BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH M 



look, could one but clearly glimpse it, and in all other character- 

 istics, it is like the living Bagabo, except for its tenuous substance. 

 It is identified with the activities and the life itself of the body, 

 and hence remains in the body throughout life; for the event of 

 its removing itself to a distance would spell death. I have heard 

 the opinion hazarded by a Bagobo youth that the takawanan might 

 go away for just a little while without the body dying, but this 

 idea may have been suggested by observing his shadow, and fan- 

 cying that it might move away from him. The customary concept 

 of the takawanan, as well as the conduct observed at a deathbed, 

 implies that this soul inhabits the human body perpetually, or as 

 a shadow remains closely attached to it, until death. 



Signs of death. The beating of the pulse at the wrist and 

 the pulsations that are to be felt "on top of the head" are signs of 

 the presence of the gimokud takawanan in the living body. When 

 a Bagobo is mortally sick and death is imminent, an attendant 

 holds the wrist of the patient, with the index and the middle fingers 

 at the dorsal side, and the thumb on the pulse, in order to note 

 whether the gimokud is still there. When the pulse ceases to 

 throb, the gimokud is ready to take leave of the body, but, since 

 it cannot find an exit through the wrist or the finger-tips, it passes 

 up to the head of the dying man and goes out through that point 

 in the crown where a pulsation is apparent (probably the anterior 

 fontanelle). Somebody lays fingers or palm of the hand on top of 

 the head to ascertain the exact moment when gimokud takes its 

 flight. ,05 The cessation of heart-beat, laginawa, is often noted also. 

 The signs of death are therefore three : (a) The stilling of the pulse ; 

 (b) The cessation of throbbing on the skullcap ; (c) The stopping 

 of heartbeat. 



Sometimes they make efforts to detain the takawanan in the body : 

 they seize and shake the arms of the dying man; they grasp his 

 head and make it wag to and fro, in the hope of checking the 

 spirit's departure; but as the sure signs of death become apparent 

 they cease all efforts to hold the gimokud. 



Summons to the living. Between the time of death and 



105 The Moro say that the soul enters the body through the top of the skull, and 

 makes its exit by the same hole at death. Cf. C. H. Forbes-Lindsay : The Philippines 

 under Spanish and American rules, pp. 502 — 505. 1906. Perhaps the Bagobo have bor- 

 bowed the idea. 



