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.
