30 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Buso does not incite a Bagobo to break tabu or to steal rice. 

 Though a spiritual foe, his attacks are aimed, ordinarily, against 

 the body alone. 



Toward securing some means of propitiating Buso, or of shunting 

 off his attacks, the attention of the Bagobo is constantly directed. 

 They pray to Buso; they prepare for him offerings of areca-nuts 

 and betel-leaf; they erect to him tiny houses for shrines, under 

 forest trees, by the wayside, at the river, near the dwelling-houses 

 — particularly at the time of a festival. os There are altars for 

 the buso of the woods, for the buso of the ground, for the buso 

 uf the rattan, for the buso of the nearer side of the river, for the 

 buso of the farther side of the river. The shrines are like many 

 of those put up in honor of the friendly gods, and the form of the 

 devotions is outwardly much the same, but the intention of the 

 rites is altogether different. In the first place, altars to Buso are 

 never placed within the home or within the ceremonial house, 

 like altars to friendly deities, but at strategic points that command 

 the approaches to the house, or else in the deep forest. Secondly, 

 as regards the substance of the prayers, the gods are implored to 

 baffle the operations of disease-bringing demons; but a buso, the 

 recognized source of sickness, is conjured in various ways. Every 

 single devotion to Buso is a mere magical device for inducing him 

 to go away. It must be noted, too, that in those cases where a 

 god sends sickness, it is because the Bagobo have broken some 

 religious mandate or have failed in the technique of a ritual, 

 and the sickness is felt to be the logical outcome of a clumsy per- 

 formance. The diseases with which a buso tortures the body come, 

 avowedly, to cause death so that the food supply of dead bodies 

 for the buso may be increased. These distinguishing features give 

 to each form of devotion its own peculiar atmosphere. 



Associated closely with the buso are the ghosts of the dead, 

 since it is believed that the evil soul, 09 or Irlxim/, of a person 

 becomes at death a burkan, which in its nature is practically 

 identical with a buso. It haunts graves and lonely trails; it eats 

 dead bodies, and is commonly called a buso. Tradition indicates 

 vaguely that long ago nobody died, and that the attitude of Buso 

 toward man at that time was friendly, 70 by which tradition we 



*" Sri- Ceremony of A \v;i.s, Part II. 



• D For a discussion of the character of the evil soul, see pp. 58 — 61. 



70 Cf. Jour. Am. Folk-lore, vol. 26, pp. 42—43. 1 'J 1 8 . 



