(Note: The story that follows is a work of fiction and should not be quoted in part or in whole as a traditional Manobo narrative. This is the first of three parts. The second part will be posted on May 27 and the third part on June 3.)
I am studying literature, particularly that of the Manobo people living in Cotabato Cordillera, and I notice that most academics and religious missionaries engaged in the same endeavor had not been enthusiastic with their findings, especially on the tribe’s myth of origin. Some of them even went on to describe the myth as “crude” (Montaño 1961), “devoid of logic” (Schmidt 1974), and plain “boring” (Belen 2010). I am thus delighted that my own research proved the opposite, though I must admit my methods were a little unorthodox and would not likely pass the punctilious eyes of my thesis adviser.
So as not to get ahead of myself, let me quote first the object of disappointment and criticism. Of all the versions other than mine, this one has the most details:
“In time long past, the shamaness Tomigel prepared to conduct a beliyan, a ritual through which human beings could communicate with spirits. When she invited the other people to participate, they refused. They believed the woman was out of her mind. Tomigel was disappointed that the others had lost their faith. She thought it better to leave them and join the spirits instead.
“Heaven then was still very near earth. Tomigel pounded some rice on a mortar, and as she drove the pestle up and down, it hit the sky, causing the great body of clouds to rise higher and higher, until it became so far no human being or winged creature could reach it. Tomigel then ascended to the sky.
“Tomelos, the son of Tomigel, was left behind because he had been out hunting in the jungle. He became aware, though, that his mother was ascending to heaven when he saw bright light piercing through the dense foliage. Tomelos came upon a boulder and decided that if he could split it in two, he should go after his mother.
“Tomelos was able to break the rock with his bolo. The game he had captured fled and turned into rats. He shot up to the sky and reached it even before his mother did.”
The researchers tried to make sense of the story. They evaluated it using established paradigms in education, anthropology, or whatever field of study they were in. Much remains to be explained, however. Inadequate accounts make comprehensive deconstruction nearly impossible. The myth of origin, even before it is known in the academic and literary world, is being dismissed as insignificant and sliding into obscurity.
Believing there was more to the folklore of the Manobo—and wanting to complete my thesis, of course—I set out to find the complete and detailed myth. I began by interviewing the chieftains and other prominent figures in several communities, just like what my predecessors had done, and unsurprisingly, the respondents had nothing new to impart to me. With further perseverance, however, my search led me to the hut of old woman Babat, the last person known to conduct a beliyan.
At first Babat had nothing more to tell me than the others. But I wasn’t willing to give up, and I came up with an idea: I would obtain the story from Tomigel and the spirits themselves. I would request Babat to perform a beliyan so that she could ask the gods of yore what I wanted to know.
There was much hesitation, and even disbelief, on the part of old woman Babat. But to cut the story short, I was able to persuade her and she succeeded. (For a more detailed account of the ritual, see my paper on the lost art of beliyan practice.) Now what follows is the complete and most accurate version of the myth.
In time long past, when heaven and earth had no known boundaries between them, human beings and spirits lived together. They occupied the same space at the same time, but the two groups did not interact with each other. Human beings were not aware of the existence of spirits, while the spirits, though they could see and hear human beings, had no interest in mingling with the latter. The spirits found the concerns of human beings too shallow and trivial. All the people wanted were to fill their stomachs with food, copulate, and compete against one another. The human beings would see who was the best in anything and decorate the winner with a wreath or engrave his or her name on a rock. The spirits, meanwhile, found joy in singing, dancing, and reciting poems. The spirits all looked alike—or more accurately, they all had no faces—and they had the same faculties, so they never saw the need to compete and decorate themselves with wreaths. Furthermore, they could pass on their memories to their progeny, so they did not have to engrave their names in stones for the latter generations to know who they were.
The mutually ignoring existence was perturbed one day when one spirit found himself obsessed with a female human being. No one could tell what exactly the spirit felt; my respondents (i.e., Tomigel and several of the spirits) have differing views on the matter. One said it was that indescribable, unpredictable, uncontainable thing called love. Some said it was lust; having lived with human beings for so long, the spirits had begun to acquire the filthy ways of humans. Whatever it was, it led to a union between the spirit and the woman. Some said it was consensual, others said it was forced, and others yet said it was something in between.
The copulation of the spirit and woman led to the death of the former, but the latter bore a child, who was no other than Tomigel. The spirits were taken by the child. Because they had been used to their homogeny, the peculiar creature fascinated them. They took turns in helping the mother take care of Tomigel. Which was a good thing for the infant. In the realm of human beings, she was a pariah. Her mother was accused of copulating with some beast in the jungle and was banished from her village. The woman tried to explain that it was a spirit, an entity of incalculable power, that got her pregnant, but her neighbors did not believe her. They could not accept that some other group had greater gifts than they had. For them, human beings were the masters of the earth and all other breathing things existed at their disposal.
Tomigel and her mother lived in the middle of the jungle until she reached adolescence. One day, a dashing young hunter came upon Tomigel while she was bathing in a stream. Tomigel had never seen a man before and malice had not been sown in her mind, so instead of being scared of the stranger or ashamed of her nakedness, she approached the man with curiosity. The hunter was as respectful of women as he was ruthless with anyone or anything else; instead of taking advantage of Tomigel’s innocence, he turned his back and asked the lass to get herself clothed. The man only looked back at Tomigel when she told him she had covered herself with leaves and vines.
It did not take long for Tomigel and the man to fall in love with each other, or as the more romantic would say, the two fell in love at first sight.
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