Religion and the Landscape

The relationship between community and environment in prewar Buguias was shaped by religious ideology and practices. Rituals guided economic endeavors and social relations, which in turn structured the subsistence activities that transformed the landscape. The supernatural also touched the land directly, as a number of spiritual beings were believed to inhabit specific places where they could influence human activities.

Ritual requirements molded the very dietary basis of subsistence in prewar Buguias. It was, in part, the ancestors' hunger that motivated their descendants to raise hogs. The living, of course, received quality food as their part of the bargain, and materialist scholars (such as Harris 1979) would regard their religious justification as merely a rationale or cultural epiphenomenon. Certainly most humans do crave meat and fat regardless of their forebears' demands. But in settled agricultural areas, meat production entails effort, and different individuals and cultural groups exhibit varying degrees of enthusiasm about exerting the labor needed to produce extra increments of animal flesh. The people of Buguias could have thrived on less meat; their neighbors, the Bontocs and Ifugaos, did

so without much ill effect. But the Buguias villagers, motivated in part by their beliefs, produced a surfeit of meat. As hogs and people ate the same laboriously cultivated sweet potatoes, dry fields had to produce tubers well in excess of minimal subsistence requirements (see Brookfield [1972] for a discussion of "ritual intensification").

Much the same could be argued for pond-field agriculture. Rice, even though usually fermented, did provide quality nutrition, and since rice terraces produced abundantly, their construction might well have been justified without a ritual rationale. But rituals required great quantities of rice beer—the ancestors demanded as much. Beer could be brewed from millet or corn, but the resulting product was considered contemptible. Prestige, wrapped in religion, played an inescapable role; no baknang couple could claim respect unless they were generous with alcohol made from rice.

The spirit realm also reflected directly on the landscape, albeit in relatively minor ways. Buguias religion was focused on a sky-world that touched the earth more at sanctified times than in sacred places. And while consumption in ritual feasts could be a holy experience, production was generally rather mundane. A few meager rituals blessed the rice fields, but other crops were ignored. It was rather through the timungao and other nature spirits that the supernatural directly impinged upon the landscape.

Each of the many timungao dwelled in its own specific abode. Such places were separated from human life not because they were sacred but rather because they were dangerous. If a man tried to cut a sprite's tree, his hand could be severely and immediately "deformed." Buguias residents usually left untouched the large trees and brushy thickets known to harbor timungao. Several potential irrigation sources remained untapped, as timungao were especially vexed when their waters were muddied. But ultimately, even the timungaos' favored havens were vulnerable if any one individual was willing, and able, to offer the necessary propitiation. Here too, class had its way.

The distribution of timungao may also have shaped conceptions of the community's territory. In one specific prayer, a manbunung had to ask forbearance of every timungao inhabiting Buguias and surrounding locales. These beings were not known by personal names, but rather by their locations of residence, and if any dwell-

ing sites were ignored in this petition, bad luck could ensue. This perhaps helped create and sustain Buguias's extremely intricate system of toponyms, in which even inconsequential sections of uninhabited slope are individually named.^[2]