The Great And The Little, The Former Being
In Truth A Chain Of Three Islands, But So Close And Nearly Continuous As
To Form Apparently One, And To Be Named As Such.
[Illustration: The Borus.
(From a Manuscript.)]
[Professor Schlegel writes (Geog. Notes. I. p. 12): "This etymology is
to be rejected because the old Chinese transcription gives So - (or
Sun) daman.... The Pien-i-tien (ch. 107, I. fol. 30) gives a
description of Andaman, here called An-to-man kwoh, quoted from the
San-tsai Tu-hwui." - H.C.]
The origin of the name seems to be unknown. The only person to my
knowledge who has given a meaning to it is Nicolo Conti, who says it means
"Island of Gold"; probably a mere sailor's yarn. The name, however, is
very old, and may perhaps be traced in Ptolemy; for he names an island of
cannibals called that of Good Fortune, [Greek: Agathou daimonos]. It
seems probable enough that this was [Greek: Agdaimouos Naesos], or the
like, "The Angdaman Island," misunderstood. His next group of Islands is
the Barussae, which seems again to be the Lankha Balus of the oldest
Arab navigators, since these are certainly the Nicobars. [The name first
appears distinctly in the Arab narratives of the 9th century. (Yule,
Hobson-Jobson.)]
The description of the natives of the Andaman Islands in the early Arab
Relations has been often quoted, but it is too like our traveller's
account to be omitted: "The inhabitants of these islands eat men alive.
They are black with woolly hair, and in their eyes and countenance there
is something quite frightful.... They go naked, and have no boats. If they
had they would devour all who passed near them. Sometimes ships that are
wind-bound, and have exhausted their provision of water, touch here and
apply to the natives for it; in such cases the crew sometimes fall into
the hands of the latter, and most of them are massacred" (p. 9).
[Illustration: The Cynocephali. (From the Livre des Merveilles.)]
The traditional charge of cannibalism against these people used to be very
persistent, though it is generally rejected since our settlement upon the
group in 1858. Mr. Logan supposes the report was cherished by those who
frequented the islands for edible birds' nests, in order to keep the
monopoly. Of their murdering the crews of wrecked vessels, like their
Nicobar neighbours, I believe there is no doubt; and it has happened in
our own day. Cesare Federici, in Ramusio, speaks of the terrible fate of
crews wrecked on the Andamans; all such were killed and eaten by the
natives, who refused all intercourse with strangers. A. Hamilton mentions
a friend of his who was wrecked on the islands; nothing more was ever
heard of the ship's company, "which gave ground to conjecture that they
were all devoured by those savage cannibals."
They do not, in modern times, I believe, in their canoes, quit their own
immediate coast, but Hamilton says they used, in his time, to come on
forays to the Nicobar Islands; and a paper in the Asiatic Researches
mentions a tradition to the same effect as existing on the Car Nicobar.
They have retained all the aversion to intercourse anciently ascribed to
them, and they still go naked as of old, the utmost exception being a
leaf-apron worn by the women near the British Settlement.
The Dog-head feature is at least as old as Ctesias. The story originated,
I imagine, in the disgust with which "allophylian" types of countenance
are regarded, kindred to the feeling which makes the Hindus and other
eastern nations represent the aborigines whom they superseded as demons.
The Cubans described the Caribs to Columbus as man-eaters with dogs'
muzzles; and the old Danes had tales of Cynocephali in Finland. A curious
passage from the Arab geographer Ibn Said pays an ambiguous compliment to
the forefathers of Moltke and Von Roon: "The Borus (Prussians) are a
miserable people, and still more savage than the Russians..... One reads
in some books that the Borus have dogs' faces; it is a way of saying
that they are very brave" Ibn Batuta describes an Indo-Chinese tribe on
the coast of Arakan or Pegu as having dogs' mouths, but says the women
were beautiful. Friar Jordanus had heard the same of the dog-headed
islanders. And one odd form of the story, found, strange to say, both in
China and diffused over Ethiopia, represents the males as actual dogs
whilst the females are women. Oddly, too, Pere Barbe tells us that a
tradition of the Nicobar people themselves represent them as of canine
descent, but on the female side! The like tale in early Portuguese days
was told of the Peguans, viz. that they sprang from a dog and a Chinese
woman. It is mentioned by Camoens (X. 122). Note, however, that in Colonel
Man's notice of the wilder part of the Nicobar people the projecting
canine teeth are spoken of.
Abraham Roger tells us that the Coromandel Brahmans used to say that the
Rakshasas or Demons had their abode "on the Island of Andaman lying on
the route from Pulicat to Pegu," and also that they were man-eaters. This
would be very curious if it were a genuine old Brahmanical Saga; but I
fear it may have been gathered from the Arab seamen. Still it is
remarkable that a strange weird-looking island, a steep and regular
volcanic cone, which rises covered with forest to a height of 2150 feet,
straight out of the deep sea to the eastward of the Andaman group, bears
the name Narkandam, in which one cannot but recognise [Script], Narak,
"Hell"; perhaps Naraka-kundam, "a pit of hell." Can it be that in old
times, but still contemporary with Hindu navigation, this volcano was
active, and that some Brahman St. Brandon recognised in it the mouth of
Hell, congenial to the Rakshasas of the adjacent group?
"Si est de saint Brandon le matere furnie;
Qui fu si pres d'enfer, a nef et a galie,
Que deable d'enfer issirent, par maistrie,
Getans brandons de feu, pour lui faire hasquie."
- Bauduin de Seboure, I. 123.
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