92 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



possession; or, again, objects taken from the agongs may be hung 

 for one night upon the tambara m and then returned to the owners. l73 

 They may never be sold, "because they have been on the agongs." 



Hut-shrines. These include buis, 17C which I shall call "buso- 

 houses;" and parabunnidn, or "rice-altars/' 



Biiis or Buso-houses. Little huts, three or four feet in height, 

 of a pattern similar to Bagobo living-houses, are erected at the 

 opening of a Ginuin festival on the grounds in the immediate 

 vicinity of the Long House. They are often placed in natural or 

 artificial thickets, at points that command the approaches from the 

 river and at turns of the paths leading to mountains trails — ob- 

 viously strategic positions with reference to unseen foes. The buis 

 has a roof, and a floor that is raised on little posts; there may be 

 three walls, but the front is always left open. On the floor, or on 

 the ground below, the Bagobo put areca-nuts and betel-leaf for the 

 Tigbanua and for the rest of the buso, and, on a particular even- 

 ing, formal rites are paid to these evil beings, with the distinct 

 intention of preventing them from breaking into the festival house 

 and thus vitiating the good effects of the ceremony. 



I am told that some Bagobo families keep little houses of this 

 type standing continually near their homes and that they call them 

 by the same name — buis — but I have seen them only at (linnni. 



Parabunnidn or Bice-sowing Altar*. A hut-shrine is set up in 

 one corner of a field on the occasion of the animal rice-sowing, for 

 the purpose of securing a good crop through the favor of Tarabume, 



' 7 * I'ossibly the intention is to give the spirits a more prolonged period of enjoyment 

 of the offerings; and there may be also a feeling that the object beeomes doubly hallowed 

 by its association with the two altars. Most of the objects, however, are returned 

 directly from the agongs to the owners. 



176 It is elsewhere noted that gifts dropped into the agong containing water are not 

 returned, but become the property of the priestess who utters an oracle at the ceremony 

 before an agong-altar. Cf. pp. 127 — 128. 



178 In its broadest sense, the term buis includes all these little ceremonial huts in 

 which offerings for unseen beings are placed; the. house structure of the parahunniau 

 being Bometimea called buis in distinguishing this element from the magic plants, the 

 wickets, the bowls, etc. But it is buso-houses that arc regularly designated as buis, 

 and it is in this stricter sense that I am here employing the term. For an account of 

 the devotional offices performed before the buis, sec \>. 108. llut-shrincs of a similar 

 type seem to have been in use among the early Filipino. Chirino writes that theVisayan 

 had, as shrines, Little houses with only roof and ground floor at the entrance to their 

 villages. Blaib and Robibtson: op. cit., vol. 12, p. 208. 1904. 



