Philippine Progress Prior to 1898 Part 4

Such was then the state of civilization among the Tagalog-Bisayan tribes at the time when the Malay Mohammedans, and the Spanish conquistadores attempted, from opposite points, to introduce their religions into the archipelago. The Moros of the Sulu Islands were beginning to overrun the Philippines on the arrival of the Spanish, and would eventually have Mohammedanised the entire group. The Philippine natives at this time were in a singularly interesting stage of intellectual progress. They had lived through the crude fetis.h.i.+sm of savagedom, and were emerging from the second stage of religious feeling, during which they had evolved, out of the contemplation of Nature, one of those wonderful mythologies which are met with among so many nations. They were beginning to renounce the old Nature wors.h.i.+p, of which the central figure was a Supreme Maker.

It has been truly said that nothing requires such calm and impartial judgment as the inquiry into the moral and religious condition of uncivilized races. The co-evolution of religion and civilization is an extremely interesting subject to the student of anthropology, when he notes the gradual refinement of the national religion as the culture of the race improves, and the degradation of that religion when a race retrogrades in civilization. It is one of the many grand problems, based on the retributive laws of Nature, which confront the enquirer into that great and wonderful mystery--the development of the human race. Well it is for him who can learn from the savage Aieta, or the semi-civilized Tagalog, a lesson in the evolution of the human intellect; but, unfortunately, so many who have golden opportunities of studying the intellect and works of uncultured man are careless of those matters, and look with contempt upon the n.o.blest of studies. They cannot interest themselves in the struggling intellect of primitive man; they no longer understand the craving of youth for advancement; they disdain to look upon the dawn of intellectual day.

These are the most interesting points procured from the aforementioned works on the Philippine Islands, a land which we call new, but in which the events of the Tagalog-Bisayan migrations were but as of yesterday. Here, as elsewhere, the rude savage retreats before a superior race, but the receptive Tagalog attaches himself to the civilization of his conquerors. He had already advanced himself to the difficult highway that leads from barbarism to a higher culture, and was thus enabled to receive the teachings of his Iberian invaders; but he who would seek the indigenous Aieta must look for him in the distant recesses of the primeval forest, or in the dark and gloomy canons of the great ranges.

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PHILIPPINE HISTORY BEFORE THE COMING OF THE SPANIARDS

By Austin Craig

The Philippine History of which one is apt to think when that subject is mentioned covers hardly a fourth of the Islands' book-recorded history.

These records are not the romantic dream of a Paterno that under the name Ophir the Philippines with their gold enriched Solomon (10th century B. C.). There are solider grounds than any plausible explanations that Manila hemp (abaka) was Strabo's (A. D. 21) "ta seerika," the cloth made of "a kind of flax combed from certain barks of trees." The shadowy identification of the Manilas with Ptolemy's Maniolas (c. A. D. 130) is not in their cla.s.s. Nor, to accept them, is recourse needed to farfetched deductions like Zuniga's that the American Continent received Israel's ten lost tribes, and thence, through Easter Island, Magellan's archipelago was peopled. Their existence saves us from having to accept such references as how Simbad the sailorman (Burton: The Arabian Nights, Night 538 et seq.) evidently made some of his voyages in this region, though it would not be uninteresting to note that the great Roc is a bird used in Moro ornament, the "ghoul" of the Thousand and One Nights is the Filipino Asuang and that the palm-covered island which was believed to be a colossal tortoise because it shook might well have been located where the Philippine maps indicate that earthquakes are most frequent.

The records hereinafter to be cited are for the most part of the prosaic kind, all the more reliable and valuable because they are inclined to be dry and matter-of-fact. They make no such demand upon imagination as Europe's pioneer traveller's tales, for instance the sixteenth century chart which depicted America as inhabited by headless people with eyes, nose and mouth located in the chest.

The British Museum's oriental scholar (Douglas: Europe and the Far East, Cambridge, 1904) states that by the beginning of the Chou dynasty (B. C. 1122-255) intercourse had been established at Canton with eight foreign nations. Duties as early as 990 B. C. were levied, and among the imports figure birds, pearls and tortoise sh.e.l.l, products of the Philippines, but the origin of these has not been investigated. "Reliable history," says Dr. Pott (A Sketch of Chinese History, Shanghai, 1908), "does not extend further back than the middle of the Chou dynasty (B. C. 722). * * * After the time of the Chou dynasty we come to more solid ground, for at the beginning of the Han dynasty (B.C. 206) the custom originated of employing Court chroniclers to write a daily account of governmental proceedings. These diaries were kept secret and stored away in iron chests until the dynasty they chronicled had pa.s.sed away; then they were opened and published, and so form the basis of our knowledge of the events that had transpired while the dynasty was in existence."

Philippine history, however, has attracted only incidental interest in the translating of these voluminous chronicles so that while the first three mentions hereafter to be cited are well within the reliable history period they have not been verified and are valuable only as suggesting more definitely where to investigate.

Dr. von Moellendorf, a sinologist, formerly German consul in Manila, states that the Philippines were once called "Gold" in China, because of their considerable export thither of the precious yellow metal. This parallels the Malay province named "Silver" (Perak or Pilak). Further he refers to Becker's Geology of the Philippines where (on page 90 of the reprint) F. Karusch gives a former German Consul in Manila as authority for gold having been exported to China during the third century. If the Chinese authority for this can be found it will destroy the value of Dr. Groeneveldt's observation (Notes on the Malay Archipelago and Malacca compiled from Chinese sources; Batavia, 1876, p. 4) on his quotation from the history of the Liang dynasty (Book 54, p. 1):

"In the time of Sun Ch'uean of the house of Wu (A. D. 222-251) two functionaries, called Chu-ying and K'antai, were ordered to go to the south; they went to or heard from a hundred or more countries and made an account of them."

The commentator admits that "what these countries were is not stated,"

but believes the "Malay islands were not amongst them, otherwise their name would have appeared at that time already in the annals of China."

Since only a beginning has as yet been made in studying the voluminous records of China, a little further investigation may easily result in establis.h.i.+ng this early date.

The last of the early three possible references to the Philippines, cla.s.sed only as introductory because of their uncertain character, is from the narrative of Fahien, the details of whose home voyage seem to suggest that he pa.s.sed in the vicinity of, if not through, this group of islands. This Buddhist priest in A. D. 400 went overland to India (Groeneveldt, Notes, p. 6) in search of Buddhist books and fifteen years later came back by sea in Indian vessels via Ceylon and Java. Shortly after his death a book was published, written from his narratives, giving "an account of Buddhist countries"

(Fo Kuo Chi). After staying five months in Java where "heretics and Brahmans flourished but the law of Buddha hardly deserved mention,"

Fahien embarked in May, 414, on a large merchant vessel with a crew of over two hundred and provisioned for fifty days. Steering a north east course for Canton, when over a month out they struck a typhoon, "a sudden dark squall accompanied by pelting rain." The Brahmans felt that the priest of the rival religion was a Jonah and wanted to land him on one of the neighboring islands but were dissuaded by a trader representing the danger that would be to all on coming to China. The weather continued very dark and the pilots did not know their situation. Finally on the 78th day, with water almost gone and provisions short, they determined to change their course since they had already exceeded the usual fifty days for the run. So on a northwest route in twelve days more they reached not Canton but Shantung, nearly thirteen degrees farther north. Now this voyage on a map works out that they pa.s.sed the Philippines about the time that marooning the priest on an island was under discussion, and, as St. John notes (The Indian Archipelago, London 1853, Vol. I, p. 103), "The Philippines * * * occupy the only part of the Archipelago liable to hurricanes." Apparently the land was then unfamiliar to these early navigators.

No voyages of discovery were attempted by the Chinese but, creeping along the coast, they finally came to the Malay Peninsula and they worked from one island to another in the Indian Archipelago. (Groeneveldt, p. 1.) By this roundabout course in connection with the great island of Borneo, then called Polo and noted to have sent envoys to China in 518, 523 and 616, we find the Sulu islands suggested. The reference reads "at the east of this country is situated the land of the Rakshas (or lawless persons, or pirates.)" These were stated to have the same customs as the Poli people, unerring in throwing a saw-edged (wooden) discus knife, but using other weapons like those in China, in ways resembling Cambodia and with products like Siam's. Murder and theft were punished by cutting off the hands and adultery by chaining together the legs for a year. In the dark of the moon came the sacrifices, bowls of wine and eatables set adrift on the surface of the water, as Bornean tribes supposed to be akin to the Bisayans and Tagalogs now are doing. The Polans collected coral and trained parrots to talk, and so probably did the men of Sulu. In their ears were the teeth of wild beasts and a piece of home-made cotton cloth was wrapped about their waists, sarong fas.h.i.+on. Their markets they held at night and they were accustomed to keep their faces covered.

Next in point of time is a reference through Southern Formosa, called by the Chinese P'i-sho-ye, which the author of "China before the Chinese" (De Lacouperie) believes is only a miscalling of Bisaya, and former Consul Davidson of Formosa corroborates this both on Chinese authority (Ma Touan-lin) and from local traditions. (Davidson: The Island of Formosa Past and Present, New York, 1903).

"Bands of uncivilized Malays" from the south drove into the interior the Formosans with whom the Chinese earlier had been familiar. So on the next expedition from the mainland, in 605, the Chinese leader was surprised to find on the coast strange inhabitants with whom he could not communicate. His surmise that the newcomers were Malays led the next expedition to take with it interpreters from different southern Malayan islands, of whom at least one made himself understood. The immigrants kept up communication with Luzon and on their rafts raided coast towns of China, as will be later seen.

Pangasinan once extended much farther north in Luzon and Mr. Servillano de la Cruz, a University of the Philippines student specializing in the history of that province, describes rafts of bamboo bound together with vines, of a size which two men can lift, yet used on rivers and by people venturing as far as four miles from the coast upon them.

The chronological order takes us again to the south.

A "Ka-ling" mentioned in the old Chinese history of the T'ang dynasty (618-906) has been, it seems to me, wrongly identified by the Dutch scholar Groeneveldt (Notes on the Malay Archipelago, p. 12) as Java on the a.s.sumption that Pali or Po-li was Sumatra. Since it is much more probable that Poli is only an older form of Poni, Brunei, our Borneo (Hose and McDougall: Pagan Tribes of Borneo, London, 1912, Vol. I), Kaling rather should be looked for as an island off the eastern side of Borneo, Cambodia to the north, the sea to the south, and on the western side of the island of Dva-pa-tan, which might have been the old, and more extensive, district of Dapitan on the northwest of Mindanao. Directions are so general that the fixing of the spot is only guess work, yet the probability puts it within the southern (Sulu) part of the Philippine Archipelago.

The walls of the city were of palisades as were those enclosing Fort Santiago's Moro predecessor. The king's palace was a two-story affair thatched with coir from the abundant coco palms and the throne of the monarch was an ivory couch. Using neither spoons nor chopsticks, food was handled with that manual dexterity of which the Tondo tribune has recently been complaining as contributory to cholera. The palm wine was obtained just as tuba is now prepared.

The older history was considered vague and in its revision, called "the new history," fuller details appear, among them another name (Djava, Dj.a.pa or Dayapo (Dva-apo?)). The larger houses were covered with palm leaves and like the king's equipped with ivory couches. Bamboo mats are also mentioned and the exports are given as tortoise sh.e.l.l, gold and silver, rhinoceros-horns, and ivory. The ivory might have been white camagon, since it was used for furniture, and the rhinoceros horns could have been imported. The rapid intoxication from the native drink is emphasized and, contrary to the American traveller (Rev. Arthur J. Browne) who attributed the introduction of vice here to his soldier-countrymen, a virulent venereal disease is mentioned. The alternative name of the island turns out to belong to the place on it where the king resided and he is said to be a descendant of Ki-yen who had lived more to the east in the town of Pa-lu-ka-si. Of his thirty-two high ministers Datu Kan-liung was chief and twenty-eight small neighboring countries owed him allegiance, as the twenty-eight islands would to a powerful Sulu sultan. (As to number of islands, see Saleeby's History of Sulu, Manila, 1908, p. 15.)

A royal mountain resort overlooking the sea was Lang-pi-ya, a name for which, like the others, Groeneveldt finds it difficult to name a counterpart in Java, in this case noting "we think it advisable not to insist upon the above identification." The lat.i.tude would seem to have been in the Sulu neighborhood for at the summer solstice an 8-foot gnomon cast, on the south side, a 2.4-foot shadow.

Between 627 and 649 envoys to China accompanied the tribute bearers from Dva-ha-la and Dva-pa-tan (Dapitan?), receiving acknowledgments under the Chinese Emperor's great seal. Dva-ha-la also asked for good horses, and got them.

Then in 674 there was an ideal ruler, a woman named Sima, of whom a story is told similar to one remembered in Korea, and somewhat like the tales of China's Golden Age, that a foreign king (prince of Arabs) to test the reports he had heard sent a bag of gold to be left in the road. There it remained undisturbed till the heir apparent happened to step over it. The incensed queen was dissuaded by her ministers from killing him but, saying his fault lay in his feet, insisted on cutting these off, finally, however, compromising on amputating the toes. Not only was this an example to the whole nation but it so frightened the Arab king that he did not carry out his planned attack. This variation of the Queen of Sheba-Solomon anecdotes is common in Chinese history, and its extensive use was probably due to the same sort of local adaptation as later made an orientalized Dido story of land-measurement trickery spread so quickly after the coming of the Europeans. Groeneveldt suggests the Arab prince might have been one of the Arab chiefs in the Archipelago, which would by our identification nicely fit with Bornean conditions.

Between 766 and 779 three Ka-ling envoys visited China and in 813 four slaves (Groeneveldt thinks negroes), a.s.sorted colored parrots, "pinka-birds"--whatever these may have been, and other gifts were presented to their powerful neighbor. A t.i.tle of "Left Defender of the office of the Four Inner Gates" came to the amba.s.sador who, by cleverly seeking to relinquish this t.i.tle to his younger brother, secured imperial praise and the coveted honor for two members of his family instead of one.

In 827 and 835 were two emba.s.sies, and between 837 and 850 an envoy presented female musicians as the tribute gift. (Account summarized from Groeneveldt, pp. 12-15.)

"The great sea southwest of Hainan," says he, "* * * has in it Triple-joint currents (Shan-ho-lin). The waves break here violently, dividing into three currents: one flows south and is the sea which forms the highway to foreign lands; one flows north and is the sea of Canton (and Amoy) * * * one flows eastward and enters the boundless place, which is called the Great Eastern Ocean Sea.

"s.h.i.+ps in the southern trade, both going and coming, must run through the Triple-joint currents. If they have the wind, in a moment they are through it. But if on getting into the dangerous place there is no wind, the s.h.i.+p cannot get out and is wrecked in the three currents. *

* * It is said that, in the Great Eastern Ocean Sea there is a long bank of sand and rocks some myriads of li (705 yards or 2-5 mile) in length. It marks the gulf leading to Hades (Wei-lu). In olden times there was an ocean-going junk which was driven by a great westerly wind to within hearing distance of the roar of the waves falling into Wei-lu of the Great Eastern Ocean. No land was to be seen. Suddenly there arose a strong easterly wind and the junk escaped its doom. (Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, note 3, p. 185.)

Such superst.i.tion, like that of the Pillars of Hercules, in the Strait of Gibraltar, naturally restrained explorations so that the first voyages across the China sea came from Manila.

The earliest account of Filipino traders comes through a brief mention in a French ethnologist's notes on foreigners in China (Henry St. Denis, Ethnographie, II, 502, according to Rockhill) that in 982 merchants from Manila visited Canton for trade. They probably were not pioneers as it is related that they came with valuable merchandise. This was about the time (between 976 and 983) when the Canton trade was declared a state monopoly. Over two centuries a maritime customs service had existed in that port, reorganized in 971 because of the greatly increased foreign trade.

From 1174 to 1190 (Chau Ju-Kua's account, Hirth and Rockhill, p. 165) the Formosan Bisayan chiefs were in the habit of a.s.sembling parties of several hundreds to make sudden raids on villages of the neighboring Chinese coast. There murders innumerable and even cannibalism were charged against them, though perhaps there should be some discount upon these unfavorable statements as even today enemies are not always reliable authorities upon their adversaries.

They placed great value upon iron, even to the extent of attaching ropes, of over a hundred feet in length, to their spears so that these might be recovered after each throw.

Such was their fondness for all forms of iron that those surprised by them would throw away spoons or chopsticks of that metal so while the pursuers were stopping to pick these up they could gain a start. Once in the house the door had only to be closed and they would be distracted from the attack by sight of an iron knocker which they would wrench off and then immediately depart with it.

The soldiers decoyed them with mail-covered hors.e.m.e.n and in their mad struggle to strip off the armor they would meet their death without being sensible of their danger. Bamboo lashed into rafts conveyed them over the waters and when hard pressed facilitated their escape for these, folded up like screens, were easy to lift and swim off with.

A collector of customs (the Chau Ju-Kua before quoted) of Chinchew, the port in the Amoy district later made famous by Marco Polo, from personal investigation obtained data as to the Philippines which he published in a geography written between 1209 and 1214 (B. Laufer, Relations of Chinese to the Philippines, Was.h.i.+ngton, 1907, p. 24).

Under "Mai," an island north of Borneo, he is supposed to include Western Luzon, and the Island of Mindoro, which Blumentritt thinks (Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen, 65) had the name "Mait," or black, from the former negrito population. The opening description, now held to be of Manila, tells of about a thousand families who occupied both banks of a water-course. Some people wore only waist-cloths while others draped themselves in a sort of cotton sheet, getting presumably much the same effect as may be seen among the feminine bathers on the Tondo beach any Sunday morning.

Little bronze idols of unknown origin were to be found in the gra.s.sy region outside the village, for Mr. Rockhill is careful to translate "idols" instead of "Buddhas," holding that the word has the more general meaning often. Yet because the later idols of the country were of wood and clay one wonders where bronze idols would be made at that time if not in a Buddhist land. Manila was a peaceable community then, and peaceful too, for the fierce pirates of the south had not yet gotten into the habit of coming there, still less had settled, as they were to do two centuries later.

The traders' s.h.i.+ps anch.o.r.ed in front of the quarters of the chiefs, to whom they presented the white silk parasols which these dignitaries were accustomed to use. There the market was held, and the sh.o.r.e people at once went on board, mixing in friendly fas.h.i.+on with the newcomers. Nor was there fear of loss, for such then was the Manilans'

honesty that even when some one helped himself and took away goods without being seen he could be relied on in due season to faithfully account for them. The period was usually eight or nine months so that, though not travelling the greatest distance, those trading to Manila were among the latest in getting back to China.

The trade was without money, a barter of the country's yellow wax (a medium grade), cotton, pearls, tortoise sh.e.l.l, medicinal betel nuts, and native cloth, for imported porcelain, trade gold, iron censers, leads, colored gla.s.sbeads and iron needles. Names of other settlements in this region may be what we now call the Babuyanes islands, Polillo island, off the East coast, Lingayen in Pangasinan, Luzon perhaps used of East Luzon and (according to Luther M. Parker, a graduate student in the University of the Philippines, 1913-14) Lian in Batangas.

For the group called "the three islands," Calamianes, Palawan and Busuanga are the closest resemblances to the curious names of the Chinese narrative, though B. Laufer in his notes to Fay Cole's Chinese pottery in the Philippines (Field Museum Bulletin) suggests another for Calamianes.

Local customs were said not to differ particularly from the ways of Mai. The country, grand in its scenery, had many ridges and ranges of cliffs rose from the sh.o.r.e, steep as the walls of a house.