
RELIGION 187 
for successful warriors; planting rice in any other 
direction than southward; laughing at one’s own re- 
flection in the water; or winding a brass girdle about 
one’s waist an odd instead of an even number of times. 
When none of these explanations seem appropriate, 
the Bagobo attributes his suffering to the experiences of 
his soul, or rather to the left-hand one of his two souls. 
He says that the soul jumps into a river and his body 
aches in the abdomen; the soul strikes his head against 
a tree, pain in the corporeal head is the result; a sore 
mouth may be the result of the soul drinking boiling 
water. 
The methods of curing disease are as various as the 
beliefs concerning its origin. The gods are prayed to 
and given sacrifices. The afflicting buso spirit himself 
may sometimes be bought off in Bagobo belief by an 
offering of betel nut. Little figures are slung on the 
necklace of a child with the idea of drawing the buso 
spirit out of the body into the manikin. Again, a 
priest-medium is sometimes summoned who has re- 
course to a ceremonial sprinkling of water on the joints 
of the patient, or prescribes cinnamon bark, crow liver, 
snake bile, or some similar medicine. Very frequently 
the remedial substance is burned to ashes which are 
drunk with a quantity of hot water. At other times 
the hot ashes are merely laid upon the diseased part. 
This shows quite clearly that the native attitude 
regarding such medical substances is that they operate 
magically rather than pharmaceutically. That this is 
the basis of belief is also clear from another treatment 
sometimes given patients: they are made to inhale the 
smoke from a burning nest of the limokun bird. The 
efficacy of this treatment rests on the fact that the bird 
is endowed with magical power—he is the omen bird 
above all others. The smoke is only the means of 
