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Monday, March 29, 2004
Heart of food, heart of worship
By Jenara Regis Newman
Think you know everything about hanging rice? Think again. As part of ritual, there are six designs and six different reasons for making them. Hang on to every new grain from Jenara Regis Newman’s inspection of what makes our puso tick.
Puso. It’s the local wonder food preparation that predates takeout and fast food. It’s go-anywhere cooked rice wrapped in biodegradable coconut leaf which foreigners call “hanging rice”. Did you know that to our ancestors (and some present day Filipinos still steeped in our past), puso is more that food? It is part of ancient religious rituals.
According to a Cebu Normal University monograph by Reynaldo B. Inocian, there are six puso designs, the most popular today is what an authentic puso maker refers to as kinasing, shaped like a diamond, therefore precious, and used as an “offering to minor gods.” The other shape, not as popular but still being made by puso makers is the binaki, resembling a frog, and “offered to the gods as a reminder of the earthly life relationship of man with the supernatural forces.”
The binosa, made of one coconut leaf, is shaped like “a small wineglass.” These are offered "in bunches of a dozen each to the lesser gods of the underworld.”
Then there is the dumpol or pudol “ a variation of the kinasing…"it possesses a flattened bottom…this is offered to the spirits of the gods by placing it on the ground below a lantay, a platform which is decorated with coconut fronds and two white flaglets on opposing ends. This is where the term lantayan is derived, "meaning an occasional or annual celebration".
The badbaranay design “means opening or unraveling. This is offered together with other designs, in the belief that the gods can open up and grant a pleasant and successful celebration officiated by the mananampit, or the local tambalan (priest or priestess) to the mamumutang, “the offerer of the preparation".
Manan-aw is the sixth design. It is a Cebuano name for “white orchids, a species of the native denrobium…it is the most intricate design…made of eight little strands of lilas. This is the biggest puso and “is offered to the highest gods especially for asking special favors like good health, good fortune and a good harvest.”
The forms of puso give us a glimpse of the way our ancestors worshipped their gods. So next time you eat one, for lunch or dinner or a picnic or whatever, it would be fitting to pause, and give thanks to your God.
(March 29, 2004 issue)
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