The Tinguian: Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine TribeCole, Fay-Cooper
Religion
The Tinguian: Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe
Cole, Fay-Cooper
Tinguian (Philippine people)
Frequent reference has been made to the parallels between Tinguian
customs and those practiced in Sumatra, while the methods of
rice-culture are so similar that they can have come only from the same
source. In the weaving the influence of India seems evident, despite
the fact that cotton is not bowed in Abra, and the Tinguian method
of spinning seems unique. These methods, apparently distinctive,
may once have been practised more broadly, but were superseded by
more efficient instruments. The primitive method of ginning cotton by
rolling it beneath a tapering rod appears to be found nowhere in the
Philippines outside of Abra, but it is used in some remote sections
of Burma.
Part I of this volume presented a body of tales which showed many
resemblances to the Islands of the south, as well as incidents of
Indian lore. There is, in fact, a distinct feeling of Indian influence
in the tales of the mythical period; yet they lack the epics of that
people, and the typical trickster tales are but poorly represented.
The vocabulary shows comparatively little of Indian influence; yet,
at the time of the conquest, the Ilocano was one of the coast groups
making use of a native script which was doubtless of Hindu origin.
The many instances of Indian influence do not justify the
supposition that the Tinguian were ever directly in contact with
that people. The Malay islands to the south were pretty thoroughly
under Hindu domination by the second century of the Christian era,
and it is probable that they were influenced through trade at a
considerably earlier date. Judging from our data, it would seem that
the Ilocano-Tinguian group had left its southern home at a time after
this influence was beginning to make itself felt, but before it was
of a sufficiently intimate nature to stamp itself indelibly on the
lore, the ceremonial and economic life of this people, as it did in
Java and some parts of Sumatra. It is possible that these points of
similarity may be due to trade, but if so, the contact was at a period
antedating the fourteenth century, for in historic times the sea trade
of the southern islands has been in the hands of the Mohammedanized
Malay. Their influence is very marked in the southern Philippines,
but is not evident in northwestern Luzon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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