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Ifugao
Hudhud: Local to Global Dimension of the Sacred (By Dr.Jesus T. Peralta)
Ifugao Hudhud: Local
to Global Dimension of the Sacred By: Dr. Jesus T. Peralta
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The effect of acculturation among the Ifugao of the
Cordilleras of northern Luzon, Philippines is the
transformation of a sacred chant, alim, into
theatrics, while endowing the nature of the
non-ritual chant, hudhud, with a sacral character
through institutional recognition.
There is a causal relationship between mundane
practices of people with aspects of their belief
system. When this relationship erodes due to
acculturation, the cohesion of an indigenous culture
is altered. There are state-coordinates that keep
societies in a more or less stable equilibrium. It
is due to these coordinates that traditional
societies remain conservative in their ways. The
disruption of even one of these stasis-maintaining
mechanisms will erode these relationships and create
new ones. What results from this are maladjustments
in the causal association between practice and
belief system.
Contact between peoples is inevitable and even
necessary, in some cases, for viability, hence the
axiom that - a group should marry out or die out.
The exposure of indigenous cultures to external
pressures, which may have beneficial effects, can
also have negative repercussions. Among the
indigenous peoples of the Philippines, the single
most efficient event that induced global change in
traditional cultures is the introduction of the
great religions of the West and East. The new
religions supplanted indigenous belief systems, and
with this altered, diminished or totally eradicated
practices associated with these systems of
believing. Only those practices not linked with
local religions survive only to be beset by other
alien factors of change. Hence there are cultural
practices that survive in some recognizable form
despite the changes, while others are assigned to
oblivion if not already precariously on the
threshold. Indigenous beliefs are vulnerable due to
the fact that the intrusions are in the intangible
aspects of the culture. The effect is such that even
the objective correlatives of beliefs become
irrelevant to the society.
The Ifugao
The Ifugao people of the northern Cordilleras of the
island of Luzon, Philippines are a graphic example
of the vulnerability of a traditional society to the
pressures of global intrusions. These are the same
people who are famous for the incredible rice
terraces that they build on mountain sides, which
have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The
ritual world of these people is dominated by the
male before the advent of Christianization. Even
before even before this, the cosmology of the Ifugao
is already very complex. The Cordillera environment
is highly textured, and this created a number of
cultural niches that effectively created both
physical and social circumscription. This is
compounded by the movement of people into the area
from different adjoining areas, including people
from different ethno-cultural stock. This
intermixture had effects on the belief system of the
Ifugao. While beliefs usually are convergent such
that the people will tend to congregate, something
different happened to the Ifugao.
One of the postulates explaining the nature of the
belief system of the Ifugao people is the movement
of populations from the adjoining province of
Benguet, located to the west. These people are the
Kankanai, again quite a complex people with a
convergent kind of religion, traditionally with a
religious hierarchy similar to that of a church.
This condition prevails in the centralized areas
where the people live. In the fringes of this
society, however, the reach of the religious
structure is rather rarefied. It is from this
religiously thinly constituted segment of Kankanai
society that moved into western Ifugao province,
bringing with them an unstructured form of religion
that diverged from the core practice. These
divergent forms coalesced in each of the
environmental niches of the mountainous terrain of
the province, resulting in the variegation of
practices and rituals within the same general belief
system among the various socio-cultural groups.
Another population movement from the east into the
northeastern part of the province resulted in
formation of linguistic groups that segment the
Ifugao people: the Tuwali in the west, the Ayangan
in the northeast and the Hanglulu in the southeast.
The latter is an admixture of Tuwali with another
ethno-linguistic group in the southeast, the
Kalanguya, which resulted in several dialects in the
Asipulo area. The three main groups also constitute
analogous religious ritual composition based on a
generally similar belief system. The practices in
each, however, are not interchangeable with the
others.
Central to all these differentiated groups of
rituals is the religious specialist – the mumbaki (“sayer
of prayers”). Almost every adult male is a mumbaki ,
which came as a result of the divergence of
practices when the migrating populations lost
contact with the central religion in Benguet among
the Kankanai. Separated pockets practiced their
religion in isolation. Each group had their own
ritual specialist who practices the tenets of the
religion in accordance with his own individual
associations. Each mumbaki would have his own
personal set of deities that he invokes, such that
there exist among the Ifugao a religious pantheon of
some 2000 named deities. Common among all
practitioners, however, is the belief in one supreme
deity, Maknongan., and the general strain of the
indigenous set of beliefs. The character of this
segmentation makes the religion of the Ifugao
vulnerable to change.
Correlatives of Beliefs
The correlatives of traditional Ifugao religious
heritage is set out in myths, stories, legends that
people vocalize in the form of narratives, songs and
chants performed during specific occasions from the
mundane to the sacred. The more common oral
literature are the liw-liwa (short simple songs in
verse sang as intermission numbers during the
conduct of rituals), the Baltung (a chant
characterized by the stamping of feet.). The major
forms of the oral literature are the hudhud and the
alim. The alim and the hudhud consist of numerous
narratives regarding Ifugao lifestyle, custom laws,
religious belief system, indigenous traditions and
practices. What distinguishes one from the other
lies in ritual. This difference also explains why
one has the potentials to survive globalization,
while the other in the very near future will be
assigned only to frangible memory.
The alim cannot be chanted unless this is done in
the context of ritual. These are narratives that
explain the origins, historical background, the
rationalizations and intents in saying the baki or
prayers. This oral literature is found principally
only among the Tuwali Ifugao, although the practice
has spread where there are admixtures of Tuwali
culture as among the Hanglulu sub-group. This is
chanted only during occasions of death and
exhumation rituals, and other special occasions like
prestige feasts for the members of the elite class-
the kadangyan. The only prestige ritual where it is
not chanted is during the konong#. The chant is
quite lengthy and is chanted in a very peculiar and
distinctive manner. The chant is led by a principal
chanter who is accompanied by a chorus of other
mumbaki. Being a prestige ritual chant not all
ritual specialists are allowed to perform it. Only a
few mumbaki who have attained a certain ranking
among the specialists can do the chant, and more so
since the performance require a certain expertise in
the text and verbalization. There are some thirty
three narratives chanted in the alim, the chanting
of which is started during the evening of the
celebration day and lasts to the midmorning of the
next day. Since only mumbaki can chant the alim,
this oral form is an exclusive domain of men.
The hudhud, on the other hand, has related stories
which form a kind of continuity. It is chanted
during three occasions. During harvest time, the
harvesters sing it to break the monotony of the
task. People also sing it during the long vigil for
someone who died a natural death. Thirdly, this is
sung during the wake held in the exhumation of the
dead (bogwa). In both the alim and hudhud, only
mortals are involved and never supernatural beings.
Idealized in the narratives are Ifugao romances of
praise for their concepts of wealth, love, and
marriage. Emphasized are attributes of strength and
courage among the men, and the feminine virtues of
beauty and diligence. The chant is performed by a
presentor (munhaw-e) who sings the narration, and
gives the cue to a chorus (mun-hudhud/mun-abbuy),
that continues the chant while providing
commentaries. While the members of the chorus need
to be familiar only with a set of recurring phrases,
the burden of the chant lies with the munhaw-e who
has to be familiar with the numerous variants of the
narratives. There are said to be 200 myths grouped
in some forty episodes, the chanting to which may
take from three to four days. It is not performed on
the occasion of a ritual and is therefore not a
celebration that would require the services of a
mumbaki. The hudhud stories, while related to the
alim are sang purely by the laity and predominantly
by women.
When the alim and the hudhud started to be chanted
is unknown. The Ifugao state that both have been
chanted since time immemorial, with no words to
specify whether this is in the hundreds or thousands
of years. A study by a scholar of the hudhud
indicates that this might have pre-dated the
construction of the rice terraces. The earliest
dated terraces are found in Bunghalian municipality
with a Carbon-14 determination of 610 AD., although
the earliest human occupation of the municipality of
Banaue is between 1545-825 BC. Both forms are
virtual anthropological documents that orally record
through time the changes that took place in Ifugao
social organization, structure and tradition. The
infusion of modern elements in the text indicates
the relative time of change. For instance the
mention of a gun in one of the stories suggest an
influence that could only have come from the West,
although the fact that the gun caused the
conflagration of an entire village indicate the idea
of a gun was still a bit confused and was therefore
still something novel.
Although the hudhud narratives are more
entertainment and less sacramental than the alim,
these contain the myths and legends which are the
bases for the stories in the alim that deal with the
ritual prayers (baki). In effect, the women chant
the myths and legends that serve as foundation of
the belief systems contained in the alim.
Western Influx
When the culture of the West principally that of the
Americans, arrived in the Cordilleras, there were
major forms of changes. The local forms of
leadership, domestic economy, traditional education
and indigenous religion were altered by the more
dominant alien culture leading into the development
of a plural form of society. More apropos to the
issue at hand is the introduction of Christianity
among the Ifugao.
The concept of monotheism is not difficult to be
introduced among the Ifugao due to their traditional
belief in a single supreme deity, maknongan, in
spite of the existence of enumerable deities invoked
by the mumbaki since Christianity, too, call upon
enumerable saints and angels. The essential parts of
Christian ritual were present in the traditional
rituals too: offering, sacrifice and communion.
There was also an advantage in adapting the religion
of the dominant culture. The offshoot is the
widespread Christianization of the Ifugao, including
the catastrophic effect on indigenous religious
beliefs and practices. Even the mumbaki became
enfolded in the new religion, inhibiting them from
indulging in native rituals still asked by surviving
traditional events demanded by the society, as in
prestige feasts. Some ritual specialists go through
the motions of the ritual required but without the
legitimizing belief system to support it. Becoming a
mumbaki is no longer aspired for by men, more so
since the training to become one is an onus on top
of being under a national educational system, and
the need to survive in a changing social structure
and organization. There was hardly any value to
becoming a ritual specialist in a religion that is
giving way to the onslaught of Christianity. With
the conversion of the mumbaki, traditional rituals
and practices became relegated to mere theatrical
performance. With this is the impending demise of
the alim, as a sacred chant with only a handful of
“Christianized” mumbaki remaining with the proper
status, and who still know the text. It is now in
the process of being relegated as an anthropological
nuance in Ifugao literature. In the globalized
world, it is losing its functional sacredness,
The hudhud, survives the alterations in the
indigenous religion of the Ifugao since it is
neither sacramental nor does it require the services
of the male mumbaki. There is also no
interconnectedness with the new social order. The
myths and legends are still sung by women while they
harvest the rice from the terraces, when they
congregate during wakes and in other social events.
It continues to be a living heritage of the Ifugao.
It has been declared by UNESCO as a “Masterpiece of
Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity”. The women
earlier asked why this chant that they use to ease
the tediousness of their labor has merited
international attention. To them chanting the hudhud
was as natural in their culture as breathing. They
are not aware that they are holding on to the
sacredness of the values of a disappearing culture.
In a way, this non-ritual chant is becoming
sacramental in the modern world even if not in the
indigenous sense, since it is a manner by which
aspects of a traditional culture is being maintained
through the medium of institutional concern with
ethnic diversity. The hudhud has been made sacred.
*From Sanghaya 2001, a publication
of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts
**DR. JESUS T. PERALTA is a Bachelor of Philosophy
graduate from the University of Sto. Tomas, with a
Master of Arts in Anthropology from the University
of the Philippines, and a Doctor of Philosophy in
Anthropology from the University of California. He
was Director III of the National Museum until he
retired in 1997. Most interestingly, he is also a
ten-time winner in the Carlos Palanca Memorial
Awards in Literature in the field of playwrighting.
He has more than 120 scientific papers and
publications on anthropology, archaeology, and
general culture to his name. He is the author of The
Tinge of Red, Glimpses: Peoples of the Philippines
and Insights into Philippine Culture: Festschrift in
Honor of William Henry Scott.
He now works as a Consultant for The National
Commission for Culture and the Arts' (NCCA)
International Desk and web site development section.
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