In the Andamans and Nicobars Part 30

The site in _Mal_ the people consider to be something like Hades, and they believe that the spirits of the dead, immediately after life is ended, take up their abode in it. Consequently they never approach it on ordinary occasions, nor do they gather coconuts from the place, though the palms grow there thickly.

When a person becomes ill, or when it is desired to expel the devil from anyone, the _tamiluanas_ first resort there to consult with their household spirits, or familiars, and to obtain "devil-expelling" leaves.

In the event of their attempts failing, they go to another spot in distant jungle called _Pa.s.sa_ (a former settlement of the M[=u]s people), where they suppose the souls of their ancestors sojourn.

The burial ceremony is peculiar, and the whole _motif_ of it seems to be that if the corpse return to the village the ghost will be able to accompany it and haunt the place.

If a death should occur in the village proper, the natives, after conveying the corpse to the "deadhouse" in _Elpanam_, for fear of the spirit, barricade themselves for a time in their houses, and keep fires burning before the doors.

When a Kar Nicobarese becomes moribund he is taken to the "deadhouse,"

or "house of pollution," and there left to die, with bunches of "devil-exorcising" leaves about his bed. After the end has come, all friends bring a piece of cotton, in which the corpse is swathed subsequent to being washed in coconut water. It is then lifted by two men and, while kept in an upright position, lowered down the ladder and delivered to a number of friends waiting below, who try to prevent its burial. These, with the intention of returning it to the house occupied in life, attempt to bear it towards the village, but the movement is opposed by the rest of the community, who are in the majority. Much struggling takes place about the corpse, and it is very roughly handled, but at length it is forced towards the burial-ground and flung violently into the grave. Sucking pigs and fowls are then killed, and after blood from them is sprinkled over the body, are placed beneath the arms and legs.[210] The grave is then filled up, and on the third day is decorated, and marked by three bamboos, to which young coconuts are fastened for the purpose of engrossing the attention of the ghost. The house of mourning is also covered with young coco-palm leaves and sprinkled with sacrificial pigs' blood.

After the death of a person, houses, canoes, and the ground about the village are covered with palm leaves to prevent the ghost from entering.

Theoretically, all the possessions of the deceased are destroyed,[211]

but the practice is now confined to personal property, as spoons, _daos_, clothes. Some of his pigs are killed, a few coco palms cut down, and on rare occasions his house is burnt, or unroofed and left deserted.

What remains goes to the children.

There is no belief in a future state, but it is thought that, for a time, the ghost will haunt the vicinity.

For some days after a death the _tamiluanas_ inst.i.tute ceremonies for the purpose of expelling the ghost from the village.

Tall bamboos, festooned with palm leaves and cotton, are erected on the sh.o.r.e at _Elpanam_, and the _tamiluanas_ take their place beneath. After scattering stones and ashes, they run about, uttering a mouse-like squeak the while, until they capture the spirit and imprison it in a bunch of leaves. Several men then grasp the bunch, and placing in it a small figure, made in human likeness of coco-palm leaf, twist up the whole, and throw it into the sea.

From time to time villages go through ceremonials somewhat similar, for the purpose of expelling such devils as may be haunting the place.

Shaving the head is sometimes indulged in as a sign of mourning, together with frequent bathing and abstinence from work. A man will also change his name to show grief at the loss of a friend, and will take another t.i.tle if it comes to his knowledge that a namesake, even a comparative stranger, is dead.[212]

It was customary for widows to have one of their fingers cut off, and if they refused to submit to the operation, the posts and doorway of their houses were gashed and notched.[213]

Accounts of two interments which differed somewhat from the usual practice may be worth giving here.

The first is that of "Distant," headman of Sawi, who was buried with much pomp.

The corpse was dressed in a good suit of English clothes, and silver wire was wound about it from head to feet. This was because he was once a _mafai_, and the usual ceremony of _Luinj-lare_ (renunciation of the character) had not been performed. Upon the wire, thirty-two pairs of spoons and forks were placed crosswise. Necklaces made of two-anna pieces (240 to each, and two dollars) were attached to head and neck, and the body was wrapped in forty yards of red cloth.

The corpse was then borne in procession by twenty-four men and women to the house of the relatives (contrary to custom), and was then taken to the graveyard. Two very large and four ordinary pigs were burnt alive as a sacrifice, and seven pigs and eight chickens were buried with the body after their blood had been sprinkled over the corpse.

The following night, the ceremony of _Fota Elmot_ (wiping away tears) was performed, on which occasion fifty pigs and twenty fowls were slaughtered to feed the guests, and thirty-two pairs of spoons and forks, necklaces of silver coin and wire, and teakwood boxes full of the dead man's property, were broken up and thrown into the sea.

Again, on the eighth day, the final mourning ceremony was gone through, when, in honour of the thirteen villages of the island, thirteen pairs of spoons and forks, and sundry other articles, were destroyed, and the guests were entertained at a feast of equal munificence to that they had shortly before taken part in.

The second case is that of a man, nearly one hundred years old, who owned a third part of the village of Lapati.

The body was neatly wrapped in cloths under a curtain in the "deadhouse." A sort of open coffin, about 7 feet long and 4 feet wide, was made, and six thick green canes were fastened to it, three to the head and three to the foot, each cane about 50 yards long.

When all was ready the coffin was drawn into the "deadhouse" up a sloping plank, and when the corpse had been placed within, two women got in and lay on either side the body, embracing it with their arms. When the coffin was lowered to the ground two big men also laid themselves down in it.

The large _Elpanam_ was filled with a crowd of about a thousand people, young and old, from other villages. Of these, a hundred from the southern and a hundred from the northern villages seized the long canes at either end, and dragged the coffin up and down in compet.i.tion until the canes were broken, when, the grave being dug, the body was buried.

This ceremony is performed only when those of the highest repute are interred.

Once in every five years the villages in turn remove all their pigs, and keep them in sties in the jungle. The surroundings of the village are then offered to the public for cultivating fruit and vegetables, and the people from other villages arrive and make gardens, which are open; there is no need for fencing, since there are no pigs to cause damage.

The reason for all this is that after demolishing the _na-kopah_ (sacrifice to the dead), during the festival of _Kana Awn_, the yams and other vegetables and fruit with which they are loaded are scattered about the houses, and grow abundantly; to obtain some profit from this unplanned result this custom has been introduced.

The people in general have their large vegetable plantations at a distance, but for immediate use there are some smaller gardens near the village. The _tamiluanas_ informed the people that in consequence of the flourishing condition of these latter, the devils were angry, and might cause the island to be drowned by a deluge, and that to save themselves they should uproot part of the plants. Accordingly, the greater portion of the yams and other vegetables were destroyed; some of the people doing it willingly, others with discontent.

The Kar Nicobarese seem to hold much the same belief with regard to an eclipse as do the Chinese and some of the peoples of India.

They think the moon is actually being swallowed by a serpent, and throughout the night both young and old refrain from sleep, and occupy themselves in driving the serpent away. Providing themselves with tins and planks, they beat them, causing a tremendous din, and shout, "Alas!

alas! do not devour it, let the moon alone and go away."

In the buying and selling of the larger canoes the natives of Chaura act as middlemen--seeming to possess a monoply of intermediation in this business as they do of pottery making.[214]

The canoes are not made at Chaura; there are no suitable trees on that small island to construct them from. The Chaura people obtain them--very cheaply--from the central groups (where many are made, and where others, obtained from the southern group, are also sold), and sell them again to the Kar Nicobarese, making four or five times in the transaction what they themselves pay.[215]

"As the Kar Nicobarese are timid, and allow themselves to be bullied by the natives of Chaura, who a.s.sume an overbearing manner towards them, as well as towards their southern neighbours--all of whom are dependent on them for pots, which cannot be made at any of the other islands--the feeling predominant among the Kar Nicobarese as regards the people of Chaura is one of fear, and they evince every desire to avoid incurring their ill-will and resentment,"[216] even to the point of submitting to be flagrantly cheated in their canoe barter! The extortionate price they have to pay may have something to do with the high value the Kar Nicobarese set on their large canoes.

The business of purchasing these is accompanied by its peculiar ceremonies. In an instance at M[=u]s, after busy bargaining for pots and a large canoe, the Chaura people, in the evening, feasted, each man in his friend's house, and then at midnight a.s.sembled at the _Elpanam_, with the chief men of M[=u]s, and amused themselves singing songs in turn, and partaking of betel-nut and toddy. There they got through the preliminaries to purchasing the canoe, and the articles intended as its price were exhibited. After the bargain was closed the M[=u]s people returned to the village, leaving the Chaura men at the house in _Elpanam_.

The articles agreed on were handed over.

Next evening a great feast was given to the people of Chaura by those of M[=u]s; in each house a young pig was killed for the purpose. At night all the people a.s.sembled in a house in _Elpanam_, and after dining, amused themselves singing songs by turns.

The Chaura people then left the island in the canoe they had sold, for it is the custom to do this, and bring the canoe back on a later occasion. They were provisioned for the voyage by the village of M[=u]s.

The dances of the Kar Nicobarese are always held at the open ground of _Elpanam_. With a _mafai_, a fire, or a trophy of spoons and forks as a centre, the people form large circles, or parts of circles, according to their number, and move slowly round to left and to right. The s.e.xes dance separately, the one ring within the other, or join the ends of their chains to form one large circle, but form up very compactly, each person grasping his neighbour's shoulder with outstretched arms intertwined. The dance is somewhat monotonous, and consists of two or three steps sideways, and a pause, with a stamp with the foot or a swing of the body, and then the same movement in the reverse direction, and so on, over and over again, to the accompaniment of the performer's songs.[217]

The refreshments partaken of are coconuts, tobacco, and toddy. The latter is supplied in large quant.i.ties, and gives rise to much intoxication, which, however, only seems to result in increased friendliness and a drunken sleep.

When a quarrel takes place the partic.i.p.ators often seek revenge in destroying each other's coconut trees, but in severe cases a man will probably burn his own house down. Possibly this is done on the supposition that the enemy will suffer more from self-reproach at having been the cause of the destruction than from any other form of punishment he could undergo. Or possibly it is a mild instance of a peculiar form of "amok," to a variation of which curious psychological state the Nicobarese are undoubtedly subject on occasions when they consider themselves injured. Several instances that have been recorded of kindred occurrences will perhaps best ill.u.s.trate this conduct and idiosyncrasy.

1. A man named Kuhangta purchased some things from the traders on the responsibility of another named Tumilo. As the traders pressed Tumilo for immediate payment, he urged Kuhangta to settle the matter with coconuts forthwith. Kuhangta was enraged at this, and killed several of his own pigs, and also set fire to his own house. He threatened, in addition, to kill any one who approached, and kept a _dao_ in hand for that purpose. Lorenzo therefore went to the owner of a gun and begged that Kuhangta might be killed. This request was not granted, and, in the end, the headmen of various villages succeeded in reconciling the two, and obtained from Kuhangta a promise of good behaviour. Such cases, however, do not always end so tamely as in this instance.

2. "About noon, Offandi, the headman of M[=u]s, came to my hut with a paddle in his hand which he was trying to break, muttering at the same time, 'I am a very rich man. All this land and everything in it is mine. You were a very poor man, and I gave you land, gardens, houses, and many other things. You now call me a liar, and so I am angry, and am going to dig up a grave.' He repeated this over and over again, and would not say anything else. I was quite puzzled, and could not understand what he meant. I asked him if he was angry with me, and he said, 'Yes, I am angry, and there is another man.'

"While this was going on, his wife and a number of men and other women came running after him from the village. As soon as he saw the crowd, he hastily broke the paddle in my hut and ran off with the handle to the burial-ground, and began to dig at the grave of his late father.

"The crowd ran off to the burial-ground, caught hold of him, and tried to drag him out of the place. A regular struggle commenced, and the women began to cry out, some, 'We fear, we fear,' others, 'Don't pollute us.' The Burmese and other traders looked on from a distance with great surprise.