Bo people (Andaman)

Territory of the Bo (Aka-Bo) and other Andamanese peoples in the late 19th century.

The Bo was one of the ten Indigenous tribes of the Great Andamanese people, originally living on the western coast of North Andaman Island in the Indian Ocean.

The tribe spoke a distinctive Bo language, closely related to the other Great Andamanese languages. The native name for the language was Aka-Bo ( Aka- being a prefix for "tongue"); and this name is often used for the tribe itself. They were mostly forest-dwellers (eremtaga) with a smaller number of shore-dwellers (aryoto).[1] They are a designated Scheduled Tribe.[2]

There are still a handful of people who identify themselves as members of the tribe living on a reservation on Strait Island, but none can speak the original language.[3]

  1. ^ George Weber (~2009), The Tribes Archived 20 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Chapter 8 in The Andamanese Archived 5 August 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2012-07-12.
  2. ^ "List of notified Scheduled Tribes" (PDF). Census India. p. 27. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 November 2013. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
  3. ^ Anvita Abbi (2006), Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands. Lincom Europa.