Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/308

 268 The Religion of the Andaman Islanders,

wax. The Andamanese reason is a simple one. " She dislikes the smell." The suggestion I would make is little more than a guess. The great honey season, when the finest combs are collected, is just at the end of the dry weather. At this season the Andamanese, men, women, and children, all turn out to collect honey. When the honey has been extracted from the comb, the wax is useless until it has been melted, and, since the natives make considerable use of the wax, this is the great time for melting it down. As the honey season draws to a close the rains begin, often very suddenly and with violent storms. These two things, always associated year after year, the breaking of the monsoon following on the time of the collecting of honey and the melting of wax, may perhaps explain the belief that this last is one of the things that greatly offend Biliku. As pointing, however, to some less simple explanation, there are other super- stitions about honey and beeswax, — how the latter, for instance, will keep away the spirits of the jungle.

There may be a somewhat similar explanation con- cerning the various roots and fruits connected with Biliku. I believe that all these roots and fruits ripen at about the same time, namely at the end of the rainy season, in October. The yams certainly are then just nearing their full growth. The Entada scandens, Kurz, in Burmese Flora, mentions as seeding in " the cold season." I think I remember having seen the seed pods fully grown as early as September. I much regret that I did not take particular note of these matters. The theory I wish to suggest is that these fruits and seeds begin to be available for human food just at the end of the rainy season, that is in October. Now November is generally the period of the worst storms, of cyclones. The Andamanese may well have come to regard the storms of November as the result of their digging up the yams at about that time. This is to some extent borne