The Manóbos of Mindanáo / Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir

by John M. Garvan

SACRED IMAGES⁹

⁹Man-á-ug.

Sacred images are of neither varied nor beautiful workmanship. At best they are but rudimentary suggestions of the human form, frequently without the lower extremities. Varying in length from 15 to 45 centimeters they are whittled with a bolo out of pieces of báyud wood, or of any soft white wood when báyud is not obtainable. More elaborate images are furnished with berries of a certain tree¹⁰ for eyes and adorned with tracings of sap from the kayúti or the narra tree, but the ordinary idol has a smearing of charcoal for eyes and mouth and a few tracings of the same for body ornamentation.

¹⁰Ma-gu-baí.

Images are made in two forms, one representing the male and distinguished by the length of its headpiece and occasionally by the representation of the genital organ, the other representing the female, and distinguished most frequently by the representation of breasts, though in a good image there is often a fair representation of a comb.

Images are intended for the same use as statues in other religions. They are not adored nor worshiped in any sense of the word. They are looked upon as inanimate representations of a deity, and tributes of honor and respect are paid not to them, but to the spirits that they represent. I have seen rice actually put to the lips of these images and bead necklaces hung about their necks; but in answer to my inquiries the response was always the same that not the images, but the spirits, were thereby honored.

It is principally in time of sickness that these images are made. They are placed somewhere near the patient, generally just under the thatch of the roof.

The priest almost invariably has one, or a set of better made ones, which he sets out during the more important ritual celebrations and before which he places offerings for the spirits represented. In a sacrifice performed for the recovery of a sick man on the upper Agúsan, I saw two images, one male and one female, carried in the hand by the presiding priests and made to dance and perform some other suggestive movements.

Occasionally one finds very crude effigies of deities carved on a pole and left standing out on the trail or placed near the house. These are supposed to serve for a resting place for the deities that are expected to protect the settlement or the house. This practice is very common when fear of an attack is entertained, and also during an epidemic.