Chapter 3
- The Common Origin of Bashiic Cultures
Jar Burials
- Glass Beads
- Bashiic Linguistic
Affinities
- Intercomprehension
- Wind Names in Irala and
Itbayat
- Belief Systems
- Magic
- Taboo
- Diviners
- The Belief Systems of the
Batanes Cultures
- Magic, Ritual, Taboo, and
Myth
-
-
-
-
-
-
- This study's approach to a comparative
analysis of Bashiic narratives is based on the hypothesis that the
Bashiic cultures formerly belonged to one and the same culture
unit. Because this hypothesis will serve as the basis for the
comparative literary analysis of the texts, it is necessary to
include some interdisciplinary data that will support it. In this
chapter I shall discuss archaeological aspects of the Bashiic
cultures, linguistic affinities, and finally, belief
systems
-
-
- Jar Burials
-
- The most characteristic archaeological finds;
in the Bashiic cultures are the jar burials.
-
- On Irala, in 1935, a Japanese researcher,
Tadao Kano, uncovered a large (60 cm high by 60 cm wide)
round-bottomed earthenware vessel.
-
- After careful examination, it was proven to
be a burial-jar, especially as it contained fragments of bone.
According to the old Yami legend, internment in pottery was the
general practice in that village, but, owing to the difficulty
of making such ware and transporting such a heavy burden to a
cemetery, the custom was abandoned 16 generations ago. The
Ivalino villagers on the northeastern coast have a similar
legend, the burial-pot being called paraparai, and said to have
not been in use for the last 11 generations. In the Iratay
village a somewhat different legend remains, namely, that in
olden times, 33 generations ago, the dead were buried in a
vanga or boiling-pot. Since the mouth of such a pot is too
narrow to admit the corpse, it is evident that it was used for
holding the bones only. It may be said that the two methods of
jar-burial were in practice among the Yami tribe in ancient
times [. . .]
-
- The jar-burying custom, in the widest sense
of the term, seems to be fairly well distributed in Indonesia.
It may be classified into the following three types:
-
- I. That of placing the dead body in the
jar. This type requires a jar of large size, which is generally
buried under the ground.
-
- II. That of placing the bones only in the
vessel after the flesh has either been removed or allowed to
decay. A pot of medium size is generally used, and buried under
the ground, or deposited in a cave or under the root of a
tree.
-
- III. That of gathering the remains of bones
and ashes after cremation. A pot of small-size is used except
in a special case as in the example of the Tran-Ninh, in French
Indo-china. (Kano, 1930, 133)
-
- In 1969, when a high school was being built in
Yayo village on Irala, a few funeral jars were uncovered by
construction workers. Among other objects, the jars contained a
few blue and orange colored glass beads.
-
- In 1977, at the Lobosbosan site on Irala,
Stamps unearthed several funeral jars, some with bone fragments.
One of these jars was covered with a smaller jar which was turned
upside down and fit over the opening of the lower jar. The most
reliable radio carbon dating measure of Stamps' outcrops were
1170+145 years B.P. or A.D. 780 (1980, 183).
-
- On the islands of the Babuyan and the Batan
Archipelago there were several similar finds. On Daulpiri and Fuga
islands of the Babuyanes, Bartlett uncovered double funeral jars,
similar to the ones revealed at the Lobosbosan site.
-
- Furthermore, in a cave on the northern part of
the steep rocky shore of Itbayat, local people who used to climb
up into a cave to set traps for tatos, coconut-crabs, had for
centuries walked around an ancient big reddish vanga. This jar, of
apparently ancient origin, contained a skeleton. In 1984, when an
Itbayat friend and I climbed the wall up to the cave, the jar was
found crushed, and, except for a few shards, it had been pushed
out from the cave into the wild surf of the current some 120
meters below.
-
- During the construction of the Ivatan airport
at Basco, Batanes, in 1978, two funeral jars; were unearthed and
taken to a Manila museum. In Ivatan, such funeral jars are known
as padapaday.
-
- In 1984, on Ivatan, at the foot of Mount
Iraya, a towering volcano which is the highest mountain of the
island, French volcanologist René Maury of the
Université de Bretagne and I collected a large amount of
shards that proved to be parts of crushed funeral jars. These
shards came from under three separate ash layers that were each 15
to 30 cm thick. According to Dr. Maury, the last eruption of the
volcano was a nueé ardente-type, similar to Mt.
Pelée in Martinique, and must have covered at least the
northern part of the island with ashes. The associated first ash
layer was dated 1480+50 years B.P. The second ash layer was dated
1700+210 years B.P., with the third ash layer being considerably
older. The 14C dating result was 2310 +80 B.P. The charred wood
which was associated with the shards was also dated 2310+80 B.P.
Thus it is safe to assume that the pottery was covered at the time
of the first eruption, because the ash layers above remained
undisturbed. Several large pieces from the brim of the opening
indicate that they were about the same size as the jars excavated
on Irala. These shards, as far as I know, are the oldest pottery
ever found on the island of Ivatan. It is interesting to note that
none of the eruptions of Iraya were retained in local
folklore
-
-
- Glass Beads
-
- In addition to funeral jars, glass beads offer
an important material-culture link between Irala and the rest of
the Bashiic area. The glass beads; have been unearthed by
archaeologists on these islands ever since excavations have been
performed, but until recently were never accorded much importance.
This neglect was mostly due to the view that if the beads were
made of glass they could not be very old, or if they were very
old, there was no way to date them accurately. Moreover, these
particular beads had a wide circulation in their history,
spreading to all corners of the world, and consequently were
difficult to research. Recently, however, scholars have changed
their attitude towards beads and have started focusing on them
precisely because of their great variety and dispersal.
-
- At the time of important events, such as boat
launchings, new house inaugurations, or festivals connected to the
seasonal functions of the farming or fishing economy, as
determined by their own luni-solar calendar, the Yami adorn
themselves with a large variety of jewelry, including beads. As
ornaments, women wear the raka, a multiple-string agate bead
necklace in long strands which reach down to the knee with some
trapezoid plates of nautilus shell decorations. Women also have
shorter necklaces of different beads, among which the best known
and most appreciated are the ones named molag, small and reddish
or orange in color. Many women wear a simple or multiple-strand
bead ornament around their ankles. Very rarely, old women still
wear their ancient shin-ornament called vagiat. Recently some wear
only a simple 2 cm. wide black rubber band (usually made of an
inner tire of a bicycle) and others wear around their ankles
regular thin rubber bands. These are all imported from nearby
Taiwan. In their ears, women wear small cocoon-shaped nautilus
shell pendants which they refer to as oveovey. They also have very
attractive head gear made of either wood or palm tree bark. These
are usually inherited.
-
- Some of the important ornaments possessed by
men are the volangat, a silver helmet, considered and respected as
an animated object; the raka, a crescent-shaped wooden board
decorated with small brass strips, rarely silver, with pendants or
boar tusks hanging from it; the ovey, a cocoon-shaped pendant made
of brass and sometimes even of gold; and the pacinoken, a bracelet
traditionally made of silver, although new ones are now made of
tin. The men also wear beads, but apparently only two kinds. One
is called sinangit, the other maraponay.
-
- Sinangit is a cylindrical, sometimes barrel
shaped, gilt glass bead. At first sight, most of these gilt beads
appear to be similar. However, closer examination proves that, as
far as their manufacturing is concerned, there were at least three
different techniques involved, which eventually produced three
different kinds of beads.
-
- According to one technique, first a
cylindrical bead was drawn and then the axis was treated with a
white silvery material and finally finished with a thin glaze to
protect the metal coating from friction resulting from stringing.
Another way in which these beads were made involved a small
cylindrical core that was metal-coated, and then a second glass
layer was wound over the metal. The spiral lines produced by the
winding process are clearly visible. To take advantage of the
total surface of the gold-looking core, such beads were further
modified from their donut-shape, which is typical for wound beads,
usually to a barrel shape. The third kind of gilt bead within the
same category had a cylindrical core with a metal coating on it,
just as in the previous example. However, in this case the second
glass layer was not wound onto the core.
-
- When I discussed and examined such a bead with
Dr. Robert Brill of the Corning Museum of Glass, he pointed out
that the second layer could not have been produced with the same
technique as the core without a partial tearing of the core's
metal coating. Furthermore, the total lack of spiral lines or even
slightly elongated air bubbles also indicates that the second
layer was not wound. The manufacturers most probably used a
special cylindrical mold to add the second glass layer. Thus in
the first example we have a drawn bead, in the second a bead with
a drawn core but a wound exterior, and in the third case a drawn
core and a molded exterior. Due to the golden color of the
sinangit, the natives believed that it actually had gold inside,
and, according to elderly Yami, only the wealthiest persons
possessed such items. Later analysis actually proved that the
metal coating of the core was done with silver.
-
- The second kind of beads, the maraponay, are
multiple wound, short, donut-shaped opaque glass beads. The Yami
are convinced that the maraponay possess magic powers and they use
them for powwowing, to stop bleeding, by placing them on a wound
and chanting the appropriate healing words. Though this ceremony
usually takes place in the privacy of homes, during my stay on the
island I had the chance to witness it several times. For a better
understanding of what these beads mean for the Yami, I shall now
describe one such event.
-
- On January 18, 1983, a three-man boat was
inaugurated and launched in Yayo village. At the moment when the
guests were picking up their shares of taro, received as gifts, a
distant relative of the celebrating family, who came from another
village, angrily threw his own share on the ground. Since he was
drunk, people pretended that the act had passed unnoticed, but the
host could not swallow the insult and slowly worked himself into a
terrible rage. Soon, he was standing in the middle of the path,
thumping his strong feet against the ground and hardening his arm
muscles as he whirled his clenched fists in front of his chest. A
fierce look and loud, foul language accompanied this amazing
display of manawatawag, the traditional challenge to fight. Since
the honor of the celebrating family was at stake, the fight was
inevitable and it broke out right away. In no time, war gear was
produced and the feasting party split into several groups.
According to their commitments as regulated by tradition, two
large fighting parties emerged, with a third neutral one who tried
to appease them. The fighters went at each other on a relatively
narrow flat area and a terrific stone, club, and fist-fight
started. As a result, several people were severely injured.
-
- One of them, a middle-aged man from the
village of Iraralay, was bleeding profusely from a two-inch-long
flesh-wound on his forearm caused by a sharp stone. The man found
refuge in the house of a friend and sat down on the floor. He
removed his necklace and unstrung one maraponay, a blue bead,
pressed it gently against the edge of the wound, and, while
apparently concentrating strongly, chanted a few words in a very
low voice. Suddenly he lifted the bead for a moment and then again
pushed it lightly against the wound, repeating the same words as
before. In less than five minutes he had succeeded in stopping the
bleeding. There was some coagulated blood in the wound but
definitely not enough to account for the halting of the
hemorrhaging. An old woman handed him a small leaf with pork lard
on it, which he placed on the wound and fastened there with a few
string-like palm bark fibers. Finally the man asked for some
water, washed the maraponay, and put it back on the string. When
asked where he had obtained that particular blue bead, he said
that it had been in his family for many generations and that he
had inherited it from his father.
-
- The Yami often tie these blue beads on the
necks of babies and small children to protect them from sickness
and demons. The maraponay is also used for bartering or to pay
fines for offenses that violate tribal rules. They are also used
against snake bites, for the Yami, while working in the wet-taro
fields, are often bit by the green bamboo snake. Depending on how
much venom is injected and into what part of the body, the unlucky
person may or may not survive the bite. For healing, a certain
spiral-line-ridden, greenish maraponay is applied to the wound.
This kind of bead is usually old, which is why its surface is not
smooth, but it looks like a coiled-up snake, being close to it in
color as well. For the Yami this resemblance of bead to snake does
not appear to be merely coincidental, but is actually an
indication of the bead's specific magic properties. If the
intervention of the local shaman is needed, he or she will also be
paid, as a rule, with one or more maraponay. Today, however, some
of them will accept money instead.
-
- Whenever a fishing party ends up with a "good"
catch, the person in front of whose house the sharing of the catch
will take place brings out his volangat, holds it over the heap of
fish, sprinkling some millet over them while saying: "we respect
you, do not avoid our net." When the fish are salted and strung,
some of the maraponay of the fisherman will hang next to it for a
while. Occasionally the brass or gold ovay and rarely the women's
olo will be exposed there, together with the blue beads.
-
- Another occasion when the blue beads may find
use is during the ritual called mivahnwa, on the opening day of
the flying fish season, when a chosen crew will carry out the
sacrificial animal in a large boat to perform the sacrifice by
dropping some of the blood of the animal into the ocean. After
having swung the sacrificial animal up and down several times,
waving it towards the horizon while calling the flying fish to
come back, the crew returns to the crouching crowd at the
ancestral landing place of the village. Then those who are not
relatives or members of the chosen fishing group will offer some
of their blue beads or ovey for some of the sacrificial blood --
enough to fill up their little tubular bamboo receptacles, which
they will hang up at several locations, for example, in their
fields, boats, and so forth. At the end of the flying fish season,
the wings and tail of the dried fish will be cut off. This ritual,
called manetted, is performed while men's and women's jewelry
hangs next to the fish.
-
- According to Yami belief, the human body
houses a main soul and several other ones, located primarily in
some of the joints. When a person dies, his main soul flies away
to a different island, but evil spirits which can harm people
remain. Thus strong taboos are related to the dead and especially
to funerals. The Yami, who respect these taboos, live in a
constant, uncontrollable fear of the dead. Those who are not
family members of a deceased person, but participate in the
transportation of the corpse and then in its funeral, are rewarded
with blue beads, ovey, and even with a small patch of taro field
or with gizit, small pieces of gold. Beads gained in these
circumstances are considered unclean, however, and will not be
used for powwowing to protect children from anito for at least a
year.
-
- Maraponay and ovey may also be paid as a
penalty for adultery. In most cases, however, the offended husband
will prefer somehow to kill the intruder, because otherwise he
will be a permanent subject of belittling and teasing on the part
of his fellow villagers. Once a murder is commited, however,
nothing can stop traditional vendettas from being carried out by
the asa no inawan, a group of close kin of the victim. Maraponay
and ovey cannot solve the problem in such cases. Besides, the
treasure of the killer may be taken by force at some point along
the gruesome path of blood revenge.
-
- The local mythology is full of events of magic
in which the beads are mentioned. They are always the objects of
extraordinary happenings or indicate the wealth of the culture
heroes. Beads were important enough to even find their way into
the Yami creation myths. In one of the versions, they are used as
offerings to the flying fish. According to the myth, a man and his
son from the old village of Ivatas tied the blue beads to the
tails of the first flying fish so that the fish would promise to
return every year.
-
- I tried to obtain further information on the
beads, but, as was to be expected, all that the Yami could say
about their origin was that the beads were very old and that they
were heirlooms, the belongings of their ancestors.
-
- In May 1983, however, as I was recording place
names on Irala and walking around the island, I started a
conversation about Ivatan with Siapen-Kotan (Isamo), who was my
companion. Between Yayo and Iratay, when we stopped to rest, he
silently pointed towards the horizon and said: "There, from
kavalatan where the south-west wind blows from, the flying fish
come every year to keep our people alive. They know the trail, and
if we are good to them they will always return. Our forefathers
knew the sea and the currents like the fish. They built huge boats
and, guided by the stars, traveled far away to Ivatan. Endless are
the stories of their dangerous voyages and their cunning deeds. I
dreamed all my life that some day, someone will bring strong men
together and will build a mighty boat to sail back to Ivatan. They
have gold there, maraponay and pagad. Our old fishing hook, the
ayos, also came from there. It must be a beautiful land." Since I
had planned to go to Ivatan anyway, I made a note of the three
items, and decided to follow up on them.
-
- Exactly one year later I arrived on Ivatan and
curiously examined the personal ornaments of the people I saw
around me. Yes, there were beads there, of all kinds and from all
over the world, except the kind for which I was searching. I was
very surprised by the goldsmithing skills that the Ivatans had
developed. The finery of these people was of an incredible
sophistication, and by no means could it be compared to the
simple, crude, cocoon-shaped, hammered-out, thin, gold-foil
ornaments of the Yami. Nevertheless, some of the Ivatan jewelry
was referred to by words that the Yami used for theirs. For
instance, obay, in Ivatan, is an earring. The repetition of the
same word, oveovey, on Irala means the same thing.
-
- I had about given up looking for the "magic
beads of the ancestors" when, one day, a friend described to me
the ritual of mivanowanwa, what the Yami call mivahnwa. It is the
ritualistic opening ceremony of the flying fish season. According
to my friend, every year, their father, who lived in the southern
township of Oyogan, put a blue bead into a glass of native
sugarcane wine, and, as a minor part of the ceremony, all members
of the family had a sip of it. The father had the last mouthful
from the cup, and as he drank it, kept the bead under his tongue.
Then he got into his boat and rowed out to sea. At some point he
would stop, utter a short prayer, and cast the bead into the sea.
This was an offering to the ocean for the fish that he was going
to catch during the season. I was also told by my friend that
these blue beads were small in size and were called motin.
-
- I had been informed also by Hornedo that among
the fishermen of San Carlos de Mahataw, and of the bay of Valogan,
the tradition of the mivanowanwa ritual was still strongly alive.
When I went there and tried to obtain some information from the
fishermen, however, for some reason they did not seem to be
willing to talk about the beads. They only smiled when I
questioned them about rituals similar to the one in Oyogan.
Finally one of them told me that it was true that blue beads were
cast into the sea, but he also added, "it is not advisable to talk
about such things in the presence of the pali." By pali he meant
the Spanish parish priest in whose company they had seen me
several times. Actually, what the man was trying to say was that
the priests were against harboring any vestiges of what they
termed "pagan" belief, and they reprimanded the members of their
parish who engaged in any sort of rituals which were not
compatible with Christian dogma. It was also easy to understand
that the gentle and good-hearted Ivatans tried to spare the
Catholic fathers the grief of seeing them performing these
rituals. As for the Catholic fathers, with all the records of the
evangelization of the Batanes right there in their churches, they
could hardly have been unaware of the experiences of their
predecessors. It was the Dominican missionaries themselves who, in
their effort to save many souls from damnation, even at the cost
of propagating established "pagan" practices, transported massive
amounts of beads to Batanes (Gonzáles 1966, 32).
-
- Since the fishermen confirmed that the beads
were being cast into the ocean, logically that meant that there
must have been fewer and fewer beads on the island unless there
was a source of resupply. So, where did the endless supply of
beads come from? The fisherman's answer was: "From the island of
Itbayat."
-
- About a week later, I felt the same uneasiness
among the Itbayats when I tried to get information about the
motin. Finally, it was explained to me that the Itbayats were
annually sending blue beads to Ivatan for some of the healers and
for the fishing season ritual. They also told me that some of the
fishermen would then send dried fish back to Itbayat in exchange
for the beads. When I asked the Itbayats where their blue beads;
came from, they said: "From the ground. Women, when they work on
the fields, pick them up whenever they come across them, string
them on a thread, and keep them there until someone will take them
to Ivatan."
-
- On a field on the top of Karowoban, on the
very spot of the long abandoned legendary settlement, beads were
all over the ground, either directly exposed or just an inch under
the soil. And there were many kinds. Some of them were what the
Yami call molag, the orange-colored beads. How they got there,
nobody knows. Dr. Yamada of Kochi University, who is the most
knowledgeable foreign researcher of the Itbayat culture, agreed
with me that the beads may have ended up in the field as the
result of some kind of "fertility ritual," that is, beads were
deposited there in exchange for root crops. This seems to be an
acceptable theory, in view of the Ivatan practice: beads to the
ocean in exchange for fish.
-
- Before my departure, some Itbayat friends came
to give me quite a few beads. They were of many kinds, mostly blue
ones, and to my great surprise, there were also some sinangit, the
precious gilt beads of the Yami. Another surprise was a large
agate bead that the Itbayats called olo. I was told that this bead
was used by men for curing swelling of the testicles. The ailment
itself is called olo and it takes an olo bead to contain it. The
Yami too, we recall, have agate beads called olo. I never heard,
however, that they used them for purposes other than adorning
themselves.
-
- When I returned to Basco in Ivatan, I fell
sick with malaria. I was treated in the local hospital. My fever
should have soon subsided, but instead it stayed right at the
upper limits, draining me of all my strength. The lab results
could not provide any explanation for the fever. The doctors
wanted to discharge me so that I could go for treatment to Manila.
At that point, my friends suggested that I let the mangaptos, the
healer, come and see me. The person whom they had in mind was an
old man, originally from Itbayat, called Santiago Salengwa. He was
well known in the community for his healing powers. I also found
out that there was a tolerance, a kind of "tacit agreement,"
between the doctors of the Basco hospital and the mangaptos. He
could come in by night and see some of the patients who thought
that he could do something for them when the doctors could
not.
-
- Leaving aside the question of Salengwa's
treatment of me, which I found most efficient, the main point here
is that, after our meeting at the hospital, I asked Santiago
Salengwa to tell me about his healing powers and how he became a
healer. He allowed me to record two of his incantations, but he
was too shy a person to talk longer with a microphone in front of
him. He was interested in hearing about the Yami and their blue
beads, and he also told me that blue beads were powerful
exorcising material. I gave him a handful of motin and
left.
-
- About a year later, a person from Ivatan was
treated by this healer, who used for this purpose one of the last
blue beads I had given him. Then, for some reason, Santiago
Salengwa decided to let himself be recorded so as to tell me about
himself. The transcription and translation of the conversation of
Santiago Salengwa on the subject of his healing powers will be
included under my discussion of the Bashiic belief systems.
-
- After having returned to Irala, I showed the
beads to my Yami family and to the village shaman. The shaman, who
had never seen these blue beads before, looked at them, promptly
separated some of them, and said: "These are the real beads of the
ancestors. They are very precious. If you want to give them to
your family or friends, they will first have to take them to the
stream outside the village and wash them in that water and chant
appropriate words for cleansing them. These beads come from the
ground, and they have been guarded there by the anito for many
years."
-
- After returning to the United States, I asked
Dr. William White of the Department of Geosciences at the
Pennsylvania State University, to arrange for an electron
microprobe analysis of the beads. It turned out that some of the
beads from Itbayat were so similar in their chemical composition
to those from Irala that they may have been manufactured in the
same place. In the case of two gilt beads from the two islands,
the analysis showed that they probably came from the same melting
pot. Dr. Robert Brill of the Corning Museum of Glass, who kindly
arranged for the analysis of another batch of beads, indicated
that the glass of which the gilt beads were made could be of
Chinese origin and could have been manufactured 700 to 1000 years
ago.
-
- At this point, the only certainty is that
these beads had been in use on both islands long before Spanish
contact, and that the natives have since employed them for various
purposes. They have traded them among each other, and the beads
are considered to have magic properties. Many of the beads are
known to the Yami and to the Ivatans and Itbayats by the same name
and are used for the same ritualistic purposes, thus offering
another proof of the common Bashiic cultural heritage.
-
- Comparisons with other beads found in
South-East Asia, particularly from China, Viet Nam, Thailand, and
the Philippines, will eventually help to shed more light on the
origin of these glass beads.
-
- To summarize, the jar-burial data supports the
hypothesis that the Ivatan and the Yami, at some point in the
past, shared the same culture, and that after having left the
Batanes, the Yami continued for some time their jar-burial
practices. The study of the beads confirms the Yami mythology
according to which the blue beads of the Yami came from their
ancestors who lived on the island of Ivatan
-
-
- Bashiic Linguistic Affinities
-
- As stated in chapter 1, the languages spoken
in the Batanes and on Irala belong to the Hesperonesian language
group. The grammars of Ivatanen, Itbayaten, and Yami are very
similar. These languages operate on the basis of a "focus" system.
This is characteristic of most Filipino languages. For a minimal
understanding of this linguistic idiosyncrasy, here is an example
from Yami:
-
- The Nominative marker is o
-
- The Accusative marker is so.
|
Macita
|
so
|
kayo
|
o
|
tawo
|
|
see
|
ACC
|
tree
|
NOM
|
man
|
- The above sentence translates in the following
way: The man sees a tree.
- Should the focus of the action fall not on the
subject, but on the object, the Nominative particle will
"override" the Accusative one. Naturally, the sense of the
objective case remains, but with an emphasis on it:
-
|
Macita
|
o
|
kayo
|
no
|
tawo
|
|
see
|
NOM
|
tree
|
AGT
|
man
|
- The tree is seen by the man.
-
- The lexicon of these languages also shows a
very close relationship between them. In order to facilitate an
understanding of the linguistic milieu that binds the Bashiic
ethnic groups, the Yami and the Ivatans/Itbayats, I present a
short list of words limited to the parts of the body, a few
plants, and some natural elements. This basic list is not meant to
be one of cognates, but rather of equivalent terms, many of which
are etymologically cognate.
|
English
|
Ivatanen
|
Itbayaten
|
Yami
|
|
anus
|
datcian
|
aos
|
laos
|
|
armpit
|
kedwan
|
edwan
|
kekelehan
|
|
back
|
dicod
|
icod
|
likod
|
|
belly
|
vodek
|
odek
|
velek
|
|
buttocks
|
atang
|
tang
|
atang
|
|
cheek
|
pisni
|
pisni
|
posngi
|
|
ear
|
tadina
|
tadina
|
talinga
|
|
elbow
|
sico
|
sico
|
sico
|
|
excreta
|
taci
|
taci
|
taci
|
|
eye
|
mata
|
mata
|
mata
|
|
eyebrow
|
ciciray
|
ciciray
|
cicimit
|
|
face
|
dangoy
|
dangoy
|
moin
|
|
forehead
|
moin
|
moin
|
rorogwan
|
|
hair
|
vok
|
vok
|
ovok
|
|
nose
|
omodan
|
momodan
|
momodan
|
|
hand
|
ima
|
tanoro
|
lima
|
|
jaw
|
sangi
|
sangi
|
sangi
|
|
knee
|
tod
|
tood
|
tod
|
|
lips
|
vivi
|
xarip
|
vivi
|
|
mouth
|
obngoy/vivi
|
vivi/ngoso
|
ngoso
|
|
neck
|
lagaw
|
langaw
|
rangaw
|
|
shoulder
|
pakoh
|
pakoh
|
pisagatan
|
|
side
|
siri
|
siri
|
siri
|
|
thigh
|
pa
|
paa
|
(a)pa
|
|
tongue
|
rida
|
rida
|
rila
|
|
tooth
|
nipen
|
nipen
|
ngepen
|
|
top of head
|
totok
|
toktok
|
toktok
|
|
umbilicus
|
posed
|
posed
|
posed
|
|
camote
|
wakay
|
wakay
|
wakay
|
|
coconut
|
nioy
|
nioy
|
(a)nioy
|
|
cogon grass
|
vocid
|
vocid
|
vocid
|
|
taro
|
sodi
|
soli
|
soli
|
|
tree/wood
|
kayo
|
kayo
|
kayo
|
|
yam
|
ovi
|
ovi
|
ovi
|
|
earth
|
hanit
|
angit
|
xanit
|
|
water
|
danom
|
danom
|
ranom
|
|
ocean
|
tawo
|
hawa
|
wawa
|
|
sea water
|
taw
|
taw
|
atew
|
|
fire
|
apoy
|
apoy
|
apoy
|
|
sun
|
araw
|
araw
|
araw
|
|
moon
|
vohan
|
vohan
|
vehan
|
|
cloud
|
demdem
|
remdem
|
demdem or cinalab
|
- It is interesting to note the semantic
transfer of "face" and "forehead," and "lips" and "mouth."
Cognates in this data set are visibly obvious. I have made no
attempt to compute such obvious phonological correspondences as
Iv. v: It. v: Ya. v, or d: d: l.
-
- The words of this list are part of a lexical
set that usually changes very slowly. The names of the parts of
the body, of the items forming the main food staple, and the words
designating basic elements, are less likely to change as fast as
the rest of the lexicon (Dyen 1965, 17), unless they fall under
some kind of word-taboo.
-
- Accordingly, other parts of the lexicon of
these languages present a lower number of cognates. In the case of
Bashiic, apparently the rate of difference between the semantic
spheres is proportional to the word's distance from subsistence
activities, or from items related to subsistence, as shown by the
fact that the number of available synonyms that are cognates
decreases. A lower number of synonyms limits communication across
groups in the sense that for the speakers of the different ethnic
groups there is "less to choose from" when they try to
communicate. After the ethnic groups were separated, they
developed different priorities in using certain synonyms, which
resulted in their choosing different "generic" words for the same
semantic value. This practice led to some of the comprehension
problems that the speakers of the different groups are now
experiencing. In conversation, when they sense that they are not
understood, they tend to solve the problem by trying to reverse
the synonomy change process. Below I shall describe a good example
of this phenomenon
-
-
- Intercomprehension
-
- In 1984 I took with me some Yami recordings
when I visited the Ivatans and the Itbayats, but they were mostly
not understood. The recordings that I made in Ivatan and Itbayat,
in turn, were even less understood by the Yami. In 1986 I
succeeded in taking along a Yami friend named Si-Mogaz (male, 39),
when I traveled from Irala to Ivatan and to Itbayat. My main
curiosity was to see how well, after several hundreds of years of
isolation, they could communicate with each other. Now we had
living people at hand with a strong desire to communicate, which
made the testing of mutual comprehension very different from the
previous attempts with the recordings. The results showed
themselves within the first hours of conversation. Si-Mogaz felt
uncomfortable with the negative form of the Ivatan verb and was
somewhat discouraged by the Spanish and English loanwords. As the
hours passed, however, his conversation became more self-confident
and a few very clear communication behavior patterns started
surfacing. Both sides had realized by then that Spanish, English,
and Tagalog loanwords on the one side, or Chinese and Japanese
loanwords on the other, did not work, so they started eliminating
them by looking for synonyms in their own languages. This
spontaneous, instinctive response caused an unusual feeling of
excitement for the conversants, as if they had understood
subconsciously that they were making efforts to reconstruct the
language of their common ancestors. Almost every time they
succeeded in finding a proper synonym for a native word or
bypassed an acculturated element of their contemporary vocabulary
by finding a commonly understood synonym, they had to pause to
express their excitement by saying: "we are relatives indeed," or
"we surely have common origin." In the case of those Spanish words
for which there were no Ivatan synonyms, or which were so strongly
embedded in usage that the Ivatans could not work their way around
them, to my greatest amazement Si-Mogaz started picking them up.
At the end of the day he was using correctly the word siguro,
which comes from the Spanish "sure." In Ivatanen it is used for
"perhaps" and there is no exact Yami equivalent for it. He also
learned some other words such as palek, "wine," for the Yami sake,
which is a loanword from Japanese, kaywan instead of the Yami
kagagan, and miharit instead of the Yami miyangey. The Ivatan word
tohos, "top," he understood from the Yami tohos, which means the
"top" of a tall object, usually a tree. In Yami, "top" is ingato,
which the Itbayat speaker had identified as hinato, now a place
name, meaning the "upper part" of the village. The Ivatan demdem,
"cloud," was understood by Si-Mogaz from the Yami phonetic
equivalent demdem, which means a thick black cloud at the horizon.
The Yami generic word for cloud is cinalab, which may be related
to the Itbayat cinohod, used only for cumulus-type of clouds. The
list of such words, which are synonyms but not the "generic"
terms, is very long.
-
- After Ivatan, a trip to Itbayat followed.
Si-Mogaz now enjoyed the conversations and was becoming more and
more efficient in communicating. He joined some of the local young
men on their fishing trips, and it soon turned out that in diving
and in spearing fish there was no match for him on Itbayat. Each
time, after diving, long hours of discussions and drinking
followed. Here is a fragment from one of the conversations after
the first fishing trip. The conversants are Si-Mogaz, who speaks
in Yami, and Dominador Castillo, who speaks in Itbayaten.
-
-
-
- In order to determine just how much the
conversants understood of each other's speech, one day after
making the recording I asked Si-Mogaz to translate for me the
Itbayaten sentences spoken by Dominador, and then asked Dominador
to translate for me the Yami sentences spoken by Si-Mogaz. We
first went through the alphabetically arranged vocabulary of the
transcribed texts. As expected, it turned out that in each case
there were some words which one of them did not understand. I next
read the sentences and asked them to translate. Each of them
translated the sentences correctly, including those words which
they previously did not understand. In the original conversation,
the word diapinara, "not acquainted with" (line 22), had been
understood by Dominador, but during the vocabulary test he mistook
it for diapinaynaxa, which in Itbayaten means "why don't (you)
rest." In context, however he understood it as it was meant by
Si-Mogaz and he answered: "You are not used to it yet." His answer
contains the loanword kabisado, "used to" (line 23), which
probably was fabricated from Spanish, and Si-Mogaz could not
understand it as a vocabulary entry, but figured it out from the
context later. He tried to memorize it for future use, repeated it
several times, but finally forgot it. Instead of kabisado, he
later learned to use kaiwaman with the same meaning. In the case
of the word omatohdaw, "float" (line 38), Si-Mogaz translated it
as tomaxaw, which means the same thing. In a similar fashion, in
case of the word patovozen "throw" (line 47), it is clear from the
recording that Dominador understood the word, and later he could
identify it again. As an explication he said that, though in his
language "to throw" is pagtosen, the word tohor, "the pointed
shoot of a plant," came into his mind, which, if inflected
(pa+tohor+en), would add up to something close to the Yami word.
(In Itbayaten, however, there is no such word as pathoren.) The
last word of the text, mapekeh, "very slow" (line 51), exists also
in Itbayaten, but it means "too exhausted."
-
- Linguists currently consider Yami and
Itbayaten to be two different languages, but the above translation
shows that these languages are still very close to each other. The
foregoing terms, however, are included in a semantic sphere
related to subsistence. As mentioned earlier, the vocabulary of
conversations that are part of semantic spheres not related to
subsistence provides a smaller number of synonymous cognates to
choose from, thus mutual comprehension is harder. As proof of this
fact, discussions about religion, politics, travel, and
entertainment were very hard for Si-Mogaz to follow, and
occasionally even required interpreting. This was, of course, not
only because of a lower number of synonymous cognates to choose
from, but also because of cultural differences
-
-
- Wind Names in Irala and Itbayat
-
- Another proof of the close tie between the
cultures of the Irala and the Batanes is provided by the names of
the winds in the two languages. One day I asked a young Yami man
about the Yami names of the cardinal points. The man could speak
Chinese too, so he knew the Chinese words for north, south, east,
and west, but after a few moments he said that there were no such
words in his native language. As I was skeptical about his answer,
I asked a few old men the same questions. It turned out that the
young man was not altogether wrong about the issue. The Yami do
not have names for the cardinal points because the concept of
directions is identical with the direction of the winds. "East,"
in the sense of "there where the sun rises," dada no araw, of
course exists, just as "west," "there where the sun sets," asdepan
no araw. It is interesting, however, that the Yami do not use
these terms to point out directions. For that purpose the names of
the winds are used. So, at first it appeared that knowing the
names of the winds was sufficient for understanding the direction
descriptions of the Yami.
-
- As I started to collect wind-names in the
villages, however, it turned out that the names of winds and their
respective directions did not coincide in all villages. Moreover,
in some places, the names of winds had been simply replaced by
names of mountains, as in "the one that blows from Ji-Marisan,"
malangin do Ji-Marisan. To my great surprise, some people did use
such direction descriptions even when they were in other villages
where the people, if they really wanted to understand, had to
"convert" the mountain-name-direction into their own
landmark-names or wind-names. This became a tricky and sometimes
quite difficult thing to do, especially when the a wind-name was
replaced not by a mountain-name, but by a term such as "the one
that blows from the edge of the island," malangin do kadwan no
pongso. To "convert" this into a wind name the listener would have
to know the exact position of the speaker relative to the
mountains of his village.
-
- My method of collecting the wind names was the
following: I sat down with an elder in an open place from where
both the shore and the mountains could be seen well and asked him
to point out the names of the winds by starting from north and
advancing clockwise, degree by degree, until 360 degrees were
completed. With a compass I determined the directions and wrote
next to them their Yami equivalents. In the case of Imorod
village, I used also Hsu's data (1982, 6). In Yayo and Iranmilek,
I had the chance to check the data at the time when each of the
listed winds blew. I found that there was no difference compared
to the data collected at the time when the winds did not
blow.
-
-
|
Dir.
|
Yayo
|
Iraralay
|
Iranmilek
|
|
N
|
rakwa keylawdan
|
keylawdan
|
- towaza
- malangin do Ji-Marisan
|
|
NNE
|
likeya keylawdan
|
-
|
-
|
|
NE
|
pangalitan
|
pangalitan
|
- keylawdan
- pangalitan
|
|
ENE
|
-
|
-
|
- yowkalam
|
- ESE
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
|
E
|
kakovian
|
kakovian
|
kakovian
|
|
SE
|
kakovian
|
somza
|
- somza
|
|
SSE
|
|
|
- itaw
- maralaitaw
|
|
S
|
somza
|
kapiyaka
|
- keytawan
|
|
SSW
|
|
|
|
|
SW
|
kavalatan
|
keytawan
|
malangin do Peysopwan kavalatan
|
|
WSW
|
|
|
- kasariana
|
|
W
|
- keytawan
- itew
|
kasaryana
|
- malangin do Ji-Pijangen
|
|
NW
|
towaza
|
towaza
|
komonmwan no makotoz
|
|
N
|
towaza
|
- rakwa keylawdan
|
towaza
|
|
NNE
|
|
likeya keylawdan
|
|
|
NE
|
pangalitan
|
kemana
|
- keylawdan
|
|
E
|
kakovian
|
pangalitan
|
kakovian
|
|
ESE
|
- kakovian
|
|
|
|
SE
|
somza
|
somza
|
somza
|
|
SSE
|
- keytawan
|
|
|
|
S
|
kasonognana
|
kasonognana
|
- keytawan
|
|
SSW
|
kavalatan
|
- kazazakana
|
|
|
SW
|
|
kavalatan
|
kavalatan
|
|
SW
|
malangin dorakwa ayo
|
|
|
|
WSW
|
|
- monmo
|
|
- W
|
- kasaryana
|
- kasaryana
|
- kasaryana
|
|
NW
|
keylawdan
|
pangalitan
|
- pangalitan
|
According to this chart the differences in wind
names; shown between villages occur mostly on the borderlines of the
cardinal points on the compass dial. If we group them only according
to north, east, south, and west, there are fewer differences: North
winds keylawdan, towaza
pangaliatan; East winds kakovian; South winds
somza, itaw, keytawan; West winds kasaryana.
- Many of the Yami wind-names correspond to
Itbayat wind-names, but in some cases there are differences in the
directions that they stand for. In the case of the Itbayat wind
names I used both Yamada's and my own data. (1976) Itbayat wind
names:N hilawod; NE hayokayam; ENE palahanitan; E
pangalitan;
SE kuvih; S
somza; SW
itaw; WSW
mahaxawod a
havayat; W
hawayat.
-
- In Itbayat hilawod is north wind, and in
Yami keylawdan, from the word ilawod, means the same thing.
On Itbayat pangaliatan stands for east wind, on Irala for north-east wind. On
both islands somza is a south wind, but kavalatan is a southwest wind
on Irala. On Itbayat it is a "general" west wind. The Itbayat
itaw is a
northwest wind, but in the Yayo village of Irala it is considered
a west wind. In Iranmilek it was listed by several people as a
southeast wind. Today, on Irala there are wind names that do not
exist on Itbayat, and vice-versa.
-
- It is surprising that there is so much
difference between the wind names used in different villages of
the Yami. Since their subsistence activities depend on the weather
and sometimes on the wind itself, as in the case of fishing and
diving that are conditioned by the intensity of wave action, one
would expect the Yami to have a more conventional and exact
nomenclature for the winds.
-
- Here I must record an observation that is
intriguing but difficult to prove. The Yami seem to perceive the
winds not only by the virtue of the physical existence of the
winds, but also by a feeling or mood. I observed that most of my
Yami friends from Yayo repeatedly went through different patterns
of general behavior, according to the direction of the wind. I
also noticed that their change in mood was not related to how the
wind affected the possibility of subsistence activities. When
kavalatan,
the southwest wind, blew, we could not dive because the shore at
Yayo had big waves, but the general mood of the villagers was
good. When keytawan, the west wind, blew, on certain portions of the coast
fishing was good. However, not only Yayo but the whole island
seemed to feel miserable. When I visited Itbayat, I was not
surprised at all when I heard people say that when the west wind
blew for a long time they felt sick. I have no explanation for the
phenomenon, but it had to be mentioned because in many cases the
Yami defined the winds according to how they felt, rather than how
the winds looked.
-
- Several hundreds of years ago, when the Yami
were still frequently visiting their relatives on Itbayat and
Ivatan, their navigation techniques must have been more developed
than they are now, and the wind nomenclature that they used was
probably more consistent and exact than it is today.
-
- The large number of cognates in the basic
lexicon and the high level of intercomprehension suggest that the
Bashiic cultures linguistically are very closely related. The
fact, however, that the rate of cognates is the highest in cases
of vocabulary related to subsistence, or terminology related to
subsistence, such as names of winds or tools, indicates that not
only the language, but subsistence activities were also commonly
shared before
-
-
- Belief Systems
-
- I shall now proceed with the presentation of
the Yami pantheon and various beliefs. As the pertinent literature
indicates, the handling of this topic requires extreme caution.
The scholarly activity of explaining in scientific terms what the
natives of non-Western cultures think and believe has led to some
of the major fallacies plaguing social science since the end of
the past century. Once engaged in research on ethnography and
mythology, however, one can hardly resist the urge to find out
what the native thinks of his ancient customs and their purposes.
One can resist even less the urge to draw certain "final
conclusions" which will occasionally be used as proof for the
existence of patterns in thinking, in culture, or in behavior that
will serve as a basis for elaborate theoretical models. Although
very often himself guilty of this fallacy, Malinowski provides a
good example of this phenomenon in his summary of
Lévy-Bruhl;'s conclusions concerning what he termed the
primitive mind: "Primitive man has no sober moods at all, he is
hopelessly and completely immersed in a mystical frame of mind.
Incapable of abstraction, hampered by a decided aversion towards
reasoning, he is unable to draw any benefit from experience, to
construct or comprehend even the most elementary laws of nature.
For minds thus oriented there is no fact purely physical"
(Malinowski1954, 25).
-
- Because in this study I shall often quote
Malinowski, I wish to state here that I am well aware of the
critical objections regarding Malinowski's theories. These
objections granted, I still believe, along with many others, that
the Argonauts of the Western Pacific remains unsurpassed in
readability as well as in its harmonious blending of ethnography
and folklore.
-
- Social anthropology has, however, come a long
way since Lévy-Bruhl and Malinowski. The topic of magic and
religion in particular has generated and developed a discipline of
inquiry wholly its own, producing many theories to clarify the
relation between the human mind, magic, and religion. But so far,
no theory has been able to provide an explanation that sooner or
later has not been proven either insufficient or wrong. The topic
of magic has generated much speculation and it will probably
continue to do so. The present study will primarily concentrate on
a comparison of belief systems and the phenomenon of change in
belief systems in Bashiic cultures, and will only marginally
attempt to speculate on relationships between the native mind,
magic, and religion.
-
- As has been mentioned before, we are still
uncertain whether the Yami have a cosmogony which is undeveloped
or degenerated (Beauclair 1974). The three divine layers, with
Simo-Zapaw at the top, may be a reminiscence of a more
multi-layered cosmogony that has indeed degenerated. In Yami
creation myths there is a distinct sense of a multilayered
exposition of existence, but the different levels are never
clearly elaborated on by the informants and generally are given
little importance.
-
- The Yami have several names for what we may
call celestial beings. Tawo do to literally means "the person up
there," and sometimes tawo do langarahen is used, meaning
"celestial person." The latter form occurs in the plural more
often than the first one does. The expression akey do to literally
means "the grandfather up there." Here, I have translated it as
"heavenly grandfather," and in my interlinear translation I will
render it as "Supreme Being."
-
- All Yami creation myths speak of the "heavenly
grandfather," but in the material that I have seen so far there is
no indication whatsoever that the "heavenly grandfather" is
Simo-Zapaw himself. To be sure, his name surfaces neither in myths
collected seventy years ago nor in recently collected ones.
Furthermore, the ritual performed every December at the ancestral
landingplace, which is the only ritual meant to bring sacrifices
to the "heavenly grandfather," is not associated in every village
with the occupant of the topmost layer of the Yami cosmogony
either. In the village of Imorod, it is believed that at the time
of the mivahnwa festival, which is the opening day of the summer
fishing season, the offerings of the Yami are made to the god
Si-Omima. According to one version of the myth, it was he who
spoke through the mythic black-winged flying fish; and instructed
the Yami in the art of summer fishing.
-
- As far as the topic of their pantheon is
concerned, the Yami hold conflicting views. If they are pressed
for precise answers, they immediately start contradicting each
other and even themselves. Despite all this, or rather because of
all this, there is a general feeling that there is only one top
celestial person, who may be called by different names, in each
case not excluding the supremacy of another name. This brings to
mind the All-Father belief, which, according to Lang, "among
primitive cultures, cannot be considered as an irrelevant matter
of mythology, but more like a simple and pure form of early
monotheism" (qtd. in Malinowski 1954, 23).
-
- Lang's idea then may suggest that while Yami
cosmogony has retained an early form of monotheism, it has
developed a multilayer structure which, after having reached a
certain degree of sophistication, due to culture change and
migration perhaps, slowly lost its importance and degenerated,
reducing itself towards its original simple monotheistic
characteristics.
-
- In a Yami person's everyday life, the most
important divinities are not the gods, but the ghosts. They are
also the most sophisticated components of the Yami belief system.
We recall that the Yami believe that there is a main soul, anito,
which resides in the head, and there are several other souls,
located mainly in some of the joints. The latter ones occasionally
may leave the body at the time of sickness or severe distress.
Such a departed soul can be recalled, though, by the means of
magic. When a person dies, his main soul flies away to a place
called Malavang a Pongso, the "White Island," but the rest of the
bodily souls becomes anito, evil spirits who try to harm
people.
-
- The attitude of the Yami towards the deceased
and human death in general is very idiosyncratic and will be dealt
with in more detail in the section on taboo. During my stay on
Irala, I witnessed the death and burial of several natives. Some
of them died of old age, some by violence, and some of sickness,
especially during the cholera epidemic of 1984. All the deaths and
burials that I observed took place in the village of Yayo.
Professor Liu Ping-hsiung, the director of the Ethnology
Department of the Academia Sinica, the most knowledgeable student
of Yami ethnography, has recorded in minute detail Yami burial
rites at the time of an accidental drowning of a young man in
1957. The rituals described by Liu have hardly changed since his
observation. My field notes indicate minor differences, but these
were either mistakes in performing the ritual or territorial
variations of one and the same rite.
-
- The Yami practice both interment and exposure
burial. The circumstances determine which method is going to be
applied. If someone dies of old age and was known throughout his
life as a good person, then interment is chosen for the funeral.
This is carried out at the kanitwan, the interment burial ground.
If the person was known as mean, especially for using black magic
to cause sickness, distress, or even the death of someone, then
exposure burial is chosen. It is carried out at the karocilicipan,
the exposure burial ground. In the case of accidental death during
work in the jungle, or, more frequently, during diving, the corpse
is not even returned to the family home, but is carried straight
to the disposal site for exposure burial. In the village of Yayo,
this site consists of the ledges and the crevices of a huge wave
breaker rock named Igang. The corpses of children are either
buried at the pamililinan or children's burial ground, which is
close to the regular interment burial ground, or deposited in the
clefts of old coral rocks by the shore named kararangan (Liu 1957,
179). In recent years the government of the Republic of China has
insistently discouraged exposure burials, and as a result they are
hardly ever practiced these days.
-
- If death occurs after sunset or shortly before
sunset, so that there is no time to bury the corpse before the
setting of the sun, the interment takes place early the next
morning. It is never carried out in the dark. It is important to
mention that the Yami do mourn their dead. The parents wail for
their children, or vice-versa, citing the good qualities or brave
deeds of the deceased. If the body stays in the home overnight,
nobody sleeps and a mourning ritual is performed in the fashion of
a wake. According to most informants in Yayo, the reason for not
sleeping is to be alert against the possible danger of being
harmed by the ghost of the newly deceased. As a matter of fact,
the corpse is verbally associated with a malevolent ghost, and,
likewise, the mourning house is associated with the abode of the
ghost by the rest of the village. It inevitably comes to mind that
the wake, in the Western sense of the word, may have originated in
such practices.
-
- The sense of the word anito is not quite
clear. The majority of the Yami agree that it means the soul of a
dead man, thus indicating that it designates an invisible entity.
But the corpse is also spoken of as anito, and in this case it is
not an invisible entity. Furthermore, the Yami often talk about
the anito no mavyay a tawo, which means "the ghost of the living
person." This concept should not be confused with the "soul" of a
living person, for which the Yami word is pahad. As I see it,
there is a potential malevolent ghost in all the living, and in
certain cases the malevolence is manifested even during a person's
lifetime. It is not clear, however, if the "ghost of the living
person" coincides with the ghosts that are released at the time of
death. The Yami themselves cannot tell the difference. If pressed
for an answer, they usually make up one that in most cases is not
accepted by others. Such makeshift answers are forgotten almost
immediately by the informants themselves, and, at the time of the
next conversation, under pressure they may make up a totally
different and even more fantastic answer.
-
- According to the explanations of
Siapen-Sirongen of Yayo, the journey of the main soul to the White
Island takes place in several phases. When a person dies a natural
death, the soul which resides in the head flies down to the
ancestral landing place, where a boat containing his or her
previously deceased relatives is waiting for it. They receive the
soul aboard and immediately proceed to an island where they go
ashore and wait for several days. After the newly arrived soul has
lost its death-stench, which, according to Siapen-Sirongen, may
take from three to seven days, the spirit party board again the
avang, in this report a Western-type large ship, and they sail to
the "White Island." The place of the intermediate stop was named
by the narrator as Tung-sa Island. Tung-sa is the Mandarin name of
the Pratas Islands, an atoll-like formation of a few small islands
in the South China Sea. The islands belong to the Republic of
China and were totally unknown to the Yami by this name until
recently, when a few natives were contracted by Chinese merchants
to harvest palatable seaweed at Tung-sa.
-
- For a proper insight into the Yami ghost
world, and to prepare the ground for a discussion of taboo, here
is the account of Siapen-Mangawat of Imorod about what the anito
is and what it does:
-
- Now I will tell you what I have heard from the
mother of Siapen-Lawas of Imorod concerning the existence of
ghosts. What she said was meant for those who say there are no
ghosts, because the mother of Siapen-Lawas had seen ghosts.
- Ghosts can be of many kinds. They originate
from two different sources: from good people's soul and from bad
people's soul. The souls of bad people wander around and about the
villages of the island as ghosts, while the good souls, they fly
to a place called Ji-Malavang a Pongso, the White Island, and they
live there.
- The bad souls wander about the village and
these are very bad, people say. They harm people, they lure people
with temptations, they make good hearted people turn bad, they
make people feel sick, they make their own children sick and their
own relatives as well, and this is how people get ill. From old
times this is how people explained why people got sick or anxious
or why they got injured. These are all, all, the wrongdoings of
ghosts.
- The good souls, whenever they hear that their
relatives are about to have a celebration, row their own boats to
the island of the Yami and take the fruit offerings of their
relatives, after which they return to their island.
- Bad souls will enter all kinds of bodies. They
will enter not only people's hearts but those of animals and fish
as well. They cause injuries and sicknesses to people. The souls
of insane people cause the sickness of their relatives.
- Ghosts also harm the plants, and they eat some
too. Ghosts can make wings for themselves and can fly. They also
can walk on the surface of the ocean. Ghosts can make their own
boats, they can make their own taro fields. They can do anything
and everything. Once they were living people so they can do
everything people can do, it is said.
- When people went to the caves of Ji-Karahem
the place was full of ghosts, who had a huge fire burning. People
had not used fire yet at that time. This is how they got it. Fire
came from the ghosts. In the caves of Ji-Karahem there were very
many ghosts, they were making boats there, taro fields, and were
catching flying fish, weaving baskets, planting and harvesting
millet and miscantous grass. There was everything there for the
ghosts.
- Good ghosts can also make their own boats and
their own wings. They can walk on the waves of the sea and fly
from village to village. Good ghosts are peaceful. They do not
harm their own relatives but love them, do not harm their
livestock either but increase their goats, poultry and pigs. They
do not harm people at all. It is only the bad ghost that hurts
people. For instance, someone who did not love his child or his
parents, after death he or she will enter the body of a rat and
will make the life of his or her children or relatives miserable.
Such a bad soul can also enter the body of a pig and make the
animal eat things which originate in or have something to do with
ghosts. Bad souls can also enter the body of fish. When diving, if
one is bit or stung by something, that is also the doing of the
ghosts. Bad-hearted people after death may also become bamboo
snakes and lie in wait on the taro fields to bite the feet of
people. So this is how the bad ghosts act.
- Good ghosts, on the contrary, they help their
relatives, and if their relatives are worried for some reason,
good ghosts always know how to comfort them. Ghosts can hear
everything even if it is spoken in another village. They can hear
and know everything, anywhere, without going near to those who
speak. Even if someone says something in Taiwan, they can hear it
right away, just like God.
- All evil is due to ghosts. If people go insane
or get depressed, if they steal or fight or anything of the sort,
it all comes from the ghosts.
- When it is day for us, it is night for the
ghosts, and when it is night for us, it is their daytime.
- The fields with crops of the ghosts are those
of eypo, angshed, and raun. (The first one is edible, the second
and third are not. They cause itching.)
- The pig of the ghosts is the raccoon, the
largest wild animal on the island, and the goat of the ghosts is
the rat. They have also poultry, but I do not know which of the
birds. Ghosts can weave, make their own loin cloths.
- In addition to the anito there is a second
kind of ghost called the vongkow. They can also make themselves
wings to fly and can walk on the surface of the ocean.
- Siamen Poypoyan of Imorod saw a vongkow, and
this is what I learned from him.
- As far as the shape of a vongkow is concerned,
the body is large and fat, vongkow are larger than ordinary
ghosts. The skin of vongkow is red and their eyes are also
entirely red and some of them have no hair. I do not know about
these ones without hair, because nobody has seen them, but it is
said that they are the most cunning ones.
- Vongkow do not make people sick, neither do
they bother them with small things. They only take the souls of
bad people. Not of all of them, of course, but if, for instance,
one catches a person out there on the high mountain, he will take
the man's soul, especially if it is after dark or if the person is
making a lot of noise.
- Vongkow do not stay in the village, they spend
most of their time in their own homes, in huge caves or on the
mountain tops
-
-
- Magic
-
- The performing of magic, both white and black,
is known to the Yami. While white magic can be performed by
anyone, black magic is usually performed only by people who do not
have children because, according to Yami belief, the children of
those who perform maniblis, black magic, will surely die. Finally
not only his children but also the performer of black magic
himself will die. The most horrible deed in the realm of black
magic is to bring someone into contact with the sand of the
kanitwan, the burial ground (Liu 1957). According to the
explanations of several informants, the person who wants to harm
others goes to the cemetery and collects a handful of earth or
sand. On his way home he may just throw it on his enemy's roof, or
right into his house. Inez de Beauclair mentions that, according
to local belief, the mixing of the sand into someone's drinking
water produces the strongest effect (Beauclair 1974, 45). After
the deed has been committed, the person who serves as a target for
the magic, together with all the members of the home, will soon
get sick and may in the end even die. The performers of magic will
not escape this fate either. If they do not die of sickness,
surely some kind of accident will make them share the fate of
their victim.
-
- In the village of Iraralay, I was told about
the names of several people, with or without children, who came
down in local history as miraraten a tawo, sinners, people who had
performed black magic and caused the sickness and death of others
in their community. And as legend has it, finally they all had to
pay with their lives for what they did.
-
- The fruit of Barringtonia Asiatica, a kind of
breadfruit tree, is highly tabooed. If the fruit or, worse, a
branch of the tree is put into someone's home, then the person
will surely fall sick. The fruit of the tree is called teva and is
feared so much that even the mentioning of it is considered
indecent or aggressive. Many of the fights that I witnessed
started with an exchange of insults in which teva teva ina mo,
"your mother, teva," was high-ranking in its insult potential.
Interestingly, this swearing is not conceived as its Western
counterpart, in which people call each other's mothers bad names.
It does not say that "your mother is..." It does worse. It creates
a sort of verbal contagion that involves the evil plant and the
mother of the opponent. It arouses the anxiety that occurs when
having been victimized by black magic.
-
- Another form of practicing black magic;
involves a small lizard called gozagozan. If someone, for instance, steals the root crops or the
bananas of a person, the aggrieved party may take revenge by
performing the following ritual: he catches a lizard and with his
knife slashes or guts it without killing it. While performing this
act, he urges the innocent lizard to take revenge for the unjustly
inflicted suffering by harming the primal cause of the incident,
the thief. Another version reduces the act of the rite to
homeopathic magic with a touch of voodooism: the aggrieved party
will wrap the dying lizard into a banana peel that the thief has
left behind and hang it on the plundered banana tree, or even
better, place it in the culprit's footprint. Then he will murmur
over the suffering lizard: "the one who stole my crop should
suffer like this lizard."
-
- Yet another form of black magic involves the
vine of a rattan-like plant. Like most black magic related items,
this is also referred to as kamanrarahet, which may be translated
as "the bad one, the evil one," or also as "the tabooed one." It
is interesting that the performer of this type of magic does not
use any secrecy. As a matter of fact, it is performed with the
consent of all the parties involved. Here is an example: if two
persons disagree on the rightful ownership of any kind of
property, and if they have exhausted all peaceful means of
settling the matter, they will resort to the ultimate judge, the
kamanrarahet. They go to a certain place outside the village, at
least that is how it is done in Yayo, and put a piece of the vine
on a certain rock known for serving this purpose. Then one of the
men will repeat the essence of his argument, after which he will
cut through the vine with his knife. The other person will do the
same thing. According to Yami belief, the person who lies or is
wrong will surely die within a year. But if a person goes through
this ritual because he believes that he is right, this will not
necessarily ensure that he will survive it. According to
Siapen-Kotan (Isamo) of Yayo, if someone was told by his
grandfather, for instance, that a certain field belonged to their
family, but the matter has only now become a subject of dispute
leading to the vine-cutting ritual, his offspring will have to
suffer the consequences if the grandfather lied generations
ago.
-
- In Yayo there is an old man who is known for
having harmed the community with his black magic practices. Though
I came to know him well, he was never willing to talk about his
experience. According to the villagers, one day some twenty years
ago he found that most of his ripe bananas had been stolen. The
footprints indicated that the culprits were children from his own
village. In his rage, he promptly cut off a few vines known as
vivias, and, whirling them over his head, cast a spell on all the
children of his village. As the story goes, a few days later
several people went to see the local shaman because there was
something wrong with the village children. Many were sick and a
few infants seemed to be in life-threatening danger. The shaman
told them about what only he and the old man knew, and as a
result, within a few hours, the people set the old man's house on
fire. He had to run for his life up into the jungle, but the
members of his lineage put out the fire and finally appeased the
villagers. A few days after the incident, he returned home. In
less than a month, he broke his hip, which later did not heal
correctly, and he ended up with a strong limp. Of course, there
was no question in any villager's mind as to why that accident
happened.
-
- In the summer of 1983, while I was thinking of
strategies to get the old man to tell me about his black magic;
experience, one night, a friend's mother came to our house, and,
in a very alarmed tone, suggested that I and at least one other
male member of the family should go right away to see the old man.
She said that at dawn he wanted to cut a gozagozan for me. At
first I thought that after my longtime insistence he was now going
to show me how the magic is done, but the somber expression on the
faces in the room convinced me that I was wrong. When the men
started putting on their armor and someone reached for the
palolpalo, the 9-foot-long traditional fighting club of the Yami,
I panicked and asked everybody to stay in the room and first
explain what happened. The woman who acted as a messenger said
that the previous day, when we had worked up in the jungle, I had
caused irreparable damage to the old man's water canal. Such an
offense, if left without material or at least moral
indemnification, is considered a crime and a great insult. As it
turned out, some of the logs which I had felled that day had later
rolled down the steep slope and, before falling into a ravine, had
crushed the old man's plastic pipes, which one of his sons had
brought him from Taiwan. The pipes were smashed to pieces and were
indeed beyond repair.
-
- Somehow I succeeded in stopping the men from
arming themselves and went up to see the old man alone. I admitted
my fault, told him that I was going to buy him a new piece of
pipe, and gave him some cigarettes. He forgave me, and then we sat
down and talked -- magic, all night. Among other things, I asked
him, "why cut the lizard?" Could he not have just gone up on his
roof and manawatawag, cried out loudly his grievances and threats,
as everybody else does? Had he done that, through indirect talk
and gossip the villagers would have made me buy his pipes anyway!
The old man's opinion was different. Had he done that, he said,
since I was a foreigner, he would have become the laughing stock
of the village, because nobody ever went up on his roof to
complain about an American. "Besides," he said," one does not cut
up the lizard if he knows exactly who the culprit is; for that
there are other ways to harm." By this he actually meant that
because, he knew it was I who did the damage there was no need to
"lizard" me. He would use other procedures of black magic that can
be directed more accurately towards a single household. This is
also why the family got so alarmed. The old man finally told me
that he did not really want to harm anybody, he just wanted to
scare me. Needless to say, with his background of maniblis, except
for me nobody believed him. The following day I went out to help
him get the water flowing onto his taro fields. He showed me how
to catch the lizard, how to cut it, and what words to say if
needed. It is from him that I obtained the explanation that the
lizard will have to look for the culprit to avenge its unjustly
inflicted suffering.
-
- The mythology of the Yami has preserved a few
examples that fit the description of the black magic practices
current on the island today. In a variant of the journey of
Simina-Vohang, when the seafaring party reaches the island of one
of the gods and steals all his bananas, the god performs four
different black magic rituals on them. They are all homeopathic,
being based on the principle that "like produces like: effect
resembling cause" (Frazer 1964, 35).
- Several mythological implements of magic often
appear in the Yami myths. There are several variants of a story
about a dagger that can fly anywhere, even to other islands, and
kill as ordered by its Yami master. Another oft-mentioned object
is the magic kakahow, the porridge-stirring stick that can be used
to stir up the ocean. All these instruments of magic are present
in the folklore of other Southeast Asian countries. Malinowski
mentions the existence of a "conditional curse" among the
Melanesians. This form of cursing is widespread among many tribal
populations in the world, and the Yami also have it. If one leaves
a pile of cut wood in the forest, or has a tree with ripening
fruits, and wants to assure that they will not be abused in any
form, the Yami make knots in a certain shape on a handful of grass
and leave it in a conspicuous position next to their property. For
the traditional Yami, this is not only a "keep out" sign, but
also, as I have been told in Yayo, a matter of potential trouble
that "may not be controlled if it occurred."
-
- The Yami believe that when they squat at the
edges of the irrigated taro fields or stand bent over their plants
while plucking them, they are always potential targets for ghosts
to sneak up on them. To protect themselves from the attacks of
ghosts, they stick into the ground, right behind themselves, a
small bundle of a kind of grass which has a strong fiber, is very
pointed, and can prick through the skin of the ghosts. The natives
call it sinasa. It is used very widely among the Yami, being
present in almost every story in which a tawo, a Yami, fights the
ghosts. In the story of a Yami trapping raccoons, when the man
finally confronts the ghosts and the "master demon," he kills them
by throwing sinasa at them. There is also a story of a giant
octopus that had such long tentacles that it simply "plucked off"
the passersby from the shore path. According to legend, a clever
Yami made a big vanga, or pot, in which he ignited some firewood
and placed it on the path by the shore. The octopus grabbed it and
burned itself badly, and the man finished it off by stabbing it in
the eyes with sinasa. According to Hornedo, this story is known
also in Ivatan with the slight difference that the fuel ignited in
the pot is laji, or cotton.
-
- Sometimes the bundle of protective grass is
also called singeh. This word, however, originally referred to
another "protective symbol," composed of two bamboo sticks put
together in the form of a cross. During many rituals, such as the
one called manetehd, in which the tail and the wings of the dried
flying fish are being cut off, the pile of dried fish and the
workers are protected by this cross-like "ghost chaser." The
cross-like shape of the singeh has nothing in common with the
Christian symbol.
-
- In mid January of 1984, while sitting and
mending nets with Yami friends, we were discussing the power of
taboo. Some of the younger ones said that taboo was foolish and
that only old people believed in it. To test them, when we were
about to decide the place of that day's night-diving trip, I
suggested the Igang, which is the most horrifying place of all
because of exposure burial. Even those who earlier said that they
did not believe in taboos could not help making a terror-stricken
face. I insisted, however, and finally we ended up almost
"bargaining in yards" while trying to settle upon the diving area.
They wanted "farther away," and I wanted "closer." Finally we
settled for a "still dangerous" marginal area. In the evening, on
our way down to shore, these young men who had claimed that they
did not fear ghosts all started plucking sinasa. They formed it
into a small bundle and combed their whole body through and
through several times, some of them even murmuring a protective
spell. Finally, they fastened the small bundles of grass under the
rubber band of their goggles. Some also had their small amulet
knives hanging on the same rubber band. Conscious of breaking a
taboo, after slipping wordlessly into the black waters of the
moonless night, they all started swimming quickly away from the
burial rock, visibly ignoring the potential hide-outs of
sleeping daytime fish, which were the actual
targets of the night-time diving.
-
-
- Taboo
-
- Although an obvious point, here it is useful
to recall that the inherent strength of any belief system is that
it is believed. No matter how apparently illogical or seemingly
self-deprecating an action may seem to non-believers, people will
perform it if they believe that they must, or that the
consequences of not doing so are worse than those of completing
the action. This is the basis of traditional ritual practices and
taboo. Something is believed "because it is true." And what makes
it true? The fact that it is believed and that everyone believes
it.
-
- As for taboo, one can say that it provides the
ultimate answer to the perennial question, "why?" To this query,
taboo supplies the answer, "because." This works within any
culture in which the ultimate argument to authority (whether it be
a god, the government, or tradition) is also the boundary or
parameter of the people's plausibility structures. The horizon of
the people is defined by their belief in the actions of their
forebears, and these actions may not be logical. They may be
supernatural, preternatural, or magical. Regardless of how they
stand in the light of Western logic, let it be remembered that
these things are true because "they were like that" since time
immemorial and were recorded in myth. That Simina-Vohang hit the
firmament with the mast of his boat and had to cut the spar five
times is no more or less logical (or ludicrous) than
transubstantiation. Both are illogical and both are acts of magic.
They are conjectures that are believed only when one has already
submitted oneself to the power or truth of their underlying
authority. In such a situation the power of truth is perceived as
an "optimal solution to a problem," which involves magic, or an
"order" or an "interdiction," which is a taboo. In either case it
becomes an organic part of the belief system. Furthermore, as
Malinowski points out "magic and religion are not merely a
doctrine or a philosophy, not merely an intellectual body of
opinion, but a special mode of behaviour, a pragmatic attitude
built up of reason, feeling and will alike. It is a mode of action
as well as a system of belief, and a sociological phenomenon as
well as a personal experience" (1954 268).
-
- We can certainly accept magic as a mode of
behavior and a pragmatic attitude. That also means that the
conscious mind requires certain actions to shift the idea, the
magic thought, into practice, which we may interpret as ritual. To
establish and to secure itself as a survival resource of the
individual or community, magic also demands a restraint or ban on
certain other actions that may contradict its aim or its
expression in ritual. In many cases, the sense of these
contradictions disappeared a long time ago, but the interdictions
themselves remain in the form of various taboos.
-
- Today, the word taboo is mostly known as
something that should be avoided and should remain untouched. As
in the case of most loanwords, very few people know in what
circumstances this word entered their language and what it meant
in its original cultural environment. The fact is, however, that
for the past two hundred years, since Captain Cook introduced the
notion into literature, we have failed to produce a definition of
taboo that accounts entirely for what it may signify in all
cultures.
-
- Franz Steiner, an authority on the subject,
defines the term in the following way:
- Taboo is concerned (1) with all the social
mechanisms of obedience which have ritual significance; (2) with
specific and restricted behaviour in dangerous situations. One
might say that taboo deals with the sociology of danger itself,
for it is also concerned (3) with the protection of individuals
who are in danger - and therefore dangerous - persons [. . .]
Taboo is an element of all those situations in which attitudes to
values are expressed in terms of danger behaviour. (1967 20)
-
- Captain Cook and Captain King observed among
the Tahitians that the native women strongly respected certain
food interdictions when in a group aboard the explorers' ship, but
if they were safe from the inquisitive eyes of their tribal
friends, they heartily ate anything they could find. At that stage
of his inquiry, Captain Cook therefore concluded that taboo was
something that had primarily a "social importance" and only
secondarily a self-valued moral significance (qtd. in Steiner
1967, 24).
-
- Margaret Mead was of the opinion that taboo
was entirely a matter of the mind and not controlled by physically
expressed regulatory actions. Drawing on Mead's theory, while
relying on Captain Cook's notes again, Steiner quotes an incident
when a tribal girl had been severely beaten by her fellow
islanders for having eaten a tabooed item. Steiner also adds
sarcastically that "the islanders who tried to beat some respect
for the laws and customs of their people into that foolish girl,
appear to have been quite unaware of Margaret Mead's definition of
taboo, according to which the culprit should have found only
automatic penalty without human or superhuman mediation" (1967,
26).
-
- The relation between magic and taboo is not
easy to grasp. What seems to be certain, however, is that between
magic and taboo there is a certain correlation. If a ritual
requires a certain action, such as the wearing of a helmet, that
implies that the failure to wear a helmet is "against the rule,"
and as such it may be interpreted as taboo. In such situations the
Yami, for instance, use the word makanio or makaniaw, which is
their generic word for taboo. If a pregnant woman does not eat
squid because she is afraid that her child will walk backwards,
that implies a ritual already in the sense that by observing the
taboo, she believes that she is causing the birth of a normal
child who will grow up to walk as everybody else. Though taboo
cannot be separated from magic, in certain cases the link between
taboo, magic, and ritual is not so clear. For instance, in the
case of certain food taboos, there are no links to any special
rituals, but the fact that by observing the taboo one expects to
preserve one's health is like performing a ritual of not eating
something-- so that one's health will remain good. I doubt that
the natives who firmly believe in a food taboo; will clearly
distinguish the validity of the results of its violation from the
validity of a "scientifically" perceived phenomenon.
-
- This probably is not in line with what
Malinowski says when he distinguishes magic from science,
asserting that "in every primitive community there have been found
two clearly distinguishable domains, the Sacred and the Profane;
in other words, the domain of Magic and Religion and that of
science" (1954, 17).
-
- His original argument is that the natives have
a good knowledge of their environment, but that this knowledge and
hard work are not sufficient for good results. Thus magic has to
be involved to eliminate unexpected and otherwise uncontrollable
harmful agencies (1954, 29). Though Malinowski does not say that
taboo and science are separated in the mind of the native, he does
say that magic and science are. If I consider magic and taboo
inseparable, on Malinowski's grounds one may argue that having a
permanent ban on eating swordfish is different from planting seeds
into the wrong soil. By this I mean that in the first case the
native believes that the violation of taboo will lead to sickness,
though we as outsiders believe that it is not necessarily true,
but in the second case it is a fact well known by both the native
and us that the seed cannot grow in bad soil. In my opinion, if
the native believes in both the "fact" and the taboo, they are
probably both equated in his mind with what only we differentiate
as a scientific fact. As has been shown above, however, there are
borderline situations when the domains are not so clearly
distinguishable.
-
- The literature on taboo amounts to entire
libraries. Probably the most acceptable theory was invented by
Malinowski, who suggested that "the meaning must be found in the
situation, in the manifold simultaneous overlapping and divergent
usages of the word" (qtd. in Steiner 1967, 34). And indeed, the
only conclusion reached over and over again is that there is too
much diversity in abstract and concrete occurrences of the notion
expressed as taboo. Therefore it should be applied or analyzed not
in a general but in a more limited manner, restricted to a given
cultural ecosystem. I agree with this idea and accept it as a
guideline. Thus I shall limit my reporting and classification of
taboo to its occurrence in the Bashiic cultures, analyzing it
comparatively within Bashiic folklore, and will only occasionally
refer to similar phenomena in other cultures.
- Here is an example of how taboo works among
the Yami. A certain person is known in the community as a good man
who always acts according to the requirements of the traditional
life style. In other words, he respects taboo. His goats climb up
on a steep rock and one of them falls to its death. The villagers
will say, "poor man, he lost a goat, he is unlucky." Another
person is known in the village as one who constantly violates
traditional behavior. If his goat falls to its death, most
villagers will just raise an eyebrow and say something like, "you
see..." or "what else could you expect." While this is the basic
idea of how taboo works, I must say again that the many cases of
its occurrence reveal such complexities that it is difficult
indeed to account fully for its role in Yami social life and
tribal economy.
-
- The Yami have an impressively large quantity
of rituals, and, since magic and taboo are related, their lives
are so interwoven with taboos that it is almost impossible even to
record them all by working with informants. Even living with the
tribe a year or two would not provide enough occasions for the
researcher to encounter most taboo situations of the culture. Thus
I shall touch upon only a few aspects of the Yami's "jungle of
taboos."
-
- The fiercest taboos, and by this I mean the
resulting anxiety level if the taboo is violated, are related to
anything that is connected with death. Here I quote a list
containing most of the taboos that the Yami have to observe at the
time of someone's death and funeral. These data were collected and
published by Liu (1957, 181). To this day, they are being strictly
observed by the eldest two generations of the Yami tribe. I took
the liberty to adjust here and there the phonetics of the
transcriptions. When a person dies the family must observe the
following taboos: Members of the mourning family are not permitted
to visit other people's houses for the duration of the mourning
period. A taboo fence has to be erected around the house in which
the death occurred. A spear has to be set up, protruding from the
house. Moving within the house, the members of the family, wearing
the ayob, have to carry weapons. When preparing the first meal
after the death, new stones have to be put up at the fire place,
and fresh fire wood has to be used. Only water taro may be
consumed, specially brought in from the field. Should there be a
supply of taro in the house, it has to be thrown away. All
utensils used at the first meal after the death have to be
discarded. Should members of the family leave the house, they have
to wash face, hands, and feet (to clean the whole body is taboo,
as this is believed to cause swellings) and whatever they took
along, before returning, and change their clothes. The use of the
word marakat, to die, is tabooed. Amina-porog do karawan has to be
said instead, which means to disappear (literally to fall off)
from this life, or the expressions makatarowan, or sicarwan, to go
away, may be used. Kanitowan, burial place, has to be replaced by
kapijan, good place. The family is prohibited from going near the
burial ground, kanituwan. The animal killed on the third day after
the death may never be a goat alone. It must be either a pig, or a
pig and a goat. In the village of Yayo the use of a chicken is
prohibited.
-
- The Burial Group must observe the following
taboos: All persons who took part in the burial have to wear the
ayob in their own house. The burial may not take place after
twilight. Should a death occur late in the afternoon, the burial
has to be postponed until the next day. Within the burial ground,
only a well overgrown spot may be chosen for the grave, in order
to avoid the site of a former burial. While on the burial ground,
spitting and blowing of the nose has to be avoided. No ornaments,
such as gold or silver bracelets, may be worn during the burial;
otherwise they have to be thrown away. The burial group has to
turn away from the grave when throwing the first handful of earth
on the corpse. The footprints have to be effaced from the burial
mound. All traces of soil and sand of the burial ground have to be
removed from hands and body. Members of the burial group must take
their meals alone. Their food has to be prepared separately, and
only fresh taro may be used. If the death occurs during the
fishing season, all fishing has to cease until the next change of
the moon. The name of the deceased may not be mentioned.
-
- The members of the village where the death has
occurred must observe the following taboos: Villagers may not
approach the house in which the death took place. Villagers may
not go near the burial ground, kanitowan. The road along which the
corpse was carried to the burial ground has to be bordered by
bamboos. Villagers sprinkle ashes into the four outer corners of
their houses while muttering some spell. They are not supposed to
leave their village during the night. For the time of the mourning
period sexual intercourse is forbidden. If the death occurs during
the fishing season, all fishing has to cease. All working has to
be suspended. It is prohibited to receive visitors from other
villages. Should people have to pass through the village where the
death occurred, they are supposed to hurry through without delay
(Liu 1957, 181).
-
- All the above taboo;s are ultimately related
to the idea of danger, of potential harm that may result from
contact with, or from the presence of, the dead. Thus they may be
spoken of as taboos of impurity or contagion.
-
- Of course, not only the dead generate taboos,
but also the living. For instance, if we look at the taboos that a
family has to observe when the mother is pregnant, from conception
to the post-partum period, one can only wonder how they can all be
memorized and so strictly respected. First of all, the word
"pregnant" is banned in most conversations that take place while
any kind of subsistence activity is being performed, such as
fishing, farming, cooking, drying fish, making boats, and building
houses. Pregnant women are not allowed to go down to the ancestral
landing place.
- According to some variants of the Yami
creation myth, the great flood was caused by a pregnant woman who
went down to the shore at the time of low tide. She turned over a
white coral stone, from under which the flood waters started
gushing out. Instead, the words mamili so kanen are used, which
mean: "the one who has to choose her food," meaning that she has
to observe the strict "food taboo." The husband of a pregnant
woman may not join the divers, and nobody is allowed to accept
from him, or give him or any member of his family, a share of any
common or individual catch. He or she is not allowed to touch any
item that is part of fishing paraphernalia, nor permitted to
attend meetings of others where subsistence-activity-related
decisions are being made. The saw, which is a fairly new
instrument among the Yami, is also tabooed under these
circumstances, and the violation of this taboo will result in the
eruption of numerous boils on the back of the knees and on the
inner side of the elbows.
-
- Here is a selected list of some of those fish
(and other food) which the husband is not allowed to eat from the
moment his wife becomes pregnant:
-
- Aciod, surgeonfish sp. (Acanthurus lineatus),
which is not only the fish of humans, but also the fish of the
demons.
- Angsa, surgeonfish sp. (Acanthurus nigricans).
If this taboo is violated, after birth the child will always have
poor health and will be disaster-prone, because this fish is
considered to be among no anito, the demon's fish.
- Kamanciracirawan, grunt sp., including all
Plectorhynchus in the Pomadasyidae family).
- Kavavaoywen, tuna sp. (Thunnus). If this taboo
is violated, after birth the child will often experience severe
headaches and his or her face will always be red from the poison
of this fish.
- Ketketan, rabbit fish, (Siganus spinus). If
this taboo is broken, it is believed that the child will have
worms in the stomach, just as this kind of fish does.
- Mavaheng a lagarow, wrasse sp., (Thalossoma
quinquevittata). If this taboo is violated, after birth the child
will surely have very dark skin like the color of this
fish.
- Paloy, porgy sp., (Monotaxis, grandoculis).
Its teeth resemble human teeth, and the mouth inside is totally
red. If the taboo is violated, certain diseases of the mouth may
occur, which cause the child's bucal cavity to look like that of
this fish.
- Rangoyan, unicorn fish, (Naso unicornis). If
this taboo is disregarded, the child may have a strange
nose.
- Tagarit, wrasse sp., (Gomphosus varius). If
this taboo is violated, after birth the child will have a long
protruding mouth like this fish.
- Tanigi, Spanish mackerel, .(Scomberomorus
niphonius). If this taboo is violated, after birth the child will
have a long, protruding mouth like the fish itself.
- Teztez, squirrelfish, (Adioryx spinosissimus).
If this taboo is violated, after birth the child will have a red
collar-like mark around his or her neck (of the color of the fish)
through which line the body liquids will ooze out. The phenomenon
is called magetget.
- Tapez, butterflyfish sp., (Chaetodontidae).
They mostly swim in pairs. Thus if the taboo is violated, twins
may be born, which is a bad omen. The newborn will have to be put
to death.
- Vazizyo, wrasse sp., (Gomphosus varius). This
name is used mainly in Yayo, but in other villages the fish is
known as tagarit. Its nickname is tarokok, which stands for a kind
of cuckoo, the Centropus bengalensis lingator Swinhoe. This fish
is also believed to be the fish of the anito, so its consumption
is strictly tabooed.
- Kazab, turban shells, are also tabooed. If
someone violates this interdiction, the child's saliva will be
running out the mouth all the time, producing a slurping sound,
like the one from the shell when it closes.
- Kananis and anus, squids, are also tabooed,
because they swim with their "heads backwards" (unlike koita, the
octopus, which is not tabooed for men during their wife's
pregnancy). If this taboo is violated, after birth the child will
have problems learning how to walk properly, and (according to the
Yami) most probably will always try to walk backwards.
-
- These fish are not allowed to be eaten by
pregnant women either. For them, in addition, there are several
other food items on the taboo list:
-
- Amiyngan,
goatfish, (Parupeneus trifasciatus). In the village of Yayo it is
believed that the consumption of this fish by a pregnant woman
will frequently cause her child to laugh with no reason.
-
- Dahodo, wrasse
species, (Cheilinius rhodochrus). The violation of this taboo will
later cause great anxiety to the mother, for her child will be
ever restless and very tense. The phenomenon is known as
tomidohdoh.
-
- Kono, giant
clam, (Tridacna gigas). Since the clam does not change its place,
if it is eaten, people believe that the child will have problems
learning how to walk.
-
- Kovahan,
surgeonfish sp., (Acanthurus triostegus). Should the pregnant
woman violate this taboo, her child may have strange birth marks
since the fish has black stripes on its body.
-
- Koyta, octopus.
If she violates this taboo, the child may end up with a multitude
of black birthmarks on the face and body.
-
- Cineha, a kind
of reddish crab. Only old women are allowed to eat it. Pregnant
women should pay much attention to not eating anything that came
into contact with it, or with the water in which the crab was
boiled. If this taboo is violated, the child's flesh will
suffer.
-
- Kalang, crabs,
in general are allowed to be eaten, except for those which are
mutilated. If during their capturing they lost a leg, tentacle, or
pincer, they are highly tabooed for pregnant women because it is
believed that the consumption of such crabs will lead to children
being born without a finger or a limb.
Taoz no kois,
heart of pigs, at time of sacrifice. If this taboo is violated,
after birth the child will develop cardiac arhythmia
-
- After the birth of a child, most of the above
taboo;s remain valid for a year. Right after birth, the
consumption of any fish is tabooed for the mother. Only dried taro
leaves boiled in hot water and pork, if available, are allowed to
be eaten. Land taro or yams are also tabooed at this time because
they do not grow in wet places and their consumption will lead to
"drying off" the mother's milk. Eating of small freshwater snails
is also forbidden because they will cause the child to become very
thin.
-
- Some of these food taboos are lifted after
four months, such as that of the "dry" rootcrops and the
freshwater snail, but most fish will remain taboo for the year.
Exceptions are the ilek, rudder fish, the kovahan, and the red
parrot fish named liton (also known as abtekan).
-
- The food taboos described here are far from
being a complete list. I have selected only those taboos for which
the Yami had an "explanation." The rest of the food taboos will be
mentioned later in their relation to subsistence.
-
- As the child is growing up, many other rituals
take place and new taboos join the list. The day after birth a
name must be given to the newborn. The naming is somewhat similar
to "baptism; by water." The mother, brothers, and sisters of the
infant, and the karios, the midwife, gather in the house where the
infant is. The father goes up to the water canal of the irrigated
taro field of the family and fills a receptacle with water. From
there, he must return home immediately. On the way it is taboo to
stop, engage in conversation of any sort, or look at the ocean. He
must be very careful not to stumble, or hit his foot against
anything on the road. He must pay the greatest attention not to
spill even a drop of the water. Any violation of these taboos will
surely result in the immediate or premature death of the infant.
When he gets home, the members of the family sprinkle some of the
water on the top of the child's head while saying: yako imo sabey
so toktok, "I mark you on the top of your head," after which
several long phrases of good wishes for health, knowledge, and
prosperity follow.
-
- The naming ceremony is followed by a feast at
the home of the parents. A pig or a goat is slaughtered. If they
cannot afford either of the two, several chickens can replace
them, and if poultry is not available either, fish will also do.
It must be a very large amount of fish, however, and only big fish
should be used for this purpose, especially the ilek, or rudder
fish (Kyphosus lembus). It is somewhat hard to catch all the right
fish for such a celebration, because of the above-mentioned strict
food taboos. Half of the sacrificial food must be taken to the
house of the karios and given to her. At the end of the day she
returns the empty containers.
-
- As expected, all domestic activities are
taboo-ridden. As far as weaving is concerned, for example, there
are many rules to observe, but the greatest taboo associated with
weaving in general concerns a certain part of the men's talili, or
vest. It is the white stripe in the lower middle section, which is
approximately two inches wide, with intricate white
- patterns, and is called vokow. As the weaving
of the vokow progresses, the health of the weaver is exposed to an
increasing amount of danger. This danger is associated with the
potential harm the vokow can cause.
- When the weaving of the jacket is finished, a
"taboo-washing ceremony" is required which will free the weavers
of the "curse of the vokow. If a person who is not of the right
age dares to wear a jacket with vokow, his backbone will be
deformed and he will be crippled for life.
-
- It is interesting to note that among the Yami,
certain rituals and interpretations of taboos are somewhat
interchangeable. For instance, the young men who finally decided
to dive in the neighborhood of the "rock of death" used sinasa
grass, thus applying a magic that was usually used on land. They
combined it with the use of the amulet knife, which was only meant
to protect the diver in the water. For the Yami there is no way of
"getting around the taboo;" without violating it. It is known that
in many cultures there are rituals that are used to "override"
certain taboos. In Israel for instance, according to Judaic
religion, the use of cars is forbidden during the Sabbath. If this
interdiction becomes inconvenient, some religious Jews put a life
preserver on the seat of the car -- to sit on during the ride. The
idea comes from the fact that riding in a car is forbidden, but
traveling on water by boat is not. Taking a piece of boat
equipment into the car, they aim for a "backward magic of
contagion" in order to "get around" the taboo which cannot be
lifted otherwise. Most interdictions of the Sabbath are treated in
similar fashion, even some of the strict food taboos.
-
- There is one more taboo-related event I should
mention here. It is interesting because it shows not only how the
taboo works, but also how it may come into existence. In the
spring of 1984 I was recording the ancestral story of Ivalino.
Siapen-Manabey, the narrator, had turned down my request on
several previous occasions because he said that there was no
particular pride in telling others that he and his lineage were
"latecomers" on the island. He meant that the people of Ivalino,
according to the myth known as the story of Simina-Vohang, came
from the Island of Ivatan and founded the village of Ivalino, but
at that time the island was populated already. To this day, the
Yami of the other five villages often tease the inhabitants of
Ivalino for being latecomers. The reason Siapen-Manabey finally
agreed to tell the story was that I was supposed to go to Ivatan
the following month. For the Yami, especially for the ones from
Ivalino, Ivatan is a "mythic reality," and they are very much
intrigued by it. Since I was preparing to go to the land of his
ancestors, he wanted me to report on it after my return in great
detail. He also chanted a message for the Ivatans, which I was
supposed to take along with me and play on my taperecorder to the
long-lost relatives on the Island of Ivatan.
-
- Siapen-Manabey had been telling, singing, and
chanting the myth for over four hours. He had finished the part
with the sea voyage and was just about to start the genealogical
part of the myth, when suddenly his daughter, a middle-aged woman
who was among the audience, started shouting at him. She was
trying to stop him from telling the katapilanda, the family tree,
and was arguing with him in a loud voice. She said that if I took
the story with me to Ivatan, and if they hear it there, the
Ivatans will surely try to come to Irala and try to revenge
themselves for all the evil deeds of the Yami. First, I thought
that by "evil deeds" she meant the petty theft and cheating of the
Yami, which occur abundantly in all the major stories. It turned
out, however, that she was talking about a certain family
heirloom. I could not find out what it was or understand the
context for the source for the feud with the Ivatans, because they
handled the issue with surprising embarrassment and unusual
rudeness. As the narrator's daughter was getting ever louder,
people started gathering, and in no time she had a greater
audience than the narrator. Then she shouted and screamed herself
into a half insane state of mind, at which point, suddenly, all
the people stood up and left.
-
- Later, Siapen-Manabey explained to me that his
daughter thought that from telling these stories only misfortune
would come, and, with her violently protesting attitude, she made
him responsible for any tragedy that now might occur in their
family. Since the argument got out of hand and was witnessed by so
many people, the famous narrator could do nothing else but end his
story-telling career. "Now, my daughter's words are like a pending
curse," he explained. "If someone in our family will drown, or be
bit by a snake, or break a limb, that will surely be because I
endangered them with my stories." According to my sources, he told
no more stories until he died in the spring of 1990.
-
-
- Diviners
-
- As has been shown, among the Yami, black or
white magic can to a certain extent be practiced by anybody. At
the same time, there are forms of magic that are the privilege of
certain individuals. These activities, which we may consider
"paranormal," are the following: detection of ailments, their
cause and their healing, prediction of certain events, locating
lost objects, and revealing the truth about lying, mischief,
theft, and crimes committed secretly. Those persons who have the
capability to perform any or all of these magic-related
activities, according to the goal of their magic and to the way
they perform it, are called zomyak, somkey, mamahad, makahaw, and
makazid.
-
- To discuss these categories I need to use a
word which is comprehensive enough to permit me to refer to all of
these aspects in a generic sense. For this purpose I shall use the
English word "diviner," with an extended definition encompassing
here any person who has one or all of the mentioned magic
powers.
-
- A zomyak, according to the Yami, is a person
who can detect, identify, and heal a sickness. It is believed that
the magic power of the person comes from a celestial agent, who
can be akey ta do to, "our heavenly grandfather," once perceived
as the "Supreme Being" of the Yami myths, or, more recently, "our
Lord" of the Christian faith. A zomyak is someone who can heal
without having to touch the sick. He or she just invokes and
concentrates the healing power upon the suffering person. Of
course, if the sickness is due to the presence of a malicious
ghost, the zomyak can promptly chase it away. He or she can
interpret dreams, cause coconuts to fall to the ground from their
branches, and command birds to do the same thing as they fly
through the sky (Beauclair 1974, 18). According to myth, if
someone has a close encounter with death, that can instantly make
him a zomyak. All cases of possession, especially if they manifest
themselves in the form of trances, fall into this category.
-
- A somkey is essentially a healer. He uses his
hands to massage the body or a certain part of the body of a sick
person. To make his intervention efficient, he murmurs certain
spells while he is rubbing the sick person's limbs or body. He can
obtain and interpret important information about the sickness from
the crackling noise produced when pulling at the patient's finger
joints. Mamahad is synonymous with somkey.
-
- A Makahaw is a native who can tell right away
if another person is lying, has stolen, or has committed a
punishable crime. There is no way to keep anything secret from the
mamahad. He or she will know of all adulteries and can even detect
adulterous thoughts. If someone violates taboos or performs black
magic of some sort, the makahaw will know that too.
-
- A Makazid is someone who is endowed with the
special skill of being able to see ghosts. He can see them day or
night as they walk down the village paths, in the rain forest, at
the shore, or on the ocean. The ghosts do know that he can see
them and for this reason they all fear a makazid. He or she cannot
only see the ghosts, of course, but can also threaten them and
chase them away and, by virtue of this fact, can also heal. If a
native loses his soul to a ghost or a vongkow, the makazid can go
and get it back from the evil ones, who are visible only to him or
her.
-
- These are the main divisions of Yami diviners,
but I am certain that in reality these categories are not that
sharply divided. The folklore proves that they constantly infringe
on each other's assumed sphere of activity. Sometimes the somkey
is also reported to have had the power of knowing the whereabouts
of lost people, and there are cases when the makazid, who could
see a ghost, healed his suffering fellow man by means of rubbing
his body while uttering a spell. As for pulling at the finger
joints for telling the future, this is performed in the myths also
by protagonists who were not known as diviners.
-
- The best example of the lack of strict
delimitations in the devining performance is the case of the
zomyak of Yayo village. Because I lived in Yayo during most of my
fieldwork, I not only came to know this person well, but actually
ended up several times as one of the subjects of her practices.
The zomyak of Yayo is a woman. When I got to the island her name
was Sinan-Pangankaman. Later, her eldest child, a girl who married
a Taiwanese aborigine, had a daughter whom they named Si-Manliven.
Consequently, everybody's name changed in the family, and the
grandmother, the zomyak of Yayo, now is called Siapen-Manliven.
Though she is a zomyak , she cannot make coconuts fall off palm
trees, nor can she make birds drop to the ground, but she can
perform all the other functions of her category. Moreover, she can
perform everything that a makahaw can, and according to her and
the natives, she is able to see ghosts, too, a fact that makes her
a makazid as well.
-
- Siapen-Manliven of Yayo is a very well-known
person on Irala. The natives come to see her with all kinds of
problems. For her services as a zomyak, she is supposed to receive
some tamtahmek, treasure, which can be blue beads, or gold foil,
or even broken gold which is called gizit. These days, when there
is little gold left and even less use for blue beads in the
quickly emerging cash economy, she also takes money. It is
important to note that even though money is clearly becoming more
and more important in the lives of these people, she does not turn
down blue beads as a form of payment. During her healing sessions,
or when some important information about a crime is demanded, she
enters a trance and contacts her "God power." While in a trance
she can tell, in most cases, with great exactness what the ailment
of a sick person is, where certain persons are, where lost objects
lie, or whatever an aggrieved party would like to know. She never
incriminates people by name, but describes very clearly how they
look, or where or in which house they live.
-
- I was somewhat puzzled by Inez de Beauclair;'s
statement that "the Yami have neither professional priests nor
magicians or medicine men or women" (1974, 16). She is right as
far as true "professionalism" is concerned, but in a society in
which there are no leaders, not even persons who are primus inter
pares, there can be no such "professionalism" because that would
automatically create a new social category. That certainly should
not mean, and this has to be explained, that there are no
individuals among the Yami who can carry out the same activities
that in other societies only the professionals perform. In other
words, the Yami have diviners and the fact that they are not
professionals does not imply that they are dilettantes or
amateurs. It simply means that their society lacks the social
stratification necessary to isolate such an elite. Nevertheless,
it is true that none of the Yami diviners earns his or her living
only by the practice of magic. They all attend to their farming
and to their fishing.
-
- Inez de Beauclair also asserts that the Yami
have no shamans. She mentions, however, reports of possession and
of certain persons who could heal or provide information of all
sorts while in a trance (1974, 16). I assume that at the time of
her fieldwork there was no person on the island whose talents were
so comprehensive as those of Siapen-Manliven, who, in my opinion,
can by all accounts be considered a shaman.
-
- I tried several times to question her about
her magical powers, but she always refused to answer or enter into
any conversation likely to drift onto that particular subject. But
during the summer of 1983 I suddenly started feeling very tired
and in less than a month lost 45 pounds. After none of my
antibiotics seemed to control the infection signaled by my
extremely swollen lymph glands, I went to see her. I eased into
her palm the two blue beads that I received from my tribal
grandfather for this purpose and told her that I was sick. "We all
know that you are sick," she said. Then she said a ghost in the
jungle had entered my body through a hole that was none of my
natural openings. It lives there, she said, and now it was
multiplying in my blood, while it drained me of my energy. She
also said that in this particular case she could not chase it out.
Finally I ended up in the emergency room of the hospital of the
National Taiwan University, where, to my great luck, Professor
Hsieh, a tropical disease specialist, immediately diagnosed the
symptoms as the result of scrub-typhus. As he explained later, the
almost microscopic larva of the tsutsugamushi, a red mite, which
lives on green vegetation, especially in the tropical rainforest
of the island, had bitten its way through my skin, and a bacterium
called Rickettsia, which lives in the mite's saliva, had
penetrated the human sanguimotor system, causing a bacteremia. Now
the organism was multiplying in my blood, causing the high fever
and a cardiovascular infection. Thanks to Dr. Hsieh's expertise, I
became that year's medical convention's topic. A visiting Harvard
University M.D. was brought in to observe my recovery, and after
two months of hospitalization I could return to the island.
-
- Siapen-Manliven told me that my blood was
clear now. She also told me that I still had something strange in
my blood, but that was all right because I had been born like
that. It took another year and two more tropical diseases for me
to find out that what she had detected was Thalasemia minor, a
type of hereditary anemia common in the Mediterranean area.
-
- A few months before my departure from the
island in 1984, Siapen-Manliven came to our home and said that she
was going to tell me the story of how she became a healer. Since
in this chapter I want to compare some of the aspects of the Yami
healing activities with those of Ivatan, I shall now render into
English the story of Siapen-Manliven, and will later discuss some
of its mythical implications
-
-
- In the beginning I wasn't really a good
person. When I went to the fields I often thought of stealing
other people's crops, and I had a wicked soul.
-
- One day when I went to the field I saw an
apparition. That time I was with two friends who said, "Let's cook
our food and eat together." First we wanted to go and wash our
faces. At the water, suddenly I saw a huge bamboo snake. It had a
very large head and its body was very, very long and thick. Half
of it was like the volay, the mythic serpent. On the back of the
snake there were pigeon-like birds sitting. They had white wings,
white bodies, and black tails. The head of the snake moved towards
me, then I fainted and knew nothing of myself for a while. After
that I tried to run up the slope. Since I was alone I was so
frightened that I couldn't even think. There in the field I
fainted again and when I came around, I just sat there, and the
snake was also there. Then I realized that there must have been a
reason for me to see such an apparition, probably because I was so
mean and worthless. Otherwise why would God show me anything like
this? I started calling my friends, "Sinan-Mamogaz,
Sinan-Sensengan, come quickly, look what a huge snake," I said.
They came running. "Where," they asked. "There, right there," I
said and pointed. "There is nothing there," they said. "But can't
you see it, look how huge it is!" I said. "There is nothing
there," they said. "That is strange," I said. "Let's go home," my
companions said, and they were pulling at me to stand up. Others
came by and asked me why had I not gathered any food yet. I told
them that I had no strength to walk. While we were talking I saw
that there were a lot of pigeons watching us, but nobody could see
them. "I am sick, perhaps, and I want to go home to rest," I said
to my friends. "But where did you go, what happened?" the others
asked. "I just went over there on Siamen-Omladan's mother's field
to wash," I said.
-
- Then I thought I should chew some betelnut, so
I walked over to an aricanut palm, and got what I wanted. While I
was chewing, suddenly two giants appeared, they were as big as the
Igang, and it looked as if they were wrestling. I stopped and
could not take my eyes off them. I wondered how come I could see
anything like that. Then I thought I should pray. The two giants
also prayed with me. Then I knew that this was all for me to
become a good person, not to steal and not to lie anymore. I even
thought of going to church because I had joined two groups
earlier, first a Protestant and then a Baptist group, but that was
quite a while ago. Then I also thought of going to Siam-Paroy's
church, the Protestant one. I was still watching the two giants
and was trying to make out if they were really from heaven or if
they were demons. The pigeons, many, many of them, they were all
around us all this time. I moved towards the giants. One of them
went away and disappeared. The other one suddenly started
shrinking, and became a person of regular size. But it did not
stop shrinking, it went on and finally it changed into a small
stone person. I do not remember exactly what happened then, I must
have fainted again. My friend came and asked me why I was sitting
there in the field, because it was time to go home. My companion
asked me what I was holding onto. It was this little stone doll,
she took it from me saying that she was going to keep it for me. I
left my basket and my other belongings there on the field and
returned to the village. After I arrived home, I fainted again. My
husband couldn't understand what was going on with me, so finally
I told him that I had to have that little stone doll back. I sent
him to the house of Siapen-Manlikod to bring it for me. When he
returned, my husband said that bringing such objects into the
house was taboo and didn't want to give it to me. "If you think it
is evil, throw it into the fire," I said. He didn't want to do
that either, so finally he gave it to me. As I touched it, it
immediately changed into a person, jumped up on my suitcase which
was up on the rack, and just sat there staring at me. Than he told
me that only I could see and hear him. He talked to me and asked
me why I still lied and stole if I had joined a Christian church
and why I was not behaving as a decent person. He talked to me
about these things for a long time.
-
- I went to Taiwan to see a Baptist preacher. I
stayed there for about a month and all they talked about was why
their religion was more important than all the others. About a
month later I returned home. My family members all joined
different kinds of churches, and we had a big discussion trying to
decide which one was better. My brother and my husband argued that
it was none of my business which church they belonged to; finally
I decided to join the Protestant group in Siam-Paroy's church. He
was the leader of the first church on the island, and it was he
who made the sezez, the snapper, oyod or real fish, so that all
women of our village could eat it.
-
- About a month later, one evening I saw a lot
of fish swimming around in my room, as if it were under the ocean,
and also a great number of white pigeons flying around among them.
I asked my husband to throw them out, but he could not understand
what I was talking about. Another month passed, then on a late
night someone knocked on our door. First we ignored it, but the
person insisted, knocking and kicking the door. "Who is it and
what do you want?" I asked. "Come quickly," a woman said, "my
daughter is dying, please come and help me!" "But what could I do
for her?" I asked while I was trying to open the door. It was
Sinan-Liowawa, crying on my doorstep. "We all know that you are a
zomyak, come quickly and save my child," she said. She was
terribly frightened, so I went with her, but I had no idea what I
was supposed to do or say once we got there. When we got to her
house, the child was as if asleep, trembling, burning with fever,
and she had white foam at her mouth. It looked indeed as if she
were going to die right away. I thought I should try to pray, but
I did not even know a prayer, so I was trying to make up one by
myself. While I was trying to do that, suddenly I realized that I
knew that I could heal her. When I thought of this, the little
girl opened her eyes and asked for cinowat, boiled water. They
gave her some, then she got up, looked at us in surprise, and
asked her mother what we were doing in their house so late at
night. Somehow, I knew for certain that she was out of danger
already, but also knew that it was going to take some time for her
to recover completely. That was exactly how it happened.
-
- After that, whenever people were sick they
always came to see me for help. Now, even if they do not come, I
know right away if someone falls sick, and if there is something
that I can do, I go to their house and try to help even if they do
not ask me for it. The easiest for me is to tell if someone's
blood is affected by a ghost or anything else, even the kind of
sicknesses men can get in the Taiwanese whorehouses. I know when
people lie, steal, or kill, and I know where they hide the stolen
objects. I know when they commit adultery even if they are far
away; as a matter of fact, distance has nothing to do with it. I
do not know how come I know it, I just know it, that's all! Now I
know that this power comes from God. When I heal, I do not see God
in person but I feel his power coming over me. I saw him only
once, he arrived in front of my house on a huge ship. It was not
like our boats, like a tatala, but like a big foreign ship. He was
clad in white and looked like an American, his hair was white and
curly like yours, Si-Mateneng, and he also had a white beard. This
happened right before my brother died. He had a huge life-size
mirror with him. The mirror was bright in the front and pitch
black in the back. He said that in the front he could see people's
virtues, and, on the dark side, their sins
-
-
- From this testimony of Siapen-Manliven we can
see that, although magic (as it is understood in Yami culture) can
be practiced by all, there are those special individuals who have
a vocation for it. And the word vocation is employed in its
religious, albeit somewhat syncretic, sense. Siapen-Manliven is
developing the first vestiges of Christian consciousness in her
life and work as a zomyak. It is worth noting that the only time
she saw God was before her brother died. The Yami have the
tradition of observing the taztazmamo, the worst omen of all, an
apparition that forecasts a death in one's family. In this case,
even though she did not explicitly say so, she associated the time
of the apparition of God with that of her brother's death. Her
relatives who die become anito like everybody else, and God,
heaven, and all the saints cannot override the strong taboos
concerning death.
-
- A good example of this is the case of the son
of the Catholic catechist of Yayo village. The son, a religious
young man, a promising future catechist, was sick. The relatives
asked the shaman to help him. She, the shaman, said that there was
nothing one could do to help in his case. The young man went to
Taiwan, to a hospital where the doctors examined him and said that
he had an ulcer. With medication in his pocket, he returned to
Irala, but within a few days he fell sick again. The shaman said
that he would not live and, indeed, in three days the young man
died. His last wish was that he be buried as a Christian, with a
cross at his head. Knowing that he was the son of the catechist, I
thought that they would consider his last wish and break the
taboo. I was wrong. His father, the right hand of the Catholic
missionary, together with the relatives, had him buried before the
sun set, and his grave, like that of any other Yami, remained
unmarked. The burying tools were thrown away, and his name has
never been mentioned again since the day he died. Today, the new
religion, "God and the son of God," is filling the life of the
Yami, but certainly does not guide it. The shaman considers
herself religious, but at the same time accepts all the tenets of
the Yami pantheon with all its functions. Thus God may even appear
as a taztazmamo
-
-
-
- The Belief Systems of the Batanes
Cultures
-
- The belief system; of the Ivatans is just as
much a split entity, and thus a mixture, as the rest of their
culture. It is fragmented by the presence of two distinct
plausibility structures, the Catholic Church and the Ivatan
anito.
-
- The anito is a category of invisibles, rather
than the name of a kind of super- or preternatural phenomena. To
this category belong (a) the souls of the dead, (b) place-specific
spirits, and (c) wandering invisibles neither identified with nor
tied down to any particular locale or thing (Hornedo 1980, 21).
Each of these sub-categories has a unique and identifying modus
operandi. First, however, one must consider that there is no
indigenous Ivatan word for "preternatural" or "supernatural," nor
even for "spirit" in the Christian sense. When Ivatans refer to
the beings belonging to what Christianity calls the spirit world,
they say sira o di a voya (those who cannot be seen) (Hornedo
1980, 50). And second, there are two types of Ivatan consciousness
which must be distinguished: (1) the indigenous pre-Hispanic
consciousness that has persisted to the present and (2) the
Christian consciousness fostered by Roman Catholic evangelization
since l783. While the concept of the "supernatural;" is basic to
Christianity, the indigenous Ivatan notion of the world of the
anito is that of the invisible. This means that the Ivatan
worldview distinguishes two worlds, the visible and the invisible
as contrasted with the later natural-supernatural Christian
distinction.
-
- Today, the visible-invisible and the
natural-supernatural distinction of worlds coexist in the
consciousness of the Ivatans, with the "invisible" being vaguely
equated with the "supernatural," which, in any case, is also
invisible (Hornedo 1980, 51-52). In spite of Spanish Catholic
missionary efforts, the anito has remained the most durable and
widely accepted object of belief among the Ivatans. In fact, as
pointed out by Hornedo, Christianization, especially Catholic
dogma, has suited the natives well and has actually reinforced the
original "pagan" beliefs. The existence of a hell, with devils who
are invisible but always there to tempt and harm a person, fits in
perfectly with the native conception of the Ivatan anito.
-
- Spanish chroniclers, starting with Fray Juan
Bel in 1720 down to Fray Anastacio Idigoras in 1895, invariably
noted the anito belief. The ancient Ivatans appear to have had no
notion of a supreme being, or if they had, they probably regarded
him as remote and having little to do with their daily activities
and pursuits. It was to the anito that the people related
themselves with ritual fear and care. Even today, the beliefs
concerning the anito and the related practices used to deal with
them are still very much alive. This is true not only among those
who are not Christians, but even extends to the Catholic clergy
(Hornedo 1980, 21-22).
-
- Although the current beliefs concerning the
anito have incorporated much Catholic ritual, the worldview behind
these beliefs is inherently non-Christian. It cares nothing for
distinctly Christian values such as spiritual salvation and is
based on an ethic of "be good to those who are good to you, and
bad to those who are bad to you." Culpability, in the world of
anito, is attributed on the basis of outcome, not on the basis of
moral responsibility. Christian symbols such as holy water and the
cross are used as charms, devoid of their religious meaning. This
view has drawn hostility towards practitioners of anito-related
rituals from priests and devout Catholics alike. It must be
mentioned, however, that this opposition has not necessarily
denied the existence and power of the anito, particularly those
associated with places (Hornedo 1980, 40).
-
- The first distinct class of anito is that of a
returned soul of the dead, the soul of the departed whether
perceived in "real" life or in a dream. Although the souls of the
dead are known as pahapahad, from the Ivatan word for soul pahad,
when these souls appear or manifest themselves to people, they are
called anito (Hornedo 1980, 2). When the anito of a dead person
appears, the reaction of the viewer is the same as a Westerner's
response to a ghost--with one exception. The dead person's anito
is carefully heeded when he or she makes requests for favors, but
resisted when he or she indicates the desire to make the living
follow him or her in a path regarded by the living as associated
with damnation (Hornedo 1980, 28). In other words, the anito is
taken seriously.
- The following is a typical case cited by
Hornedo:
-
- Antonio Gutierrez died in l977 leaving behind
three grown children: two men and one woman. A third son had died
earlier. The men were his sons by a second marriage, the woman by
his first marriage. Soon after the father's death, the children
had difficulty deciding each one's just share of their father's
estate, the father having left no written will. The youngest,
Juanito, had lived with their father and served him till his
death. The woman had married early and had lived away from her
paternal home for many years. The youngest naturally felt that he
should have a larger share than his half sister. They were,
therefore, ready to settle the matter in court. But before they
could do so, Juanito dreamed of his father. He saw him throwing a
fistful of coins and saying, "tawri pa o da Maring," or there is
some more for Maring. When he woke up, Juanito believed that his
father's anito had meant to tell him that his half sister should
be given more than she had so far been given. So Juanito relented
and agreed to give Maring a more generous share of their
inheritance. (Hornedo 1980, 28)
-
- This narrative incorporates many of the
characteristics of the anito of dead humans. The anito has the
recognizable likeness of the deceased. Although this is common,
sometimes sounds alone are sufficient to suggest the anito's
presence. The anito relays a message to Juanito. This is not
unusual. Anito frequently relay messages to individuals. However,
they tend only to show themselves to groups of people. Juanito's
father appeared at night and in his house. As we shall see later,
anito manifest themselves regardless of place or time of day.
Also, Juanito obeyed the anito. This is the universal response to
an anito whose demands are not excessive. The anito, whose demands
may reflect its needs in the hereafter, is obeyed out of sympathy
and fear of retribution. Many anito manifest themselves to
indicate their condition in the other life, whether it be a
condition of temporary suffering or eternal damnation. The Ivatans
interpret its status via clothing (black garments are believed to
indicate suffering) and other signs which the living find
meaningful. Thus, even if the apparition is silent, the viewer can
interpret its state in the hereafter (Hornedo 1980, 28-30). Given
the Ivatans' great fear and respect for the anito, they avoid
certain places and things associated with the dead, especially at
night and when alone: cemeteries; farms owned by dead persons
known to be mangmo, who intend to cause fright; coffins, poles
used as part of a stretcher for carrying the dead; places of death
(whether from suicide, accident or illness); places reputed for
anito apparitions; and churches (Hornedo 1980, 30).
-
- The second type of anito is that which is
associated with a particular place. In the West, we would liken
this to a haunted area. Anito may inhabit particular trees
(especially vadichi), fields, farms, or caves. These anito may be
protective and friendly to the owner of the property, hence the
tradition of introducing succeeding generations of the family to
them, as long as the owner continues to perform the traditional
ritual of kapamivyay in which food and drink are offered to the
anito. And to those humans who are privileged to know how to deal
and communicate with them, the macanito, they may even become
subservient. However, to most people these anito too are
frightening and even dangerous. The anito manifests itself through
perceivable phenomena such as sounds, the human voice, the sound
of musical instruments, the appearance of animals, and even human
form. Hornedo describes another case of anito interfering with the
living.
-
- About a kilometer west of Barrio Savidog in
Sabtang island is a region called Mayavosoy. Here the Volang
family own a parcel of farm land that has traditionally been
believed to be guarded by anito. Many people have reported having
seen nanak (piglets) running about in the grass and among the
plants and then suddenly vanish into thin air. One day, it is
said, young members of the Volang family came to cut banana leaves
and pick pineapples. But to their surprise, they discovered that
the leaves and fruits they had picked disappeared, and when they
looked at the plants, they saw they were back on their stalks.
Frightened, the children went home to tell their parents about
what happened. Bebek, one of the old people, it is said, went to
the farm and scolded the anito saying: "Anmyan sa aya o mangay
jiya am yavayohen nyo sa ava ta kaynapwan ta say." (When people
come here, don't be bothered because they are our grandchildren).
(1980, 37)
-
- The third class of apparitions, the wandering
anito, is so-named because they are not clearly associated with
any particular person or place. Although their manifestations are
similar to those of the anitos
- associated with place, two forms of wandering
anito are of particular interest. These are the kapri and the
dayanak. The kapri, an anito that supposedly lives under trees and
gives out amulets, has the peculiar ability to change its size to
that of the surrounding objects, but it is not an indigenous
member of the Ivatan world of invisibles. Like the Tagalog Kapre,
it comes from the Spanish word cafre, defined as a "folkloric
giant who appears at night and lifts houses." Hornedo explains in
a note that "The Spanish cafre is said to refer in ancient Spain,
during the time of the Saracen or Moslem invasion, to giant
soldiers known as Kaffirs from Kaffraria, a province in Persia"
(Hornedo 1980, 50). The fact that the kapri is probably a result
of Spanish importation is reflected in the lack of giants in Yami
folklore. The dayanak, on the other hand, is a mythological being
sometimes referred to as koto n'tana or louse of the earth, and is
generally audible, not visible, in manifestation. The sound it
makes is that of an infant's short crying bursts; it is heard as
if from far away. This may be due to its small size. It is thought
to be able to inflict harm without being seen, and when seen it
has the appearance of an infant with red eyes and possessing many
gold trinkets. The form of the dayanak coincides with the sound
attributed to it, and tradition says that those ornaments bring
harm to those who accept them.
-
- The following two episodes cited from Hornedo
illustrate the above-mentioned attributes of the wandering anito.
-
- Juan Galarion was walking one night across the
town square at one end of which stood the parish church of
Mahataw, when he suddenly became aware of a very tall walking
being. He could not make out clearly the features of the being but
the silhouette-like form could be seen as being as tall as the
church. He knew it was an anito and he sought to avoid its path.
He believed it was a kapri (1980, 40).
-
- The second story particularly exemplifies the
more malevolent
- tendencies of the anito.
-
- A man had suddenly fallen ill in the field and
come home in great pain and in delirium. A mangaptos (medicine
man; literally, masseur) was called in. When the mangaptos
arrived, he said he saw several anito (whom he alone could see).
He said that these anito had been encountered by the victim
somewhere in the fields and that the man must have done something
they did not like, so they inflicted harm on him. He asked for
incense, particularly the incense taken from the burner used in
church (because that has been blessed, according to him). This was
burned, for its smell is believed to drive the anito away. Then
holy water was also sprinkled on and around the sick man so that
the anito would not be able to touch him again. Then the sick man
was massaged with special oil preparations and spices such as
garlic which are believed to neutralize the effect of the anito
(1980, 43)
-
-
- This last narrative relates the use of
Christian symbols and practices as charms or rituals in anito
belief. Other rituals and spells include distorted versions of
prayers, particularly in Latin, as well as the crucifix and the
Missal. The pali or priest is regarded with certain dread by the
people because it is believed that he has a superior knowledge of
prayers. Using the Missal, with its special incantation, he can
ask God to bring about anything he desires. For this reason, in
cases of extreme harassment by anito, the priest may be called in
to perform an exorcism. When the people become unruly or when
crimes are committed in the parish, the priest is believed to be
able to pray at mass for a typhoon and other natural catastrophes
to punish the people. This would be particularly true if the
priest wore green robes to mass because the people attach extreme
importance to the color of the priest's attire. It is also
believed that the maniple and the stole of the priestly vestments
are instruments for driving away evil spirits. However, it must be
noted that his powers are believed to come from God, the angels,
and the saints (Hornedo 1980, 50-51).
-
- The Ivatan believes that he or she is in daily
contact with the powers of the invisible world, which he regards
with fear, especially since he does not usually know what is going
on there. He does believe, however, that there are groups of
gifted people who have the power to deal with or understand the
invisibles. They are regarded as privileged humans who are not
only of the visible world but also in possession of powers
regarded as belonging to, or on the level of, the anito. Thus it
is sometimes said of them, anito o vit na, or "half of them is
anito" (Hornedo 1980, 45).
-
- These privileged humans are divided into five
classes: macanito, mamkaw, masolib do dasal or manlatin, manolib,
and mamalak. Two other categories of privileged humans that
operate in similar circumstances are the mangaptos or mamyay, the
healers, and the priest or pali. These two categories are somewhat
apart in the sense that their gift does not lie entirely in the
realm of the anito, but does have cause now and again to overlap
it. As has been explained previously, the macanito is someone who
has at his command powers believed to come from invisible forces
that give him control over the invisibles. Generally, his powers
are regarded as beneficent to good people and threatening to those
who are bad. The mamkaw is like the macanito in that he traffics
with invisible powers, but differs from the latter in that his
works are regarded as sinister and evil. His tools are charms and
ritual. Although his spells have bad consequences, they are said
never to be unprovoked. Retribution is the motivation of his
actions. The masolib do dasal, or the one who knows magical
prayers, and the manlatin, the one who has Latin spells, use
spells of Christian origin, thus setting them off from the mamkaw
and the macanito. Most of the masolib do dasal have been
choirboys, acolytes, or sacristanes in the local parish churches.
The results of the spells are generally considered beneficial,
although under provocation, the manlatin is believed to inflict
punitive harm. The manolib is a witch. Although of either sex, the
greater number are old or middle-aged females. Their powers are
considered evil and inspired by jealousy or envy. She or he
possesses a tovong (a bamboo tube) which contains a variety of
reptiles and insects. From these she concocts her powers, or kari
with which she can inflict pain and disease on those whom she
hates or envies. Women witches are believed to perform nocturnal
ceremonies in isolated places during certain phases of the moon.
They perform their rituals alone, with their hair disheveled and
dangling. The witch's powers are believed to come from the devil.
The mamalak are diviners. They appear to be related to what the
missionaries of the l8th and l9th centuries call somkey. They
claim to be able to read one's fortune in the palm of the hands,
or from other signs in the body. They are also believed to be able
to know a person's character by simply looking at his or her
appearance. Certain mamalak claim that they can foretell when
someone is going to die. It is believed that these powers come
from invisible forces (Hornedo 1980, 45-48).
-
- It should be noted that the Spanish have
recorded the existence of a kind of diviner called somkey. On
Irala, this category of diviners still exists and is called somkey
as well.
-
- Most of the data on the Ivatan belief system
presented so far has come from Hornedo's expertise on the topic.
In the following pages I shall involve another source, a person
who is also an expert but in a quite different way. This person is
Santiago Salengwa, one of the well-known healers of the Ivatans. I
have described earlier how I met him in May 1984, when I was sick
with malaria in the Basco hospital. At the suggestion of my Ivatan
friends, I became one of Mr. Salengwa's patients. One year later,
I succeeded in obtaining from him the story of his career as a
healer. The story was recorded in the form of a conversation with
Ms. Oliva Elica of Basco Batanes. Here is his story:
-
- On the third Wednesday of Easter, before I
went to Valogan, I told my companion in the house, the late
Domingo Garcia, to ring the clock at three in the morning.
-
- "Where are you going?" Domingo asked.
-
- "I want to go to Valogan." In my dreams, this
old woman always wanted me to cure ailments. "I didn't want that,
but she forced me to," I told Domingo. So, he adjusted it to
three, but that meant that if I woke up when it rang, then I was
late already. So, I said, "put it to fifteen to three." He did
that. At fifteen to three when it rang I did not rise, but did so
when it was three.
-
- I went outside, but I was somewhat afraid
because she told me to go some place from where I can see the
rising of the sun. I did that, and as I was looking at it, it
turned bright red in the East, and then I saw a table -- similar
to this one here. Then I saw an object which looked like a piece
of straight wood, similar to that one over there. Then, there was
one that was somewhat crooked, it looked like those three pieces
of wood over there. Afterwards, I saw two bottles with different
contents, one white and the other red. The wood was still there.
While the sun was rising, I saw an arm like that of a big man.
-
- "You saw the arm up to the elbow?"
-
- "Yes." Afterwards, I saw the woman opening the
bottle. She took the straight wood which was broken to pieces. She
crossed it with the oil until the wood was straightened out. Then
she massaged it and laid it aside. Then she got the white oil. She
got hold of the crooked wood. She opened the bottle with the white
content and she made the sign of the cross. She rejoined the ends
of the bones. When it was rejoined, she massaged the veins. The
sun kept going higher. Then I saw her getting hold of the one like
these over here (wood), she took some from the content of the
white bottle, she crossed with the oil the two broken branches and
the pieces returned to their places.
-
- When the sun was high already, gradually, I
couldn't see the table and the arm of a man. As I was there, I
said to myself "what does all that mean?" On the eve of Holy
Saturday, the woman came into my dream and she said, "I was sent
by God the Savior to give you the instructions. He wants you to
help all those who have ailments on earth." In my mind I said,
"Why me? I'm not a wise man." I was quite apprehensive; then
someone came and asked me to massage his hand which was sprained.
"I'm not a wise man," I said. "That is not true, besides your
father is wise in this!" he insisted. While I was massaging his
arm, it returned easily to its place. "You see that you are
wise!"
-
- From that time they began to come to me for
massage. I began in 1934 and went on till 1943. I was noted for
returning dislocated bones and joints. Afterwards, the old woman
came again into my dreams. She said, "I was sent by God the Savior
to tell you this and that. After 50 years, you will be still
alive, and there will be an additional knowledge to what you have
now, in order to help our God, the Savior." "What is that going to
be?" I asked. I did not know what she meant. Then, one Saturday,
while I was sleeping, I dreamed that she was holding two objects;
she placed them into my hands while I was sleeping, but when I
woke up there was nothing to be seen. I did not know what it was
all about. Afterwards, a mother brought a child who had abdominal
pain.
-
- "Was he as old as my son Aji?"
-
- "Yes, as big as Aji" (about twelve). I
massaged him and he recovered very easily. After that, I said to
myself, that must have been what the woman meant by additional
skills. It seems that I can remember well that week. Someone who
had a back pain asked me to massage him. I massaged him and he
recovered easily. That could be called additional because it was
added to my usual knowledge.
-
- That is why from that time and until now I
have not stopped "holding people." That does not mean that every
time I "hold a person," I know the ailments and that I can cure
them. I am not like the doctors, who know the cure of all ailments
because they are doctors. God has pity on me, and I promised in
front of God that as long as I live I shall use my knowledge to
heal.
-
- This is a long story. I'm somewhat lazy to
tell stories anymore. When I was interested in doing that, it was
good, but now that I'm growing old I can't move easily, and I
can't remember everything. According to the one who first came for
massage, I inherited my skills from my parents. They knew how to
return dislocated joints.
-
- "Did your father massage before?"
-
- "Yes, and my mother massaged muscle spasms and
any other ailments."
-
- "Are those the things that we call 'damaged by
ghosts'?"
-
- "Yes, that is it."
-
- "And how do you know it was from a ghost? How
is it that just by 'holding someone,' or taking the pulse of a
person, you know what kind of ailment the person has, and in which
part of his body, and what the cause of the ailment is."
-
- "When we say it is 'damaged by ghost' or 'hit
by wind,' when I touch or massage the part which is painful, I can
feel that it is open. But when I massage it, the blood clots and
the opening closes. Afterwards, you heat water and put a hot
compress on it, apply tiger balm or rubbing alcohol. That is all
that I can do if it is damaged by a ghost."
-
- "When I got sick, you said it was because I
was touched by a ghost. Then you did not use any rubbing alcohol.
How did you see it was because of a ghost?"
-
- "I did not see the ghost. Whenever I go to
drive away ghosts in bad fields, for I have prayers to drive them
away, that is the only time I can see them. When we take a walk on
the roads, I don't feel like seeing them because they have
different features from man. But sometimes they ask me to drive
them away. For example someone says: 'This here is my field, the
bad part is at the edge, see to it that you go there and drive
them away.'"
-
- "But what must you do when you go to a field
like that of Jose Calderon?"
-
- "I told him to tell me when we are nearing the
place so that I can say my prayers to keep us away from accidents.
For instance, here is their field, and we are still here, but when
we are approaching the very place he had to tell me that. I
prayed. When we arrived he said: 'There is now our field.'
-
- "Stay here far away,' I said." "Where is the
source?"
-
- "It is at the trunk of the nala tree and the
kamaya tree! I went there where the winds were. But if you drive
away the wind in the field, don't stay where they are. For
example, this is the inside of the house, don't go inside for they
go out and you are not aware of what they will do to you. Stay a
distance away from their house."
-
- "What must be done if their house is there and
you are here?"
-
- "Say a prayer to bring them out! Before the
ghost comes out, I feel the earth shake a bit, then it cracks and
smoke comes out. As the smoke comes out, then you see the ghost
standing there. When you see them, it is good if you are wise in
reading and wise in memory. And I'm not wise, my sight is poor for
reading too. I had the prayers copied with me, and when I started
to read one paragraph, they were already through with their
prayer."
-
- "Who, the ghost?"
-
- "The ghost, the wind, as we call them, it is
said that they were Angels, Cherubims in heaven before, and when
the Virgin Mary said Mass in heaven, they were the ones who played
the music. Like those in the choir. When they disobeyed God, they
came to look like what God had made, man. But then when God became
mad at them for not obeying, the seven choirs were thrown away to
whatever place. For example, when we clear land, burn it when it
dried, then they get burned, and if they have wounds, their wounds
will be transferred to the man who cleared the field and that is
the hardship. If we know the source of the ailment, we then look
for the healer to drive them away. You can't reason with them for
they have sufficient reasons. They say, 'Why do you drive us out
from here? Before we used to stay here, according to God's wish.'
'But we paid for this soil, and this is our own jurisdiction, and
I want you to get out from here. Go near the sea!' They will
answer, 'You go there if you like, we don't like it there, this is
our house.' They don't run out of reasons for they really have
sufficient answer for you. Even sufficient prayers to face you, so
don't go to face them with a skinny prayer. For example, if you
sing, they sing with you, if you read, it's the same, they go
ahead of you to finish the prayer. If you have the prayer
memorized, they go ahead of you to finish the prayer. They are
wise, that is why they can do that. When people here say, 'If you
go through the fields, do not say vulgar words, like demon or
devil for it is to their favor. As those are their names, those
are not curses for them. It is the prayers of the Lord our God
which are curses to them, for then they are thrown out of any
place. If you curse them saying 'you will never see light,' the so
said ghosts are so indignant, because that is the same curse that
our Lord God put on them. That is why I copied the prayers."
-
- "I was saying, when you cured me, you used
incense and moten, right? Then was that a ghost or no?"
-
- "Yes, it was your late husband who caused your
ailment. As if your lost one came to hold you, pitied you for you
were alone to carry on all your life, and as he held you it turned
to an ailment, but when we used the moten, the incense and holy
water, we parted him from you so that he will not come to hold you
again. The moten which the old Americano gave me are gone for I
used them in many places, wherever I went. The length of the
katoyan, the string with beads, as long as this. This is from
Itbayat, which Armando Delatado and I found," he said. He was his
companion to look for those things in the former town of ancient
people. I have used it up fast for those are the only things I
use, and now I have only one left. Before, when I ordered incense
from Manila, the unblessed was 1.00 Peso per kilo. I sent it back
to late cardinal Santos, when it was sent back I paid 14.00. If I
send 100.00 Pesos' worth, a kilo, now when it returns it is
150.00.
-
- "Are the ghosts afraid of that?"
-
- "Yes, when I go to remove them from bad
fields. They don't stop reasoning for they have sufficient
reasons, but when they are tired of reasoning, they get out and
that's when you say the curse of God and your prayers and use the
incense. They can't stand the a bad odor. They cover their noses
and turn their backs and go away. Then sprinkle holy water on them
so they move away faster. If they see the crucifix on you, they
don't like that because they don't have that."
-
- "If we scatter holy water in the so called
'bad field,' will they be afraid of that?"
-
- "Without prayers? No, that will not do. If you
first scatter the holy water and then burn incense, then they
won't be afraid for the holy water and incense are outside while
they are inside the earth. As the late choir teacher in Itbayat
said, 'You are as if going to war without a gun.' That can't be
done. The incense, holy water, crucifix and prayers are what you
use as your gun. That's why we use those."
-
- Once when I tried to go to chase them out, I
was not told exactly where their house was, so that I could keep
distance. So, I was exactly in their house, they were three, a
couple and their child. When they came out, I looked and the child
was not there. Where did the child go? He did not go out with
them, I said. Afterwards, I was surprised by a crinkling noise
behind me. I looked, he was a very short distance from me already.
That's why it is very delicate if you go right into their house.
Their houses are inside the earth and look like the houses of
Eskimos, they are similar to a coconut shell turned upside down,
but with only one door.
-
- "Can they be seen by us?"
-
- "You can't see them without the prayers. If
you say the prayers you could, but not if you have a weak body and
mind."
-
- "If we say the prayers together, do we see
them?"
-
- "You may see them. For example I give you the
prayer, but when you see them you get frightened and you will
shout."
-
- "If you cannot do that you die?"
-
- "You don't entirely die, but you will be like
if they gave you an ailment because of which you can't move."
-
- "Can you cure that?"
-
- "That I can cure, like our late choir teacher
in Itbayat. What was his name? Maximo Cano, the father of the
Mayor. The father of the Mayor then was a choir teacher like
Manuel Ruiz.
-
- "If you like to learn," he said, "come to my
house at 8:00 o'clock."
- At that time it was raining. On the fourth day
a townmate died, his name I can't recall. When I arrived at their
house, I greeted his wife in the kitchen. She said, "go to him in
the living room." I went to him in the living room, he was reading
a misal. I greeted him but he did not talk, he just went on
reading the misal, so I went back to the kitchen.
-
- "Why, isn't anyone in there," the wife said.
-
- "He has something to do."
-
- "Why, doesn't he attend to you?"
- The wife went to the living room. He did not
answer her, he just went on reading the misal. After he read the
misal he came to the kitchen.
-
- "So you are here now my brother," he said.
-
- "Yes, I came to you but you had something to
do. That's why I stayed here." He said, "The misal is like this,
read this and this, two paragraphs."
-
- I could read it but because it was in Latin I
could not translate it into Ivatan. After I read it, he lighted
the hurricane lamp and he told me to go across the cemetery. In my
mind I was afraid. Because I liked to learn, I took the hurricane
lamp and I went. I was thinking while I was on the road. If this
is our cemetery, this is the national road curving this way, I
will turn to the grassy way. I was a bit afraid. I sat here and
there outside the cemetery compound because it was the fourth day
after there was a burial and that scared me. After a long time of
sitting, about thirty minutes, it looked as if they had already
frightened me, so I wondered if I was going to take the lamp in
there or not. I thought, brave men can go on. I went on walking. I
arrived in the cemetery compound. I walked and climbed the cross
and hung the lighted hurricane lamp. When I got down from the
cross, I immediately turned my back. I saw them walking in front
of me, by my side, and heard their murmuring voices. I did not
mind them. I went on walking. As soon as I got out from the
cemetery compound, I ran. When I was near the town, I walked
slowly for I was tired from running.
-
- When I arrived at the house of the choir
teacher, I greeted them.
-
- "Did you take it there?" he asked.
-
- "Yes."
- He peeped outside, he saw the cross and
hurricane lamp as it was seen clearly from their door.
-
- "I took it there as you can see," I said. He
peeped, "you surely took it there," he said. As for the second
part of my readings, he asked, "Did you read the three prayers
there?" I read them. After reading them, I told him that I didn't
know how to translate Latin to Ivatan. "Never mind, just read it,"
he said. As it was horizontally like that, he said, "Read two
paragraphs so that you will stop being afraid." I read those, then
he took the book of Saint Mary. That is usually kept by the
priest, but because he was the choir teacher, and my cousin, like
a brother to me, he kept the book whenever the priest went away
from Itbayat. That is why it was easy for me to copy the prayers.
All the prayers for healing are there.
-
- What made me laugh was that in the prayers in
the book of St. Mary it is written that the pig's manure is a
medicine for asthma. When I think of drinking the pig's manure, I
can't stomach it, but what you do is dry it until it's very dry.
When it's very very dry, then burn it, take the ashes and mix it
with medicine, and then drink it as medicine for asthma. According
to the choir teacher, you need to know prayers to remove a ghost
in the field.
-
- "Yes, if you want, there are many more prayers
here," he said. "If you want to have a a thief stuck to the tree
from where he stole your plants, you may copy that prayer too and
learn it." I thought, if I have not visited my plantation for
three days and a person was stuck to a tree there and died, after
three days he would already have bad odor. That's why if you use
this prayer, you should be industrious and go to see your plants
frequently so that the dead person will not smell bad. Because the
parents or husband or the brothers or relatives of the person who
died like that can be mean to you. And what will the government
ask you? The value of the coconut or corn or watermelon or
whatever was taken from your plants. They will ask how much was
the value of the watermelon and then they will tell you how much
the person's value was. That's why you should think in advance and
compare the value of watermelon or corn or coconut to that of a
person. The value of a person is bigger, that's why I stopped
learning those prayers. I still know them, but I don't like to do
that, only if they steal too much and keep doing what I don't
like. Then I do it.
-
- "That's what they say about you."
-
- "No, no, when you read those prayers, to get a
thief stuck to a tree, you must answer first God, second, the
government, third the victim's relatives. Then, you are not
answering for your own deeds when you talk to the persons. It's
Lord God's will. He is our creator as it has been said."
-
- As I recall, when I was a young man I did
prayers in all the places where our plants were. Then I came over
here or I went to Manila, or any other place, and I could not go
and check my plants. Had it happened that I killed a person, then
I would have been made responsible for that. That is why I stopped
learning those prayers. I don't like to disturb other's
wisdom.
-
- Other prayers, for example, to find what we
call ghosts, and prayers to calm the mind of persons who would
like revenge, or put you in danger wherever you go, those are the
prayers I took and studied. It seems you may use them wherever you
go to keep you away from danger. That is why I learned them
-
-
- In a sense, the approach of the mangaptos is
that of the Yami healers. This is mostly true because the target
are the anito, the ghosts, which the two cultures still share. The
major difference is that the Ivatan healer takes his
oración, incantation, straight out of the Bible, and he is
a very religious man. The Yami understands the text of his
incantations. Salengwa does not, because they are in Latin, and
this is precisely what gives them power. For the Ivatans and the
Itbayats it seems to be plain that some of the powers of the pali,
the Catholic priests, hide in the obscure Latin prayers of the
sacred books, and, as Mr. Salengwa himself explained, it is a
great luck if someone can copy and learn these prayers.
-
- According to Santiago Salengwa, my ailment
resulted from the fact that I had tread on fields guarded by
ghosts and had removed broken pieces of funeral jars from the
ground. If these items are touched by outsiders, trouble can
result. He also explained that shards can be removed from the
ground only after the proper incantations have been uttered. Here
is the text of his oración: "Benedeste de omnipotentes
patrie et filio et espirito santo. I sicut erat en principio et en
secula seculorum. Amen."
-
- Another useful oración which should be
said every time one leaves home and in situations when there is
eminent danger, both of which may be the result of the doings of
the anito, is the following: "Desendam supervors, maniz semper.
Amen."
-
- As the healer himself explained, a collection
of the most useful oraciónes is so important that he will
never leave home without them. He has most of them memorized, but
some long ones he had copied for himself. Paper gets destroyed
fast, so he copied them many many times.
-
- As is to be expected, the Catholic
missionaries of Ivatan do not encourage the healing activities of
the mangaptos. All "pagan" survivals of the old Ivatan culture
generate negative responses on the part of the Dominican
clergymen. On one occasion, when I mentioned the local healing
practices to one of the Fathers in Ivatan, he just rolled his eyes
and said that he preferred to talk about less unpleasant topics.
This happened at about the same time that the Pope appointed six
professional exorcists to protect the northern towns of Italy from
the works of evil.
-
- Siapen-Manliven's activity can be juxtaposed
to the position of Santiago Salengwa, a masseur or mangaptos on
the island of Ivatan, who is also a "user of blue beads." He
functions in Ivatan life as Siapen-Manliven does on the island of
Irala. And this he does under the reproachful and stern gaze of
the Catholic church. Known to both the doctors and the people of
the island for his curative powers, Salengwa has incorporated into
his repertoire many forceful chants and rituals based on the power
of Catholic religious practices. Here we can observe the
accommodation of "pagan" beliefs to the imposition of Catholic
truth, and vice-versa. And yet, just like the zomyak, the
mangaptos occupies an essential niche in the belief and
subsistence systems of their islanders. The perseverance of these
traditions bears witness to their importance in the Batanes.
Missionaries reported the existence of shamans on the island of
Ivatan who were called somkey. Today, their descendants are known
as mamalak. Among the Yami the somkey still exist, however. It can
be inferred from this situation that specific individuals with
healing and magic powers are not only a necessary part of the
belief system, but are apparently an intrinsic and vital part of
subsistence livelihood as well.
-
- It is noteworthy that the Yami belief system
is changing according to the same pattern as the Ivatan belief
system. Christianity, as Hornedo correctly pointed out, suits
perfectly the original belief system of the Bashiic cultures
(1987). The new religion does not replace the old one. The
Christian God is put on top of the already existing Yami pantheon,
and the Christian hell, with the devils, is put lowest, lower than
the layer which contains the Yami anito. Thus, nothing is really
replaced within the belief system, but the pantheon itself is
enlarged. The Ivatan fishermen go to church right before they
start the ritual which requires the offering of the blue beads to
the spirit of the ocean. The Yami go to church before they start
the mamorow so laktat ritual, the chasing of the sickness from the
village at the time of an epidemic. In both cases, the belief in a
Christian God only enhances the power of rituals which are based
on the ancient belief system of the ancestors. This fact is
reflected very clearly by the practices and world view of the Yami
shaman and the Ivatan healer, and it also explains why the Ivatan
belief system has not changed so much as other aspects of Ivatan
culture
-
-
-
- Magic, Ritual, Taboo, and Myth
-
- It is somewhat difficult to decide how to
limit and confine to specific topics the discussion of abstract
phenomena present in myth. For example, it is widely accepted that
ritual and myth are not only very closely related to each other,
but interwoven. Of course, opinions still differ about the exact
nature of the relation and interaction between them.
-
- The idea that myth not only incorporates
magic, ritual, and taboo, but also interacts with them, is not
rejected by folklorists, mainly because the relations are
extremely difficult to verify. This is due to the complex,
multilevel encoding process by which a culture imbeds in myth
phenomena such as magic, ritual, and taboo. The problem of how
these abstract entities interact with myth is complicated even
more by the fact that, on one hand, myth has magic-, ritual-, and
taboo-generating capability, while, on the other hand, magic,
ritual, and taboo have myth creating power. To understand the
relation between these abstract phenomena and myth, first we have
to examine the process of how they are incorporated into myth and
what their stability is like once they are part of a myth.
-
- Malinowski views magic as "the most important
and the most mysterious aspect of primitive man's pragmatic
attitude towards reality" (1954, 138). Mysterious or not, reality,
in the particular case of the Yami, is also everything transmitted
in the stories of the ancestral grandparents, including the
necessity of rituals. If we accept Malinowski's assertion as
valid, myth can be viewed as a carrier of an attitude, or, rather,
a larger selection of attitudes, one of which concerns ritual. In
this context, however, myth is by no means a generator of ritual;
neither is it necessarily a life support system for it.
Consequently, on one hand the customs associated with performing
any kind of ritual may slowly disappear from a myth, while the
ritual itself either remains in practice or becomes forgotten. On
the other hand, just as often but not necessarily for the same
reason, certain rituals may vanish completely, but the oral
tradition may preserve them for a long time in myths. To a certain
extent, this should also be valid for magic and taboo.
Lévi-Straus; asserts that "a myth may well contradict the
technographic reality to which it is supposed to refer, and the
distortion nevertheless forms part of its structure. Or it may be
the case that the myth perpetuates the memory of customs that have
disappeared or still persist in another part of the tribal
territory (1970, 45).
-
- This idea seems to be especially true in the
case of certain aspects of Yami-Ivatan comparisons. One mysterious
issue, that of the palek, could be explained by this theory. The
issue concerns alcoholic beverage consumption, which has a long
history in most tribal cultures, including the ones populating
northern Luzon. The making of palek, the fermented sugarcane juice
wine, most probably was imported from northern Luzon to the
Batanes. At the time of Spanish contact; in the seventeenth
century, the natives of the Archipelago had already developed a
drinking habit. The Yami, who in my opinion share common ancestry
with the Ivatans and Itbayats, for some reason tabooed the making
of that alcoholic beverage and placed the sugarcane under a
partial taboo as well by giving it a name which indicated a
certain connection with the ghost world: onas no anito, the
ghosts' sugarcane. Palek, the word by which the fermented
sugarcane juice must have been known to the Yami before the
splitting of the tribes, has been retained by the Yami language.
It is pronounced parek and it is part of a highly taboo-ridden
ritual. At the time of house inauguration ceremonies, a bit of
millet is sprinkled into spring water and this, the parek, is then
sprinkled with the blade of a knife on the main post of the house,
called tomok. The action is accompanied by a proper incantation.
Should a drop of parek fall by accident on any of the by-standing,
feasting participants, according to Yami belief that person is
sure to die within a very short time. The taboo of the contact of
humans with the parek is still alive, and very much feared among
the traditional Yami. Since both the making of the alcoholic drink
and the plant that serves as its prime material are associated
with taboo, it is safe to assume that earlier there must have been
a powerful incident which generated the taboo with all its
implications, and that must have been remembered for
generations.
-
- The mythological data collected so far in the
Bashiic culture area do not provide any reference to such an
incident. Interestingly, the mythology supplies more than enough
reliable data, which is supported by material culture evidence, to
show that after the parting of the two groups, there were still
many intentional and unintentional contacts between the Yami and
the inhabitants of the Batan Archipelago. Yet in spite of the
contacts with Ivatans and Itbayats who knew well how to generate
the process of fermentation, wine-making was not reintroduced
amongst the Yami and, with the plant itself, wine-making remained
under strict taboo. I believe that the unknown incident, which
must have led to the severe ban on wine-making, was probably
related to some major offense committed as a result of alcoholic
intoxication. If the event ended with death, or, worse a massacre,
it is very probable that it generated a whole chain of related
taboos. As already mentioned, time may change or even totally
eliminate the perception of myth-carried events and customs. This
seems to have happened to the palek taboo because the probable
cause of the interdiction, the drinking of alcohol itself, slipped
out of the focus of the taboo: at the time of Japanese contact,
the Yami quickly developed an unusual gusto for the liquor that
the newcomers brought along. At present, while taboos concerning
sugarcane and wine making are still valid, the tribe is facing the
severe problem of advanced, general, and chronic
alcoholism.
-
- Another phonetic form in which the original
word has survived in Yami is parek, which, as in maparek, means
"blurry." After torrential rains, the ocean water gets polluted
from the inpouring streams, which renders diving impossible for
several days. The word maparek is used to describe the opaque
light-diffusing condition of the seawater due to impurities. On
Itbayat, the same word is used for the same phenomenon, and the
natives seem to agree that the origin of the word lies in the
strong resemblance of the muddy, blurry seawater to the color and
turbidity of the sugarcane wine. Hornedo noted that in Sabtang
both palek and parek are known, but states that there is no
convincing evidence that one derives from the other (1978).
-
- What will be incorporated into myth and what
not, and what will remain stable and what will rapidly disappear,
is very hard to tell. Above I argued that certain incidents that
led to intentional or unintentional killings may have produced the
existing taboos. The incident that may have generated the cane and
wine taboo, however, may have never been recorded in Yami
mythology.
-
- Weapons that have been involved in
manslaughter are strongly tabooed by the Yami. By virtue of their
physical existence, such weapons may preserve memories of the
incident of killing that brought about the taboo. Inez de
Beauclair mentions in her field notes that the massacre of the
crew of a stranded American ship by the Yami at the beginning of
the century faded out of memory and never became part of the local
legends. At about the same time, however, the incident of an
involuntary killing in the village of Ivalino came down in a
mythical way, developed several variations, and brought about the
introduction of a taboo. According to the story, two brothers once
went diving together, but when they wanted to get into the water,
one of them realized that he had forgotten to bring along his
little amulet knife. These small one-inch blade knives are usually
tied to the rubber band of the goggles, next to the diver's ear.
The Yami believe that the ghosts of the deep will not attack if
they wear such a knife. The reasoning of the Yami in this case is
that the ghost, before attacking the diver, will have to disarm
the man, but the amulet-knife is too small for the ghost to grab;
so, upon seeing it, the ghost will give up and will not even
approach the diver. Carelessly, the young men did not return for
the knife, but went on with their fishing. Soon, in the current
they saw a very large fish. When they got closer and were about to
spear it, they saw that it was not a fish, but a large piece of
green cloth, which they promptly seized. Once on the shore, they
wanted to share it, and one of them tried to cut the cloth with
his little amulet knife. While he was performing a slashing
motion, proceeding with the knife from his end of the cloth
towards the end held by his brother, the knife slipped through the
cloth and ran into the brother's body, killing him. This incident,
which is recent enough to be still remembered as a childhood
memory by old folks, produced a taboo observed mainly in Ivalino,
but as a result of frequent intermarriages it has diffused to
other settlements as well. Consequently, now in Ivalino, one with
a knife does not cut "away," but towards himself.
-
- The episodes of this apparently true story are
visibly broken down. New elements are introduced that act as
accommodating devices for gaining a stable, permanent
incorporation into myth. The fact, for instance, that the two
brothers perceived the cloth as a fish and wanted to spear it is a
typical mythic twist to the plot. Having regularly dived with the
Yami for a long time, I am absolutely sure that such a confusion
could never happen. If the basic story is true, the brothers
probably noticed the drifting cloth and, recognizing it for what
it was, swam for it and brought it to shore. Accordingly, in an
incomplete version retold in Ivalino, the informant stated that
the big fish changed into a cloth when they wanted to spear it. In
reality, in my experience, if divers thought that such a thing had
happened it would have been considered a very bad omen, and the
divers would have immediately given up not only the pursuit of the
cloth, but the day's diving altogether. They would no doubt have
run back to the village to consult their local specialist of the
spirit world. The second mythic element is that the accident was
caused by the amulet knife. While this is not absolutely
impossible it is highly improbable, due to the shortness of the
blade.
-
- Thus it is safe to conclude that there is no
way to anticipate how culture change will retain or modify an
element of folklore. The comparative analysis of the Yami, Ivatan,
and Itbayat folkloric data strongly supports this
statement.
-
- The foregoing information on the archaeology,
linguistic affinities, and belief systems of the Yami and the
inhabitants of the Batanes supports the common origin hypothesis
which I have proposed. In the following I shall examine the
narratives and folksongs of these peoples
.