In spite of the partial likeness of type, it is doubtful whether all, or nearly all, the islands were occupied by the aborigines. Tilanchong, for instance, is uninhabited, and it is questionable whether such forestless islands as Kar Nicobar, Chaura, or Kamorta, etc., could be suitable habitats for such a primitive people. In Kachal, Nankauri, and Little Nicobar we have islands of a similar character to Great Nicobar, although in them no traces of a rude people are to be found. It is probably on account of the smallness of these areas that the immigrants succeeded in eradicating the first inhabitants, who, in the other island alone, hostile causes notwithstanding,[135] have preserved for themselves a separate existence.
To account for such features as are common to both peoples everywhere, we may conclude, therefore, that while many of the latter aborigines survived separately, the others were absorbed by settlers on the coasts, who, by communication and intermarriage with islands not possessing an indigenous element, carried the Shom Peṅ strain throughout the Archipelago.
The arrival of numerous colonists from the eastward would account for the lighter complexion of the Nicobarese; for it is only natural to suppose that if a separate branch of the same people, the one living in the open on the coast would be darker in complexion than the other, instead of which the contrary is the case.
MAN OF NANKAURI; A HEADMAN OF THE SHOM PEṄ.
As to the component parts of the Nicobarese, various suggestions have been made. They are Malays modified by a Burmese element;[136] the descendants of Malays before Mahommedanism spread among them (close of thirteenth century), but separated at a much earlier date;[137] or, again, they are of the same race as the Battaks.[138]
They are described as offshoots of the Malay race, being a people which, while possessing much in common with the Indo-Chinese stock, nevertheless, in their physical characteristics, hold a place midway between the Malays and the Burmese.[139]
It has also been said of them that they are "descended from a mongrel Malay stock, the crosses being probably in the majority of cases with the Burmese, and occasionally with natives of the opposite coast of Siam, and perchance also in remote times with such of the Shom Peṅ as may have settled in their midst."[140]
The natives of Teressa are probably not greatly wrong when they say that the inhabitants of Nankauri are Malays, who when out fishing lost their boats and settled there, and the Kar Nicobarese are descendants of the Burmese who, in a revolution that took place in their country, were obliged to leave the Tenasserim coast.[141]
In the first case, it is not difficult to admit that fishing-boats belonging to Sumatra (90 miles distant), or to the Malay Peninsula (260 miles away), should be blown off-shore in a storm, and safely reaching Nankauri yet not care to face the voyage back.[142]