This does not
refer to desirability of location, but simply to physical location --
as in the mountain north of Bontoc, or in one to the east or south.
As was stated in a previous chapter, with the one exception of
toothache, all injuries, diseases, and deaths are caused directly by
a-ni'-to. In certain ceremonies the ancestral a-ni'-to, are urged
to care for living descendants, to protect them from a-ni'-to that
seek to harm -- and children are named after their dead ancestors,
so they may be known and receive protection. In the pueblo, the
sementeras, and the mountains one knows he is always surrounded by
a-ni'-to. They are ever ready to trip one up, to push him off the
high stone sementera dikes or to visit him with disease. When one
walks alone in the mountain trail he is often aware that an a-ni'-to
walks close beside him; he feels his hair creeping on his scalp, he
says, and thus he knows of the a-ni'-to's presence. The Igorot has a
particular kind of spear, the sinalawitan, having two or more pairs
of barbs, of which the a-ni'-to is afraid; so when a man goes alone
in the mountains with the sinalawitan he is safer from a-ni'-to than
he is with any other spear.
The Igorot does not say that the entire spirit world, except his
relatives, is against him, and he does not blame the spirits for the
evils they inflict on him -- it is the way things are -- but he acts
as though all are his enemies, and he often entreats them to visit
their destruction on other pueblos.
Pages:
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388