BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 63 



Ideas of death. Young people among the Bagobo, tend to 

 confuse mental images of the dead body that they have seen put 

 into the grave with those of the gimokud which, they are told, 

 "goes into the earth" in order to reach the underworld. The 

 people in the graves are blind, the children say, but they get 

 along because they have plenty of rice and chickens and bananas 

 and camotes to eat. Yet an intelligent adult differentiates perfectly 

 the tri-partite nature which tradition has assigned to man, — there 

 is a physical body that the buso will dig up and eat after it has 

 been put under the soil ; there is a good takawanan that goes to 

 the One Country to continue its existence in a less substantial and 

 more highly idealized manner than on earth, although moved by 

 like interests and like emotions to those that motivate him here,, 

 and, finally, there is an evil tebang that turns into a horrible, 

 man-eating burkan, perpetually roaming over the earth like a prey 

 animal, and preserving not a single tie or a single interest to bind 

 him to the friends and activities of his mortal life. 



The point of psychological interest is, that when a Bagobo talks 

 of his own personal future existence, either as demon or as happy 

 spirit, his attention is wholly drawn off in the direction of the 

 special gimokud which at the moment appeals to him, to an extent 

 that the two conceptions may be said to be mutually exclusive. 

 Remarks like the following illustrate the point : "I shall be a buso 

 when I die." "Everybody turns into a buso when he dies." 



festive day. They gathered a great quantity of food and beverages ; they commenced 

 many joyful dances; they stuffed themselves with what was prepared, taking some to 

 their houses, and reserving the greater portion to offer to the divata, and to the de- 

 ceased, in the following manner. A small bamboo boat was prepared, with much care, 

 and they filled it with fowls, flesh, eggs, fish, and rice, together with the necessary dishes. 

 The baylan gave a talk or a prolix prayer, aud finished by saying: 'May the dead 

 receive that obsequy, by giving good fortune to the living'. Those present answered with 

 great shouting and happiness. Then they loosed the little boat (sacred, as they thought), 

 which no one touched, and whose contents they did not eat, even though they were perish- 

 ing: for that they considered a great sin." Blair and Robertson: op. cit., vol. 21, 

 p. 209. 1905. 



In another Recollect document, 1624, a custom of the Calamianes is recorded which 

 appears to show a unique attitude toward the dead: "They believed in the humalagar soul 



of an ancestor whom they summoned in their sicknesses by means of their 



priestesses. The priestess placed a leaf of a certain kind of palm upon the head of the 

 sick man, and prayed that the soul would come to sit there, and grant him health . . . 

 They celebrated the obsequies of the dead during the full moon." Ibid., vol. 21, p. 

 228. 1905. 



