BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 173 



shoulder at a point just above the bulge of the biceps muscle ; the 

 taklaya is the middle point of the wrist on its palmar aspect. 

 Between sowing and harvest, the palakpak is kept in the house, 

 for if it were sold or given away during that interval the rice 

 crop would fail. 



While sowing, a line of men and boys goes first, moving in the 

 orthodox direction for the Bagobo, that is, from north to south, 

 for if they should move northward or eastward or westward they 

 would be attacked by the sickness pamalii. A man holds his pa- 

 lakpak at an angle of about forty-five degrees, with the right hand 

 higher up on the stick than the left. According to the fixed motor 

 habit of his tribe, the right hand grasps the stick from underneath, 

 as it guides the motion, while the left hand, in steadying the 

 downward thrust, is clasped over the stick. This gives a centri- 

 fugal motion exactly the opposite of the habit in hoeing common 

 among ourselves. The depth of the hole is to the neck of the 

 mata, or little spade, but the mata are not all of uniform length. 

 The holes are made as far apart as the distance from the point at 

 the wrist where the pulse-beat may be felt to the tip of the middle 

 finger; and the time between the rapid, regular blows of the spade 

 one can measure by the striking of the clappers; it is as the time 

 between the ticks of the pendulum of a small clock. All the 

 strokes are made in unison, so that the palakpak of all the men 

 rattle precisely at the same moment. A line of women and girls 

 follows, each carrying in her left hand a vessel of cocoanut-shell 

 containing the seed rice, or with a small basket of rice hanging 

 from her left arm. With the right hand she takes out a few 

 grains of rice, drops them into one of the holes, and pulls some 

 earth over the place with her foot, patting down the soil with 

 bare toes. 



To secure the growth of rice and the well-being of the family 

 that tends it, there is placed in one corner of the field a shrine 

 called parabunnidn. Before sunrise on the day of the sowing, or 

 the morning of the preceding day, the shrine is set up, with 

 prayers for a good crop and prayers against sickness. 



The parabunnian consists of a little house, three or four feet in 

 height, made of light bamboo thatched with nipa or cogon grass, 

 and having a steep, sloping roof like a Bagobo house, but with 

 only three walls, the front being left open. The parabunnian used 

 by the Bila-an people has a floor, and some Bagobo have borrowed 



