[323] This condition of affairs and the collection of usury is true still [1890]. Morga's words prove true not only of the Indian, but also of the mestizos, the Spaniards, and even of various religious. So far has it gone that the government itself not only permits it, but also exacts the capital and even the person to pay the debts of others, as happens with the cabeza de barangay [head of a barangay].—Rizal.
[324] The tam-tam and the pum-piang are still used.—Rizal.
[325] The early Filipinos had a great horror of theft, and even the most anti-Filipino historian could not accuse them of being a thievish race. Today, however, they have lost their horror of that crime. One of the old Filipino methods of investigating theft was as follows: "If the crime was proved, but not the criminal, if more than one was suspected … each suspect was first obliged to place a bundle of cloth, leaves, or whatever he wished on a pile, in which the thing stolen might be hidden. Upon the completion of this investigation if the stolen property was found in the pile, the suit ceased." The Filipinos also practiced customs very similar to the "judgments of God" of the middle ages, such as putting suspected persons, by pairs, under the water and adjudging guilty him who first emerged.—Rizal.
[326] The Filipino today prefers a beating to scoldings or insults.—Rizal.
[327] From bago, new, and tao, man: he who has become a man.—Rizal.
[328] In speaking of a similar custom in Australia, Eyre (Central Australia, i, p. 213), says: "This extraordinary and inexplicable custom must have a great tendency to prevent the rapid increase of the population."—Stanley. [Stanley does not translate this paragraph of the text.]
[329] It appears that the natives called anito a tutelary genius, either of the family, or extraneous to it. Now, with their new religious ideas, the Tagáls apply the term anito to any superstition, false worship, idol, etc.—Rizal.
[330] Others besides Morga mention oratories in caves, where the idols were kept, and where aromatics were burned in small brasiers. Chirino found small temples in Taitay adjoining the principal houses. [See VOL. XII. of this series, chapter xxi.] It appears that temples were never dedicated to bathala maykapal, nor was sacrifice ever offered him. The temples dedicated to the anito were called ulañgo.—Rizal.
[331] San Agustín says that hell was called solad, and paradise, kalualhatian (a name still in existence), and in poetical language, ulugan. The blest abodes of the inhabitants of Panay were in the mountain of Madias.—Rizal.
[332] Cf. the "wake" of the Celtic and Gaelic peasants. Cf. also the North-American Indian burial ceremonies, and reverence paid to the dead, in Jesuit Relations, i, p. 215; ii, pp. 21, 149; viii, p. 21; x, pp. 169, 247, 283-285, 293; xiii, 259; xxi, 199; xxiii, 31; lxv, 141; etc.