BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 223 



investigating theft was as follows : 'If the crime was proved, but not the 

 criminal, if more than one was suspected . . . each suspect was first 

 obliged to place a bundle of cloth, leaves, or whatever he wished 

 on a pile, in which the thing stolen might be hidden. Upon the 

 completion of this investigation if the stolen property was found in 

 the pile, the suit ceased.' 355 The Filipinos also practiced customs 

 very similar to 'the judgments of God' of the middle ages, such as 

 putting suspected persons, by pairs, under the water and adjudging 

 guilty him who first emerged." 350 



DISEASE AND HEALING IN THEIR SUPERNATURAL ASPECTS 



Ignorant of the nature of metabolic processes in the human body, 

 and unwarned against the ravages of hostile bacteria, a Bagobo, in 

 the frankly primitive attitude, accepts pain and sickness as due to 

 the manipulations of the buso, or of his own left-hand soul, or 

 else he suspects that he has broken some tabu. Some blunder of 

 his own may, somehow, have brought on the illness: a failure to 

 observe a ritual detail so that some ceremony is spoiled ; the doing 

 of some forbidden thing, such as eating a limokun pigeon, or 

 uttering the name of his dead grandfather, or putting on the cere- 

 monial red shirt while he is young. Just as frequently, however, 

 a man is the innocent victim of a buso who gets inside of him, 

 or of his evil soul that is playing truant from his body and shooting 

 pains into him from some distant point. 



We find, then, that sickness is due to one of the following causes : 

 (a) The breaking of a tabu; (b) The attack of a buso; (c) The 

 adventures of the left-hand soul, or gimokud tebang. 



Diseases that Result from Breaking Tabu 

 The simple fact of falling sick because of the transgression of a 



355 For magical usages in the Tagal tribes, Cf. J. de Plasencia: "Customs of the 

 Tagalogs." 1589. Blaiu and Robertson-, op. at., vol. 7, pp. 192—194. Cf. also P. 

 Chirino: "Relacion ..." 1604. Op. cit., vol. 13, p. 81. For Visayan magic, cf. M. de 

 Loarca: "Relacion ..." 1582. Op. cit., vol. 5, p. 163. 



356 Blair and Robertson: op. cit., vol. 16, pp. 128 — 129. In Minahassa, the judg- 

 ment of God by the water-ordeal was formerly in use, by which test he who could stay 

 longer under water was the innocent person. Cf. Sarasin: Reisen in Celebes, vol. 1, 

 p. 44. 1905. 



