20 THE PIGMIES. 



Poison is also employed by the Manthras (*) and other Bermun 

 tribes. But these half-bred Negritos, although knowing the use 

 of bows and arrows, have substituted the blow-pipe for them. ( 3 ) 

 In this case, as in many others, we can easily detect the influence 

 of the Malays. 



These Malacca Negritos are also acquainted with the art of 

 setting snares for big game, some of them being strong enough to 

 capture even tigers. They place at the end of a long path, artifici- 

 ally made in the jungle, a strong spear fixed to a tree which is bent 

 back and kept in position by the means of a catch. Any animal 

 passing by, releases the spring, and is instantly transfixed. ( 3 ) 

 In India, now-a-days, as in the time of Ctesias, the bow is, so to 

 speak, the characteristic weapon of the Draviclian races. The 

 Gonds seem to be the only ones who have given it up and 

 taken to the use of the axe and pike. (*) 



IY. 



Beligiotts and Moeal Characteristics. 



Belief in Superior Beings. — Like many other wild races, the 

 Negritos, to whom these chapters are specially devoted, have 

 often been represented as perfect atheists. This is anything but 

 accurate. We must not, in our appreciation of their rudimentary 

 beliefs, start from the ideas which educated Europeans form of 

 religion, even when they declare themselves unbelievers. 



On the strength of assertions made by a Sepoy deserter who had 

 lived for some time with the Mincopies, some writers have, even 

 quite recently, taken for granted that these islanders do not behove 

 in any superior being who has any influence, bad or good, on their 



(1) Montaxo, loc. cit., p. 47. 

 (a) Montano ; Logan, loc. cit., p. 272. 

 (3) Logan, loc. cit., p. 257. 



(*) Rousselet, Tableau do* Faces de VInde Cevirale (Bcvvc d" Anthropolo- 

 gic, Vol. II, p. 276). 



