BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 189 



any sort, but simply spread a petati or two at the bottom of the 

 grave to receive the body. A vestige of this old custom appears 

 at the present time, when the same mats upon which the person 

 died are carried by somebody near of kin, and laid in the grave 

 before the body is lowered, so that they lie under the coffin. For 

 chieftains and persons of rank, a burial-box has probably been used 

 for a very long period. 



If the body is to be carried any considerable distance for burial, 

 the coffin is placed on a rough bier (Mangan), consisting of two 

 long poles and two short cross-pieces, tied together with rattan. 

 Male relatives bear the dead to the grave. At the funeral of Obal, 

 three cousins carried the coffin, and Obal's daughter carried three 

 forked sticks on which the bier would be placed at intervals on the 

 road, when the bearers stopped for rest; she carried the petati, too. 



While Jesuit influence has led those Bagobo who live near the 

 coast to inter in one section of land set apart for a graveyard, the 

 mountain Bagobo continue the ancient custom of burying their dead 

 in the ground directly beneath the family house - - a convenient place, 

 on account of the Malay mode of house construction, by which the 

 floor is lifted several feet above the ground. Many references in 

 the writings of Spanish missionaries 205 show that the old Filipino 

 custom was to make individual burials under the house, or in the 

 open field. 



The grave (kalian) is measured, as custom requires, by the stat- 

 ure of the digger ; 29G that is to say, the top of the wall of the 

 grave must be on a level with a point of the body somewhere 

 between waist and breast. The grave runs north and south, and 

 the body is placed with head to the north, so that it faces south. 



At the moment of lowering the coffin into the grave, another 



295 The Visayau of Oebu, according to the chronicler of the Legaspi expedition, 

 1564 — 1568, buried in coffins, with rich clothes, pottery and gold jewels, the common 

 people in the ground, but chiefs in lofty houses. Cf. Blair and Robertson : op. cit., 

 vol. 2, p. 139. 1903. Chirino describes Filipino customs of embalming with the juice 

 of buyo, and burying in coffins under the house, or in the open field. Cf. ibid., vol. 

 12, p. 30. 1904. Plasencia says that the Tagal buried beside his house, and that the 

 chiefs were buried beneath a little house, or beneath a porch specially constructed. Cf. 

 ibid., vol. 7, p. 194. 1903. 



196 Zoroastrian books prescribed the exact depth for a grave. "On that place they shall 

 dig a grave, half a foot deep if the earth be hard, half the height of a man if it be 

 soft." J. Darmesteter (tr.): "The Zend-Avesta." Sacred books of the East, vol. 4, 

 p. 97, 1895. 



