These infidels said that they knew that there was another life of rest which they called maca, just as if we should say “paradise,” or, in other words, “village Page 185of rest.” They say that those who go to this place are the just, and the valiant, and those who lived without doing harm, or who possessed other moral virtues. They said also that in the other life and mortality, there was a place of punishment, grief, and affliction, called casanaan, which was “a place of anguish;” they also maintained that no one would go to heaven, where there dwelt only Bathala, “the maker of all things,” who governed from above. There were also other pagans who confessed more clearly to a hell, which they called, as I have said, casanaan; they said that all the wicked went to that place, and there dwelt the demons, whom they called sitan.
All the various kinds of infernal ministers were, therefore, as has been stated: catolonan; sonat (who was a sort of bishop who ordained priestesses and received their reverence, for they knelt before him as before one who could pardon sins, and expected salvation through him); mangagauay, manyisalat, mancocolam, hocloban, silagan, magtatangal, osuan, mangagayoma, pangatahoan.[5]
There were also ghosts, which they called vibit; and phantoms, which they called Tigbalaang. They had another deception—namely, that if any woman died in childbirth, she and the child suffered punishment; and that, at night, she could be heard lamenting. This was called patianac. May the honor and glory be God our Lord's, that among all the Tagalos not a trace of this is left; and that those who are now marrying do not even know what it is, thanks to the preaching of the holy gospel, which has banished it. Page 186
[1] With this document cf., throughout, the “Relation” by Miguel de Loarca, in Vol. V of this series.
[2] Juan de Plasencia, who entered the Franciscan order in early youth, came to the Philippine Islands as one of the first missionaries of that order, in 1577. He was distinguished, in his labors among the natives, for gathering the converts into reductions (villages in which they dwelt apart from the heathen, and under the special care of the missionaries), for establishing numerous primary schools, for his linguistic abilities—being one of the first to form a grammar and vocabulary of the Tagal language—and for the ethnological researches embodied in the memoir which is presented in our text. He died at Lilio, in the province of La Laguna, in 1590. See account of his life in Santa Inés's Crónica, i, pp. 512–522; and of his writings, Id., ii, pp. 590, 591.
[3] The betel-nut; see Vol. IV, p. 222.
[4] The Aetas, or Negritos, were the primitive inhabitants of the Philippine Islands; but their origin is not certainly known. It is perhaps most probable that they came from Papua or New Guinea. For various opinions on this point, see Zúñiga's Estadismo (Retana's ed.), i, pp. 422–429; Delgado's Historia general, part i, lib. iii, cap. i; and Report of U.S. Philippine Commission, 1900, iii, pp. 333–335. Invasions of the islands by Indonesian tribes, of superior strength and culture, drove the Negritos into the forest and mountain regions of the islands where they dwelt; they still remain there, in a state of barbarism, but in gradually decreasing numbers. See the Report above cited (pp. 347–351), for habitat and physical characteristics of this race.
[5] For much curious and interesting information regarding these superstitions, beliefs in demons, etc., see Blumentritt's ”Diccionario mitológico,” in Retana's Archivo, ii, pp. 345–454.