Grammatical Structure.
Yet with their infantile arithmetic these paradoxical islanders have contrived to develop an astonishingly intricate form of speech characterised by an absolutely bewildering superfluity of pronominal and other elements. Thus the possessive pronouns have as many as sixteen possible variants according to the class of noun (human objects, parts of the body, degrees of kinship, etc.) with which they are in agreement. For instance, my is día, dót, dóng, dig, dab, dar, dákà, dóto, dai, dár, ad, ad-en, deb, with man, head, wrist, mouth, father, son, step-son, wife, etc. etc.; and so with thy, his, our, your, their! This grouping of nouns in classes is analogous to the Bantu system, and it is curious to note that the number of classes is about the same. On the other hand there is a wealth of postfixes attached as in normal agglutinating forms of speech, so that "in adding their affixes they follow the principles of the ordinary agglutinative tongues; in adding their prefixes they follow the well-defined principles of the South African tongues. Hitherto, as far as I know, the two principles in full play have never been found together in any other language.... In Andamanese both are fully developed, so much so as to interfere with each other's grammatical functions[348]." The result often is certain sesquipedalia verba comparable in length to those of the American polysynthetic languages. A savage people, who can hardly count beyond two, possessed of about the most intricate language spoken by man, is a psychological puzzle which I cannot profess to fathom.
The Semangs.
In the Malay Peninsula the indigenous element is certainly the Negrito, who, known by many names—Semang, Udai, Pangan, Hami, Menik or Mandi—forms a single ethnical group presenting some striking analogies with the Andamanese. But, surrounded from time out of mind by Malay peoples, some semi-civilised, some nearly as wild as themselves, but all alike slowly crowding them out of the land, these aborigines have developed defensive qualities unneeded by the more favoured insular Negritoes, while their natural development has been arrested at perhaps a somewhat lower plane of culture. In fact, doomed to extinction before their time came, they never have had a chance in the race, as Hugh Clifford sings in The Song of the Last Semangs:
The paths are rough, the trails are blind
The Jungle People tread;
The yams are scarce and hard to find
With which our folk are fed.
We suffer yet a little space
Until we pass away,
The relics of an ancient race
That ne'er has had its day.
Physical Appearance.
In physical features they in many respects resemble the Andamanese. Their hair is short, universally woolly and black, the skin colour dark chocolate brown approximating to glossy black[349], sometimes with a reddish tinge[350]. There is very little evidence for the stature but the 17 males measured by Annandale and Robinson[351] averaged 1.52 m. (5 ft. 0¼ in.). The average cephalic index is about 78 to 79, extremes ranging from 74 to 84. The face is round, the forehead rounded, narrow and projecting, or as it were "swollen." The nose is short and flattened, with remarkable breadth and distended nostrils. The nasal index of five adult males was 101.2[352]. The cheekbones are broad and the jaws often protrude slightly; the lips are as a rule thick. Martin remarks that characteristic both of Semang and Sakai[353] is the great thickening of the integumental part of the upper lip, the whole mouth region projecting from the lower edge of the nose. This convexity occurs in 79 per cent., and is well shown in his photographs[354].
Hugh Clifford, who has been intimately associated with the "Orang-utan" (Wild-men) as the Malays often call them, describes those of the Plus River valley as "like African Negroes seen through the reverse end of a field-glass. They are sooty-black in colour; their hair is short and woolly, clinging to the scalp in little crisp curls; their noses are flat, their lips protrude, and their features are those of the pure negroid type. They are sturdily built and well set upon their legs, but in stature little better than dwarfs. They live by hunting, and have no permanent dwellings, camping in little family groups wherever, for the moment, game is most plentiful[355]."
Usages.