I think these seem like some pretty cool summer reads written by and about us Filipinos!

http://www.tribo.org/bookshop/frontpage.html

feel free to add referal to other grat filipino books as well!

from the grammers and spellings we employee on this forum, it is self evident that AFers are a well bred bunch.

Friday, 15 June 2001
?A masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity? 
Ifugao epic wins UNESCO recognitionBy Marilou Guieb

Handih wandi [a long time ago] "our ancestors were singing their hudhud in rice fields while busy harvesting, or in their house yards during funeral wakes. But in those days it was always the same ones repeated, for they knew only one, the hudhud of Pumbakhayon.
Thus begins a hudhud presentation that goes on to tell enchanting tales of heroes and heroines, warriors and rivals, fantasies of heroes? duels for the mountain maiden, fights that are fought nowhere except in the imagination of the storyteller, and elaborate descriptions of celebrations.

These are the dominant themes in the stories within an epic that was born out of Pumbakhayon?s boredom at hearing the same story about himself.

The high literary value of this enduring epic that has been kept in memory by the Ifugaos for many hundred years through oral tradition was finally given due recognition when it was recently cited as a "masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity" by the UNESCO.

A first for UNESCO

Hudhud is the only Southeast Asian epic to be given an award. This is the first time UNESCO has given the cultural award for literary pieces

"One day, Pumbakhayon emerged from a large rice terrace at Kuto, where women were harvesting and singing. They saw him swinging his spears up and down, dancing on the dike. After a while, he stopped dancing and shouted, "Hello, hello! I am Pumbakhayon! People of the Earth, look at me and see me dancing!" The blade of his spear gleamed, the red stripes of the blanket over his shoulder shimmered, his scabbard and bag dangled at his hip. Nimbly moving towards a big stone lying near the dike, he stuck his spear into the rock, squatted on it, and began to chew betel nut. "Hayoo!" he shouted. "Women of the earth, chantresses, my ears are weary of hearing my name all the time. Listen! I shall teach you other hudhud. I shall tell you about the feats of others."

This is how the tales of Aliguyon and Bugan, Dinulawan and Aginaya begins. A hudhud version can have as many as 80 episodes and some episodes last for three days. The epic is high on linguistic creativity and imaginative play on words. Its language is figurative, pleonastic and repetitious in style. All through the hudhud text, same meanings are repeated in words and phrases, one to express more vividly the concept of the other, or conceal a comparison.

For example, an excerpt goes, "Those who come home from a journey let the breeze dry up their perspiration, dry up the dewdrops that cover their forehead." Reduplication is employed for emphasis, such as "border the border of the border dwellers" to speak of someone who arrives at the border terrace of a village. This makes the hudhud repetitious from beginning to end. It is also rich in figures of speech like the spear represented as a reed that has a flower because of its shape.

Chanted by women

The hudhud is chanted by women, and the most impressive feature of the ritual is the prodigious memory of the chanters. The main story is chanted by a "munhawe", and a chorus, the "manhudhud," continues the chant in pleonastic duplications of certain terms.

Chewing betel nut after betel nut, Pumbakhayon narrated the tales and when the sun began to sink, he uttered a protracted cry and plunging into the pool in front of the stone on which he had squatted, he disappeared. All those who saw him dancing fell dead on the spot, except for two young women who taught his tales to the people and their children and their grandchildren.

The stone in Kuto, a Kiangan village, tells the legend that this is where Pumbakhayon told his tales, because of imprints of his feet and a little hole near the feet supposedly made by the spittle of the betel nut he was chewing all the time.

The hudhud was first translated by Fr. Francis Lambrecht, CICM, an anthropologist, who said that the Ifugaos had sung the hudhud since the 17th century. The result is a 500-page translation that first brought the epic from the villages in its oral tradition to the world in an English version in 1967.

A live tradition

The tradition is very much alive in Ifugao villages where the hudhud is recited on the same occasions at which it was sung hundreds of years ago.

Hudhud romances extol both wealth and valor. The riches of the heroes and heroines are exalted by the chantresses, and battles and duels are embellished and unrealistic and far removed from the way Ifugaos wage their conquests. Cultural traits are interwoven into the narration, the headhunting tradition figuring here as a way of winning a maiden?s heart or sowing fear among the lowlanders.

The hudhud gives historical links that aid in placing other events highlighted in the Ifugao?s lifetime. Some historians, for example, claim that the hudhud came after the time of the rice terraces as excerpts of the epic are set in the rice terraces. A phrase goes, "Aliguyon regions the region where his brother-in-law dwells. He admires once more the rich man?s very wide rice field terraces, crosses the large river, walks on the rice field dikes, ascends the village slope and enters the center."

But since there are several theories about the age of the rice terraces, just how old these epics are has become debatable if they are tied up to when the Ifugaos carved their mountainsides. But geneaologies within the epic romances show that they were probably recited as far back as 1680. But the epic may have been woven even farther back.

Indigenizing education

The distinction garnered by this epic may finally bring home the long-neglected program to indigenize the education in the ethnic regions. In 1997 and 1998, 18 teachers made a concrete attempt to put together indigenous modules with the goal of producing 179,757 copies for distribution in the local villages in line with the government's project to preserve the culture. But the project did not get priority funding and fell apart.

The international distinction accorded it by the UNESCO has put the hudhud in line for inclusion in the school curriculum. The National Museum and National Library will also be setting up an archive of the hudhud in its complete form.

Ifugao is considered one of the poorest provinces in the country. But it is unsurpassed in the wealth of its ancient culture. Proof positive of this is that Ifugao was also recently cited by UNESCO as the only "Living Cultural Heritage" in the world.

-- CyberDyaryo


http://www.cyberdyaryo.com/features/f2001_0615_03.htm

Extract From the Humudhud

By: H.O.Beyer

Manila - July 12, 1912

 

One of the two epics of the Ifugaos.

The Ifugaos have two great epic poems - the Alim and the Hudhud. The first corresponds in general type to the Hindu Ramayana, and the second to the Maharata (or Mahabharata). This correspondence refers to type only, of course, and not to the contents, which are very different. The extract here given is from the first part of the Hudhud. The whole is so long that it would require more than 14 hours of actual time to sing it; but it is better wholly repeated in any one ceremony. Short or long extracts from it are used on various occasions. The women use it as a harvest song, when working in the fields; men often sing snatches of it when journeying along the trails. So far as I know, it is unique to the pure Ifugao dialect group and is best known in Kiangan, Ifugao (though it is found as far north of Anganad clan, in Central Ifugao.)

The Hudhud consists of a series of great song stories, hero stories - sung about famous hero ancestors of long ago, detailing their lives and adventures and their dealings with gods and men. Some of the chief male characters are: Aliguyun of Gonhadan, Gumigin of Da’u-lai-an, Dulinai-an, Dinui-agan nak Panga-iwan, Dulnuan nak Panga-iwan, Dumai-ahon nak Bulai-ung-an.

The chief female characters are: Bugan nak Manga-iwan, Bugan nak Dinui-agan, Aginai- a nak Amtalao ad Dumanai-an and etc.

The story of the birth and marriage ceremonies, respectively and etc.

Men who know the whole of the Hudhud are celebrated for their knowledge. Gimpatan of Kiangan is one such.

The extract here given is the only part of the Hudhud that has yet been transcribed. The text of this extract is very correct, but it contains many phonetic errors, as it was transcribed by a Christian Filipino using the Spanish alphabet. The Ifugao from whom it was obtained, Leon of Kutug, was a famous priest and died about 1905 or 1906.

Neither Mr. Barton nor myself have as yet had time to work on this epic, but I hope that we may do so in the near future. Their importance is great, both as pure literature and because they may be one of the greatest helps in solving the problem of the Ifugao people.

One of the chief difficulties to be encountered in securing these epics is the fact that they are in more or less an obsolete language, and their translation will require much time and labor. For that reason no translation is given of the extract here represented.

http://home.chello.no/~andy.anderson/Beyer/Beyer10.html