Chal-chal, the Sun

Chal-chal is the personified Sun of Bontoc myth, named in Jenks's account of the origin of headhunting. There he is a man whose young son goes to watch the Moon, Kabigat, at her potting; when she strikes the boy's head off with her clay-paddle, the Sun comes at once, replaces the head, and the child revives. The Sun harbours no resentment, yet pronounces that because his son's head was cut off the people of the earth will thereafter cut off one another's heads, so that this divine episode is the charter for the Bontoc institution of headhunting. In the wider Lumawig cycle the Sun is also a helper who arms and aids the hero.

Domains

• sun and daylight
• restoration of life

Powers

• to set a severed head back in place and restore the slain to life

Relations

• rival: Kabigat, the MoonIn the headhunting myth the Moon, Kabigat, strikes off the head of the Sun's child; the Sun restores the boy and bears the Moon no lasting ill will, but his pronouncement that men will thereafter take heads sets the two luminaries in lasting mythic opposition.Albert Ernest Jenks, The Bontoc Igorot (Manila: Bureau of Public Printing, 1905). (secondary)

Sources

• Chal-chal is the Bontoc Sun, the male deity whose beheaded son he restores to life and whose words establish the origin of headhunting.: Albert Ernest Jenks, The Bontoc Igorot (Manila: Bureau of Public Printing, 1905). (secondary); Joy Christine O. Bacwaden, "The Lumawig Bontoc Myths," Philippine Studies 45, no. 1 (1997): 3-49. (secondary)