Tuesday, October 10, 2006 Tantingco: Romance before the funeral By Robby Tantingco Peanut Gallery
ONE Kapampangan tradition that should be revived is the practice of commiserating (darámč) with the bereaved family (kématén) during a wake.
It is more than merely shaking their hand and saying "Condolences" and hanging around until the late hour (lámč); rather, it is having fun, lots of fun, at the wake -- not by playing mahjong or card games, but by holding an ancient, elaborate ritual called caragatan.
Today caragatan has somewhat morphed into a bulaklakan or has been simplified into a bugtungan.
Our ancestors eased the pain of relatives of a deceased person by spending the night at the wake.
Their superstitious belief is that a dead person should never be left alone even for one moment because the asuang could come and steal the body. Hence visitors stayed and kept watch as the bereaved family got much-needed sleep.
The bereaved family showed its gratitude by giving the overstaying visitors the right to laugh and have fun at the wake. And so they passed the long hours of the night doing the caragatan.
According to an H. Otley Beyer document supplied by one of his Kapampangan students at UP in 1916, Leon M. Gonzales, caragatan was considered not a bawdy game but a sacred ritual in which young men and women solemnly quizzed each other as part of the mating process.
The boys and the girls positioned themselves on either side of a judge, who was appointed by consensus, and who was given an associate, usually one from the girls' side. The judge was not necessarily the richest or oldest or most powerful man in the village, but rather the person perceived by most as impartial, or objective -- another social practice now lost, as the mayor, or the richest matrona or businessman, is often the one given significant, symbolic public tasks such as awarding beauty queens, champion athletes and contest winners, or crowning the image of Our Lady.
The boys and the girls became the opposing parties in a debate. One from the boys' side opened the debate with a soliloquy on love, usually advancing a thesis on an aspect of love, which the girls must challenge.
The bugtungan is similarly structured, except that the judge is not provided an associate, and "is not as delicate as the caragatan," i.e., the procedure is not as structured, the rules are not as tight, and the language is coarser. The stakes, of course, were higher in a caragatan, e.g., a girl who lost may have to marry the winning boy, while a boy who lost must render perpetual service to the winning girl's parents.
"He must serve the (girl's) parents as if they were his own and treat the girl as his sister," says the document. "This was obeyed carefully."
The boy was not treated like a servant; he did it as part of social relations and in fidelity to the rules of caragatan.
"The decision of the judge is taken by each of the two opposing parties as the right one," the document continues. "This is very significant because by it we could say that they respect authority." Thus, caragatan was a social tool by which our ancestors taught youngsters the value of respecting parents and elders and accepting their decision without question, aside from the fact that it was a very public way of matchmaking.
Today it may seem strange, even shocking, that one game or ritual can be the sole basis for choosing a life partner, but in those days when boys and girls had no opportunity to interact and marriages were often arranged by parents, one encounter was all it took. Caragatan was actually a stylized flirtation and courting process where one revealed his or her convictions on love and expectations on marriage, and where one got to know those of the opposite side. Compared to one night of sex, which is often the sole basis for untimely marriages today, the one-night ritual of caragatan seemed more reliable.
Thus, a death in the village must have been always an exciting occasion for the youngsters in the community to find their match.
As time went by and matchmaking became more sophisticated, caragatan gradually lost its potency until it deteriorated into a mere game, its two versions being bugtungan and bulaklakan. In a bugtungan, the first line is usually a complete-the-sentence exercise, "Were it not, we would not" which is completed as "Were it not for the dead person we would not be doing such business as this (bugtungan)." If a question is not immediately answered, the group is punished by requiring them to pray three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys. The bulaklakan is similarly structured except that the participants imagine themselves as various flowers (hence, bulaklakan) being challenged by a butterfly.
Examples of original Kapampangan bugtung (riddles): Daralán cu la, daralá ra cu. (Answer: shoes) Potang macalucluc ya matas ya, potang macaticdo ya mababa ya. (Answer: dog) Pesus ya e ya cualta, dapot manakitan ya. (Answer: a priest's tonsure) Ing bulung atiu babo bunga, ing bunga atiu babo bulung. (Answer: pineapple)
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