HARVEST FEAST OF THE KIANGAN IFUGAO. 83 



the rice sufficient, whereas it would not have been sufficient without 

 their action." This, of course, is only a vaguer form, a toning down of 

 the old belief, made necessary by a growing intelligence. 



The holating is always celebrated on the day on wliich the owner of 

 the alang begins to cut his rice. In the early morning before either 

 harvest or feast commences, the owner of the fields kills a chicken and 

 examines its gall bladder for an omen as to whether or no the time is 

 propitious for the harvest. A full, black bladder is a favorable sign in 

 this case, as in others in which the gall bladder is examined for an 

 omen, as, for example, in cases of sickness or departure on a journey. 

 Unless the chicken is diseased, the gall bladder is always full early in 

 the morning at which time the digestive organs have for some hours 

 rested from their functions. If, by chance, the gall bladder is white, or 

 empty, the harvest and feast are postponed for two or three days, when 

 the omen is consulted again. 



The harvest feast takes place at the granary. The doors of the latter 

 are decorated with leaves of the liaganga tree and with liagaga, a kind 

 of grass common in rice fields, similar to what is called "nut-grass" in 

 some parts of the United States. These decorations are said to frustrate 

 malicious human sorcerers and other enemies in their efforts to make 

 the rice disappear rapidly and to decrease it in quantity. 



The feast begins at about 10 o'clock in the morning. The dotal,'' 

 a kind of a mat made of long runo stems laid closely parallel and tied 

 together with rattan, used on festive or funeral occasions, is brought 

 from the gi'anary, unrolled, and placed on the ground underneath the 

 structure for the people to sit on. The mat fits the space under the gran- 

 ary. Bubud jars, augang, generally two, holding from fifteen to thirty 

 liters each, are set in the center of the mat. These jars contain the 

 fermented rice, the malt called hiibud, and the binabudan, or rice wine, 

 called tapui in Benguet, and tafei in Bontoc. Sometimes the rice wine 

 is termed binadayan, but binadayan and baya are generally terms for 

 intoxicants and apply to the basi and gin of the Christian Filipinos and 

 the whisky of the Americans. Usually, there are about four and one- 

 half liters of the beverage in an average-sized bubud jar; the rest is 

 malt. Wooden bowls are provided into which the binabudan is strained 

 from the bubud jars by means of three or four round stalks which hold 



' There' is a feast called humangali page given every year by such persons as 

 find the rice in their granaries being consumed more rapidly than they think 

 it should be. Last year, 1909, a partially Christianized Ifugao, one of the 

 municipal officials, refused to give the harvest feast. When, after about three 

 months, he found that his supply of rice was being used up too fast, he gave 

 this feast hoping to mend matters. 



' Dotal is the ordinary Ifugao word for floor. It is applied to the mat here 

 referred to because the mat is used at the feast to make a floor. 



