made to feel the moral force of the society acting upon

him either directly, or in some instances indirectly through those

things that have important effects on the social life. By its action

upon the individual the ceremonial develops and maintains in existence

in his mind an organised system of dispositions by which the social

life, in the particular form it takes in the Andamans, is made

possible, using for the purpose of maintaining the social cohesion all

the instinctive tendencies of human nature, modifying and combining

them according to its needs.

As an example of such modification of primary instincts let us briefly

consider that of fear, to which, from the time of Petronius [183] to

the present day, so much importance has been attributed in relation to

the origin of religion. In childhood any fear of danger makes the child

run to its mother or father for protection, and thus the instinct of

fear becomes an important component of that feeling of dependence that

the child has towards its parents. The primitive society uses the fear

instinct in much the same way. The Andaman Islander, through the

ceremonies and customs of his people, is made to feel that he is in a

world full of unseen dangers,—dangers from the foods he eats, from the

sea, the weather, the forest and its animals, but above all from the

spirits of the dead,—which can only be avoided by the help of the

society and by conformity with social custom. As men press close to one

another in danger, the belief in and fear of the spirit-world make the

Andaman Islander cling more firmly to his fellows, and make him feel

more intensely his own dependence on the society to which he belongs,

just as the fear of danger makes the child feel its dependence upon its

parents. So the belief in the spirit-world serves directly to increase

the cohesion of the society through its action on the mind of the

individual. An important law of sociology is that the solidarity of a

group is increased when the group as a whole finds itself opposed to

some other group; so, enmity between two tribes or nations increases

the solidarity of each; and so also, the antagonism between the society

of the living and the world of the dead increases the solidarity of the

former.

The argument is now concluded. I have examined, as fully as space would

permit, all the more important features of the Andaman ceremonial, and

have tried to show what part they play in the social life of the

Andamans. At the end of our enquiry it is well to ask if any definition

of ceremonial can be given more exact than the vague one with which we

started. The chapter has shown that what I have denoted as ceremonial

consists of (1) collective actions, (2) required by custom, (3)

performed on occasions of changes in the course of social life, and (4)

expressing the collective sentiments relating to such social change. By

the first part of the definition we exclude the magical practices of

the medicine-men, which however it has been convenient to consider in

connection with the ceremonial, as it has helped us to understand some

of the ideas underlying both magic and ceremonial. If we are not to

exclude the rite of painting after eating food we must regard the

obtaining of a good supply of food as being a change in the course of

social life even though it occurs very frequently, and even every day

for weeks together. It must be admitted, however, that the definition

does not give us any very clear dividing line between ceremonial and

art, play, or morals. The painting of the body with white clay after

marriage or initiation must, I think, be regarded as ceremonial, while

the painting of a new bow or canoe with the same clay in the same

pattern should perhaps more conveniently be called art. But what are we

to say of the painting worn at a dance or the face-painting that a man

occasionally wears when there is no special reason? The dance at the

end of mourning is clearly a ceremony, but can we say the same of the

ordinary dance after a successful hunt? And if it be not ceremonial,

shall we call it art or play? When friends are required to give

presents to a newly-married couple are we to call this obligation one

of ceremonial, of etiquette or of morals? These and similar questions

are perhaps incapable of a satisfactory answer, nor does it seem

necessary to attempt to find one. Those elements of culture that we now

differentiate and call by different names were, in primitive societies,

undifferentiated and not clearly to be distinguished from one another,

and a striving after too great a precision of definition in dealing

with such a culture as that of the Andamans leads, I think, not to a

clearer understanding, but to the opposite. The main thing is to keep

close to the facts. In this chapter I have examined a number of facts

which are plainly related and the question of how we are to label them

is one that may well be left till such time as we shall have acquired a

more profound insight into the nature of culture in general and the

complex forces involved in its existence and growth. For the present,

some vagueness in our provisional classifications need not greatly

perturb us.