PYGMIES. — The term, derived from a Greek word (πνευματικό = men as tall as a fist) already known to Homer, is used to designate representatives of a human race of great antiquity who still live in small nomadic groups, engaged in hunting and gathering, in the inland forest regions of the Belgian Congo (basins of the Ituri, Ubanghi, and Sanga) and in parts of Central-Western 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 the southern provinces of the Belgian Congo, and the homonymous BaTwa of Rwanda, among others, exhibit to a greater or lesser extent divergent racial traits due to interbreeding with forest-dwelling Negroes; these are collectively referred to as Pygmoids. The term "Pygmy" is also extended to certain residual populations of Southeast Asia and the islands, traditionally known as Negritos, who share with the true Pygmies (Africans) the common somatic characteristic of very short stature (averaging close to or below 150 cm), isolation in forest environments, and a primitive and crude type of economic and social life: these include the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (Andamanese, formerly called Mincopies), the Semang of the interior of Malacca, and the Aeta of the Philippines. Well distinct from the Asian Pygmies are pseudo-Pygmy groups such as the Sakai of Malacca, and even more so the Tàpiro, Goliath, and related groups of New Guinea (Melanesian Pygmies), who are in reality nothing more than a short-statured variety of the Papuan race.
In his recent anthropological classification (1941), Biasutti grouped the Pygmy races into a separate category within the larger group of Negroids, reducing them to four (Bambutid, Andamanid, Semangid, Actid). The last three, Asian, consist of only a few thousand or perhaps hundreds of individuals and are in demographic decline; the African groups, however, are more numerous and vital, amounting, according to Schebesta, to perhaps 100,000 individuals (including those of mixed blood). The racial problem presented by the Pygmies remains one of the most open and debated among anthropologists: according to one thesis (Kollmann, W. Schmidt, Bryn, G. Montandon, and others), they constitute the oldest stratum of present-day humanity, while according to another theory (Virchow, Schwalbe, Sarasin, Fischer, Vallois, etc.), the Pygmies are a group formed through secondary differentiation, resulting from various causes (isolation, adaptation to the forest environment, mutation) at the expense of an already existing melanodermic stock of normal stature. An interesting attempt to reconcile the two opposing theories was proposed by Schebesta (1940): the Pygmy sub-races would derive from the same undifferentiated archaic Negroid race from which Negroes and Melanesians also emerged. The Pygmies, as a specialized, "fossilized" race, would have formed not through degeneration but through a process of selection in the virgin forest. A substantially different, independently developed opinion was also expressed by Biasutti.
Among the distinctive features of Pygmy culture are the following: clothing reduced to a loincloth; absence or rarity of ornaments, body painting, and mutilations; dwellings of the most primitive types everywhere (windbreaks, beehive huts, caves); primitive methods of fire-making (groove method, rotation, sawing), and in one case (Andamanese), ignorance of any method for this purpose; absence of pottery, weaving, lithic industry, and regular numbering systems; predominant weapons, bow and arrow; economy based on gathering and hunting; patriarchal monogamous family, with equality between husband and wife; non-exogamous totemic clans (in Africa), but lacking true chiefs; slavery unknown; anthropophagy rare and probably attributable to borrowing. Within this overall picture of evident primitiveness, the study of religious beliefs is of special interest, and it is appropriate to review them for each of the main groups.
1. Religion of the African Pygmies
The credit for delicate investigations in this sphere goes almost exclusively to Catholic missionaries.Among the Pygmies of Gabon (Akoa), Fr. H. Trilles established the existence of multiple orders of beliefs, which have as their object: first, a Supreme Being (Khumum), creator of the world and of men, omnipotent and omniscient; now dwelling in the sky but once living on earth alongside his creatures (for some related myths, see COSMOGONY); below Khumum are the lesser spirits, also created by him, some benevolent (veruca) and others hostile (torva) to humanity; distinct from these are the manes (me), whose nature and fate are linked to complex beliefs about the human soul. The terminology of the Pygmies reveals that they have a plurality of concepts and terms in this regard: the soul as a whole (molli), an immaterial principle residing in the heart but influencing the mind (nise), the spirit-shadow or *genius* (*tis*), each with its own distinct destiny. Fr. Trilles also documented among the Gabon Pygmies the existence of totemic beliefs and magical practices; it is especially his merit to have transcribed various myths (on creation, the origin of fire, etc.) and a series of songs of surprising poetic force, worthy of standing, in their immediacy and powerful richness of imagery, alongside the masterpieces of literature from every country. The Bake of eastern Cameroon, who also belong to the western group of African Pygmies, hold similar beliefs.
Far more complex, and perhaps because in this case they were observed and analyzed by an ethnologist of repute such as Fr. Schebesta, are the religious beliefs of the eastern and purer group of African Pygmies, the Bambuti of the Ituri. Here the figure of the supreme Being, called *father* or *grandfather* in myths, not explicitly created but charged with preserving the world, is conceived as an old man, master of lightning and the flashing bow, who, as he walks or sways his white beard from right to left, brings on hurricanes, storms and earthquakes. This figure of the Being, however, has become so confused and enriched with so many different elements that it has lost its precise personality in myth, its supremacy in cult, and indeed any proper name. In its place come other supernatural beings, who are in a sense personifications and hypostases of that first nameless Being, but who also have their own differentiated characteristics. These are the god of the forest, the god of the sky, and the god of the subterranean afterlife. Examination of the rich Pygmy mythology, and even the etymology of the numerous names by which these three fundamental deities are known, demonstrates their lunar nature: most clearly in the case of the second, which is now the lunar symbol of the nameless Being (who in mythical times took refuge in or behind or above the moon), now the moon itself as the nocturnal star. To this divinity is specifically attributed the cosmogony, accomplished with the aid of, or by means of, lunar animals.
But in the daily life of the Bambuti, it is the god of the forest and of the game (Tore, Mugu, Muri-muri, Kalista, etc.), who lives on earth, invisible yet endowed with marked metamorphic qualities, now a provident and benevolent father, now a terrifying deity. To him, as master of life and the hunt, is directed almost exclusively their cult (prayers of request and thanksgiving, offering of first-fruits); but he is also the pre-eminent bearer of a mysterious magical force (megbe), and this explains the Bambuti recourse to *white* magic practices. Less relevant and less original (perhaps derived from conceptions of the neighboring Negroes) is the third divine hypostasis, the lord of the dead and of the underworld: a manistic cult, as the Bantu have it, seems quite foreign to the original Pygmy culture.
2. Religion of the Asian Pygmies
Certain coincidences that are found, even at such a great spatial distance, in the religion of the Asian Pygmies cannot fail to strike the observer. The theistic conceptions of the Semang are almost equally complex and vary widely from one tribe to another. The names by which the highest divinity is most frequently indicated are *Ta Pedn* and *Karei*; the first is sometimes conceived as the son, sometimes as the younger brother of the second. Ta Pedn appears to be the original divinity, identified with thunder (which perhaps originally was only the principal one of his manifestations), creator and preserver of the world, good and merciful toward men, whom he defends from the more feared Karei, who also gives food to the Semang. It is believed that he dwells in the sky, seated on a beam, whence he gazes upon the world. The configuration of Ta Pedn is usually anthropomorphic, as an old man (he is also called here *little grandfather*), he is the legislator and punisher of individual sins; for these he is asked forgiveness when the terrifying equatorial storms break out, manifestations of his wrath. Along with the supplications, the Semang offer, as a typical expiatory sacrifice, a little of their blood drawn by cuts made for the occasion.Little is known of the religion of the Aeta: but it is known that they believe in a creator God, immortal and invisible, dwelling on high, lord of all things and in particular (as *Tore* of the Bambuti) of the animals of the forest, whom he protects from the arrows of hunters. To him the Negritos turn in the crucial moments of their existence or when they find themselves in grave danger.
Finally, the religion of the Andamanese is much debated, and this because the two principal sources on which our knowledge is based, though both authoritative and worthy of trust, give a fundamentally different picture. Ethnological criticism, however, has been able to establish 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 an uranic god, dwelling in the sky 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, except evil; he was never born and is immortal; his omniscience, which ceases only with the coming of night, extends even to the thoughts of men. He is the punisher of sins: falsehood, murder, adultery, theft are punished by him equally with infractions of his alimentary taboos (certain food plants are under his direct protection) and the breaking of the “sacred silence,” which the Andamanese must observe when the cicada, his daughter, begins to sing. No cult of prayers or sacrifices is paid to him, but none the less is his wrath feared and his commandments observed.
3. Summary considerations
The Asiatic and African Pygmies constitute an ethnic complex sufficiently homogeneous, despite local differences, to be considered as a unitary entity. The general poverty of material goods and tools, and the simplicity of their economy and sociology, mean that this ethnic group must be placed at the lowest rungs of the civilizations now existing on earth. These facts, which have led ethnologists of an evolutionist orientation, even in fairly recent times, to postulate in the Pygmies a corresponding coarseness and poverty of spiritual conceptions, in reality do not prevent them from possessing, on the contrary, a rich animological heritage. This observation has been one of the most significant achievements—and, if one wishes, surprises—of modern ethnology. What part of this heritage should be considered as originally deriving from Pygmy culture? It is not possible to give a definitive answer for the present, and perhaps not even in the future. An attempt has been made in an outstanding way by Fr. Schmidt and his school with regard to the present situation, which may be considered not substantially changed over the last few centuries. After having affirmed the absence or rarity among the Pygmies of elements such as naturism, animism, manism, and magism (in particular black magic), or having recalled from time to time their possible presence due to influences from later cultures now in contact with the Pygmies (the so-called totemic culture of the Negroes of west-central Africa, the agricultural-matriarchal culture of south-eastern Asia), the latter has been successfully resolved (1933) in favor of the priority and predominance among them of a veritable monotheism (for the general characteristics of the latter in the Urkultur, V. D10, in Enc. Catt., IV, cols. 1627-20).The most in-depth, very recent direct investigations, and in particular those of Fr. Schebesta (1950; those of Fr. Schumacher [1950] concern Pygmy groups not undoubtedly pure), have highlighted the greater complexity of these problems; and Fr. Schmidt himself has seen fit to reaffirm (1951) the constant revisability of individual conclusions and the hypothetical and working character of the inferences that may be drawn from them. However future studies may be oriented, the Pygmies remain and will remain a living testimony to the richness and often the excessive pressure of persons and activities.