PRIESTS, THEIR PREROGATIVES AND FUNCTIONS 201 



Lamifiga River, a tributary of the Kasilaian, where a certain individual 2 became a baildn without 

 previous premonition and without any aspirations on his part. He was a person of little guile 

 and one who had never had any previous training in the practices of his order. 



When he receives a familiar deity the new priest becomes endowed with five more spirits or 

 soul companions, for his greater protection and for the prolongation of his life. It is evident 

 that his duties as mediator create a deadly hate on the part of the evil spirits toward him ; hence 

 the need of greater protection, such as is said to be afforded by the increase in number of spirit 

 companions. It is generally believed that, due also to this special protection, the priests are more 

 long-lived than ordinary men. I was informed by some that with the increase of each familiar 

 there was an addition of five more souls or spirit companions, but I did not find this to be the 

 common belief. 



THEIR PREROGATIVES 



(1) The priest holds converse with his divine friends, whose form he sees and describes, 

 whose words he hears and interprets, and whose injunctions, whether made known directly by 

 personal revelation or through divination or through dreams, he announces. When under super- 

 nal influence he is not a voluntary agent but an inspired being, through whose mouth the deity 

 announces his will and to whose eyes he appears in visible incarnation. 



(2) By means of his friendship with these unseen beings he is enabled to discover the pres- 

 ence of the inveterate enemies of human kind, the iusau, and even to wound them. I investigated 

 two 3 cases of the latter kind and found that not a shadow of doubt as to the truth of the killing 

 and as to the reality of this last-mentioned power was entertained by those who had been in a 

 position to see and hear the facts. 



(3) As a result of the favor with which he is looked upon by the beneficent deities, he is 

 enabled to discover the presence of various spirits in certain localities, and he knows the proper 

 means of dealing with them. This statement applies to the spirits of "souls" 4 of the departed 

 whose wishes and wants he interprets; to the spirits of the hills and the valleys, the tagbdnua, 

 whose favor must be courted and whose displeasure must not be provoked, and to the whole 

 order of supernatural beings that people the Manobo world, with the exception of the blood 

 spirits, the worship of whom falls to the war priests. 



SINCERITY OF THE PRIESTS 



On first becoming acquainted with the baildn system, I was very dubious, to say the least, 

 of the sincerity and disinterestedness of these favorites of the gods. But long and careful 

 observation and frequent dealings with them have thoroughly convinced me of their sincerity. 

 They affect no austere practices, no chastity, nor any other observance peculiar to the order of 

 priesthood in other parts of the world. They claim no high prerogatives of their own; they 

 can not slay at a distance nor metamorphose themselves into animals of fierce aspect. They 

 have no cabalistic rites nor magic formulas nor miraculous methods for producing wondrous 

 effects. In a word, as far as my personal observation goes, they are not impostors nor con- 

 jurers, plying thrifty trade with their fellow tribesmen, but merely intermediaries, who avail 

 themselves of their intimacy with powers unseen to solicit aid for themselves and for their fellows 

 in the hour of trial or tribulation. "I will call on Si Inimigus" (her diudta's pet name, his real 

 name being Si Inampo), said a priestess of the Kasilaian River to me once when I consulted 

 her as to the sickness of a child, "and I will let you know his answer." On her return she 

 informed me that the child had fallen under the influence of an evil spirit and that Si Inimigus 

 required the sacrifice of a pig as a token of my good will towards him and also as a gratification 

 of a desire that he felt for such nourishment. She departed as she came, never asking any com- 

 pensation for her advice. 



I might cite many cases of a similar nature that passed under my personal observation 

 and in which I made every endeavor to discover mercenary motives. I frequently interrogated 



' Bays (or Bono) Is the young man referred to. • San Luis and San Miguel. ' Um-a-nid. 



