Were the Andaman Tribes the cannibals ?

 

                        The Andaman Tribes were not the cannibals

 

There has always been an unquenchable search for the history of the Andaman Islands and the islanders, firstly attempted by the travellers and explorers and now the islanders themselves.

 

Prior to the 18^th century, the Andamans remained shrouded in mystery despite some early accounts of very few people beginning with Alexandrian Geographer Claudius Ptolemaeusor say Claudius Ptolemy of second-century Alexandria. There is an obscure description about the islands and the natives as cannibals in the Geography of Claudius Ptolemy, originally titled Geographia and written in the second century. Though inaccurate due to Ptolemy's varying methods of measurement and use of out-dated data, Geography of Claudius Ptolemy is nonetheless an excellent example of ancient geographical study and scientific method. This edition contains more than 40 maps and illustrations, reproduced based on Ptolemy's original manuscript.

 

At the end of his description of transgangetic India he mentions a number of islands ‘whose people go naked and are cannibals’. Among these he mentions Bazakata (or Bazakota) and the ‘Island of Good Fortune’ (Agathoudaimonos) which have been identified by Yule with the Great and Little Andamans. He has also suggested ‘that the name Andaman might have been adopted from a transcript of the latter name in greek as Ag. daimon’. Portman, however suggests that the cartographer Agathodaemon, who drew the maps of Ptolemy’s Geography may have called Buzakata Agathou Daimonos (Island of Good Fortune) after his own name. Regarding Bazakata Ptolemy notes that “in these islands some say there is found in abundance the murex shell-fish and the inhabitants go naked, and are called Sindai, inhabited by cannibals”, and names Agathoudaimonos in this connection ( Majumdar 1975).  

 

During the 9^th Century AD, two Arab travellers namely Abu Zaid Hasan and Sulaiman gave a very authentic description about the Andamans and interestingly they named an island as ‘Najabalus’ in their description.

 

The account of the said Arab travellers has been translated as under :

 

“The islands called Najabalus are pretty well peopled; both the men and women there go naked, except that the women conceal their private parts with the leaves of trees. When shipping is among these islands, the inhabitants come off in embarkations, and bring with them ambergris and cocoa-nuts, which they truck for iron, for they want no clothing, being free from the inconveniences either of heat or cold. Beyond these two islands lies the sea of Andaman; the people on this coast eat human flesh quite raw; their complexion is black, their hair frizzled, their countenance and eyes frightful, their feet are very large, and almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked. They have no sorts of barks or other vessels; if they had, they would seize and devour all the passengers they could lay hands on. When ships have been kept back by contrary winds, they are often in these seas obliged to drop anchor on this barbarous coast for the sake of water, when they have expended their stock; and upon these occasions they commonly lose some of their men.”

 

Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller who visited the Andamans on his way to China in 1290 AD circa, referring to the Andaman Islands as ‘Angamanain’ mentions that the island is a very large island with no chief and the people are no better than wild beasts. They have heads like dogs with teeth and eyes likewise. Friar Odoric (1322) and Nicolo Conti (1430) mentioned about the cannibalism of the Andaman Islanders. In Ramusio, Cesare Federici (1563 circa) mentions about the terrible fate of crew after their ship wrecked on the Andamans. All the crews were killed and eaten by the natives.  

Captain John Davis, of Arctic fame, the inventor of the "back-staff " the earliest form of quadrant, piloted a Dutch ship to the East Indies, and touched, in 1599, at the Central Nicobars. He wrote, "... the people brought in great store of hens, oranges, lemons, and other fruit, and some ambergris which we bought for pieces of linen cloth and table napkins. These isles are pleasant and fruitful, lowland, and have good road for ships. The people are most base, only living upon fruits and fish, not manuring the ground, and therefore having no rice."

An Italian doctor, John Francis Gemelli, who made a voyage round the world, touched at the Nicobars in 1695, and refers incidentally to the neighbouring group. "Friday the 3rd, we were in sight of the island of Nicobar. The island pays an annual tribute of a certain number of human bodies to the island of Andemaon, to be eaten by the natives of it. These brutes rather than men, use, when they have wounded an enemy, to run greedily to suck the blood that runs. The Dutch are witness of this cruelty of theirs; for they, going with fire-ships to subdue them, and landing 800 men, though they were well entrenched to defend themselves against those wild people, yet they were most of them killed, very few having the good fortune to fly to their ships.... The chief motive of the Dutch to attempt the conquest of that island, was a report spread abroad that there was a well in that island whose water converted iron into gold, and was the true philosopher's stone.... No man in Europe or Asia can give any certain account of it, because those people have no commerce with any nation in the world." This vanished wonder was discovered by an English vessel that was driven to the islands; for a native who was carrying a shell of water accidentally spilt some of the contents on the anchor, and the part so wetted immediately turned into gold! The narrative goes on to say that the unhappy native, who thus by his clumsiness revealed the priceless secret, was immediately killed, not by his countrymen, as might perhaps be expected, but by the strangers! There is no mention of torture; but the well was neither discovered then nor since. (C BodenKloss 1903 pp. 178-79)

 

Captain Alexander Hamilton who navigated the Bay of Bengal between 1688 and 1723 in his ‘Account of the East Indies’ asserted that the Andamanese were cannibals and extremely violent and used to take slaves from the neighbouring islands of Nicobars. (Pandya, 1984, p. 348). Hamilton tells of one, Captain Ferguson, whose ship, bound from Malacca to Bengal, in company with another, was driven by a strong current on some rocks, and lost. The second vessel was carried through a channel, and was completely powerless to aid those shipwrecked, "which," says our author, "gave ground to conjecture that they were all devoured by those savage cannibals."(C Boden Kloss 1903 p. 179)

 

 

Thus all those narratives and explanations revolving around the cannibalism of the inhabitants of the Andamans, lack trustworthy evidence even amidst the present added fact that I (present author) have worked for more than twenty years among the Andaman tribes within a friendly working relationship as Tribal Welfare Officer under the Andaman administration, and during my stint I witnessed several killings of the offenders by the Jarawas of South and Middle Andaman, but found their cannibalism only in the old papers. In many recorded cases of Jarawa killings mostly during 1970s to 90s, the bodies of the deceased were found badly mutilated, mangled and torn but without eaten. Being well acquainted with the Jarawa language, I never heard any instance of cannibalism from the old members of the Jarawa. Similar experience I gained from the Onge and Great Andamanese who have still in memory many stories passed on to them by their ancestors. They saved themselves from the deadly wall of Tsunami waves in 2004 with the help of the ancient knowledge their ancestors had given to them. They did not come down to see the receding water in curiosity but preferred to run towards the hillock. On the west of Andaman, the North Sentinel Island lie and as a member of the official expeditions I visited the island on several occasions and during these expeditions they never attempted to kill us with bows and arrows. Their aggression is generally termed as their hostility. In the aftermath of Tsunami they killed two fishermen and were dancing on the bodies when the team went on air-survey. That time too, no sign of so-mentioned cannibalism was observed. For now, all these clearly suggest that, much part of the early accounts about the cannibalism were made under the influence of misleading sources and misunderstandings only, while in reality the Andaman islanders were NO cannibals. An example is placed below about how a misleading source may cause trouble to the follower(s). A survey party consisting of Frederic J. Mouat, George Playfair, Lieutenant J.A. Heathcote, and a French photographer Oscar Mallitte landed on Interview Island on basis of the misleading accounts of J.H. Quigley titled Wanderings in the Islands of Interview (Andaman), Little and Great Coco (1850). Quigley had reported the islanders to be very friendly and had written fantastic accounts of tigers, deer and beautiful plants. But when the party landed on the Interview Island the natives attacked with their bows and arrows injuring one of the members Heathcote. In the same way perhaps those stories about the cannibals or cannibalism have been rumoured and/or furthered with new experiences and fictions as well.

 

Later Robert Hyde Colebrooke and many others have confirmed their hostility but produced no evidence of their cannibalism. It is interesting to note that when these travellers mentioned about Andaman islanders’ cannibalism, at the same times few more facts they highlighted which are arguable. For example, Marco Polo in 1290 AD Circa narrates that they carry spices and they live on flesh, rice and milk. Henry Cordierre marks, “from the Sing-ch’a Sheng –lan quoted by Professor Schlegal (Geogr. Note.Ip.8) we learnt that the islanders have neither rice nor corn, but only descend into the sea and catch fish and shrimps in their net, they also plant bananas and cocoa trees. A far more serious objection against the older accounts is raised by Sir Henry Yule. Sir Henry Yule (1 May 1820 – 30 December 1889) was a Scottish Orientalist and geographer. He published many travel books, including the translations of the work of Marco Polo in 1871. He observes against the cannibalism, “The traditional charge of cannibalism against these people used to be very persistent, though it is generally rejected since our settlement in 1858…of their murdering the crews of wrecked vessels, like their Nicobar neighbours, I believe there is no doubt, and it has happened in our own day.” But some of Yule’s own statements are debatable to the modern scholars. For example-

“Abraham Roger tells us that the Coromandel Brahmans used to say that the Rakshasas or demons had their abode on the island of Andaman lying on the route from Pulicat to Pegu and also that they were maneaters..an island, a steep and regular volcanic cone which rises covered with forest to a height of 2150 ft. straight out of the deep sea to the eastward of the Andaman group bears the name of Narkandam in which one cannot but recognise naraka-kundam (hell) (can it be that this volcano was active in old days and some Brahmans regarded it as the mouth of Hell)” (Majumdar 1975 pp 37-38)

 

Mouat (1863) writes in his Adventures and Researches among the Andaman Islanders, “There is another account of the Andaman Islands and their inhabitants, which dates from the early part of the reign of William III. This was the time (17^th Century AD) when Aurangzeb was ruling the Moguls, and when the new and old East India Companies were carrying on those struggles for monopoly which ended in the formation of that grand corporation of merchants, which, after founding and ruling, tantbienque mal (as best they could), one of the mightiest of Eastern empires, has recently become historic. The maritime adventurers of England, excited by the wildest rumours of the exhaustless riches of India, then fitted out ship after ship, in which they undertook this distant voyage, to return to Europe laden with the shawls, the silks, and precious stones of the East. As mariners became better acquainted with the navigation of these seas, the Andamans were more frequently visited, and our knowledge of them begins to be more trustworthy and accurate...”

 

Elaborated in the book ‘History of the Andaman Islands’  https://notionpress.com/read/history-of-the-andaman-islands