BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 19 



fered with by the ghosts of relatives that will not be quieted. 



In any one of the above cases, the victim is regularly a slave 

 that has been secured by purchase or by capture; preferably, a 

 poor, wretched slave is chosen, who, on account of some physical 

 defect, is of little use for work. 



Although this sacrificial rite is often a constituent element of Ginum, 

 of funeral services, and so forth, yet, from another point of view, 

 it may be regarded as a ceremonial unit by itself, and as characterized 

 by the types of chanting, the form of altar, the ritual recitations,, 

 and several other elements that will be mentioned as common to 

 many ceremonies. Furthermore, the special crises that may neces- 

 sitate such a sacrifice do not necessarily coincide with the date of 

 a festival, so that paghuaga may become an isolated ceremony. 



Ceremonial Food. There is set before the gods for their enjoyment 

 certain foods having a ceremonial value, chief among which are 

 chicken meat and a rice ritually called omok, which looks red in 

 the raw grain, but becomes dark-colored, almost black, after boiling. 

 Grated cocoanut is mixed with the chicken and with the rice. 

 The sacred food may never be cooked in clay jars, but invariably 

 in vessels of bamboo. At a certain point in the ceremony, after a 

 period during which the unseen beings are supposed to have extracted 

 the spiritual essence ,03 of the food, the material part (the "acci- 

 dents," if one may borrow a theological term) is eaten by men 

 and adolescent boys. They told me that it made them "good in 

 the body," so that they "could not be sick." This is one of the 

 very few privileges not enjoyed by women, who, however, eat at 

 harvest the sacred omok, at which festival no sacrificial meat is 

 mixed with the rice. 



Ceremonial Liquor, A sacred drink, called balabba, which is 

 never used outside of ceremonial occasions, is offered to the super- 

 natural beings with an appropriate ritual, and afterward passed 

 about to be partaken of freely by everybody present at the festival. 

 I did not have an opportunity to observe the manufacture of balabba, 

 but the process, as briefly described to me, consists of boiling sugar 

 cane and treating the syrup thus obtained with the bark of a 

 tree called boyis, the liquor being then allowed to ferment in jars 

 for a very long time before use. It is of rather thick consistency, 



163 The Bagobo term for the essence of the food and drink that the gods enjoy is 

 taguriring. 



