The Chol are a race of supernatural beings mentioned in anthropological accounts of the folklore of the Great Andaman archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. They are spear-wielding spirits of the air, associated with the racket-tailed drongo. “Chol” is the sound of this bird’s call: chol, chol, chol.

It is said that in the distant past, Maia Chol, the ancestor of these beings, stole a pig from another mythological figure named Maia Kolwot.

Maia Chol took his prize and climbed up into a tall gurjon tree to eat it.

Maia Kolwot, who was incredibly strong, was not ready to let this deed go unpunished. He set up sharp spikes in a circle all around the tree. Then he grabbed hold of the trunk and with mighty heaves started pulling the tree straight down into the ground.

Maia Chol felt his perch getting lower and lower. He realized that if he didn’t get off the tree soon, he too would be stuffed into the earth. So he jumped — only to be impaled on the spikes Maia Kolwot had set up around the tree.

Usually, when people die, their soul travels over an invisible cane bridge in the sky that connects our world with the world of the dead. But when Maia Chol died, his soul did not cross all the way over the bridge. Instead, it took up residence on the bridge itself, where it was joined by all his progeny, the racket-tailed drongos.

Sitting in the sky and looking down on us, the Chol sometimes take offense at certain human actions — for example, if someone does a shoddy job of butchering a pig. When this happens, they punish the person by hurling invisible spears at them. The Chol live so high above the earth, though, that they can’t hope to hit a moving target, nor can they see well enough to aim at night. They can only get a clear shot when someone is standing absolutely still in the daytime. Thus the spears of the Chol are blamed when people suffer from sunstroke.