1. The Creation of Man and His Food The First Sacrifice

It is not known how Talanganay proceeded in making the first people. He made them in a concavity on the annayugan rock, a ledge with a flat surface that juts from the mountain slope along the river bank almost directly across from the stone on the other side of the river that is said to have been his residence.

The name of the ledge, annayugan, is an obsolete form for mansayugan, literally ‘where watering of plants is done,’ from sayug, ‘watering of plants.’ Throughout the myth, the first people and their descendants are referred to as sinayug, best translated as ‘watered to life.’ One narrator thought that the God poured water, in which herbs were mixed, over the bodies he had fashioned to make them alive. In another body of myths, the epic songs, the heroes, who only die in battle, are sent to a pool downstream to be masayug or restored to life. In these same epics also, the heroes commonly bring their newborn babies to the river, and pour water over them. By this repeated action, the children grow progressively through the main stages of childhood into young adults.[…]