BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 255 



tially similar regarding death and burial are widely diffused through- 

 out the northern, the eastern and the southeastern regions of Min- 

 danao; such as the journey of the soul to another world, the impor- 

 tance of placing food for the soul to eat on the way, 407 the burial 

 of rich clothes 408 and other possessions with the dead and, often, 

 the desirability of forsaking a house in which there has been a death. 



Names of demons, such as Busao, Tagamaling, Tigbanua, appear 

 in other tribes, but sometimes with traits other than those that 

 characterize these evil personalities among the Bagobo. The as- 

 uang 408 of the Mandaya is clearly borrowed from the group of 

 Yisayan situated on the Pacific coast. The Mandayan Busao, 

 however, is not identical with the Bagobo Buso, for the former spirit 

 is conceived to be a sort of intangible out-going from the good 

 gods, Mansilatan and Badlao; it is believed that the bagani or brave 

 men have the spirit of Busao given to them to make them strong- 

 and valiant. 40 ° Thus the Mandayan Busao is functionally identical 

 with the Bagobo Mandarangan, who enters into the heads of brave 

 men and fills them with a desire to shed blood. Padre Pastells 

 states that the Mandaya had a Tagamaling, a being of gigantic 

 stature 410 (thus differing from the Tagamaling of Bagobo myth). 

 Again, the name of Tagumbanua is mentioned as "a god of the fields" 4 ' ' 

 among the Bukidnon; but, here, it seems highly probable that this 

 spirit may be found to be identical with the Bagobo demon, for 

 the missionaries may have been misled by the composition of the word. 



In general, however, I think that we ought to be very hesitant 

 about rejecting the records of the Religious in regard to the char- 

 acteristics of the supernatural beings. Their notes on demons have 

 a peculiar value on account of the sympathetic attitude of the priests 

 when the natives brought to them accounts of supernatural visita- 

 tions. Believing, as many of their letters show, that the spirits 

 called busao, asuang, and so forth, were actual apparitions of the 

 real devil of theology, they listened to the weird stories of the 

 people in a spirit that encouraged confidence. 4 ' 2 



"' Cf. P. Pastells: op. cit. Cartas, vol. 2, p. 142. 1879. 



408 Cf. P. Pastells: ibid. Cartas, vol. 2, p. 143. 1879. 



409 Cf. P. Pastells: ibid., Cartas, vol. 2, p. 138. 1879. 

 4 » ° Ibid., p. 143. 



1,11 J. M. Clotet: loc. cit. Blair and Robertson: op. cit., vol. 43, p. 294. "Banua" 

 means "the earth" in the sense of "the world," in Bagobo. 



4 ' 2 As the following passage and a number of others demonstrate, the missionaries- 



