The origin of the name Andaman appears to be somewhat doubtful, and it is, of course, a word unknown to the natives. It is, however, very old, and may—as Sir Henry Yule suggests in his Commentary on Marco Polo—perhaps be traced to Ptolemy (who flourished at Alexandria soon after the commencement of the Christian era), and if so, we have by him the first-known reference to the Archipelago, for he mentions a group of islands under the name of Good Fortune, Αγδαιμονος Νηδος, or the like—"The Angdaman Islands"—whence have come the names Agdaman, Angdaman, Andaman. Even at this early date the inhabitants were said to be cannibals.
Doubtless the Chinese knew of the group in comparatively early times, for they have records of the neighbouring Nicobar Islands going back for more than a thousand years.
Skipping a long period, we next come to the ninth century, and there have the accounts of Arab travellers (A.D. 871), which, although of an alarming description, are tolerably correct in some details. "The people eat human flesh quite raw; their complexion is black, their hair frizzled, their countenance and eyes frightful, their feet very large, and almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked." Those ships, the story goes on to say, which have been set back by contrary winds, and compelled to anchor for the sake of water, commonly lose some of their men on these barbarous coasts, and it is fortunate that the natives have no ships or other vessels, otherwise they would seize and devour all the passengers.[92]
Reference to the Andamans in the thirteenth-century narrative of Marco Polo is very much of a traveller's tale. "Angamanain is a very large island. The people are without a king, and are idolaters, and no better than wild beasts. All the men of this island have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise; in fact, in face they are just like big mastiff dogs! They have a quantity of spices; but they are a most cruel generation, and eat everybody they can catch not of their own race. They live on flesh, and rice and milk, and have fruits different from ours." Colonel Yule suggests that Angamanain is an Arabic (oblique) dual, indicating "The two Andamans," viz., "The Great and the Little."
In 1563, Master Cæsar Frederike set out on his travels, and returning homeward three years later, passed near the Nicobars on his way from Malacca to Goa. "From Nicobar to Pegu is, as it were, a row or chain of islands, an infinite number, of which many are inhabited with wild people; and they call those islands the Islands of Andemaon, and their people savage or wild, because they eat one another. Also, these islands have war one with another; for they have small barques, and with them they take one another, and eat one another: and if by evil chance any ship be lost on those islands, as many have been, there is not one man of those ships that escapeth uneaten or unslain. These people have not any acquaintance with any other people, neither have they trade with any, but live only on such fruits as the islands yield."[93]
An Italian doctor, John Francis Gemelli, who made a voyage round the world, touched at the Nicobars in 1695, and refers incidentally to the neighbouring group. "Friday the 3rd, we were in sight of the island of Nicobar. The island pays an annual tribute of a certain number of human bodies to the island of Andemaon, to be eaten by the natives of it. These brutes rather than men, use, when they have wounded an enemy, to run greedily to suck the blood that runs. The Dutch are witness of this cruelty of theirs; for they, going with fire-ships to subdue them, and landing 800 men, though they were well entrenched to defend themselves against those wild people, yet they were most of them killed, very few having the good fortune to fly to their ships.... The chief motive of the Dutch to attempt the conquest of that island, was a report spread abroad that there was a well in that island whose water converted iron into gold, and was the true philosopher's stone.... No man in Europe or Asia can give any certain account of it, because those people have no commerce with any nation in the world." This vanished wonder was discovered by an English vessel that was driven to the islands; for a native who was carrying a shell of water accidentally spilt some of the contents on the anchor, and the part so wetted immediately turned into gold! The narrative goes on to say that the unhappy native, who thus by his clumsiness revealed the priceless secret, was immediately killed, not by his countrymen, as might perhaps be expected, but by the strangers! There is no mention of torture; but the well was neither discovered then nor since.[94]
The next historian is an Englishman, for Captain Alexander Hamilton, in his Account of the East Indies,[95] written about 1700, devotes some space to these islands. "The Andamans are surrounded by many dangerous rocks and banks, and they are all inhabited with cannibals, who are so fearless that they will swim off to a boat if she approach near the shore, and attack her with their wooden weapons, notwithstanding the superiority of numbers in the boat and the advantages of missive and defensive arms of iron, steel, and fire."
As an example of this, Hamilton tells of one, Captain Ferguson, whose ship, bound from Malacca to Bengal, in company with another, was driven by a strong current on some rocks, and lost. The second vessel was carried through a channel, and was completely powerless to aid those shipwrecked, "which," says our author, "gave ground to conjecture that they were all devoured by those savage cannibals."
This same chronicler met a native of the Andamans at Acheen in 1694, and says of the incident: "The Andamaners had a yearly custom to come to the Nicobar Islands with a great number of small praus, and kill and take prisoners as many Nicobarians as they could overcome." During one of these raids, however, the long-suffering Nicobarese armed themselves—it does not seem to have been their custom to resist—and, gathering together, gave battle to the invaders, and utterly defeated them; and on this occasion the man under discussion, then a boy of ten or twelve years, who had accompanied his father, was taken prisoner, and, spared on account of his youth, was made a slave.
Some years went by, and he was sold to the Achinese, who, being Mohammedans, taught him their religion; and he remained in Sumatra, until, on the occasion of his master's death, he was manumitted.