Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 25 - A-AUS.pdf/469

 ANDAMAN

ISLANDS

423

if lie reaches old age. Except as to the marrying age, but this cannot be ascertained. Attempts to civilize the these figures fairly apply to women. Before marriage free Andamanese have met with little success either among intercourse between the sexes is the rule, though certain adults or children. The home established near Poit Blair conventional precautions are taken to prevent it. Marriages is used as a sort of free asylum which the native visits acrarely produce more than three children, and often none cording to his pleasure. The policy of the government at all. Divorce is rare, unfaithfulness after marriage not is to leave the Andamanese alone, while doing what is common, and incest unknown. By preference the possible to ameliorate their condition. Andamanese are exogamous as regards sept and endogaPenal Settlement.—^ point of enduring interest as regards the mous as regards tribe. The children are possessed of a Andamans is the penal system, the, object of which is to turn the and few long-sentence convicts, who alone are sent to bright intelligence, which, however, soon reaches its life-sentence the settlement, into honest, self-respecting men and women, by climax, and the adult may be compared in this respect leading them along a continuous course of practice m self-help an with the civilized child of ten or twelve. The Andamanese self-restraint, and by offering them every inducement to take are, indeed, bright and merry companions, busy in then- advantage of that practice. After ten years’ graduated labour the is given a ticket-of-leave and becomes self-supporting. He own pursuits, keen sportsmen, naturally independent, and convict can farm, keep cattle, and marry or send for his family, but he not lustful, but when angered, cruel, jealous, treacherous, cannot leave the settlement or be idle. With approved conduct, and vindictive, and always unstable—in fact, a people to however, he may be absolutely released after twenty to twenty-hve like but not to trust. There is no idea of government, years in the settlement; and throughout that time, though no civil rights, a quasi-judicial procedure controls all but in each sept there is a head, who has attained that possessing punishments inflicted upon him, and he is as secure of obtaining position by degrees on account of some tacitly admitted justice as if free. There is an unlimited variety of work for the superiority and commands a limited respect and some labouring convicts, and some of the establishments are on a large obedience. The young are deferential to their elders. scale. The general and marine steam and hand workshops Offences are punished by the aggrieved party. Property emnlov 574 men; 72,000 burnt bricks are turned out daily the season ; in building the Cellular Jail some 30,000,000 is communal, and theft is only recognized as to things of durinbricks were used. Very few experts are employed in superabsolute necessity, such as arrows, pig’s flesh, and fire. vision ; practically everything is directed by the officials, who Fire is the one thing they are really careful about, not themselves have first to learn each trade. Under the Chief knowing how to renew it. A very rude barter exists Commissioner, who is the supreme head of the settlement, are a and a staff of assistant superintendents and overseers between tribes of the same group in regard to articles not deputy almost all Europeans, and sub - overseers, who are natives of locally obtainable. The religion consists of fear of the India. All the petty supervising establishments are composed spirits of the wood, the sea, disease, and ancestors, and of convicts. The garrison consists of 140 British and 300 of avoidance of acts traditionally displeasing to them. Indian troops, with a few local European volunteers. The police organized as a military battalion 643 strong. The number There is neither worship nor propitiation. An anthropo- are of convicts has somewhat diminished of late years, and in 1900 morphic deity, Puluga, is the cause of all things, but it is stood at something over 11,000. The total population of the not necessary to propitiate him. There is a vague idea settlement, consisting of convicts, their guards, the supervising, that the “ soul ” will go somewhere after death, but there clerical, and departmental staff, with the families of the lat er, a certain number of ex-convicts and trading settlers and their is no heaven nor hell, nor idea of a corporeal resurrection. also families, numbers about 13,000 males and 2000 females. The There is much faith in dreams, and in the utterances of labouring convicts are distributed among four jails and nineteen certain “ wise men,” who practise an embryonic magic and stations; the self-supporters in thirty-eight villages. Ihe witchcraft. The great amusement of the Andamanese is a elementary education of the convicts’ children is compulsory. are four hospitals, each under a resident medical officer, formal night dance, but they are also fond of simple games. There under the general supervision of a senior officer of the Indian The bows differ altogether with each group, but the same Medical Service, and medical aid is given free to the whole two kinds of arrows are in general use: (1) long and population. The harbour of Port Blair is well supplied with buoys ordinary for fishing and other purposes; (2) short with a and harbour lights, and is crossed by ferries at fixed intervals, detachable head fastened to the shaft by a thong, which while there are several launches for hauling local traffic. On Boss Island there is a lighthouse visible for nineteen miles. A complete quickly brings pigs up short when shot in the thick jungle. system of signalling by night and day on the Morse system is Bark provides material for string, while baskets and mats worked by the police. Local posts are frequent, but there is no system of wireless are neatly and stoutly made from canes, and buckets out of telegraph, and the mails are irregular. A 0n, o^ bamboo and wood. None of the tribes ever ventures out telegraphic communication with India is ^ 1898 there were among the convicts 36 Christians, 27«>2 of sight of land, and they have no idea of steering by sun Mahommedans, 6585 Hindus, 1758 Buddhists, and /0 others. or stars. Their canoes are simply hollowed out of trunks The convict death-rate was 25 per 1000, and 173 were set free after with the adze and in no other way, and it is the smaller twenty to twenty-five years’ average transportation. 265 children ones which are outrigged; they do not. last long and are attended the school. Of 88 applications for permission to marry, were granted. The total receipts (actual cash from timber, &c not good sea boats, and the story of raids on Car Nicobar, 47 apart from the value of the convict labour as such) in 1898 out of sight across a stormy and sea-rippled channel, must amounted to £36,359, as compared with only £27,826 m 1894, be discredited. Honour is shown to an adult when he but with £50,421 in 1897. Expenditure, on the other hand m amounted to £103,861, as compared with only £93 963 m dies, by wrapping him in a cloth and placing him on a 1898 1894 but with £112,170 in 1897. Thus the net cost to Governplatform in a tree instead of burying him. At such a ment in 1898 was £67,502 ; and the net annual cost per convict, time the encampment is deserted for three months. 1 e £6-1. The variation in the amounts for different years is largely Andaman languages are extremely interesting from t ic due to the fact that the forest year does not coincide with the philological standpoint. They are agglutinative m nature, revenue year, and to the great distance from London, whence show hardly any signs of syntactical growth, though every payments are made. Ain-HOPaTiES.—Since 1875 there has been extensive research indication of long etymological growth, give expression o the Andamanese and their country. The following books wi only the most direct and the simplest thought, and aie into be found to contain most of the necessary references: purely colloquial and wanting in the modifications always Aboriqinal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. London, imnecessary for communication by writing. .The sense is port max. History of our Relations with the Andamanese largely eked out by manner and action. Mincojne is the cutta, Government, 1899; Notes on the Languages qf I; d first word in Colebrooke’s vocabulary for “ Andaman of the Andamanese, xi. vols. MS. India Utnce, -P011 , Island, or native country,” and the term has thus become Department, Calcutta.-Ds Foltn. Mollusques ^J^^^eleValue °f]]^fr Mands a persistent book-name for the people. It, or some- Bordeaux, 1879.—Temple. Commercial thing like it, was probably one of the tribal names when graphic Communication with the Andaman and C T - -> Colebrooke wrote 120 years ago, and may be used now, Calcutta, 1899.