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)
On the morning of the third day, the male guests assemble in the
yard, and after drinking _basi_ they select one of their number
and proceed to beat him across the wrist or thigh, with a light rod
(Plate XVII). Two hundred blows are required, but since the stick is
split at one end only, one hundred strokes are given. This whipping is
not severe, but the repeated blows are sufficient to cause the flesh
to swell. As soon as the first man is beaten, he takes the rod and
then proceeds to apply one hundred and fifty strokes [99] to each man
present, excepting only those whose wives are pregnant. Should one
of the latter be punished, his wife would suffer a miscarriage. The
avowed purpose of this whipping is "to make all the people feel as
sorry as the relatives of the dead man."
Burial in most of the valley towns is beneath the house, "as it is
much easier to defend the body against evil spirits, and the grave
is also protected against the rain." In Manabo and many mountain
villages, however, burial is in the yard. It is customary to open a
grave already occupied by several of the relatives of the deceased.
Toward noon of the last day, some of the men begin clearing away the
bamboo, which protects the old burial, and to remove the dirt.
The grave is generally of one of the forms indicated in Fig. 3,
and when a depth of about three feet has been reached, the workers
encounter stone slabs which protect a lower chamber. [100] When
these are reached, the diggers make an opening and thrusting in
burning pine-sticks, they call to the dead within, "You must light
your pipes with these." As soon as the slabs are raised, the oldest
female relative of the deceased goes into the grave, gathers up
the bones of the last person interred, ties them into a bundle,
and reburies them in one corner. There is at present no such type
of burial chamber, as is described by _La Gironière_, [101] nor is
there a memory or tradition of such an arrangement. As his visit took
place less than a century ago, it is unlikely that all trace of it
would have been lost. The heavy rainfall in this district would make
the construction and maintenance of such a chamber almost impossible,
while the dread of leaving the corpses thus exposed to hostile spirits
and the raids of enemies in search of heads would also argue against
such a practice. His description of the mummifying or drying of the
corpse by means of fires built around it [102] is likewise denied by
the old men of Manabo, who insist that they never had such a custom. It
certainly does not exist to-day. In a culture, in which the influence
of custom is as strong as it is here, it would seem that the care of
the corpse, which is intimately related to the condition of the spirit
in its final abode, would be one of the last things to change, while
the proceedings following a death are to-day so uniform throughout
the Tinguian belt, that they argue for a considerable antiquity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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