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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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).
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- 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.
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- Of course, not only the dead generate taboos,
b