522 THE PEOPLING OF THE PHILIPPINES. 



.surpri.sing- to witness, as on Mindanao, Christian and Mohannnedan 

 beliefs side by side. But, before Islam, ancestor worship, as has long 

 been known, was widely prevalent. In almost every locality, every 

 hut has its Anito with its special place, its own dwelling; there are 

 Anito pictures and images, certain trees and, indeed, certain animals 

 in which some Anito resides. The ancestor worship is as old as 

 history, for the discoverers of the Philippines found it in full bloom, 

 and rightly has Blumentritt^ characterized Anito worship as the ground 

 form of Philippine religion. He has also furnished numerous examples 

 of Anito cult surviving in Christian communities. 



Chronology has a good groundwork and it will have to observe every 

 footprint of vanishing creeds. Only, it must not be overlooked that the 

 beginning of the chronology of religion has not been reached, and that 

 the origin of the geiK^rally diffused ancestor worship, at least on the 

 Philippines, is not known. If it is borne in mind that belief in Anitos 

 is widely diffused in Polynesia and in purely Malay areas, the drawing 

 of certain conclusions therefrom concerning the prehistory of the 

 Philippines is to be despaired of. 



Next to religious customs, among wild tribes fashions are most 

 enduring. Little of costume is to be seen, indeed, among them. There- 

 fore, here tattooing asserts its sway. The more it has been studied in 

 late years the more valuable has been the information in deciding the 

 kinship relations of tribes. Unfortunately, in the Philippines the 

 greater part of the early tattoo designs have been lost and the art itself 

 is also nearly eliminated. But since the journey of Carl Semper" it 

 has been known that not only Malays but also Negritos tattoo; indeed, 

 this admirable explorer has decided that the " Negroes of the East 

 Coast" practice a different method of tattooing from that of the Mari- 

 vales in the west, and on that account they attain different results. In 

 the one case a needle is employed to make fine holes in the skin in 

 which to introduce the color; in the other long gashes are made. In the 

 latter case prominent scars result; in the former a smooth pattern. 

 But these combined patterns are on the whole the same, instead of 

 rectilinear figures. Schadenburg has the operations commence with a 

 sharpened bamboo on children 10 years of age.^ Among the wild 

 tribes of the light-colored population tattooing is not less diffused, but 

 the patterns are not alike in the different tribes. Isabelo de los Reyes 

 reports that* the Tinguianes, who inhabit the mountain forests of the 

 northern cordilleras of Luzon, produce figures of stars, snakes, birds, 

 etc., on children 7 to 9 years old. Hans Meyer describes the pattern 



^ Der Ahnencultus und die religiosen Anschauungen der Malaien des Philijipinen- 

 Archipels. Wien, 1882, p. 2. (From Mittheil. der K. K. Geograph. Gesellschaft) . 



^ Die Philippinen und ihre Bewohner. Wiirzburg, 1869, pp. 50, 137. 



=* Zeitsclirif t fiir Ethnologie, 1880, XII, p. 136. 



* Die Tinguianen (Luzon). Translated from the Spanish by F. Blumeutritt (Mitth. 

 der K. K. Geograph. Ges. in Wien) , 1887. 



