From Nicobarese Folklore
Long ago, in the days of yore, there was a man, Tot-ta-rong by name, who was violently in love with a beautiful damsel, and anxious by all means to get her for his wife. Time after time he would come to her to speak with her and to urge his request, but the girl simply did not care in the least for Tot-ta-rong.
Tot-ta-rong did not know what to do, for the girl always gave him a persistent and most emphatic “No!” So he was utterly miserable, and felt inclined to commit suicide on account of his grief.
Now it happened to be the time of the great Ossuary Feast in his village, and great crowds of people had come in from the other villages for the occasion. It had got on towards midnight in the bright moonlight; and the people were coming in from their gardens in the jungle, and were carrying round the pigs which were to be killed for food at the feast.
Tot-ta-rong went round too, and saw the people carrying the pigs – a merry crowd and a pleasant sight, sufficient (one would have thought) to banish sorrow from any heart. But Tot-ta-rong found no pleasure in what he saw. On the contrary, he hated it all on account of his grief, and he could not endure it.
There was none among his friends either to comfort him; for they were one and all busy, seeing to the comforts of their numerous guests.
He felt that he must do something to assuage his sorrow on account of that woman; he would kill himself and thereby perhaps work out her death too.
“However,” he thought to himself, “I will go to that woman once more and try to win her. I will speak my final words to her.” So he went and spoke to her once more, but she never deigned to answer him a word.
After he had considered his course of action, he went home and took a long dah (or sword), and forthwith went out into the jungle. His intention was to cleave asunder the island, in the north-west portion of it, the part where the lady dwelt and where all that crowd of feasters were.
So he went on until he came to “Cleft Hill.” He got up on a rock in the midst of where the dancers were; for owing to the great numbers of guests, there was dancing going on in all the somewhat scattered groups of houses round about. Then Tot-ta-rong drew his sword and tried to cleave the earth with it. But the earth did not part asunder when he marked it with the point of the sword.
So he took a piece of ta-choi wood; this he fashioned like a dah (a sword or chopper); and then when he had marked the ground with the point of it immediately the earth rent asunder at his feet – from “Cleft Hill” even to “Deep.”
When the ground was being thus cleft asunder, Tot-ta-rong was in two minds as to where he would like to be – he would like to remain in the land where he was, and he would like to be on the part which was moving off elsewhere. Ultimately he decided to go away with the part of the island that was being rent off. But already there was a chasm formed, and when Tot-ta-rong tried to jump it he slipped and fell.
Meanwhile the portion of land that was moving away thought better of it and decided to come back again, and join on to the main part of the island as before; and so Tot-ta-rong got crushed between the rocks.
When the severed portion of the land saw the blood of Tot-ta-rong, it felt hysterically sick at the sight, and in disgust again moved off and became Little Andaman Island; at least so say some travelled Nicobarese. The body of poor Tot-ta-rong was turned into a rock, and strewed on the beach lies his hair, which the uninitiated think to be the decaying fallen leaves of the casuarina pine.
Meanwhile the cleaving of the ground was going on, right up to the place whence the sound of the revelling came; and then and there friends and lovers, husbands and wives, parents and children, were being parted asunder for ever; for some were on the land which remained here, and some on that which moved away.
Those left here had no relics of their friends, nothing to remind them of the dear ones who had been carried off. So they picked up the empty nuts which their friends had drunk, and put them in boxes and stowed them carefully away; and every now and then they would open the boxes and take out the empty nuts, and kiss them, and then put them back again in sorrowful remembrance of the dear ones departed.
Source:
In the Nicobar Islands, George Whitehead, 1924
Kotharian Lightning 