23. Myths and Legends

by George Weber

 

 

Tying myths to real events in the Andamans

Myths explaining the origin of the world, of people, of good and evil as well as stories telling of the doings of ancestors and gods, are all rooted deeply in the prehistoric experience of any culture. Unfortunately, so deeply buried is the kernel relating to real events buried that it is rarely possible to connect myths and legends to archaeological evidence. In this Andamans this might - just might - be a little less impossible than elsewhere.

The Andamanese situation is, as usual, unusual. The islands' remarkable isolation over a very long period of time has prevented outsiders from injecting their own ideas, beliefs, stories and tales into the Andamanese myths and legends. As a result, some legendary Andamanese events can just possibly be tied in with archaeological evidence. There might then even a chance of dating them. As in all myths and legends, a heavy incrustation of fantastic embellishments added by generations of storytellers has to be scraped away to reveal what could be hints of real prehistoric events. Discarding bits of colourful myths and legends may be unfashionable and the danger is indeed great that one inadvertently throws out misunderstood but important parts. We are here not concerned with the inherent beauty, the literary and religious aspects, nor in the deeper insight that the myths and legends can give into a people. We are rather in the prosaic business of trying to establish if there is a hard core of fact in these tales and to see what it might be.

 

How myths and legends were passed on

Before we recall some of the myths and legends, mention must be made of the way the Andamanese regarded their tales and how they passed them on from generation to generation. There never were standard "authorized" forms of the stories told. Each story teller told his or her story as he or she saw fit, adding elements and leaving others out. The same Oko-jumu (see below) could tell completely different and contradictory versions of the same story on different occasions without disturbing his listeners in the least. The listeners appreciated the variety and entertainment value and did not care for what we call logic or consistency. It should come as no surprise, then, that each tribe, each sept, each individual even, treasured many different versions of any given story. Nevertheless, the basic story behind all the variations remains essentially and recognizably the same.

The Andamanese of both sexes were fascinated by hunting stories of which they could never get enough. Outsiders generally thought that if you had heard, one you had heard them all. Each time a group of successful hunters returned home with their catch, the villagers gathered and the leader of the hunt told his story with many gestures and much play-acting. Myths and legends were told in a similar way but a little more formally and with less clowning around. Their telling was limited to special occasions, usually at night around the village fire and the telling was reserved to the "dreamers" or medicine-men, the Oko-jumu. The telling of tales in the familiar circle of one's own group was a social bonding mechanism (if I may be forgiven this ghastly expression from the social engineering department), it was the telling, not the tale that mattered most. Like children being told a story before falling asleep, the listeners would demand to hear the same favourite over and over again. It made them feel comfortable, protected, cosy, belonging.

 

The Storyteller

There were three ways a man, and much more rarely a woman, could become an Oko-jumu. One was by "dying" and then coming back to life, for example by fainting or by having an epileptic fit and then recovering. Another way was to be "kept" in the jungle by spirits: if a person showed no fear of spirits, it was believed that they would refrain from killing but they could still keep their victim in the jungle for a while. Yet another way was by talking to the spirits in a dream. The spirits were the dead and any contact with them either killed a person or made him or her into an Oko-jumu. There were no ceremonies, no training by elders, no questions. Anybody who claimed to have had contact with the spirits and lived to tell the tale was immediately recognized by all as an Oko-jumu. Since every grown-up knew all the tribal myths and legends and had roughly the same knowledge of and skills with medicinal plants and their application, individuals varied only in their talents and the level of competence. The new Oko-jumus only had to be convincing and more competent than the rest of the group when applying his or her skills and knowledge.

Each Oko-jumu prided himself on being different from the other - Andamanese individualism pure. There was no rule on what a dreamer-medicine man had to do and what services he had to offer to the community. Each decided for himself. If one medicine-man had, in the eyes of his group, stopped a storm by placing a crushed piece of a special creeper under a stone on the shore, after his death another medicine-man in the same group would make a point of placing crushed bark and twigs of a different plant under another stone. In this way, a common set of legends about events of the earliest times was coloured and expanded by individuals without affecting the essence of the stories. An Oko-jumu could become famous for his vivid and colourful storytelling while others were better known for their healing power.

As mentioned before, common to all Andamanese was a certain set of beliefs and stories known to all. The common ground between the two major groupings, the Great Andamanese and the Onge-Jarawa, was relatively small. Once more we find the same straightforward picture: the closer a group is linguistically and culturally related, the more of their beliefs and stories they hold in common, too. This far-reaching agreement across language, geography, myths and legends, culture and technology is a strong argument in favor of the extreme stability (and antiquity) of life in the Andamans before 1858.

The lack of traditional forms encourages variations in the stories by individual Okojumus while the common stock of beliefs prevents major changes or at least slows down their introduction. The changes affected only the fringes of a story, the added curlicues. Just as linguistic change in the Andamans seems to have been very slow, so was change to the content of their legends.

E.H. Man towards the end of the 19th century was the first to collect and publish Andamanese legends. He later became the main source for others but he is under some suspicion to have up some legends on his own by sticking together disjointed fragments.

With the arrival of outsiders in the Andamans in 1858, many new diversions and interests were introduced. The old stories were increasingly neglected and most of the legends recorded were not taken directly from the lips of genuine Oko-jumus but from ordinary old folk, not specially skilled in relating legendary lore but who remembered the tales from the camp fires of their youth.

 

Legend: the discovery of fire

We present here a sample of a version of the tale how how fire was first acquired. The story is from the Aka-Cari tribe and it is given in their otherwise little-known and documented language. It also illustrates the problems that such fragments present.  

A Maja Dik ijokoduko
Sir Prawn makes fire

o konmo tec injuktertoia
yam leaf catches fire

konmo tec bi ikterbie
yam leaf is dry

kete aijoko
that one it burns

ujiokobiko
he makes a fire

Maja Dik ubenoba
Sir Prawn slept

Maja Totemo emato
Sir Kingfisher takes

ujokil uektebalo
he fire with he runs away

Maja Totemo jokobiko
Sir Kingfisher makes a fire

Maia Totemo tajeo ubiko
Sir Kingfisher fish cooks

upetil ubeno
his belly in he sleeps

Maja Mite juktebalo uemato
Sir Dove runs away taking
As Radcliffe-Brown, to whom we owe this story, remarks, the above is hardly comprehensible without a little explanation. Indeed not. His comments on some key words are listed here as follows:

Radcliffe-Brown's own free translation of the story goes as follows:
It was Sir Prawn who first obtained fire. Some yam leaves, being shrivelled and dry, caught fire and burnt. The prawn made a fire with some firewood and went to sleep. The kingfisher stole the fire and ran away with it. He made a fire and cooked some fish. When he had filled his belly, he went to sleep. The dove then stole the fire from the kingfisher and ran away. The implication is that it was the last of the thieves who gave the fire to the ancestors of the Andamanese.

The Andamanese could not make fire themselves but had to nurse it carefully in special containers they carried around with them on their frequent wanderings. If the fire was allowed to go out through carelessness or accident, a new flame had to be sought from a friendly neighbouring sept (which would be embarrassing) or a natural fire caused by lighting had to be awaited.

One version of the legend we have just read above. Other versions have the fire given to the people by the god Puluga (Biliku) directly. One Aka-Jeru version has someone shooting an arrow at a "hill of fire" whereupon it caught fire. The burning arrow was found and brought to its camp by the kingfisher bird. The bird refused to share the fire with the people who, after asking for it in vain, stole and kept it for themselves. Neither Narcondam nor Barren islands were known to the Andamanese. Both are occasionally active volcanoes and are just out of sight of the archipelago. Both would certainly have been known, if perhaps only from afar, to the Andamanese at times when the sea level was lower with the islands bigger and closer together. In full eruption either of the two volcanoes would have been quite impossible to overlook and their plumes of ash and smoke visible from afar.

Another story, this time from the Aka-Bea, regarding the creation of fire tells of Puluga stacking up layers of wood and then asking the sun to come down and sit on it until it had caught fire. Mission accomplished, the sun returned to its place in the sky and the people had their fire. Puluga then showed the people how to use the fire by cooking pigs.

 

Legend: the creation of the world

The world (which to the Andamanese was their archipelago with the seas surrounding it and nothing else), according to one myth collected by Mr. Man from the Aka-Beas, was created by Puluga, the Creator-of-All in E.H. Man's reading of the Andamanese myths. Radcliffe-Brown later collected other myths in the northern parts in which Puluga appeared only as one of several major spirits, specially two named Biliku and Tarai. We will have more to say about these spirits and their functions in the chapter on Andamanese religious beliefs. It is interesting to note here that Tarai was said to have lived on a small island off Interview Island that according to the Andamanese is now submerged.

And talking about submerged islands, interestingly there is a whole complex of legends known to have been told in all Andamanese tribes of which we have records. These legends concern the floods that are known from the archaeological evidence.

 

Legend: fire saved from flood

In one story from the Akar-Bale tribe, the fire was saved from the flood by the monitor lizard and the civet cat. When the monitor lizard found that he could not carry the fire up a tree, his wife the civet cat took it from him and carried it to the top of the hill where she kept it safe until the rain and flood had stopped.

 

Legend: talking animals

Talking animals and the ease with which they transform from and into people without (to us) any rhyme or reason is characteristic of Andamanese myths and legends. This can be disconcerting but would not have seemed (or still seems) at all outlandish to the Andamanese for whom this was (and still is) part of the way they see the world, rooted in their religious beliefs.

 

Legend: floods

The major group of legends concerning floods has many local variations but its core is quite clear and unambiguous. It may also be relevant to mention, before we tell this story, that the flooding and dispersion legend in the South Andamans at least is connected to the A-Pucikwar tribe. The name of this tribe meant "those who talk the original language" or "they who speak Andamanese". It was generally agreed among the Andamanese at least of the Southern Great Andaman group (the other groups did not know of the A-Pucikwar) that the A-Pucikwar language was closest to their original common tongue. The legend clearly reflects an Andamanese awareness that they had once been a single people speaking a single language.

We can only tell the main strand of the story here and must disregard its countless variations. As E.H. Man has told the story:

After Puluga had made the world, he created man and called him Tomo. He was black in colour like his modern-day descendants but much taller and bearded. Puluga showed Tomo how to use fire and especially how to cook pigs which in those days were easy to catch as they had neither ears nor noses. Later Puluga also created a woman whose name was Chan Elewadi. The original couple had two daughters and two sons. When pigs became plentiful enough to be a nuisance, the clever woman drilled holes into their snouts and heads, thereby enabling them to hear and see to avoid danger and procure food for themselves. Puluga then covered the whole land with jungle in which the newly-equipped pigs could hide, thereby becoming much more difficult to catch. Puluga came to the rescue of the people by showing Tomo how to hunt with the help of bow and arrows as well as how to build canoes and how to fish. He showed Chan Elewadi how to weave baskets, make fishing nets and to use ochre and white clay. He also set down a number of rules and regulations such as a prohibition on noisy work at night during the wet season. Puluga also gave the people their language, A-Pucikwar. In those days Puluga lived on Saddle Peak and being so near could visit and instruct his people. The canoes of those early days were not, according to legend, equipped with outriggers and were made of the hollowed out trunk of the pandanus tree which was said to have grown much bigger then. The creeks so characteristic of Greater Andaman are also said to have been made at that time: Tomo had harpooned a large fish which in its frantic efforts to escape hit the land repeatedly with its snout and caused the indentations that turned into useful creeks. Tomo himself was said to have lived to a great old age and to have seen his descendants increase in number to such a degree that the original homeland could no longer accommodate them all. Puluga then interfered again and had them all equipped with weapons, implements, fire and their own language before they scattered in pairs all over the country. Tomo and his wife later drowned and were turned into a whale and a small crab respectively.

Tomo's successor was his grandson, Kolwot, who distinguished himself by being the first to catch turtle. After Kolwot's death, the people became remiss of the commands given to them at the creation. Puluga ceased to visit them and then without further warning sent a devastating flood. Only four people survived this flood: two men, Loralola and Poilola, and two women, Kalola and Rimalola. When they landed they found they had lost their fire and all living things had perished. Puluga then recreated the animals and plants but does not seem to have given any further instructions, nor did he return the fire to the survivors. They suffered grievously. At this critical moment, one of their recently-drowned friends reappeared in the form of a kingfisher. He noticed their distress and flew up to the sky where he found Puluga seated beside his fire. He sized a burning log and tried to fly to earth with it. The kingfisher-spirit dropped the log on Puluga who suffered burns and angrily hurled the log at the bird. It missed its mark and instead fell near the four survivors people who thus had their problem solved for them. The legend at this point adds that since that time until the present day, the Andamanese tribes have never been without fire, thanks to the precautions they employ to guard against its extinction. The survivors received no such help with the other skills of daily life which they had to recover by themselves. The pigments for body-painting were said to have been rediscovered accidentally by women searching for edible roots.

After settling down to their reduced circumstances, the survivors began to entertain thoughts of revenge against Puluga who had killed all their friends. When they met Puluga one day they thought of killing him. Puluga himself talked them out of this when he made clear to them that he was too hard for their arrows and that if they tried to kill him, he would kill them all. He also explained to them that their people had brought the deluge upon themselves by their disobedience. Thus obedience and submission was restored. It was said that this was the last time Puluga rendered himself visible or held any communications with his people. The Andamanese remembered Puluga's warning and were afterwards strict in their observance of his command.

When for the second time in their existence, their number increased to such an extent that it became impossible to remain together in one place, another exodus took place. Each party took fire and the necessary implements with them and after settling down adopted its own distinct language. They each received a tribal name (it is not stated from whom) and from them have sprung the various tribes found in occupation of their territories in 1858. The people of this second diversion are again described as long-lived, tall men with large beards. We look in vain for an explanation how and why their descendants have subsequently grown so much shorter and quite beardless.

 

Legend; human origins and the arrival of fire

Tomo is a name variously used for the first male ancestor (our Adam) or for the early ancestors in general. In some legends Tomo is not only the first ancestor but a God in his own right, a rival to Puluga. The name appears in many myths and legends and it is not always clear what aspect of Tomo is referred to. There are only a few ancestors who bear human names and were described as humans. A majority bears animal names and indeed seems to have been regarded as animals. All carry the usual title of respect, translated here usually as "Sir" or 'Madam" or "Lady". The titles varied with the language but were always used: Maia and Mimi in north Andamanese, Da and In in Akar-Bale and Maja and Cana in Aka-Bea. The legends that tell of the origin of the human species refer exclusively to the Andamanese race. Humans from outside were not recognized as human but were regarded as spirits of the dead. In the same way, there was no recognized world outside the Andamans and the surrounding sea: outsiders were spirits and came from the spirit world. This tiny self-contained universe was not definitively shattered until one or two generations after the arrival of the British in 1858. 

Each tribe had contradictory versions and there was no general agreement on any aspect of how the first humans came into being. The Aka-Jeru and Aka-Bo versions of how the first man was created call him Jutpu, which is said to mean "alone." He was born inside a big bamboo, like a bird in an egg. The bamboo split and he came out as a little child. The child built his own hut and made his own bow and arrow. When he found a lump of quartz he scarified himself. When Jutpu was lonely, he took a lump of clay from a nest of white ants (termites) and moulded it into the shape of a woman. Kot, as his Eve was called, came alive and they lived together as man and wife. Later, Jutpu made more people out of clay and these became the ancestors. Jutpu told everybody all they needed to know, from hunting, fishing and the making of a canoe to the weaving of baskets and nets and the painting of bodies with clay. The Aka-Jeru believed that the first man came out of the buttress of a tree. When he was lonely, he cohabited with an ant's nest and thus obtained a large number of children. The Aka-Jeru also had stories which made the sun in the form of a man made the earth (i.e. the Andamans) and then filled it with people in his own image. The Aka-Kol and the A-Pucikwar had legends that made the monitor lizard into the creator of mankind but had no legend to explain how the lizard came into existence. The monitor lizard was said to have climbed up a tree one day and found the civet cat stuck up there. After helping her down, the two got married and their off-spring were the human ancestors. Common to this multitude of legends is the claim that men were created before women. The A-Pucikwar had a story according to which there were only men at first. In some cases, woman is also created from man: in an A-Pucikwar legend a monitor lizard bit the genitals off one of them, making him into a woman. Her offspring and that of one of the men became the ancestors.

Unusual (because tied to an existing location) is the myth of Wot-a-emi (Wotaemida) first reported by .H. Man in 1878 and again by Radcliffe-Brown in 1909 (as reported by Z. Cooper 1993):

According to the Puchikwar tribe (in whose territory Wot-a-emi was located at the time of Man and Radcliffe-Brown), Ta Patie, the first islander lived at Wot-a-emi, while Biliku, a mythical being associated with the northeast monsoon, resided at Tol-loko-tim across the strait. The ancestors had no fire at that time, but Biliku made a fire for himself from the wood of the 'Parat' tree. While Biliku was asleep, Luratut, the kingfisher, stole some fire, whereupon Luratut awoke and hurled a lighted brand at Luratut, and burnt him. However, Luratut managed to convey the fire to the people at Wot-a-emi.

It may (or may not) be relevant, that from the identified place Wot-a-emi it is possible to see the smoky plume of erupting Barren island volcano ca. 100 km to the east.

 

The approximate area of Wot-a-emi is also the location of an excavated kitchen midden and a number of unexcavated sites. Archaeological evidence, however, does not support the legend. The oldest finds made at the excavated kitchen midden were in the region of 1,530 years old (dated by C14 method).

For further information see Chapter 24 "Archaeology"

 

Legend: Floods and draughts

Human life in the Andamans was not only under threat from the rising sea and of storms. Rainfall can be unpredictable enough to create occasional droughts. It therefore does not come as a surprise that there are legends dealing with droughts. One relates how a woodpecker discovered a honeycomb during the dry period. While eating, the woodpecker noticed a toad wistfully observing him. The woodpecker invited him as his guest and sent a liana down to fetch the toad. Just before his guest had reached the site of the feast, the woodpecker mischievously dropped him to the ground. This so exasperated the toad that he went to all the streams of the land and drank them dry. The failure of the streams led to great distress in the islands. The toad was delighted with his revenge and commenced to dance, whereupon all the water flowed from him and the draught was ended. Unfortunately, unlike the flood stories, there is no archaeological evidence yet for draughts - but on climatological grounds they must have taken place on the islands.

 

Legend: Pigs

A few minor legends and superstitious practices exist regarding the pig. In view of its importance, its central position in daily life, it is indeed remarkable how rarely the pig appears in Andamanese myths and legends and indeed in religious belief. Yet pig skulls have been collected and kept as hunting trophies by all Andamanese, even by the isolated Sentinelis, to an extent that would almost demand a cult of the pig. Other animals, especially birds and including many other animals that we have not had the space to mention here, pop in and out of the tales with abandon. Not so the pig. Very few legends about the origin of pigs are known. One is from the Aka-Kede:

A human ancestor, the civet cat, invented a new game and made some ancestors run on all fours and grunt. Those who played turned into pigs.' Another story on how the pigs got their senses we have already met earlier. And that is it, more or less.

According to the archaeological evidence, the pig was introduced to the Andamans relatively late from the outside, probably shortly before 2,200 or so years ago and perhaps together with pottery and possibly even by the same mysterious visitors. Is it really only coincidence that pottery, too, is remarkable by its near-absence from legend and myth in the islands? It would be interesting to speculate that if events more than two millennia ago had so little impact on Andamanese legends, the age of the tales told might be immense. Speculating is one thing, proving it something else.

 

Legend: Discovery of iron

Another interesting legend deals with the discovery of iron. The archipelago does not have any known iron deposits and all iron used by the natives is thought to have come from plundered shipwrecks and lately from raids on outsiders' settlements and trade. The following story indicates that at least a tiny amount of iron may also have come from meteoritic sources:

One day, Tomo (in this story called Duku) went on a fishing expedition and shot an arrow. He missed his object and instead struck a hard substance that proved to be a piece of iron. The legend states that this was the first iron found by the natives. From the new substance, Duku made himself an arrow-head with which he also scarified (tattooed) himself. He then sang a ditty to the effect that now that he was scarified nothing could strike him.

 

Legend: Large beasts

Throughout the Andamanese tribes there was a belief in huge, mythical land animals that are said to have lived in the jungles of the archipelago during the earliest days of the ancestors. In the northern parts of Greater Andaman they were known as Jirmus while the southern Akar-Bale knew something similar as Kocurag-boa. The Aka-Bea had their Ucu who is said to have eaten so many people that it got stuck in mud and died. When elephants were first introduced into the Andamans in the 19th century, the Aka-Bea immediately called it Uca and the northern tribes Jirmu. Nothing bigger than the Andamanese pig could have roamed the islands for a very long time (unless one includes whales in the story). From the vague descriptions supplied by the legends, the giant beasts sound like a mixture of tiger and elephant, both native to the Asian mainland surrounding the Andaman sea. The legends may well be a last faint echo of the times before 8,000 years ago, when tiger and elephant were cut off in the Andamans (which was not a peninsula, though at the time of the lowest sea level, the straits between the Andamans and mainland Asia in the north was indeed narrow enough for larger animals to swim across). The sea has been rising ever since and the large beasts along with their human Negrito contemporaries were cut off from Asia. Elephant and tiger (if it was them) could well have lost in the competition for shrinking hunting and grazing grounds against the human ancestors of the present Andamanese.

 

We can only speculate at this time, but archaeology may one day give us an answer.

  

  

 

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Last change 29 January 20006