Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/365

Rh to which the custom is to be traced back. The chronological evidence leads to the confident belief that the custom and the tribe immigrated together.

Over the whole Philippine Archipelago religious customs have changed with the progress of external relations. Christianity has in many places spread its peculiar customs, observances and opinions, and changed entirely the direction of thought. On closer view are to be detected in the midst of Christian activities older survivals, as ingredients of belief which, in spite of that religion, have not vanished. Before Christianity, in many places, Islam flourished, and it is not surprising to witness, as on Mindanao, Christian and Mohammedan beliefs side by side. But, before Islam, ancestor worship, as has long been known, was widely prevalent. In almost every locality, every hut has its Anito with its special place, its own dwelling; there are Anito pictures and images, certain trees and, indeed, certain animals in which some Anito resides. The ancestor worship is as old as history, for the discoverers of the Philippines found it in full bloom, and rightly has Blumentritt characterized Anito worship as the ground form of Philippine religion. He has also furnished numerous examples of Anito cult surviving in Christian communities.

Chronology has a good groundwork and it will have to observe every footprint of vanishing creeds. Only, it must not be overlooked that the beginning of the chronology of religion has not been reached, and that the origin of the generally diffused ancestor worship, at least on the Philippines, is not known. If it is borne in mind that belief in Anitos is widely diffused in Polynesia and in purely Malay areas, the drawing of certain conclusions therefrom concerning the prehistory of the Philippines is to be despaired of.

Next to religious customs, among wild tribes fashions are most enduring. Little of costume is to be seen, indeed, among them. Therefore, here tattooing asserts its sway. The more it has been studied in late years the more valuable has been the information in deciding the kinship relations of tribes. Unfortunately, in the Philippines the greater part of the early tattoo designs have been lost, and the art itself is also nearly eliminated. But since the journey of Carl Semper it has been known that not only Malays but also Negritos tattoo; indeed, this admirable explorer has decided that the ‘Negroes of the East Coast’ practise a different method of tattooing from that of the Marivales in the west, and on that account they attain different results. In the one case a needle is employed to make fine holes in the skin in