Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/305

 The Religion of the Andanian Islanders. 265

"The people at Tebi-chiro called across to Biliku, saying-, — "Come over here." She answered, — "Very well! I'm coming." She took a stone and put it in the sea, and it floated. She got on to it, to cross over. When she was half-way across, Biliku and her stone sank in the sea, and they became the two big rocks that stand there."

I will close this collection of stories by giving one from the Chari people of the very north of the Great Andaman.

" Biliku took a red stone and a pearl shell {Be). She struck them together. Fire came. She collected wood, and made a fire. She went to sleep. Mite (the bronze- winged dove, Chalcophaps indicd) came and took away (stole) fire. He made a fire for himself. He gave fire to all the people in the village. Afterwards fire was given to all the places. Each man took his own."

In these stories we find several themes continually re- curring, (i) Biliku as living on earth but separated from the Andamanese ancestors. (2) Fire as stolen from Biliku. (3) Biliku represented as throwing either a firebrand or a pearl shell {Be).

There is one more point to be mentioned before I pro- ceed to the discussion of the material I have put forward. That is the legend of Biliku as the creator of the world, and more particularly of men and women.

I was often told that Biliku was the first human being, and that she made the earth and the first Andamanese. But there was no legend of creation in connection with Biliku. On the contrary, all the different legends which I did obtain attributed the origin of mankind to some other person. The Jeru legend tells how the first man, Jutpu, came out of a joint of a big bamboo, and how he made a wife out of clay, and then other people out of the same material. In the Puchikwar story the first being is Patie, the Monitor lizard, who got a wife out of a piece of wood. That is to say, the belief in Biliku as the first being is sporadic and undeveloped. It is