The BUSO Complex in BAGOBO Folklore

The Bagobo are one of the largest subgroups of the Manobo peoples. They comprise three subgroups: the Tagabawa, the Klata (or Guiangan), and the Ovu (also spelled Uvu or Ubo) peoples. The Bagobo were formerly nomadic and farmed through kaingin (slash-and-burn) methods. Their territory extends from the Davao Gulf to Mt. Apo. They are traditionally ruled by chieftains (matanum), a council of elders (magani), and female shamans (mabalian). The supreme spirit in their indigenous anito religions is Eugpamolak Manobo or Manama.

The contents of this article have been taken from the 1916 paper A Study of Bagobo Ceremonial, Magic and Myth  by Laura Watson Benedict,  and may not accurately reflect the beliefs of the modern people representing the Bagobo peoples. Beliefs among the Bagobo people can vary significantly from region to region. The bulk of the research in this study was conducted at the beginning of the 20th century and appears to have been gathered  primarily in the district of Talun, at the village of Mati,  which was situated on the summit of Mount Merar.

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It is far from easy to distinguish the buso from the nature-gods – a difficulty that is emphasized by the use that many Bagobo make of the word dios. Even mountain Bagobo, who visit the coast and have caught up a word or two of Spanish, find dios a convenient and flexible term to designate any unseen personality, whether a friendly god or a malignant demon : the diwata are dios, but a buso also may be called dios. In the secluded mountain home of Datu Imbal, at Tubison, the young girls led me from one to another of the out-of-door shrines, and pointed out this one as belonging to the dios ka tana (god of the ground), and that one as sacred to the dios ka waig (god of water) . The impression made upon me was that of altars erected to beneficent nature deities ; but later, at Talun, when observing the devotions performed before shrines answering exactly to those at Tubison, the possible significance of dios, as they had used the word, occurred to me. That those shrines were dedicated to the tigbanua of the ground, the tigbanua of the water , etc., is quite as likely as that they belonged to nature-gods. However, one is helped out by the phrase madiger manobo (good person) or malaki – terms commonly used by the Bagobo in referring to a god – as well as by the description given of the spirit’s behaviour and functions.

Another supernatural being associated with the mountains is Tagamaling, who is, traditionally, a god on the alternate months only, and at other times a demon. Later, under the caption, ” the Demons called Buso,” Tagamaling finds his place, but he ought to be mentioned at this point because he is god half of the time, and one hears him mentioned with the other dios of the mountains. As the special protector, too, of deer and of pigs, Tagamaling cannot be excluded from the spirits that are closely related to the interests of the Bagobo. Primarily, there are two· chief tagamaling, a male god and his wife, but, according to folklore, there must be very many spirits by that name.

 

THE ‘DEMONS’ CALLED BUSO

All demons, spirits of diseases, evil supernatural beings of whatever form, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, are classed by the Bagobo under the generic name of buso. The fundamental concept underlying all of these manifestations of evil is that of a being that preys upon human flesh , that sends sickness to the living in order to kill them and thus have their dead bodies for food. There is, for the most part, no idea of an interaction between stimuli from bad spirits and the religious or ethical transgressions of man.

Buso does not incite a Bagobo to break tabu or to steal rice. Though a spiritual foe, his attacks are aimed, ordinarily, against the body alone.

Toward securing some means of propitiating Buso, or of shunting off his attacks, the attention of the Bagobo is constantly directed. They pray to Buso ; they prepare for him offerings o f areca nuts and betel-leaf ; they erect to him tiny houses for shrines, under forest trees, by the wayside, at the river, near the dwelling-houses – particularly at the time of a festival.  There are altars for the buso of the woods, for the buso of the ground, for the buso of the rattan, for the buso of the nearer side of the river, for the buso of the farther side of the river. The shrines are like many of those put up in honor of the friendly gods, and the form of the devotions is outwardly much the same, but the intention of the rites is altogether different. In the first place , altars to Buso are never placed within the home or within the ceremonial house, like altars to friendly deities, but at strategic points that command the approaches to the house, or else in the deep forest. Secondly, as regards the substance of the prayers, the gods are implored to baffle the operations of disease-bringing demons ; but a buso, the recognized source of sickness, is conjured in various ways. Every single devotion to Buso is a mere magical device for inducing him to go away. It must be noted, too, that in those cases where a god sends sickness, it is because the Bagobo have broken some religious mandate or have failed in the technique of a ritual, and the sickness is felt to be the logical outcome of a clumsy performance. The diseases with which a buso tortures the body come, avowedly, to cause death so that the food supply of dead bodies for the buso may be increased. These distinguishing features give to each form of devotion its own peculiar atmosphere.

Associated closely with the buso are the ghosts of the dead, since it is believed that the evil soul, or tebang , of a person becomes at death a burkan, which in its nature is practically identical with a buso. It haunts graves and lonely trails ; it eats dead bodies, and is commonly called a buso. Tradition indicates vaguely that long ago nobody died, and that the attitude of Buso toward man at that time was friendly,  by which tradition we are led to infer that not all buso are ghosts. It will not do to press this inference too far, however, for the Malay may not feel a contradiction that, to us, is at once apparent. Yet the most malignant buso, called tigbanua, seem to be distinguished from burkan, or ghosts, for I have heard an old man, while explaining a ceremony, make this remark : “We offer betel to all the tigbanua and to all the dead buso. “ Again, the statement is made that “there are many buso and many burkan.” Moreover, there are a great number of zoomorphic forms called tigbanua or buso that are not identified with ghosts. The fact is, that so great is the multitude of mental images associated with evil spirits in their diverse­ shapes and functions, that some little confusion in dealing with the subject is almost inevitable. There are different lines of approach  according to whether a native is talking of sickness, or of death,.or of a ceremonial , or of a haunted tree, or of an episode in a story ; and he makes no attempt to correlate these various lines of approach, or to define exactly the groups of evil personalities that he happens to be dealing with.

The volcano Apo, whose intermittent eruptions of sulphurous vapor and whose matchless height suggest mysterious dwelling places for spirits, has long been regarded as the home of the worst buso or tigbanua, of many less malevolent buso or tagamaling, and of a vast throng of bad ghosts (burkan), all of whom live in an enormous house within the mountain into which the crater leads as a vast passageway, or as an open door. Great numbers of wild animals, reptiles and flying creatures live on the summit of the­ volcano – deer, pigs, cats, dogs, civets, mice, flying lemurs, monkeys, birds, jungle fowl, snakes and monitor lizards – all of which belong to Buso. Around the edge of the crater, the prints of these animals may be seen by those persons who have the temerity to make the ascent (so say the old men) ; but the fabulous animals are invisible, except to all the buso. There are also living on Mount Apo great numbers of the so-called ” bad animals,” that is to say, buso under the form of beasts. Here is one of the little folk tales of Apo.

All the old Bagobo men say that in the crater of Apo lives a rich man. He is a Chinaman, and he keeps a store there. Long ago a Bagobo man climbed up to see the volcano. He saw a big hole in the top of it. He went down into the hole and found a big house with a store in it. He went in and rested there a while. A Chinaman was keeping the store. By and by the Chinaman told him that he must go away. “Why,” asked the Bagobo. “ Because the buso will be here in a few minutes and he eats people.” Then the man went home. In a few minutes the Buso came to rest in the store. He smiled and said : “Who has been here? “ “Nobody but a dog,” replied the Chinaman. That Americans are not afraid to ascend the volcano without the use of protective charms, is a source of bewilderment to the Bagobo, and that no fatal illness follows the rash act is still more astonishing; but the native explanation is that we treat Buso with pronounced courtesy, and thus win his favor. “The American people can go to Apo , because they are very polite to Buso . If they were not polite, Buso would eat them.”

Though having their special habitat on Mount  Apo , and on another mountain called Maabanisan,  the buso are said to frequent, in general, all localities where there are graves, empty houses, solitary mountain trails. At any time, indeed, or in any place outside of the house, there is the chance of a buso making his appearance. The young people are impressed with the idea that “Buso lives everywhere out-of-doors ;” and that a buso is “in every way.” For this reason, a Bagobo rarely walks alone for any considerable distance over the mountains ; two, or several, go in company, the more easily to ward off Buso’s influence, for, although unable to attack directly a living man or openly kill him, he works under covert by entering, in the form of some disease, the body of his victim ; or by some other means he makes him sick.

An empty house is likely to be buso-haunted, even if its owner has gone away for but a short time, and the neighbors are cautious about entering during his absence. One often sees several Bagobo sitting on the bamboo rounds of the house-ladder, and waiting patiently for some member of the family to return, when they will all go up the steps together. Rarely does a buso dare to enter a house while people are living there, at least during the day, for the demons are supposed to be afraid of meeting, face to face, people in health and action ; but in case of mortal illness Buso scents from afar the flesh of the dying, and flies through the air until he comes to rest under the house, or even inside of the sickroom. Unless by some magical means he can be driven away, he seizes the body as soon as life is extinct, puts into its place a section of a banana-trunk, to deceive the friends, and goes off, riding on the corpse.

Certain species of forest trees are traditionally haunted by demons, particularly the baliti,  the mararag, the pananag, the barayung, the magbok, and the lanaon  – all of which are mentioned in folklore and myth as sacred to Buso. In general, too, any individual tree having spreading branches and heavy, straggling roots protruding above the surface of the earth is associated with the possible home of a buso, and is pointed out, fearfully, as an object to be avoided after dark. Throughout the island tribes, indeed, a tree of such appearance is almost universally held to be haunted.

Both mythology and current folklore represent the number of individual buso as practically unlimited ; they people the air and the mountains and the forests by myriads ; their number is legion.

Of course, like the ghosts and demons of all other peoples, it is in darkness that the buso are particularly busy in their evil deeds, although, here and there, they have been known to make their presence felt by day.

These vast throngs of evil personalities, known under the collective term of buso, are subdivided into several groups, and in these, again, we find a great number of individual names, each of which suggests some peculiar external buso-character, or some particular buso-trait, or some set mode of preying upon the humankind. Of such sub-groups and individuals, the following are typical.

THE TIGBANUA

The tigbanua are representative fiends of the most dangerous sort. To them, more than to any other buso, shrines are erected, magic formulae are recited, and propitiatory offerings are made; while numerous spells are constantly worked to frustrate their evil designs. A tigbanua is reported to live in a state of perpetual cannibalism and to be most repulsive in aspect, having one eye in the middle of the forehead, a hooked chin two spans long and upturned to catch the drops of blood that may chance to drip from the mouth, and a body covered with coarse black hair. From Mount Apo and from the deep forest the tigbanua come flying or running to every fresh-dug grave, whether it be on mountain or beside the sea; they drink the blood from the corpse, and gnaw the flesh from the bones, and then throw away the skeleton. Gruesome as is, the situation, however, it is relieved by flashes of quaint humor, such as invariably dart into Bagobo talk and story. According to the folktales, a tigbanua is often very dull of perception, very credulous; so much so that a child, a cat, the moon, even a woman’s comb may fool him and make a jest of him,  in much the same manner that the trickster Coyote, of American myth, is himself, in turn, tricked by others.

The Tigbanua most often invoked are the following:

Tigbanua kayo (of the timber, or forest trees)
Tigbanua balagan (of the rattan);
Tigbanua tana (of the ground);
Tigbanua waig (of the water);
Tigbanua batu (of the rocks, or stones)
Tigbanua dipag-dini-ka-waig (of this side of the river);
Tigbanua dipag-dutun-ka-waig (of the other side of the river);
Tigbanua buis (of the hut-shrine).

TAGAMALING

Another group of supernatural beings, the Tagamaling, are sometimes termed “good buso” on account of their extreme moderation in eating human flesh, a practice in which they indulge only on alternate months. The tagamaling are thought to resemble the Bagobo in physiognomy and in manner of dressing. A few of them, however, have eight faces. Their houses, invisible to man, are hidden in dense foliage up on the mountains or the hills. I quote from the “Story of Duling and the Tagamaling”,  a tale of two young men who are enticed to the house of a tagamaling by two tagamaling girls; as a result of which adventure one of the youths is turned into stone.

“Before the world was made, there were Tagamaling. The Tagamaling is the best Buso, because he does not want to hurt man all of the time. Tagamaling is actually Buso only a part of the time ; that is, the month when he eats people. One month he eats human flesh, and then he is Buso ; the next month he eats no human flesh, and then he is a god. So he alternates, month by month. The month he is Buso, he wants to eat man during the dark of the moon; that is, between the phases that the moon is full in the east and new in the west ….

“The Tagamaling makes his house in trees that have hard wood, and low, broad-spreading branches. His house is almost like gold, and is called “Palimbing”, but it is made so that you cannot see it; and, when you pass by, you think, ‘Oh! what a fine tree with big branches’, not dreaming that it is the house of a Tagamaling. Sometimes, when you walk in the forest, you think you see one of their houses; but when you come near to the place, there is nothing. Yet you can smell the good things to eat in the house.”

Another literary reference to these legendary tree-dwellings of the spirits is in a little poem, the text of which I have in manuscript. A young man says to the girl whom he has seduced:

“In the mountains hide you,
Like Tagamaling’s house concealed.”

S’IRING

A rustic demon well known in folklore is S’iring, who, under the guise of some relative or friend, lures a young person into the densest part of the forest, causes him to lose memory and judgment, and finally brings him to his death in some indirect manner. What we call echo is the call of S’iring, who answers in a faint voice the shout of some wanderer whom he is trying to entice from the familiar trails. The S’iring is represented as having long sharp nails and curly hair.

TAGASORO

The demon who “makes men dizzy” is Tagasoro, and his presence at a ceremonial is greatly feared.

TAGARESO

Tagareso is an ugly fiend who stimulates ill-feeling and arouses a quarrelsome spirit on festival occasions. He tries to make married men dissatisfied with their wives, so that they will want to
run off and leave them.

BALINSUGU

Balinsugu is another dangerous spirit that stirs up enmity at ceremonies, in the hope that good men may be induced to fight and kill one another in the house where many are assembled, and thus give him blood to drink. I was present at a devotional meeting at Oleng’s house when one of the anito urged the Bagobo to be on their guard against Tagareso and Balinsugu.

MANTIANAK

The Mantianak, as everywhere throughout the Malay country, is associated with childbirth, but there are local variations. Bagobo tradition says that if a woman dies during her trial her spirit is angry at the husband, since he is held responsible for the conditions that caused his wife’s death. The ghost of the woman becomes a mantianak that hovers in the air near her former home and utters peculiar cries, resembling the mewing of a cat. When the man hears that sound at night, he knows that it is the voice of the mantianak of his dead wife. This form of buso is characterized by a hole in the breast and by the long claws, and it is called ”a bad thing.” They say that the mantianak is constantly trying to kill men and boys, but that it is afraid of women and girls.

RIW-RIWA

Some buso live in the sky, like the eight-eyed Riwa-riwa,  who listens to the talk of mortals. If anybody makes a random remark that offends Riwa-riwa, his eight eyes “turn big;” he drops to the ground, and brings sickness with him.

BUSU BUNTUD

Of Busu buntud it is reported that he is black as soot, and has nine faces.

BUSO LISU T’KAYO

Buso lisu t’kayo, on the contrary, is pure white, being probably  associated with the pith of forest trees.

BUSO T’ABO

Buso t’abo is a mere torso of a demon, with head, chest, shoulders and arms; but having no legs or abdomen. In pictures, his
body is cut off sharply at the waist.

KAROKUNG

One of the disease-bringers, named Karokung, is a white woman with long black hair, whose home is in rivers. Karokung is a common sickness, of which the symptoms are fever, chills and a racking cough. It is to be traced to a white woman who lives in rivers and is said to be very beautiful. Her hair is long and dark; her feet black, or blue and black, while her legs, too, are black to a line half-way up to the knees. The rest of her body is white. She is very amorous, desiring to embrace every man she sees, and it is this propensity of hers that throws men into burning fever. When high fever is running, she is said to be putting the man into the fire, but directly afterwards she plunges into the river, and forthwith the patient begins to shiver. Nobody has ever seen the Karokung woman, but many people have dreamed about her, and thus her characteristics are completely established. When a Bagobo woman, however, has chills and fever, her symptoms are caused by a white man with long hair, who also lives in the river and behaves like the Karokung woman. In either case, the treatment consists in burning the deserted nest of a limokun or of some other bird, and allowing the patient to inhale the smoke. Another effective remedy is to smell the fumes that come from burning a few wisps of hair cut from the coat of the flying lemur, called tungalung ; or one may simply lay before a god some little agricultural offering. These disease-bringing river inhabitants have none of the ear-marks of  the traditional mermaid, who finds her counterpart, at least on the morphological side, in the gamo-gamo people.

Three other disease-bringers are women, one of whom lives in the center of the earth where there is an enormous hole; another resides at the rim of the sky, and still another in the middle of the sky.

 

ZOOMORPHIC FORMS OF THE BUSO:

In the native arts there are no figures or symbols of Buso to be found, either in animal or in human form ; but Bagobo boys and girls who have learned to use the pencil a little and who also come from families conversant with a wide range of buso folktales, agree in stressing certain features that are traditionally characteristic of the demon in his anthropomorphic guise — big round eyes, tongue lolling from large mouth, branched horns, wings of varying sizes, enormous feet, heavily clawed or hoofed. The characters that are emphasized are those that stand out most prominently in folklore, while the rest of the body takes its chance, so to speak, being merely a “filler” for the really important buso traits. Such traits characterize, in particular, the entire class of tigbanua. On the other hand, the tagamaling are pictured as looking like the Bagobo, both in face and in costume; but their hair is curly rather than wavy, and they carry small circular shields of an ancient pattern.

We now turn to the distinctly zoomorphic forms of the buso. While the tigbanua, the s’iring, and perhaps other buso in human form, have the power of assuming at will the appearance of certain animals, there are, in addition, a large number of evil personalities that have peculiar and permanent bestial shapes. These are myth animals — the so-called bad animals — of strange shapes and ill-matched members, that are visualised as curious modifications of familiar beasts and birds, or, more often, are purely fanciful products. Doubtless there are hundreds of such fabulous animals awaiting the discovery of the field worker, but the following names will at least suggest what sort of creature a myth animal may be.

KILAT

Most important of all, probably, is Kilat,  that gigantic ungulate — it may be horse or it may be carabao — that runs through the sky, and during a storm makes his voice heard in claps of thunder. When the roaring is loudest, the people expect Kilat to fall to the earth, and to bring in his train numerous diseases.

NAAT

Many buso have the form of deer, notable among which is Naat, with his one good horn, and his one bad horn that has a branch pointing downward.

MAMILI

Numbers of buso are snakes, whose chief is Mamili, called “king of snakes.”

BUSO MONKEY

The Buso-monkey is well known in myth, and even at this time not only are there many buso who are lutung, or monkeys, but a normal ape occasionally turns into a buso.

TIMBALUNG

Timbalung is a disease-bringer whose home is on the mountains, and who is said to be “a big bad animal that goes into the belly and makes the Bagobo very sick.” It is thought dangerous to speak the name of this buso, and children are so instructed; but occasionally somebody will mention him in connection with the sickness he causes.

BLANGA

Blanga is a cursorial animal, distinguished by enormous branchings horns.

PUNGATU

Pungatu is pictured as a fat quadruped, with a bird-like head, and several humps on his back. He lives up on the mountains.

LIMBAGO

Limbago is a long-necked quadruped, that carries sickness wherever he goes.

ABUY & RIIU

Abuy and Riiu are pig-like forms, the latter being an underground animal, with a big belly and extremely pointed teeth. Any intruder into Riiu’s house below the ground is punished by having his strength taken from him. Straightway he becomes so weak that he cannot walk, and his feet give way under him. Then Riiu attacks him with his sharp teeth.

SEKUR

Sekur is a big-eared quadruped, a mountain climber, sometimes called Sakar.

MARINA

Marina is an arboreal animal with a snake-like body, that climbs by means of long arms.

UBAG

Ubag looks like a horse with a hump on his back, and is said to smite with mortal illness those whom he attacks.

KOGANG

Kogang is a bad animal which is visualized under several shapes.

BUSO TULUNG

Still other diseases are brought by the Buso Tulung, who resembles a jungle fowl.

WAK-WAK

The most rapacious bird of folklore is Wak-Wak, a fierce mythical crow that flies headless, and feeds on human flesh, and must he charmed away by a formula of suggestive magic.

 

CHARMS AGAINST THE BUSO:

None of the above-mentioned demons, whatever its form, can be seen by the Bagobo,  unless it be, rarely, by some old man. But in response to what is, perhaps, a primitive psychical impulse — that of attributing to other peoples and to other forms of living organisms (with whose mental processes one is unfamiliar) the power of perceiving things beyond one’s own sense-range — the Bagobo say that the Kulaman folk can see Buso ; and that Buso is plainly visible to the domesticated animals, whether dog or cat or chick or horse or carabao. When a dog bays mournfully into the air at night, he is baying at Buso; when the carabao leave their wallow and dash wildly through the lanes of the villages, they are fleeing from Buso. It is always Buso that makes animals behave in a strange manner after dark, and it is currently believed that Buso walks in the rain, for the dogs, seeing him, at once begin to bark. This is the reason why dogs bark more often in shower than in sunshine.

Charms against Buso are more numerous than any other class of charms. The forms of buso magic in most common use are briefly listed together at this point. To forestall the approach
of a buso:

Repeat magical formulse;
Set up images of wood to represent living men;
Make a thicket of “medicinal” plants near the house;
Lay pieces of lemon and red peppers under the house;
Circumambulate the house while holdino; a lemon:
Wear a bit of dried lemon on the necklace;
Hang a crab-shell over the door;
Hold a rice-winnower before the face;
Weave into textiles a crocodile design;
Paint the figure of a crocodile on bamboo rice-cases, on stringed instruments, and on. other manufactured objects of wood;
Carve the figure of a crocodile on the coffin, or decorate the coffin with a conventional crocodile figure, made of strips of cloth;
Rub a dying person with sweet-smelling plants of magical value;
Hold a wake in the house of death;
Surround with all kinds of knives the bed of an expectant mother before she sleeps at night.

 

COMPARISON TO ASUANG ON MINDANAO (Bisaya speakers):

In Bisaya myth, (as I learned in a number of conversations with Bisayans) the asuang is functionally identical with the buso of the Bagobo: both haunt desolate places, tear open freshly-made graves, feed on corpses, prow^l over the earth at night in shadowy shapes, or fly through the air and, having entered a death-chamber by the window, suck the blood of the dead as soon as the soul leaves the body. Yet there is a fundamental distinction between the two conceptions on the morphological side; for the Bisayan says that many of the asuang are able to metamorphose themselves into human beings, and thus live in intimate relationship with the people — an extension of the sphere of demoniac influence quite foreign to Bagobo ideas. The Bisayan young people insist that a large number of the asuang are men and women who live and work as near neighbors of their own. In certain parts of their villages these human demons cluster. In Davao, there is a short street, named Claveria, where whole families of asuang are popularly believed to have their residence, and their houses are pointed out to visitors. At nightfall, the asuang resume their proper forms, put on wings, become shadowy, and go flying off in search of dead bodies for food. It is said that all asuang have oil in their bodies for lubricating their wings, so that flight is easy. A human asuang is ordinarily a person of tall stature, extremely thin, with a shiny skin, and with eye-balls slightly protruding. However other bodily characters may differ, there is one sure mark of an asuang to be found in the pupil of the eye. Suppose that some neighbor is suspected of being an asuang. One must examine his eyes, and if in the pupil there is detected the figure of a boy upside down, that person is unmistakably an asuang.

Among the Bisayan on the coast of Davao gulf, it is said that the asuang systematically propagates the baliti by making use of rotten tree trunks as a suitable soil. An old tree of which the native name is ononang was shown me by Manuel, a clever Visayan boy, who assured me that that was an asuang-haunted tree. It had a hollow trunk, into the decaying texture of which an adventitious shoot of a baliti had intruded, and had pressed its way upward through the soft material, its roots intertwined within the trunk, its glossy, sharp-pointed leaves growing out through numerous crevices in the bark. “Nobody but an asuang,” explained Manuel, “can make the trunk of any tree hollow. You see, the asuang works himself through some small hole in the bark and, with his long nails, scoops out the trunk and claws away until only a hollow shell remains. That done, he plants a seed or root of baliti to grow there, and then he goes off to work at another tree.”

 

SOURCE: A Study of Bagobo Ceremonial, Magic and Myth by Laura Estelle Watson Benedict (1916)

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