160 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



the misrepresentations of some explorers, marriage is a permanent 

 tie, divorce being unknown, and "conjugal fidelity till death the 

 rule and not the exception 1 ." 



No forms of worship have been noticed, though there is a 

 vague belief in Puhtga, an immortal, invisible being, 



BeHefs 10US w ^ ^ ves m a ^ ar g e stone house in the sky, knows 

 everything, even the thoughts of men, in the daylight, 

 but not in the dark, and has made all things except three or four 

 evil spirits, for whose misdeeds he is not accountable. He pities 

 the victims, sometimes affords them relief, and shows in the 

 thunderstorm his anger at certain crimes and offences. But 

 nothing can lessen their dread of the evil one, to whose machin- 

 ations nearly all deaths, sickness, and other calamities are 

 attributed. There is a curious notion about wax-burning, which, 

 being distasteful to Puluga, is often secretly done when the enemy 

 is a-hunting or a-fishing, in order to stir his wrath and thus spoil 

 the sport. Hence in the criminal code, after falsehood, theft, 

 assault, murder, and adultery, follows wax-burning, the greatest 

 crime of all, equivalent to our sacrilege ! 



Original also is the native cosmogony, which teaches that the 

 earth-, flat as a plate, rests on the top of a very 



Cosmogony. 



tall tree, and is doomed one day to be upset by a 

 great earthquake. Then the living and the dead will change 

 places, and the latter, to hasten the consummation, every now 

 and then combine to shake the tree and so displace the wicker 

 ladder by which it is connected with heaven, but this must be 

 done only in the rainy season, as at other times the parched 

 earth might crumble and crush them all. 



Mr Man has carefully studied and reduced to writing the 

 Andamanese language, of which there are at least 



Speech. 



nine distinct varieties, corresponding to as many 



1 Man, //;. p. 237. 



- That is, the Andaman Islands, which they supposed to comprise the 

 whole world. Hence the few strangers that occasionally arrived were their 

 deceased forefathers, who dwelt on a neighbouring islet and were allowed 

 now and then to revisit the erema, or world. Hence also the natives of 

 India who now come regularly are still called chatigala, i.e. "departed 

 spirits." 



