Graded Prestige Feasts: The Pedit

While all households performed many minor curative or preventive rituals, roughly one-fourth of prewar Buguias couples did not progress beyond sabang in the prestige-feast ladder. The rest moved on to tol-tolo , the first real step of the pedit series, and all respected members eventually progressed to lim-lima (lima , or five, refers to the number of pigs sacrificed on the second day). The following several pages describe a typical pedit ceremony, using the lim-lima as an example.

As with other stages, butchering would begin during an organizational meeting held several days before the actual observance.

Here the celebrants, ritual experts, and elders would immolate a single pig while they planned the celebration's logistics. On the first day of the ceremony proper the ancestors and some of the living guests arrived to be feted with two pigs of either sex.

The following day marked the essential sacrifices of otik ("swine with tusks"). The guests, representing several villages, assembled at dawn, when five ritual hogs, four males and one female, were released in a sanctified enclosure. Young men then scrambled to catch and tie down the boars, avoiding the sow for the time being. They then lashed the boars together in a line; the connecting rope allowed the ancestors to lead the spirits of the animals to the after-world. After prayer and ritual, four high-status men drove sharpened stakes into the pigs' hearts. The screams of the dying beasts pleased the ancestors, while their blood gushing to the ground foretold fertility.

After the hogs expired, the manbunung would burn blood-soaked taro slices and rice stalks on their backs, bringing prosperity to the celebrants' household. The animals were then butchered, with their livers and gall bladders carefully exposed so that the manbunung and other experts could read them as oracles. The carcasses were then singed, scraped, dismembered, and boiled. After this, members of the "meat committee" would distribute the flesh, making sure that elite (and the ancestors) were first honored with the best portions. All guests were also given raw meat to carry home. To fill the enormous appetite of the gathering, the celebrants might have to slaughter water buffalo and sometimes even cattle in a purely secular context off to the side of the main proceedings.

Once the sacrifices were completed, attention turned to dance. A man and a woman invariably danced as a pair, while brass gongs, iron bars, and wooden drums maintained the rhythm. The performers would alternate between several different dance styles, each associated with a particular geographic region. The celebrating couple danced first, followed by the village elite, with each dancer performing in the stead of a specific ancestor. All dances were punctuated by the manbunung's blessings. Eventually the roster of the ancestors would be completed, and the dance opened to the wider community. At this point even the young participated, often reveling through the night. The mood was now one of pure festivity, the participants well lubricated with rice beer. One of the

first Europeans to visit Buguias, the German traveler Carl Semper, must have arrived at such a time, for he wrote, "When I arrived in Buguias the people had been drinking . . . for five days and nights, and the general drunkenness lasted during my three day stay" (1862 [1975]: 29).

After the second day most guests returned home; only the immediate family, the village elders, the ritualists, and the ancestors remained. On the third day the elders would sacrifice another hog and possibly a water buffalo, and the fourth day marked a simple "party" for the ancestors. On the fifth day, ritual specialists would clean and bind together the heads of the ritual pigs, then slaughter a new pair of swine, male and female. The following day was uneventful, but the seventh day again required a pair of hogs as the remaining guests prepared for the departure of the ancestors. This signified the formal conclusion, even though on the following evening the celebrants' close relatives often performed their own subsidiary rites. The celebrating couple might also observe a last single-hog ritual to "dam up" the good luck bestowed by the ancestors.

The celebrating couple bore the feast's financial brunt, but some of the other participants also contributed. Close relatives had their own secondary rituals, and both relatives and neighbors always prepared rice beer used to entertain guests during the initial gathering. Throughout the festivities, a markedly communal character remained.

During the feast's public events, the ancestors were entertained, provisioned, and beseeched. But within the house, the celebrants and ritual experts strove for more intimate communication, chanting and singing to the ancestors well into the night. Some of their intonations were simple requests; others were ritual utterings meaningless in ordinary speech. During these occasions the spirits could possess certain women; through these media the ancestors prophesied and demanded additional favors, often requesting that another specific couple also celebrate a major feast. Such a woman might remain in a trance, alternating between anger, sorrow, and elation, for hours. Occasionally a man would be entranced, but most participants would regard such an event with skepticism, wondering openly whether he were only drunk.

Few couples progressed beyond the lim-lima pedit, but those with social pretentions were obligated to continue up the prestige

ladder. A given pedit ceremony was ranked by the number of hogs chased on the second day; at each successive rung the number increased by two, the scale thus ascending in odd numbers.^[3] The essential observations remained the same, but the number of villages invited and the number of animals butchered increased markedly with each step. Cattle especially were slaughtered in large numbers, as the take-home meat requirements escalated faster than did the sacrificial obligations. Swine killings roughly matched those of the lim-lima for the first seven days, but they continued for a longer period of time, determined ultimately by the advice of the ritual experts. Seventeen days was typical for a "number nine," but any untoward occurrence, even the appearance of a rat, could prolong it. Through the entire period the celebrants observed taboos; they could not eat pungent vegetables, nor could they engage in any sexual activities.^[4]

"Nine" (siam ) marked the graduating pedit, confirming a couple's baknang status. After this their prime responsibility shifted to helping their children ascend the prestige ladder. But the wealthiest could still continue their own series, celebrating "eleven," "thirteen," and so on. Upon reaching the stellar level of "twenty-five," the couple had completed one full ritual cycle and was expected to withdraw. In the "reti