Recommended reading

by George Weber

English-reading students and other interested parties who have not yet aquired an extensive knowledge of the Andamanese Negrito should start their studies with the titles listed below.

Key to Area and Field
(from our Bibliography which is not available to the public)

Area		Field
A	Andaman islands	1	anthropology, ethnology, sociology, art, customs, beliefs
B	Andaman and Nicobar islands	2	Government administration, economy, education, tribal welfare, current affairs, politics, tourism
C	Nicobar islands	3	linguistics
D	Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka	4	medicine, nutrition, biology, genetics, anatomy, population
E	mainland Southeast Asia	5	outside relatives (understood in the loosest possible sense)
F	insular Southeast Asia, Taiwan	6	archaeology, prehistory, origins
G	eastern mainland Asia, Japan	7	history
H	Australia, Oceania, New Guinea	8	geography, geology, oceanology, meteorology, botany, zoology, atlases, maps
I	other areas, the world in general	9	travelogues, guides, expedition reports, biographies
		10	bibliographies, encyclopaedias
		11	photography
		12	museology, collections
		13	general and others

Venkateswar S.

Development and Ethnocide: colonial practices in the Andaman Islands

263 pages

2004, Copenhagen, IWGIA

Subjects covered: A 1, 2, 4

See book review on this web-site

Madhusree Mukerjee

The Land of the Naked People - Encounters with Stone Age Islanders

288 pages

2003, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin

Subjects covered: A 1, 2, 9

See book review on this web-site

eds. Bhattacharya R.K., Mukhopadhyay K., Sarkar B.N.

Jarawa Contact - ours with them, theirs with us

248 pages

2002, Calcutta, Anthropological Survey of India

Subjects covered: A 1, 2

The most extensive official account/justification of the Jarawa situation, Indian government policies, Jarawa anthropology, ethnology, linguistics as well as environmental concerns. Consists of many articles written by many authors, so it is inevitably of uneven but on average of much higher quality than has been usual for official sources before. A must for anyone interested in any aspect of the subject.

This book should be counterbalanced with the unofficial account on this web site, Befriending the Jarawa, and by the two titles listed above by Venkateswar and Mukherjee. 

Cipriani L.(editor and translator D. Taylor Cox)

The Andaman Islanders

174 pages

1966, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson / New York and Washington: F.A.Praeger

Sujects covered: A 1, 4

The earliest detailed description of traditional Onge life - and the last: Cipriani visited the Onge in the early 1950s when they were still living in a relatively undisturbed state before the arrival of Indian settlers and social workers. Posthumously edited and published in a somewhat chaotic way but popular and easy to read. Contains much information not otherwise available.

A brief biography of L. Cipriani can be found on this web-site.

Cooper Z.

Archaeology and History: early settlements in the Andaman Islands

207 pages

2002, New Delhi, Oxford University Press

Subjects covered: A 6

Gives the latest available archaeological evidence and updates L. Cipriani's and P.C. Dutta's writings. They are relatively short scientific articles but are written so that they can be read and understood by non-specialists.

A brief biography of Z. Cooper can be found on this web-site.

Dutta P.C.

The Great Andamanese: Past and Present

88 pages

1978, Calcutta, Anthropological Survey of India

Subjects covered: A 6

The most thorough and detailed work published on Andamanese archaeology and the only (nearly) full-length book on the subject. Contains a wealth of relevant information. Well organised, well written, well illustrated &endash; but printed on awful paper and bound worse. 

Man E.H.

The Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andamanese Islands

288 pages

1st edition 1883/5, London, Anthropological Institute
reprint 1932, London, Bibling & Sons Ltd;
reprint 1975, New Delhi: K.M. Mittal

Subjects covered: A 1, 3, 4, 7, 8

The single most important work on the Andamanese but not an easy read. Man has a very dry style and tends towards the merciless piling of facts upon facts. In consolation: he was a conscientious data collector and piled up reasonably reliable facts. The book is an absolute must for anyone seriously interested in the subject. There is also a very valuable appendix on the Southern Andamanese languages by A.J. Ellis, the earliest scientific linguistic description of Andamanese languages. The elusive original edition was published in a rather messy manner (hence the double date) that we have not been able to figure out. It seems to be unobtainable. However, it is the reprint of 1932 edition (which may have been expanded and altered from the first edition by Man himself) and later Indian reprints based on it that are widely available.

A brief biography of E.H Man can be found on this web-site. 

Mathur L.P.

History of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands 1795-1966

348 pages

1968, Delhi, Sterling Publishers

Subjects covered: : B 1, 2, 7

The only full-scale history of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. It is an indispensable work of reference and contains much information not easily found elsewhere The book is well organised and well written but falls down somewhat for the time after 1942.

Pandya V.

Above the Forest: a Study of Andamanese Ethnoanemology, Cosmology, and the Power of Ritual

352 pages

1993, Delhi, Oxford University Press

Subjects covered: : A 1

The only serious work on the religious beliefs of an Andamanese group: a difficult subject presented in great depth and detail . It is not an easy read (the full title gives an inkling) but the result is well worth the effort. Unlike earlier, much more superficial descriptions of Andamanese religious beliefs (including E.H.Man's), Pandya's gives the reader a feeling for the alienness of the Andamanese world view. Tough but impressive.

A brief biography of V. Pandya can be found on this web-site. 

Portman M.V.

Notes on the Languages of the South Andaman Groups of Tribes

590 pages

1898, Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing

Subjects covered: : A 1, 3

A compendium of linguistic data on the southern Andamanese.There is a vocabulary with English equivalents for 2286 words in Aka-Bea, Akar-Bale, A-Pucikwar, Aka-Juwoi and Aka-Kol. Portman understood and spoke some Andamanese languages (we do not know precisely how well nor exactly which) but was not a trained linguist. Modern linguists regard this work as scientifically deficient in many respects but it remains one of the very few sources we have on the Great Andamanese languages - and it does contain a wealth of valuable other information. It is very difficult to get hold of.

Portman M.V.

A History of Our Relations with the Andamanese, compiled from Histories and Travels, and from the Records of the Government of India

892 pages (2 volumes)

1st edition 1898, Calcutta, Superintendent of Government Printing
reprint edition 1990, New Delhi, Asian Educational services

Subjects covered: : A 1, 3, 4, 7, 9

The 2-volume work contains an enormous amount of information. A medley of documents give a colourful account of life in an unusually isolated colonial outpost and penal colony. There are eyewitness accounts of all sorts of mayhem, cruelty and heroism, official accounts, sailing captains' reports of storms and shipwrecks, accounts of military exploits and disasters, battles and executions, tales of sexual shenanigans veiled in the traditional Victorian manner and much unveiled violence. In short: the huge book is (in parts) a jolly good read with material for half a dozen Hollywood movies. Besides, the book is a major source of material on the history of the islands and sheds much light (diretly and incidentally) on the Andamanese and their relations with British and Indian outsides.

A brief biography of M.V. Portman can be found on this web-site. 

Radcliffe-Brown A.R

The Andamanese Islanders

510 pages

1st edition 1922, Cambridge University Press,
2nd edition 1932
3rd and later editions from 1948, The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois
Original research 1906-08

Subjects covered: : A 1

The book is a standard text for manywork book was the fruit of Radcliffe-Brown's first field trip 1906-08, before he became a famous and influential anthropologist through his ground-breaking theorising in the field of social anthropology.

Brown's later fame still influences the esteem in which his Andamanese work is held in many academic circles today. At least in the field of Andamanology, that fame and respect accorded to Brown is not justified by his work. In fact, he built his book on data that is much more flawed than most satudents realise. Leaving aside the theorising which does not concern us here and which fills about half of his book, Brown had several serious problemswhich he barely acknowledges and two of these problems critically affect the value of the collected data.

Firstly, he did not speak any of the Andamanese languages (not even badly) and had to collect his data through dubious translators. Secondly, he investigated a people (the Great Andamanese) whose tribal identities had already virtually disappeared and whose traditional culture had already collapsed in most parts when he appeared on the scene. One would never guess these probems when reading the book. Brown's truly brilliant academic writing covers up all the factual cracks and crevasses. He deliberately gives the impression of investigating a people that had barely been touched by outside influences. The works of Man and Portman are less polished academically but both men were very much closer to the Andamanese over very much longer periods than Brown, spoke several of the Andamanese languages and their field work dates at least one to several crucial decades earlier.

Although no linguist, in 1914 Brown in his boundless self-confidence (which remained his trade mark all his life) published an analysis of the northern Andamanese languages that is our only source for some of these languages. Unfortunately, the source's water is undrinkable: the article has such serious and obvious flaws that linguists (a far more demanding community, apparently, than anthropologists) have dismissed it as useless. Our knowledge of the northern Andamanese languages remains close to zero. The 1948 edition of Brown's book still contains an expanded asnd re-worked rehash of the 1914-article as an appendix.

Brown's book remains a useful document but students should not take it as their only reading, still less base any of their own daring theories on it. The work's hidden but major flaws and the resulting unsafe foundation for Brown's own anthropological theorising should be kept in mind.

A brief biography of A.R. Radcliffe-Brown can be found on this web site.

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Last changed 30 March 2006