It is apt that this muscular, long-winged, tetchy-looking bird is called the taran-chel-yar. “Decomposition: taran ‘surface’ + chel ‘waterfall’.” The name was given to the bird by the Great Andamanese, one of the peoples of the Andaman Islands. How does it work? “The Great Andamanese had observed the flight of the storm-petrels [for that is what a taran-chel-yar is] as they patter the sea surface while flying close to it with dangling legs. The surface is churned like a waterfall splashing on it from above.”
These are quotes from a startling, moving new book on the Great Andamanese and their knowledge of the birds of their islands. Ethno-ornithology — Birds of the Great Andamanese: Names, Classification and Culture (OUP, Rs 950) is by ornithologist Satish Pande and linguist Anvita Abbi. One studies birds, the other documents the dying tribal languages of India. Modestly they write that “This is perhaps the first work in the field of ethno-linguistic ornithology related to the Great Andamanese community.”
No doubt it is. Only a tiny number of the Great Andamanese survive, in and around Port Blair. None now live in the jungles that housed them for 70 millennia. They now live “civilised” lives, with pucca homes, TVs and radios, and with a government dole. Of these survivors, the young no longer know their own languages. The most common is Jeru. It is spoken by just 10 humans, of whom five are over 40. The other 28 speak Andamans Hindi.
There are touches of nostalgia and pessimism, but once the authors get to the meat (that is, the birds) this is a serious book, the result of a literally last-ditch attempt to salvage a world view. In the dense Andaman jungles, the authors write, most birds are hard to spot and harder to trap, even for the natives. So the Great Andamanese approach their birds (some 250 species, of which 28 are endemic; this book covers about 100 species whose local names could be verified) less as things to eat than as fellow creatures.
This is why Pande and Abbi focus on names. Because birds are not utilitarian for the Great Andamanese, it is useful for a linguist to learn how a tribe identifies and classifies them, what features are considered defining. Does an isolated human society think like the rest of “civilisation”, and/or like other isolated societies around the world?
Read the book for a partial answer to that question. Here are some more bird names.
There is the domestic cock, known as the mocho. This means “’infamous’ or ‘mad’”, which is apparently what humans think of it.
The Eurasian curlew, a migrant. Its name laotchote combines lao, foreigner, with choto, curvy. The curlew has a long, curved beak.
The ridiculously showy Nicobar pigeon, milidu. This combines mil, to move, with i, an object, and diu, sun or glitter. So, a glittering moving object.
The little tern, taie. Ta is a “causative marker” and ie means pain: that which causes pain. This tern has a shrill, incessant cry.
There is, of course, much more. The Great Andamanese identify a bird by its look, what it reminds them of, what it sounds like, what it makes them think of, what else it resembles, where it lives, how it behaves...
Here, it seems, is the very foundation of metaphor. Is this how our languages formed? We name for understanding; we understand by drawing parallels. It’s a happy reminder that no matter how abstract and fast-evolving our language and ideas get, at root they are rooted in the things that provide the building blocks of sense. Real things, like birds.
