Although the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands were originally all of the same stock, various causes have contributed to bring about a distinction amongst them, and they are now separated into two distinct ethnical groups,--the Shom Pe[.n] of the interior of Great Nicobar, and the coast people, or Nicobarese, who are found in all the inhabited islands.
Of the Shom Pe[.n] but little is known, as, with the exception of a few families who have friendly intercourse with the coast villages, they have, as now constituted, always been persistently hostile to the Nicobarese, but it is probable that they number at most between 300 and 400 individuals.
It was for long believed that the interior of Great Nicobar was inhabited by a race of Negritoes akin to the Andamanese, but the Shom Pe[.n] are an isolated group of primitive Malayans, and although they must be regarded as the aborigines of the islands, many features amongst them point to the fact that they are no longer racially pure.
Not only does the facial appearance vary greatly, but the hair, which is universally regarded as an almost infallible indication of race amongst primitive peoples, occurs in all the grades between curly and straight.
To account for this latter difference, and for the dull brown colour of the skin--far darker than is usual amongst Malays--one may of course suggest remote Negrito admixture. Possibly the Andamanese, on one of the predatory voyages which it seems they were not unaccustomed to make in this direction,[126] may have reached the island, and for some reason unable to return, have intermixed with the inhabitants.
But I think it more probable that these peculiarities are due to a Dravidian strain, and that some mariners of this race, who, from before the time of Solomon, were accustomed to make trading voyages to the Eastern Archipelago,[127] became stranded on these islands, and incorporated themselves with the people they found there.
In this way, not only would the nature of the hair, colour of the skin, and occasional definiteness of feature, be accounted for, but the aborigines would be left as we now find them, unreduced in height, while mixture with the Andamanese would probably have the effect of lessening their stature.