hagiyo name meaning

IFUGAO

The Ifugao is a group that lives in a mountainous region of north-central Luzon around the of town Banaue. Also known as the Ifugaw, Ipugao, Yfugao, they are former headhunters who are famous for their spectacular mountain-hugging rice terraces. The Ifugao are believed to have arrived from China around 2000 years ago. Their first contact with the outside world was through American military officers and schoolteachers early in the 20th century. Communication with them was made easier when better roads were built to the areas where they live.

In the past the Ifugao were feared head-hunters, just as other tribes in the mountainous regions of northern Luzon. Their war-dance (the bangibang) is one of the cultural remnants of the time of tribal conflict. This dance is traditionally held on the walls of the rice terraces by the men, equipped with spears, axes and wooden shields and a headdress made of leaves.

Ifugao name means "inhabitant of the known world." Many of the older Ifugao continue to live as their ancestors did. Some men still wear loincloths; and the practice of headhunting was given up only a few decades ago. In the late 1980s, I heard stories about a bus driver that hit and killed an Ifugao woman, whose relatives formed a head hunting party to seek revenge but were stopped before they could do anything.

The Ifugao are found of chewing beetle nut. I asked a couple Ifugao men why they liked chewing it and they said it cleans their teeth, and then smiled with half their teeth missing.

Surveys in the 1980s counted 70,000 Ifugao but few of these were pure blooded and few retained their tradition customs. Most have forsaken their traditional loin clothes, spears and beetlenut and moved to the town where money and jobs can be found.[Source: "Vanishing Tribes" by Alain Cheneviére, Doubleday & Co, Garden City, New York, 1987]

Ifugao Religion
About half of all Ifugaos have embraced Christianity but their animist beliefs have been absorbed into their Christian beliefs. The Ifugao have traditionally believed their lives were ruled by spirits called anitos. Many Ifugao still believe the universe was divided into five levels. At the top is: 1) the heavens which itself has four "superimposed heavens." Beneath it is 2) Pugao, the known land. Below is 3) the underworld and there is also 4) the world upstream and 5) the world downstream. Each area has a large number of spirits, each of which has a name and belongs to one of 35 categories. Among them are ones associated with hero ancestors, diseases, omens, messengers, celestial bodies.

There are around 1,500 important spirits. They have precise locations in the Ifugao universe that carry with them specific roles and duties. They cover almost of every aspect of life: war, peace, fishing, weaving, rain, disease and so on. In addition to spirits there are deities who are immortal and have the power to change form. There is no one supreme god which has made it easy for the Ifugao to accept Christianity and not have the Christian god in competition with the spirits of their traditional religion. [Source: "Vanishing Tribes" by Alain Cheneviére, Doubleday & Co, Garden City

F. Jagor wrote in “Travels in the Philippines” (1875): “The anito of the Philippines is essentially a protecting spirit.” The Spaniard Pardo de Tavera wrote in in 1906: “The religion of the islands, what may be called the true religion of Filipinos, consisted of the worship of the anitos. These were not gods, but the souls of departed ancestors, and each family worshipped its own, in order to obtain their favorable influence.” According to the De Morga the anito was a representation of the devil under horrible and frightful forms, to which fruits and fowl and perfumes were offered. Each house had and “made” (or performed) its anitos, there being no temples, without ceremony or any special solemnity. “This word is ordinarily interpreted ‘idol,’ although it has other meanings. There were anitos of the mountains, of the fields, of the sea. The soul of an ancestor, according to some, became embodied as a new anito, hence the expression, ‘to make anitos.’ Even living beings, notably the crocodile, were regarded as anitos and worshiped. The anito-figura, generally shortened to anito, ... was usually a figurine of wood, though sometimes of gold.”