A History of the Philippines

by David P. Barrows

Conditions of Culture.—The culture of the various tribes, which is now quite the same throughout the archipelago, presented some differences. In the southern Bisayas, where the Spaniards first entered the archipelago, there seem to have been two kinds of natives: the hill dwellers, who lived in the interior of the islands in small numbers, who wore garments of tree bark and who sometimes built their houses in the trees; and the sea dwellers, who were very much like the present day Moro tribes south of Mindanao, who are known as the Sámal, and who built their villages over the sea or on the shore and lived much in boats. These were probably later arrivals than the forest people. From both of these elements the Bisaya Filipinos are descended, but while the coast people have been entirely absorbed, some of the hill-folk are still pagan and uncivilized, and must be very much as they were when the Spaniards first came.

The highest grade of culture was in the settlements where there was regular trade with Borneo, Siam, and China, and especially about Manila, where many Mohammedan Malays had colonies.

Languages of the Malayan Peoples.—With the exception of the Negrito, all the languages of the Philippines belong to one great family, which has been called the “Malayo-Polynesian.” All are believed to be derived from one very ancient mother-tongue. It is astonishing how widely this Malayo-Polynesian speech has spread. Farthest east in the Pacific there is the Polynesian, then in the groups of small islands, known as Micronesian; then Melanesian or Papuan; the Malayan throughout the East Indian archipelago, and to the north the languages of the Philippines. But this is not all; for far westward on the coast of Africa is the island of Madagascar, many of whose languages have no connection with African but belong to the Malayo-Polynesian family.[1]

The Tagálog Language.—It should be a matter of great interest to Filipinos that the great scientist, Baron William von Humboldt, considered the Tagálog to be the richest and most perfect of all the languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family, and perhaps the type of them all. “It possesses,” he said, “all the forms collectively of which particular ones are found singly in other dialects; and it has preserved them all with very trifling exceptions unbroken, and in entire harmony and symmetry.” The Spanish friars, on their arrival in the Philippines, devoted themselves at once to learning the native dialects and to the preparation of prayers and catechisms in these native tongues. They were very successful in their studies. Father Chirino tells us of one Jesuit who learned sufficient Tagálog in seventy days to preach and hear confession. In this way the Bisayan, the Tagálog, and the Ilocano were soon mastered.

In the light of the opinion of Von Humboldt, it is interesting to find these early Spaniards pronouncing the Tagálog the most difficult and the most admirable. “Of all of them,” says Padre Chirino, “the one which most pleased me and filled me with admiration was the Tagálog. Because, as I said to the first archbishop, and afterwards to other serious persons, both there and here, I found in it four qualities of the four best languages of the world: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Spanish; of the Hebrew, the mysteries and obscurities; of the Greek, the articles and the precision not only of the appellative but also of the proper nouns; of the Latin, the wealth and elegance; and of the Spanish, the good breeding, politeness, and courtesy.”[2]

An Early Connection with the Hindus.—The Malayan languages contain also a considerable proportion of words borrowed from the Sanskrit, and in this the Tagálog, Bisayan, and Ilocano are included. Whether these words were passed along from one Malayan group to another, or whether they were introduced by the actual presence and power of the Hindu in this archipelago, may be fair ground for debate; but the case for the latter position has been so well and brilliantly put by Dr. Pardo de Tavera that his conclusions are here given in his own words. “The words which Tagálog borrowed,” he says, “are those which signify intellectual acts, moral conceptions, emotions, superstitions, names of deities, of planets, of numerals of high number, of botany, of war and its results and consequences, and finally of titles and dignities, some animals, instruments of industry, and the names of money.”

From the evidence of these works, Dr. Pardo argues for a period in the early history of the Filipinos, not merely of commercial intercourse, like that of the Chinese, but of Hindu political and social domination. “I do not believe,” he says, “and I base my opinion on the same words that I have brought together in this vocabulary, that the Hindus were here simply as merchants, but that they dominated different parts of the archipelago, where to-day are spoken the most cultured languages,—the Tagálo, the Visayan, the Pampanga, and the Ilocano; and that the higher culture of these languages comes precisely from the influence of the Hindu race over the Filipino.”

The Hindus in the Philippines.—“It is impossible to believe that the Hindus, if they came only as merchants, however great their number, would have impressed themselves in such a way as to give to these islanders the number and the kind of words which they did give. These names of dignitaries, of caciques, of high functionaries of the court, of noble ladies, indicate that all of these high positions with names of Sanskrit origin were occupied at one time by men who spoke that language. The words of a similar origin for objects of war, fortresses, and battle-songs, for designating objects of religious belief, for superstitions, emotions, feelings, industrial and farming activities, show us clearly that the warfare, religion, literature, industry, and agriculture were at one time in the hands of the Hindus, and that this race was effectively dominant in the Philippines.”[3]

Systems of Writing among the Filipinos.—When the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines, the Filipinos were using systems of writing borrowed from Hindu or Javanese sources. This matter is so interesting that one can not do better than to quote in full Padre Chirino’s account, as he is the first of the Spanish writers to mention it and as his notice is quite complete.

“So given are these islanders to reading and writing that there is hardly a man, and much less a woman, that does not read and write in letters peculiar to the island of Manila, very different from those of China, Japan, and of India, as will be seen from the following alphabet.