Both the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been very closely studied by
Indian Government officials for about fifty years, and they and the people
occupying them are now thoroughly understood. There is a considerable
literature about them, ethnographical, historical, geographical, and so
on.
I have myself been Chief Commissioner, i.e., Administrator, of both
groups for the Government of India for ten years, 1894-1903, and went
deeply into the subjects connected with them, publishing a good many
papers about them in the Indian Antiquary, Journal of the Royal Society
of Arts, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and elsewhere.
A general survey of all information to that date concerning the islands
will be found in the Census of India, 1901, vol. III., which I wrote; in
this volume there is an extensive bibliography. I also wrote the Andaman
and Nicobar volumes of the Provincial and District Gazetteers, published
in 1909, in which current information about them was again summarised. The
most complete and reliable book on the subject is E.H. MAN'S Aboriginal
Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, London, 1883. KLOSS, Andamans and
Nicobars, 1902, is a good book. GERINI'S Researches on Ptolemy's
Geography of Eastern Asia, 1909, is valuable for the present purpose.
The best books on the Nicobars are MAN'S Nicobarese Vocabulary,
published in 1888, and MAN'S Dictionary of the Central Nicobarese
Language, published in 1889. I am still publishing Mr. MAN'S Dictionary
of the South Andaman Language in the Indian Antiquary.
