Pygmies

PYGMIES. — This is the name given, from a Greek term (πυγμῶς = men as tall as a fist) already known to Homer, to the representatives of a highly primitive human race, who still live in small nomadic groups, devoted to hunting and gathering, in the forested interior regions of the Belgian Congo (basins of the Ituri, the Ubangi, the Sanga) and in some zones of west-central Africa (southern Cameroon, Gabon, Spanish Guinea). Their names are numerous and varied: Aka, Efe, Bambuti, Akoa, Bekwi, BaYele, etc. Some groups, such as the BaBinga, the BaTwa of the Equator and of the southern provinces of the Belgian Congo, the homonymous BaTwa of Rwanda, etc., present in greater or lesser measure divergent racial characters, due to crossing of P. with forest Negroes, and are collectively called Pigmoids. The name of P. is also extended to certain residual populations of south-eastern and insular Asia, traditionally known as Negritos, who with the P. properly so called (African) have in common the conspicuous somatic character of a very low stature (averages close to or below 150 cm.), isolation in forest environments, and the primordial and crude type of economic and social life: they are the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (Andamanese, formerly called Mincopi), the Semang of the interior of Malacca, the Aeta of the Philippines. From the Asiatic P. too, pseudo-P. groups must be kept clearly distinct, such as the Sakai of Malacca, and even more the Tapiro, Goliath and related groups of New Guinea (Melanesian P.), which latter are in reality nothing but a small-statured variety of the Papuan race.

In his recent anthropological classification (1941) Biasutti has gathered into a separate group, within the larger "branch of the Negroid peoples", the pygmy races, which he reduces to four (bambutid, andamanid, semangid, actid). The last three, Asiatic, are each made up of a few thousand or perhaps hundred individuals, and are in demographic decline; more numerous and vital, on the other hand, are the African groups, which according to Schebesta would amount (including mixed-bloods) to perhaps 100,000 individuals. The racial problem presented by the P. is still among the most open and debated among anthropologists: according to one thesis (Kollmann, W. Schmidt, Bryn, G. Montandon and others) they would constitute the most ancient stratum of present-day humanity, while according to another theory (Virchow, Schwalbe, Sarasin, Fischer, Valois, etc.), the P. would be a group formed by secondary differentiation, following various causes (isolation, adaptation to the forest environment, mutation) at the expense of an already existing melanoderm stock of races of normal stature. An interesting attempt at reconciling the two opposing theories was proposed by Schebesta (1940): the pygmy sub-races would derive from one and the same undifferentiated archaic (negrid) race, from which the Negroes and the Melanesians would likewise have branched off. The P., as a specialized, "fossilized" race, would have been formed not by way of degeneration, but through a process of selection in the virgin forest. An opinion not substantially different, and arrived at quite independently, has moreover been expressed by Biasutti.

Among the distinctive characters of pygmy culture the following are enumerated: clothing reduced to a loincloth; absence or rarity of ornaments, body painting and mutilations; dwellings everywhere of primordial types (screens, beehive hut, caves); primitive methods of kindling fire (in a groove, by rotation, by sawing) and, in one case (Andamanese), ignorance of any procedure for that purpose; absence of pottery, of weaving, of stone industry, of regular systems of numeration; prevailing weapons, bow and arrow; economy based on gathering and hunting; patriarchal monogamous family, with equality of the woman with respect to the husband; totemic clans not exogamous (in Africa), but with absence of true chiefs; slavery unknown; anthropophagy rare, and probably attributable to borrowing. Within this overall picture, of evident primitiveness, the study of religious beliefs acquires a special interest, which it is worth reviewing for each of the main groups.

1. Religion of the African P

The merit of the delicate investigations in this sphere belongs almost exclusively to Catholic missionaries.

Among the P. of Gabon (Akoa) Fr. H. Trilles has ascertained the existence of several orders of beliefs, which have as their object: in the first place a Supreme Being (Khm-um), creator of the world and of men, omnipotent and omniscient; now dwelling in heaven but once living on earth beside his creatures (for some of the relevant myths, v. COSMOGONIA); then, below Khm-um, the inferior spirits, also created by him, some benevolent (verva) others hostile (torva) to humanity; distinct from these are the manistic spirits (me), whose nature and whose fate are linked to complex beliefs about the human soul. The terminology of the P. reveals that they have a plurality of concepts and terms in this regard: soul as a whole (molili), immaterial principle residing in the heart but influencing the mind (nie), shadow-spirit or "genius" (tsi), each with its own different destiny. Fr. Trilles has also documented among the P. of Gabon the existence of totemistic beliefs and of magical practices; it is above all his merit to have transcribed various myths (on creation, on the origin of fire, etc.) and a series of songs of surprising poetic force, worthy of figuring, in their immediacy and for their powerful wealth of images, alongside the masterpieces of the literature of every country. The Bake of eastern Cameroon, who also belong to the western group of the African P., have analogous beliefs.

Far more complex, and perhaps because in this case observed and analyzed by an ethnologist of standing such as Fr. Schebesta, are the religious beliefs of the eastern, and purer, group of the African P., the Bambuti of the Ituri. Here the figure of the supreme Being, called "father" or "grandfather" in the myths, not explicitly creator but nevertheless preserver of the world, is conceived as an old man, master of lightning and of the rainbow who, by walking or by swinging his white beard from right to left, causes hurricanes, storms and earthquakes. The figure of this Being has however come to be confused and enriched with so many different elements, as to lose its precise personality in myth, its supremacy in worship, and even any proper name. Other supernatural beings take its place, which are in a certain sense the personifications and the hypostases of that first nameless Being, but also have their own differentiated characters. They are the god of the forest, the god of the sky, the god of the subterranean underworld. The examination of the rich pygmy mythology, and the very etymology of the numerous names by which these three fundamental divinities are known, demonstrate their lunar nature: with greater evidence for the second, which is now the selenic symbol of the nameless Being (who took refuge in mythical times in the moon and behind or above it), now of the moon itself as a nocturnal luminary. To this divinity is specifically attributed the cosmogony, carried out with the help, or by means, of lunar animals. But in the foreground, in the daily life of the Bambuti, is the god of the forest and of game (Tore, Mugu, Muri-muri, Kalisia, etc.), who lives on earth, invisible but endowed with marked metamorphic qualities, now a provident and benevolent father, now a terrifying divinity. It is to him, as master of life and of the hunt, that the cult is almost exclusively directed (prayers of petition and of thanksgiving, offering of first-fruits); but he is also the bearer par excellence of a mysterious magical force (megbe), and this justifies the recourse of the Bambuti to practices of "white" magic. Less prominent and less original (perhaps derived from conceptions of the neighboring Negroes) is the third divine hypothesis, the lord of the dead and of the subterranean world: a manistic cult, such as the Bantu have, appears entirely foreign to the original Pygmy culture.

2. Religion of the Asiatic P

Certain concordances that are found, even at so great a spatial distance, in the religion of the Asiatic P. cannot fail to strike one, or to appear fortuitous. The theistic conceptions of the Semang are almost equally complex, and largely variable from one tribe to another. The names by which the highest divinity is most frequently indicated are Ta Pedn and Karei; the former is conceived sometimes as the son, sometimes as the younger brother of the latter. Ta Pedn appears to be the original divinity, identified with thunder (which perhaps originally was nothing but one, the principal, of his manifestations), creator and preserver of the world, good and merciful toward men, whom he defends from the much feared Karei, and moreover the giver of nourishment to the Semang. He is believed to dwell in heaven, seated on a beam, from which he gazes upon the world. The configuration of Ta Pedn is as a rule anthropomorphic, that of an old man (he is also called here "little grandfather"); he is the lawgiver and the punisher of individual sins; for these he is asked for forgiveness when the fearful equatorial storms break out, manifestations of his wrath. Together with their entreaties, the Semang offer him, as a typical expiatory sacrifice, a little of their blood drawn from cuts made expressly on such occasions.

Of the religion of the Aeta very little is known: but it is known that they believe in a creator God, immortal and invisible, dwelling on high, lord of everything and in particular (like the Tore of the Bambuti) of the animals of the forest, which he protects against the arrows of hunters. The Negritos turn to him at the crucial moments of their existence or when they find themselves in grave danger.

Much discussed, finally, is the religion of the Andamanese, and this because the two principal sources on which our knowledge is based, although both authoritative and worthy of trust, give a fundamentally different picture of it. Ethnological criticism has nevertheless been able to ascertain the authenticity (among the more southern and presumably purer groups of these islanders) of a monotheistic belief. The Supreme Being, here called Puluga, is predominantly a uranic god, dwelling in heaven in a house of stone; the lightnings are the burning brands that he hurls with his hand, the thunder is his voice. Puluga has created everything, with the exception of evil; he was never born and is immortal; his omniscience, which ceases only with the falling of night, extends also to the thoughts of men. He is the punisher of sins: falsehood, murder, adultery, theft, are punished by him just as are infractions of his dietary interdictions (certain food plants are under his direct protection) and the breaking of the "sacred silence," which the Andamanese must observe when his daughter, the cicada, begins to sing. No cult of prayers or sacrifices is paid to him, but his wrath is none the less feared for that, nor are his commandments any the less observed.

3. Summary considerations

Asiatic and African P. constitute a sufficiently homogeneous ethnic complex, despite local differences, such as to be considered as a unitary entity. The general poverty of material goods and tools, the simplicity of their economy and sociology, mean that this ethnic complex must be placed at the lowest rungs of the civilizations existing today on earth. These facts, which allowed ethnologists of evolutionist orientation, even in fairly recent times, to postulate in the P. a corresponding crudeness and poverty of spiritual conceptions, in reality do not prevent them, on the contrary, from possessing a rich animological heritage. This observation has been one of the most significant conquests and, if one wishes, surprises of modern ethnology. How much of this heritage is to be considered as original to Pygmy culture? It is not possible to give an exhaustive answer, at least for now, and perhaps also hereafter. An attempt has been admirably made by Fr. Schmidt and his school, with regard to the present situation, which may be considered not substantially changed in the course of these last centuries. After having affirmed the absence or rarity among the P. of elements such as naturism, animism, manism and magism (in particular of "black" magic), or having from time to time traced their possible presence back to influences of later cultures currently in contact with the P. (the so-called totemistic culture of the Negroes of west-central Africa, the agricultural-matristic culture of southeast Asia), this scholar concluded (1933) in favor of the priority and predominance among them of a true and proper monotheism (for the general characteristics of the latter in the Urkultur, v. Dio, in Enc. Catt., IV, coll. 1627-29).

The most thorough, very recent direct investigations, and in particular those of Fr. Schebesta (1950; those of Fr. Schumacher [1950] concern P. groups undoubtedly not pure), have brought out the greater complexity of these problems; and Fr. Schmidt himself has insisted on reaffirming (1951) the constant revisability of individual conclusions and the character of working scientific hypotheses of the inferences that may legitimately be drawn from them. However future studies may orient themselves, the P. remain and will remain a living testimony of the richness and often of the loftiness that can characterize the spiritual life of the most primitive peoples of the world today.

Vinigi L. Grottanelli