13. Clothes, Clay and Beautycare
by George Weber
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Table of Contents
2. Onge 3. Jarawa 4. Sentineli
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The climate of their islands being what it is, traditional Andamanese went practically naked for probably tens of thousands of years. The few items that were worn were not so much designed to protect as to decorate.
For ceremonial purposes as well as protection against insects and the sun, much use was made of body paints with variously coloured clays. Both decorative items and body painting were subject to such complex rules and traditions that an underlying religious significance must be assumed. The religious significance of the fibres used for the characteristic Onge female genital covering, the nakuinyage, though obscure, is obvious.
Clothing, decoration, body painting, shaving and hair styles, scarification, etc., hey all reflect a mix of religious, ceremonial, decorative, practical and social functions.. They just dressed, painted, shaved and scarified themselves and each other because tradition decreed that this was what made them look good and feel right.
Besides being practical and decorative, body painting was regarded by the Great Andamanese as a gift of the god Puluga. The practice clearly has religious significance and is likely to be very ancient indeed. One of the colours used in the Andamans was ochre in the form of a burnt, powdered iron oxide. The same material was used even by pre-humans hundreds of thousands of years ago. Ochre was also widely used by the first anatomically modern humans more than 50,000 years ago in funeral ceremonies and very likely for body painting. It is thought that the red colour signified blood and life and its use in the Andamans is important, all the more so in view of the fact that the Andamanese used it in connection with sickness, death and funeral rites.
Paint was prepared from clay or powdered iron oxide mixed with pig fat or turtle oil and then applied either with a finger or alternatively by smearing over whole areas by hand and then scraping away unwanted paint. Three basic colours were used and each had its own function: a common whitish-gray clay which could shade into gray, yellowish, olive or pink (called among Great Andamanese og, odu or od), a rare white clay (called tala-og or tol) and a reddish-brown ochre pigment (called koiob).
The whitish-gray clay was most widely used. It was spread all over the body as a sign of mourning and is also splattered over participants at certain initiation ceremonies. Most popular, however, was its use for painting purely decorative pattern. Applying body paint was a privilege of the women who painted each other as well as the men. A husband returning from a successful hunt was sure to get an especially elaborate pattern painted on his heroic body by his wife. The women vied with each other to produce different designs and a successful new idea was sure to be copied by less successful artists far and wide. The "copyright" applied to the words of songs did not apply for paint pattern. Competition among women led to fashions in the type of pattern used that came and went much as clothes fashions come and go in our world. Fashion in our world can be circular with grandmother's laced boots becoming the very latest of today again. Andamanese fashion, despite the competitive creativity involved, always returned to the old starting points, not evolving in the long run. The pattern painted were always strictly geometrical straight, zig-zag or wavy lines and dots and never in any way representational. The painting of animal or human forms was quite unknown, even unthinkable. Common clay was applied in the late afternoon before the evening meal and sometimes, after an especially extensive repast. In this, body painting resembles nothing so much as the fashionable "changing for dinner". Among the Onge, there were enormous pork and honey feasts which ended in competitive body painting sessions when the women tried to outdo each other.
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Riala at age 35. He was a member of the Great Andamanese
Aka-Kede tribe and in the 1890s (when this photograph was
taken) worked as an interpreter between the northern Great
Andamanese tribes and the British authorities. He also was a
popular singer with his people and was regarded by the
British as intelligent but of violent temper. |
The men of the Greater Andamanese wore narrow belts or girdles of hibiscus fibre, sometimes decorated with other materials of different colours. The belts also had a practical use since tools and weapons could be fastened to them, something that was especially useful during hunting expeditions when hands had to be kept free. Men also sometimes fastened leaves, cut into thin strips, to their belt, making the male dress look a little like the women's string skirts. Available photographs from the last decades of the 19th century and later show men and boys with traditional string skirts but also often with genital pouches and other types of covering made from non-native materials. These modern variations seem to have been insisted on by the early photographers. In the jungle, far from photographic equipment, the men went as their forefathers had done with nothing but the practical belt around the waist.
The women, especially the married ones, wore rather more about their persons. They covered their genitals carefully and wore styles that in detail differed rather more from tribe to tribe than that of the men. The southern tribes wore bunches of leaves cut into strips and held by belts made of pandanus leaves. Among the northern tribes loose tassels made from strips of bark were the traditional fashion. The effect of both styles was that of short string-skirts. Most of these skirts covered only the front and not the back or had other gaps. Often tassels were added to the back which to the distant or casual observer could look like tails. Small duplicates of the style of skirt worn were sometimes added just above the knees to cover them and part of the lower legs.
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Great Andamanese girl wearing a "tail skirt". Such
"tails" were are a feature of traditional Great Andamanese
attire and may have contributed significantly to the myth of
the "monkey-tailed people" of the Andamans that were common
before the 19th century. Also note the traditional hair
style. |
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One of the earliest existing photographs of Great
Andamanese known: two men of an unidentified northern tribe.
The man on the left is wearing a traditional cincture
decorated with shells . The other on the right is wearing a
piece of imported cloth along with more traditional strings
- and this only 7 years after the British had set up shop in
the Andamans at a time when only very few northern Great
Andamanese had had any direct contact with the outsiders
yet. How and where this picture came to be shot is unknown.
It is possible that the British photographer insisted that
the man on the left covered himself with the imported cloth
for reasons of modesty.
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Hairstyles were another way for decorating oneself that was used by both males and females. Haircutting and partial shaving of the head was originally done with splinters of quartz (one of the few stone tools used in traditional Andamanese society) but from the 19th century onwards increasingly with shards of glass. Men and women alike cut their hair and shaved their heads every few weeks.
The women traditionally left only two narrow parallel bars from forehead to neck where the hair was allowed to grow longer than 3 mm (one eighth of an inch). The men left a circular patch on top of the head, not more than 20 cm (8 inches) diameter, while shaving everything around the central patch. Sometimes, the eyebrows were also cut but never the eyelashes. Older people often shaved their entire head while infants were shaved by their mothers within a few hours after birth. After the arrival of the British 1858 these traditional hairstyles were replaced by a variety of other styles according to individual taste - but not the taste of the customer but to the female hairdresser. Haircutting was exclusively women's work: males shaved each other only if there was no female anywhere. In such cases it was the younger men and boys who had to shave the older men.
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An early (staged) photograph to show Great Andamanese
women (and the odd male) with a wide variety of hairstyles
and body painting patterns. Clearly visible are only the
wide variety of hair cuts. |
Body painting was (and still is) widely practiced among all Andamanese groups. It has deep (if unclear) spiritual significance but also was (and in some groups still is) the Andamanese way of dressing up. The Andamanese since the 19th century were either unable or more likely unwilling to explain their practice to inquiring anthropologists.
Among Great Andamanese the rare white clay was used only in one strictly traditional pattern, the so called snake-pattern, lines zig-zagging in a particular way across the body. Although the Andamanese, when asked, merely said that this pattern made them look attractive, the traditionally fixed form clearly must have once had a deeper significance which has long since been lost. This clay and its associated pattern was applied across the entire body for large gatherings and dances involving two or more local groups. It was also used at the dance that marked the end of the mourning period and after a wedding ceremony when the bride and groom were painted in this way. The white clay and its special pattern could be said in some ways to correspond to our gala or formal dress. There was a reduced gala version for dances without outside guests when no one had to be impressed: only the face was then painted with the snake-pattern.
Finally, ochre paint was used when someone was sick. For coughs the chest was painted, toothache was cured by smearing red paint on the cheeks while fever disappeared when the upper lip was covered or when the ochre was eaten. Ochre was also used to decorate the corpse before burial together with white clay.
It should be noted that this list of uses for body paint is almost certainly far from complete. Our knowledge, especially of traditional funeral rites among all Andamanese groups, is so fragmentary that additional uses for body painting in this and other ceremonies and circumstances are more than likely.
Body painting also has purely practical advantages. It adds a certain amount of protection against ticks and other obnoxious insects, against direct sunlight and cold drafts. The advantages, however, do not seem to have been the main reason for using paints since paint was not usually worn on hunting or gathering expeditions when added protection was most likely to have been useful. Perhaps paint was not then worn because any rain shower or the permanently dripping forest would soon have washed it off anyway. The Onge regarded the unpainted body as open to all sorts of dangers and painted new-born babies immediately after birth with red ochre, partly no doubt in mere observance of tradition but also partly as conscious protection against mosquitoes and flies.
In 1863 the superintendent of the convict settlement forbade the Greater Andamanese at Port Blair body painting on the grounds that it was "degrading and barbarous." Others protested against this, feeling that the Andamanese (who were not convicts, after all) should not be interfered with and claiming body paint as a substitute for clothes without which the natives would be exposed to chills and the ridiculous order was never enforced.
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A body painting session in progress. Note that wives paint their husbands. The pattern painted may well have had a meaning to the painters and the painted but the Great Andamanese have never given clear answers to the inquiring early anthropologists about it. Photograph by A. Radcliffe-Brown, 1906-08, original at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. |
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Body-painted group of Great Andamanese hunters. The tall man in the middle wears one of the few painting pattern that have a known meaning: he wears the pattern that is used only for a short time after its wearer has undergone the so-called "pir- or turtle-eating initiation ceremony." Photograph by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, 1906-08, original at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. |
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A Great Andamanese couple wearing human bones strung together. Needless to say, this tradition must be connected to an ancient form of ancestor worship and the same must apply to the custom of carrying skulls "for decoration" shown below. The Andamanese themselves have been very cagey about telling anthropologists about why they do so. Perhaps they do not wish to talk to strangers about it or they do not know themselves any more. The suspicion is that it is the former since Andamanese from all tribes have been remarkably reluctant - to the fury and frustration of generations of anthropologists - to discuss their beliefs with outsiders. Wearing human bones was also believed to have medicinal properites (see Chapter 19 "In Sickness and in Health") (Picture taken by E.H. Man, 1876/77) |
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Among Great Andamanese, an ancestral skull was often carried on the back for reasons that are not clear but probably represent a remnant of an ancestral cult that was already vanishing when first observers noted it. Habits such as these may also have significantly contributed to the (untrue) rumours that the Andamanese were cannibals. (Picture taken by Radcliffe-Brown, ca. 1906). |
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An ancestral skull decorated and prepared to be carried around as shown in the drawing. This skull was collected in the early years of the 20th century. (Photograph by George Weber 1998) |
The closest the Andamanese came to mutilation was the scarification (often and wrongly called "tattooing") widely practiced by the Greater Andamanese but not by the Onge-Jarawa group nor by other Negritos. According to the Andamanese themselves, scarifying was done purely for beautification and "to make the children stronger". Nevertheless, an original religious significance is likely. Every boy and every girl had to undergo scarification as a matter of course. The first cut was made at an early age and new cuts were added at intervals over the years until the child had grown up. Only women did the scarifying work and it was they who decided what design the scars were to follow. Normal cuts healed leaving a slight scar visible only from close up while infected wounds left the raised welts easily seen on many old photographs. Among the southern tribes on Greater Andaman, the cuts were made with splinters of quartz or glass and were short and not deep. The lines were arranged in geometric pattern of straight lines or zig-zag, running down the body and the limbs, quite similar to the geometric pattern of body painting. The northerners also cut lightly but had a second type of scarification in which long and deep cuts were made with pig arrows and the pattern arranged rather differently.
Scarification was also used for medical purposes and was then again administered only by women: small, slight cuts on the site of the pain were supposed to help.
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Scarification pattern among the Great Andamanese in the
late 19th century. Nothing is known of the origins or
antiquity of this custom among the Andamanese. |
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A scarification ceremony stage for the photographer (M.V. Portman) during the late 1890s. . |
The few surviving Great Andamanese have not worn old-style clothes and decorations for many years. They all now wear western- or Indian-style clothes such as shorts, saris and skirts as a matter of course. Scarification and body- painting have also vanished since the 1950s.
Clothes and other decorations worn by members of the Onge-Jarawa group differed greatly from those of the Greater Andamanese but there were two significant similarities: both groups had a marked preference for the use of yellow in decorations and neither group used feathers or flowers to any extent although colourful birds and flowers would have been available in great abundance. These general Andamanese preferences are shared by the other Negrito groups, the Semang on the Malay peninsula and the Aeta in the Philippines, so that a reasonable case for their high antiquity can be made. Negrito reluctance to employ feathers and flowers is in marked contrast to the Papuans and the Australian aborigines who make exuberant use of such colourful material.¬Ý
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The classic Onge couple in the old-style everyday dress.
The woman is wearing the traditional nakuinyage . . |
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Onge women in full body-paint without a discernible paint
pattern. Such nearly full-area paint provides excellent
protection against the sun and insect pests. The two women
on the right also wear the characteristic Onge
nakuinyage. The woman on the left carries a baby in a
sling on her back. The woman on the left carries a baby in a
sling that is laid around her head. . |
Among the Onge, ornaments of shells or nuts were not unknown but not widely used. Necklaces were worn more by women than by men. Human skulls were not used as they were among the Great Andamanese, but lower human jawbones decorated with fibre are known to have been used by Onge, though not recently. Formerly, the Onge also wore belts made of bark around the waist as well as cords of cane strips woven together with thread, often with tassels of thread added to make a sort of skirt. Headbands of a somewhat similar design were also worn by men and women but bands around legs and ankles are unknown. All these decorative items have fallen out of use during the last decades.¬Ý
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Onge women carrying babies in the traditional way. None of the Andamanese groups are known to have deliberately deformed themselves - they did not practice circumcision, filing of teeth, flattening of skulls, binding up of feet, cutting of fingers, trepanation of skulls, etc. Skulls of Andamanese women were earlier thought to have been deliberately deformed but this is now known to have been an incidental side-effect of the way girls from a very early age, carried babies and other weights in a sling that was often laid around the carrier's head. No archaeological evidence has been found that indicates mutilating practices (at least not as far as they would be reflected in skeletal remains) among the Andamans for the past 2,000 years - but the practice of carrying babies in a sling seems to be at least that old. . |
In the 1970s, the Indian authorities (as authoritarian and prudish as the British had ever been), decreed that Onge women had to be "decently clothed". The Onge took to this with a vengeance and exaggerated to such an extent that they would not even bare an arm to visiting anthropologists, to the evident delight of their menfolk. The extreme prudery was briefly fashionable but then soon passed away in the hot and humid climate of Little Andaman and it did so on both sides, among the the Indian authorities and their Onge subjects . However, not all Onge women have gone back to using the nakuinyage, more now prefer an often topless version of the Indian sari or the western skirt. The men now hardly ever go stark naked (apart from hunting expeditions when no outsiders are present). Most now wear at least a genital pouch, a loin cloth, or shorts.
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Left: Body painting among Onge was not as often and as widely practiced as among other Andamanese groups - but it was practiced, too, on special occasions and usually out of sight of outsiders, be they British or Indian. Consequently very little is known for sure of their painting. Drawing by Jane Cameron, 1998.
Below: Onge woman with elaborate facial paint and more
general body smears.
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Jarawa youngsters show off the daily wear of the tribe. Characteristic for the Jarawa female dress code are the string skirts and the head bands. The two girls on the right also wear plastic baubles received as gifts during "friendship visits" of Indian groups. The only male in the picture wears the characteristic bright yellow male-only breast plate (with which offshore observers can distinguish male Jarawa from female even from quite far away). He also wears the same headband as the girls but only a bit of string in place of the girls' more elaborate string skirt. Photograph taken in the 1980s. |
Jarawas, particularly the women, had long been thought to go almost entirely without clothes and other body decorations. Since the Indians have established closer contact with some Jarawa groups, it has become clear just how little reliable information was available on them. This was so even about clothing which one would have thought was the one item most easily checked from afar. Most women and many of the men do wear clothes and other body ornaments. What is worn is fairly similar ut not identical to items of the Onge wardrobe. Like the Onge but unlike the Great Andamanese, the Jarawas have not been seen to wear bands around their legs and ankles, nor do they use human bones and skulls. Contact with Jarawas has not been close enough so far to see whether they wear additional or special ornaments during their dances.
A particular form of elaborate headband is unique to the Jarawas. It consists of long bundles of yellow fibre that are fixed to the conventional headband and that hang down the wearer's back, looking for all the world like the long blond hair of top fashion models. Sometimes the fibres are worn long enough to reach the ground, more usually they reach only the small of the back. Men as well as women have been seen wearing these incongruous locks. Both sexes also occasionally use strings to enlarge their necklaces of shells. This is reminiscent of the decorative netting of the Onge but for the fact that the Jarawa strings are not netted.
Many Jarawa men go stark naked apart from a small necklace or a string around the waist or arms. Some men, however, have been seen wearing all sorts of other decorative items such as headbands and necklaces of fibre or shell as well as a rather odd piece of apparel, a sort of wide girdle, cuirass or corset made of bark fibres. This singular piece of male apparel does not seem to have any practical function; as a defence against arrow shot it is not convincing. However, if it is worn as tight as it usually is, the corset does make the wearer's chest much more prominent. The Jarawa corset may have had its origin in the belt worn by Onge men but it is much wider, reaching from the nipples to the navel. We do not know the reasons why some Jarawa men wear the corset while others do not. Does it signify status, a function or is it an individual whim?
Jarawa women have been seen wearing at least two types of skirt besides headbands, shell necklaces and armbands. Skirts are the only form of clothing that the men have not so far been seen to use. The most widely worn type of skirt consists of a thin string around the waist from which many short strings hang down to form a sort of skirt. The strings hanging down are so widely spaced that they do not hide the genital area and cannot have the function of hiding a taboo zone. This makes them quite unlike the Onge nakuinyage. Another type of Jarawa skirt consists of a thick strand of loosely woven fibre from which many lose fibres of the same material sticking outwards form an extremely short skirt that barely reaches below the pubic area. Probably a simplified version of the latter is a thick strand of plain fibre around the waist that does not even try to be a skirt.
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Jarawa girl in traditional dancing dress. The bright red
cloth is not traditional but the gift of an Indian
"friendship visit". The Jarawa love the bright red colour
which they cannot make themselves. |
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Left: Jarawa girl with facial body paint. Bodypaint is
not very often seen among Jarawa. This girl may have put it
on for the special outing she and other Jarawas have on an
Indian ship during a "friendship visit".
Below: male facial body paint (also seen during an outing
on an Indian ship).
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The Sentineli have never been observed at close range by anyone with sufficient leisure to observe details (the pictures below were shot with teleobjectives) and little is known of what body decorations and clothing they wear. In recent years, a few Indian "friendship visits" and the occasional film crew have approached them and managed to shoot film material from boats at a safe distance. No outsider has ever spoken to, photographed or filmed the Sentineli off the beaches, during their daily life and ceremonies, in their villages and forests. We simply do not know what, if any, decorative items they might wear then. The women on the rare beach photos always wear next to nothing as far as can be seen, while the men often sport a sort of belt that is also used to hold tools (knives, probably hammered out of cold metal salvaged from shipwrecks, and other tools have been seen stuck into this belt - see left picture below).
Decorative bands around the head also are a popular item with men.
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During the 19th century Sentineli have been seen a few times "smeared with a yellowish clay". In the past 100 years, no Sentineli has been observed with any kind of body paint - but then, they are so rarely seen and then usually from afar and never in what the Sentineli would consider a "formal or festive occasion". They may well practice body painting out of sight of foreigners.
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Last change 23 October 2005
