National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

146

MARCO POLO.   VOL. II. BK. III.

at least 1560. The fanciful story of the tails is repeated by the Swede

Kj oeping as late as 1647."

Nicobar clearly means the Land of the Naked, but that does not

correctly describe the people. I have never seen either a naked man

or woman in the Nicobars. The men are nearly naked, but they wear

a string round the waist with a very small loincloth. The string is so

tied as to leave two long streamers behind, which have very much the

appearance of a tail as the man walks along, and no doubt this gave

rise to the idea that they were tailed men. The women wear a petti-

coat coming below the knees, generally red.

The Nicobarese are not savages and live in well-built clean villages,

are born traders, and can calculate accurately up to very high figures.

They deliberately do not cultivate, because by using their cocoanuts

as currency they can buy from Chinese, Malay, Burmese, Indian, and

other traders all that they want in the way of food and comforts. They

are good gardeners of fruit. They seem to have borne their present

characteristics through all historical times.

Pp. 307-308, Note i. Nancowry is a native name for two adjacent

islands, now known as Camorta and Nankauri, and I do not think it

has anything to do with the name Nicobar. For a list of the geo-

graphical names of the islands, see Census Report, pp. 179-180.

Race and Dialect.—The Nicobarese are generally classed as Malays,

i.e., they are " Wild Malays," and probably in reality an overflow of Mon

tribes from the mainland of the Malay Peninsula (Census Report,

p. 25o). They are a finely built race of people, but they have rendered

their faces ugly by the habit of chewing betel with lime until they have

destroyed their teeth by incrustations of lime, so that they cannot close

their lips properly.

I think it is a mistake to class the Nicobarese as Rakshasas or

demons, a term that would apply in Indian parlance more properly to

the Andamanese.

The Nicobarese are all one race, including the Shorn Pen, for long

a mysterious tribe in the centre of Great Nicobar, but now well known.

They speak dialects of one language, though the dialects as spoken are

mutually unintelligible. There is no Negrito tribe in the Nicobars. A

detailed grammar of the language will be found in the Census Report,

pp. 255-284.

The Nicobarese have long been pirates, and one of the reasons for

the occupation of their islands by the Indian Government was to put

down the piracy which had become dangerous to general navigation, but

which now no longer exists.

P. 309. The great article of trade is the cocoanut, of which a

detailed account will be found in the Census Report, pp. 169-174,

219-2207243. I would suggest the recasting of the remarks on the