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.
Recent information has so superseded old ideas about both groups of
islands that I suggest several of the notes in the 1903 edition of Marco
Polo be recast in reference to it.
With reference to the Census Report noted above, I may remark that this
was the first Census Report ever made on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands,
and according to the custom of the Government of India, such a report has
to summarise all available information under headings called Descriptive,
Ethnography, Languages. Under the heading Descriptive are sub-heads,
Geography, Meteorology, Geography, History, so that practically my Census
Report had to include in a summarised form all the available information
there was about the islands at that time. It has a complete index, and I
therefore suggest that it should be referred to for any point on which
information is required.
NICOBARS.
P. 307. No king or chief. - This is incorrect. They have distinct village
communities, governed each by its own chief, with definite rules of
property and succession and marriage. See Census Report pp. 214, 212.
Pp. 307-308, Note 1. For Pulo Gomez, see BOWREY, Countries Round the Bay
of Bengal, ed. Temple, Hakluyt Society, p. 287 and footnote 4. Bowrey (c.
1675) calls it Pullo Gomus, and a marine journal of 1675 calls it Polo
Gomos.
Origin of the name Nicobars. - On this point I quote my paragraph thereon
on p. 185, Census Report.
"The situation of the Nicobars along the line of a very ancient trade has
caused them to be reported by traders and sea-farers through all
historical times. Gerini has fixed on Maniola for Car-Nicobar and
Agathodaimonos for Great Nicobar as the right ascription of Ptolemy's
island names for this region.
