'j:,s ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



records of great value on the religious customs of the natives have 

 been made by missionaries, by explorers and by Spanish officials. 

 Manv of these observations, especially on ceremonial rites, are 

 fragmentary; many, isolated as single sentences in the midst of an 

 ecclesiastical document, or in a discursive narrative of a voyage; 

 many are tainted by religious bias; the majority are impressionistic 

 and non-critical, yet they are priceless records, as being contem- 

 poraneous accounts of religious practices now almost completely 

 vanished, simply and truthfully taken down without any attempt 

 to present evidence for a pre-conceived ethnological theory, and as 

 having been secured before the Filipino had been contaminated by 

 intercourse with higher cultures. In some cases, we are able to 

 check the observations of one writer by frequently repeated state- 

 ments of other writers in not distant localities — all of which 

 records leave us with the distinct impression that the Tagal and 

 the Visayan of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries worshiped 

 and worked magic and sacrificed slaves in pretty much the same manner 

 as the Bagobo do to-day. 



The Tagal people used to set apart three days or four days 

 annually, before the sowing, 413 for a solemn feast which, in cere- 

 monial details as well as in fundamental character, closely re- 

 sembled the Bagobo festival of Ginum. The large house of the 

 chief was divided into definite compartments for the occasion, 410 

 and during the four days of the feast it became the temple or 

 ceremonial house, whither the entire baranguy, or group of rela- 

 tives and dependants of the chief, came together for worship and 

 for feasting; percussion instruments of various sizes were brought 

 in and played on at intervals throughout the four festival days: 

 torches of special types were put at set places in various parts of 

 the ceremonial house;*" a sacrifice of a hog or of a cock was made, 

 the animal being put to death after a peculiar dance had been 

 executed around it. " s and its flesh distributed to the people as- 

 Bembled; "'■' the music of drums and bells accompanied the sacrifice; 



111 Cf. Aduartk: "Historia, 1040." BlaIB and ROBERTSON: op. cil., vol. 30, p. 287. 

 1905. 



**■ Cf. Plasehcia: "Relation of the worship of the T. i ., 1589." Blair and 

 B ibertbon: op. cit., vol. 7, pp. 185—180. 1903. 



-" Loc. cit. pp. 185—180. 



4,n <f. ( ■iiihisu: "Relacion . . . , 1601—1604." Op. cil., vol. 12, p. 270. 1904. 



kl » Cf. Z.iiiM.s: The people of the Philippines," 1803. Op. cit., vol. 43. p. 125.1906. 



