In the
1490 edition of Ptolemy, the Satyrorum Insulae placed to the south-east of
the Malay Peninsula, where the Anamba islands east of Singapore, also on
the line of the old route to China, really are, have opposite them the
remark: - qui has inhabitant caudas habere dicuntur - no doubt in
confusion with the Nicobars. They are without doubt the Lankhabalus of the
Arab Relations (851 A.D.), which term may be safely taken as a
misapprehension or mistranscription of some form of Nicobar (through
Nakkavar, Nankhabar), thus affording the earliest reference to the modern
term. But there is an earlier mention of them by I-Tsing, the Chinese
Buddhist monk, in his travels, 672 A.D., under the name of the Land of the
Naked People (Lo-jen-kuo), and this seems to have been the recognised name
for them in China at that time. 'Land of the Naked' translates Nakkavaram,
the name by which the islands appear in the great Tanjore inscription of
1050. This name reappears in Marco Polo's Necuveran 1292, in Rashiduddin's
Nakwaram 1300, and in Friar Odoric's Nicoveran 1322, which are the lineal
ancestors of the 15th and 16th Century Portuguese Nacabar and Nicubar and
the modern Nicobar. The name has been Nicobar since at least 1560. The
fanciful story of the tails is repeated by the Swede Kjoeping as late as
1647."
Nicobar clearly means the Land of the Naked, but that does not correctly
describe the people. I have never seen either a naked man or woman in the
Nicobars. The men are nearly naked, but they wear a string round the waist
with a very small loincloth. The string is so tied as to leave two long
streamers behind, which have very much the appearance of a tail as the man
walks along, and no doubt this gave rise to the idea that they were tailed
men. The women wear a petticoat coming below the knees, generally red.
The Nicobarese are not savages and live in well-built clean villages, are
born traders, and can calculate accurately up to very high figures. They
deliberately do not cultivate, because by using their cocoanuts as
currency they can buy from Chinese, Malay, Burmese, Indian, and other
traders all that they want in the way of food and comforts. They are good
gardeners of fruit. They seem to have borne their present characteristics
through all historical times.
Pp. 307-308, Note 1. - Nancowry is a native name for two adjacent islands,
now known as Camorta and Nankauri, and I do not think it has anything to
do with the name Nicobar. For a list of the geographical names of the
islands, see Census Report, pp. 179-180.
Race and Dialect. - The Nicobarese are generally classed as Malays,
i.e., they are "Wild Malays," and probably in reality an overflow of Mon
tribes from the mainland of the Malay Peninsula (Census Report, p. 250).
They are a finely built race of people, but they have rendered their faces
ugly by the habit of chewing betel with lime until they have destroyed
their teeth by incrustations of lime, so that they cannot close their lips
properly.
