The Mambunung blesses the harvest

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title
The Mambunung blesses the harvest
Language
English
Source
The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 8 (No. 11) November 1928
Year
1928
Rights
In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Fulltext
November, 1928 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 19 The Mambunung Blesses the Harvest “You, O Kabigat and Bugan! Bless the cutting, bless the harvest! Little known, and that with small respect, since they are a pagan folk, the best agricul­ turists in the Philippines are the Igorots of Mountain province; and experts in the art and science of farming often have not been content to pronounce these hardy mountaineers the best farmers in the Philippines, but have declared them to be the best in the world. For they have converted sterile mountains into the most fertile fields, first terracing the slopes with walls and then building up the fields with loam from the valleys. They have perfected the art of making compost out of every superfluous straw, so that all but the very grain itself goes back into the soil. Finally, aside from seed selection, which they know well, they have devised for their terraced fields a most ingenious and fully adequate system of artificial irrigation and drain­ age. All their farming is done by hand, women working with the men and a natural division of labor being practiced. The men build and repair the walls and tend the ditches, the women plant and tend the fields, and all, men, women and children, busy themselves with the harvesting. These stocky Igorots have a religion strikingly like that of the North American Indian. Evil spirits are propitiated, good ones supplicated. There is special reliance upon Kamundian, the Great Spirit. Before the yellow grain is cut, an old medicine man blesses the fields. “You, O Kabigat and Bugan! You, O Kabigat!” so prayed he, “Living in the sky, your dwelling— You who feed us all, and give us Rice and abba in abundance, All we need for our existence. A Me Europe White Empress Via Suez AN EXCEPTIONAL CHANCE Make Your Reservation Now On the Canadian Pacific- S. S. “Empress of Canada” 21500 TONS GROSS November 23rd MANILA TO PLYMOUTH Calling at Hongkong—Singapore—Colombo—Bombay Fares—First Cabin £108 Second Cabin £78 For Further Particulars and Accommodations Please Apply to CANADIAN PACIFIC 14-16 Calle David Phone 2-36-56 MANILA Phone 2-36-57 “You are He who in your goodness Long ago has made these paddies; You have plowed them, you have worked them! Bless them then, O bless the rice fields, Planted here in endless paddies, Sai gwara kai-ngad-ngadanyo— So that we your name may honor! “You, O Thunder, mighty Speaker! From your heights above, don't harm us: Don’t lay waste our burthened rice fields! —Iango! Here is good tapoei! —Iango! Here’s rice wine to please you! Come, and let us drink together! Come, protect us! Come and give us Long and happy lives, and riches!” So it is that Father Claerhoudt, a Belgian missionary priest, says the mambunung of the village of Bokod on the headwaters of the Agno river, blesses the fields before the ripened grain is cut. He describes the mambunung, whose office precisely corresponds to that of an Indian medicine man, as a man of great age, “a tall fellow, surpassing all the other tribesmen by at least a head,” who was born in Bokod and learn­ ed in all its traditions. Also, the mambunung “knew about sickness and other evils; he knew not only the causes of such ills, but also their remedies. He possessed a valuable storehouse of exorcisms, mysterious and all-powerful; he conversed with Kabunian, the Divinity; with the ghosts on Mount Polak, and with the spirits that dwelt in the sky, the water, and the fire.” It is to the ancestral manes, the ghosts on Mount Polak, that the mambunung addresses his supplication—asking them not to speak angrily in the thunder and deluge the ripened fields with untimely rains, but to drink the tapoei, rice wine, and mingle with the people friendily. “All the women, about to help (in the cutting of the rice), were sitting in a circle round the flag, and one step farther on toward the field sat the thin mambunung, his tall body doubled over a jar of rice wine.” Ending his prayer, he dipped up the wine in a coconut shell and held it high aloft, proffering it to the demigods, the people’s ancestors, the ghosts ofi Mount Polak. "The field first to be harvested must be bless­ ed,” the mambunung had told his flock. “The field first to be harvested must be exorcised!” So, on the highest point on the wall round the field, the mambunung planted a warrior’s spear from the head of which floated a taboo cloth; and none then could enter the field with­ out incurring the wrath of the gods, save those who were of right to help with the cutting. These waited for the blessing of the field, the exorcism of evil spirits, and then got out their sickles. But the mambunung’s sorcery is not quite ended; do not enter yet! “The mambunung kept silence for a mo­ ment, threw a few pebbles into the field, and pro­ ceeded: “ ’Sikajo ay makadaga— You who founded all these fields here, Bless our harvest, bless the cutting! —Iango! Here is tapoei! —Iango! Here is rice wine!’ “After which Pokchas (the owner of the field) took a swallow of the rice wine. Then the cup passed round from lip to lip, and the people began to cut the rice. “At sunset Pokchas and the mambunung descended from the field and went to the village, followed by a long row of women bending under the enormous loads of their kaibangs, their heavy baskets full of golden rice.” The harvest festival resembles the primitive Grecian festival to Dionysius. In Pokchas’s hut the village maidens had boiled big pots of last year’s rice, “which they had pounded, sifted and cleaned.” Dried pork was served for meat. With the harvesters gathered round, the mam­ bunung squatted near the steaming rice and boiling meat and said a prayer: J’Kaladjo! Come ye all much nearer, All who at bakak have feasted Long ago and long before us! IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 20 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL November, 1928 Teach us, pray, your supplication For the bak&k of the harvest: Sikajo Bimaka-makak— The bakak of former ages! You who prayed and celebrated, Mandasakjoi inaakan— Please increase and make abundant All the feast to you we offer! "Tep iango y aduto— Here is food, and food delightful, You with us will eat this evening! Give us fortune, vouchsafe riches, That we mortals may more often To the harvest home invite you! ” A somewhat astounding detail of the ceremony Father Claerhoudt so poetically and vividly de­ scribes is the blessing of the very utensils in which the food was prepared: “The mambunung smeared cooked rice over the three stones on which the rice kettle had stood a-boiling, and proceeded: “ ‘Chakadan, because you carry On your head the heavy kettle Where our rice is put to boiling, Eat you first, for you deserve it— For you keep the embers glowing And the boiling rice from burning! ’ “Then the mambunung took another hand­ ful of rice and smeared it on the shelf that hangs above the fire, on which the villagers lay their rice bundles to dry”, and once more he cried out: “Sikam s6o ood&n pang-&nka— You too, shelf, where dry the bundles, Eat this food first! And your watching Over fire and food neglect not.” In the same way he blessed the mortar in which the rice is pounded free from the hulls, and then the feast began; and wine, rice wine, as straight from Mother Earth as wine may come, passed freely round the circle. Next day the village was deserted: “Each and all were in the fields, excepting the emaciated old mam­ bunung. All day .long he lay with his bony body stretched out in the refreshing shade of a mango tree near his hut. He alone was watch­ ing over the village, and his dim eyes longingly followed the brown figures stooping in the pad­ dies, that from the summit of the mountain descended to the river.” The moral laws of the Igorots are, of course, very rigorous. To despoil a village while the inhabitants were in the fields harvesting would be a capital crime. It would mean a job for the headhunters. 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