Islands of sun and sea


Have you ever wondered about the origin of the names of the Andaman and Nicobar islands?

Have you heard of Pulan Hantuman or Nakkavaram islands? Well, they are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. "The Malays called the group `Pulan Hantuman' or the `Land of Hanuman' and this we have corrupted into Andaman," concluded Sir Maxwell in the Journal Straits Branch (June 1886). The palm leaf Tamil inscriptions of Thanjavur refer to it as Theemai-t-theevugal (Islands of Harm or Evil). The islands were part of the domain of the Chola King Rajendra Chola II. The Chinese history of the T'ang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) refers to these islands as "The Land of Demons (Ogres)". Unlike the friendly Nicobarese, the aboriginal Andamanese were afraid of any outsider and invariably killed whoever landed on their shores

Kala Paani Even now the Sentinel tribal group, live on the isolated island, called the Sentinel Island, and do not allow outsiders to set foot on their island. Hence they are aptly named the "Sentinelese". They are probably the only living Palaeolithic people of the world. There is another theory that the Andamans were named after the Roman cartographer Agathodaimon (of Alexandria) who drew a map of the world of Ptolemy's account, and that the islands in Indian Ocean called by Ptolemy as Agmmatae and Aginatae referred to the Andamans. Ptolemy wrote of the Andamans as Bazakata, derived from the Sanskrit vivasakrata , meaning "stripped of clothes". The name Andaman can also be related to the Sanskrit nanga manava, the naked man.

Marco Polo, who travelled and explored the Europe-Asia route between 1271 and 1295, wrote both about Necuveran (Nicobar) and Angamanain (Andaman) as a "very large island, not governed by a king, with plenty of spices". Then comes Nicolo de Conti (Venetian explorer) who confirms with Marco Polo that cannibals lived on the Andamans. How far this allegation of cannibalism is true is anybody's guess. As far as the name Nicobar is concerned, there is no doubt that it is a corrupt form of the Tamil word "Nakkavaram", meaning the land of the naked. It is found in the Tanjore inscriptions of 1050 AD. Even earlier to this, I-Tsing, a Chinese Buddhist monk, refers this group of islands as Lo-jen-kuo (Land of the Naked) in 672 A.D.

It is an accepted fact that Andaman is derived from the Malay Pulan Hantuman and Nicobar from the Tamil Nakkavaram. During the British regime, it was feared as "Kala Paani" (Black Waters) because of the penal settlement and the Cellular Jail where the deported freedom fighters were to suffered untold miseries.