Andamanese turn out to be quite embarrassingly rich in the higher
elements of faith. They have not only a profoundly philosophical
_religion_, but an excessively absurd _mythology_, like the Australian
blacks, the Greeks, and other peoples. If, on the whole, the student of
the Andamanese despairs of the possibility of an ethnological theory of
religion, he is hardly to be blamed.

The people are probably Negritos, and probably 'the original inhabitants,
whose occupation dates from prehistoric times.'[4] They use the bow, they
make pots, and are considerably above the Australian level. They have
second-sighted men, who obtain status 'by relating an extraordinary dream,
the details of which are declared to have been borne out subsequently by
some unforeseen event, as, for instance, a sudden death or accident.' They
have to produce fresh evidential dreams from time to time. They see
phantasms of the dead, and coincidental hallucinations.[5] All this is as
we should expect it to be.

Their religion is probably not due to missionaries, as they always shot
all foreigners, and have no traditions of the presence of aliens on the
islands before our recent arrival.[6] Their God, Puluga, is 'like fire,'
but invisible. He was never born, and is immortal. By him were all things
created, except the powers of evil. He knows even the thoughts of the
heart. He is angered by _yubda_ = sin, or wrong-doing, that is falsehood,
theft, grave assault, murder, adultery, bad carving of meat, and (as a
crime of witchcraft) by burning wax.[7] 'To those in pain or distress he
is pitiful, and sometimes deigns to afford relief.' He is Judge of Souls,
and the dread of future punishment 'to _some_ extent is said to affect
their course of action in the present life.'[8]

This Being could not be evolved out of the ordinary ghost of a
second-sighted man, for I do not find that ancestral ghosts are
worshipped, nor is there a trace of early missionary influence, while
Mr. Man consulted elderly and, in native religion, well-instructed
Andamanese for his facts.

Yet Puluga lives in a large stone house (clearly derived from ours at Port
Blair), eats and drinks, foraging for himself, and is married to a green
shrimp.[9] There is the usual story of a Deluge caused by the moral wrath
of Puluga. The whole theology was scrupulously collected from natives
unacquainted with other races.

The account of Andamanese religion does not tally with the anthropological