Andaman Sea Gypsies - Burmese or Myanmar, Peaceable, Disappearing Reality, Compare Fictional Gyptians of "Golden Compass" film?

 Gypsies and Water Cultures

Real and Fictional

Update on the Andamans,
The film, "The Golden Compass," see post at Gypsies, Roma, "Gyptians", features a water-nomad Gypsy culture, a tribe on the canals of Great Britain. That apparently is fiction - we find no authority so far for a water-borne Gypsy culture in Eastern or Western Europe.

Such a culture may still exist in Burma, or Myanmar, however. See Phuket Magazine's article on an indigenous sea-nomad people, "Endangered Idyll? Andaman Sea Gypsies Live, Work And Play On The Water, But Is This Ancient Way of Life Now At Risk?" at //www.phuketmagazine.com/html/PM%20Issues/Vol.14.7/Endangered_Idyll.htm.

Andaman. 

By way of update (this is February 2010), the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are shown on a map at the BBC's article, Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India, at  ://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8498534.stm/.

Apparently, this last speaker of the Bo language of the Andaman Islands was Boa Sr - the Andamans being one of the most "linguistically diverse" areas of the world.  The language roots stem from pre-Neolithic times; African roots?  The article posits, but has no further information.  The Voga site suggests southeast Asia instead.  The woman's name is Boa Sr.  There is a website called The Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese (Voga), see ://www.andamanese.net/.  See photos, gallery, read the language phonetically at the site.

With some four main groupings within the Andamanese, and linguistic differences among them, two of the languages had already vanished.

Groups:  All but the Sentinelese have contracted outside illnesses from contacts with outsiders

• Great Andamanese - maybe 50 remain, many of which are children, on Strait Island. Capital:  St. Blair (this Great Andamanese group is Boa Sr's group)

• Onge - maybe several hundred

• Sentinelese - no contact, resist intervention.  

• Jarawa - about 250, live in the forests of Middle Andaman

Burma's Sea Gypsies are The Salons (several spellings -Salone, Salong, etc.)

They refer to themselves as the Moken or Mawken.

Here is an extensive site about this group, known as Sea Gypsies, still found from Philippines to Borneo, and from Thailand to Burma (country names not updated in the article), see ://www.projectmaje.org/gypsies.htm/  This is a compendium of articles.

"Freely roaming the ocean in small boats from birth to death, living simply off its riches, a Southeast Asian people seem as mythical as mermaids. ***"

Are they connected at all with Gypsies, Roma?

No, says ://www.projectmaje.org/gypsies.htm/  The term "Sea Gypsies" instead refers to the nomadic lifestyle.

Cultural Skills; Ecological Wisdom. 

Their knowledge of the sea and waves, and signs, led those on shore or able to get to it to flee to higher ground and safety before the devastating tsunami in 2005. See the CBS account, updated from the original in 2005, at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/18/60minutes/main681558.shtml. Others already at sea saw signs and headed to deeper water and were safe there. Read about the Veddas - they also have deep ecologically sound knowledge, see://vedda.org/1-who.htm.

Beliefs. 

They speak of, "the wave that eats people." A Tsunami idea? Then the earth is reborn - like the Noah story? Apparently legends among them warn of seven waves, and the first irregular one brought the legend to life.

Location. 

How does this gibe with the Andaman Islands location in the BBC article?

The area is near Kawthaung, at the Mergui Archipelago - or the Surin Islands. People with various names such as Mokken, Selung, Urak Lawoi, Moken, and many other names in the article.

Origin. 

They may stem from the forest-dwelling "Veddas" of India, see://vedda.org/index.htm, the home page site for Sri Lanka's Veddas or Wanniyalaeto. There are maybe 2000 left by now, and on some 200-500 boats. There are also coastal Veddas, see ://vedda.org/seligmann-coastal-veddas.htm. More cultures - not only the Moken, but the Veddas - being let go. Shall we wake up here and preserve ourselves?

The Vedda, however, took to the sea for economic reasons, and are distinguished from the Moken, see ://www.projectmaje.org/gypsies.htm/.  Regardless of connections to each other, and a no-connection (perhaps?) to the gypsies-roma-romani that migrated from Asia (probably) to eastern Europe, we endanger ourselves when we let any group dwindle and die.  Knowledge, lore, perspectives, all needed, is that so?

Language. 

Is this the same as the languages noted in the BBC article about Boa Sr?

The language is "Austronesian" with some Thai, Burmese. So much not known. See more info at ://www.trv.net/trv98/culture/gentlepeople.htm. Then see more on the language at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/18/60minutes/main681558_page3.shtml. Absent from the language are equivalents of "want," or "take," "goodbye," "hello," or "worry." No greetings. Correction on the idea of "take" - the site says you give or take but you do not want, all is give and take? Without separate culpability attached to take?

Can we learn from these brethren of ours, or not. See a "yes" at ://vedda.org/glpieris.htm. If we have nothing to learn from the accumulated wisdom of those who do not accumulate property, if the absence of property makes them valueless, let them go. Go ahead.

Then read this site, by R. Chandrasoma, concerned about romanticizing these non-Aryan "primitives" - the Veddas - site found at at ://www.lankalibrary.com/cul/veddha/veddha_12.htm. The claims are that the last pure Veddas disappeared long ago, those left are fake or so diluted in racial stock (some such concept) as to make preservation meaningless.

Next interest:   Southern Iraq's Marsh Arabs.  Connected?