Some notes on the bibliography of the Philippines

by Thomas C. Middleton

The Tagal Arte (Sampaloc, 1745), along with a manual (also in Tagal) for the administration of the Sacraments, composed by the Franciscan missionary, Sebastián de Totanes, “is” (according to our bibliographer) “the best edition of the best grammar” written by missionaries of that order.

In Ilocano, another of the unnumbered dialects of Luzon, there is a good dictionary (Manila, 1849), by the Augustinian scholar, Andrés Carro (aided by others of his brotherhood)—the first work of its kind, reprinted only a few years ago, in 1888. Serviceable, too, for the study of the same dialect—Ilocano—as doubtless easy to obtain, is the Catecismo, by another member of that same order, Francisco López (Manila, 1877), whereof editions fairly without number have issued.

In Batanes, or Vatanes, a dialect used in the islets north of Luzon, mission-field of the Dominicans, hard to reach, nor easy at best to live in, is composed the Catechism of the Christian Doctrine (Manila, 1834), by a missionary of that order—the only work, perhaps, printed in that language, wherein Retana states he is about to edit a grammar and dictionary. In his Biblioteca (p. 51) he gives the Ave Maria in Batanes, Ibanag and Ilocano, in order to show (he says) the diversities between these idioms.

The Pampanga Arte (Manila, 1729), by the Augustinian, Diego Bergaño, an estimable aid to the would-be learner of that language, was reissued at Sampaloc in 1736. By the same author is a dictionary of Pampanga—the only work of its class, printed at Manila, first in 1732, and again in 1860.

In the Ibanag tongue, otherwise Ibanay or Cagayan, the dictionary by the Dominican linguist, José Bugarín, and companions (Manila, 1854), we have what Retana styles a masterpiece of philological craft, “the first and (in fact) only vocabulary of that dialect” whereof of all Philippine tongues “the orthography is the most difficult to manage.” In another place, however (p. 102), he has named another Ibanag dictionary (Manila, 1867), constructed from Dominican MSS., to which similarly (by error I suppose) he has awarded seniority of press. Prior to the above date—1854—in that vast region of Cagayan, where, by the way, is grown the choicest tobacco in the Philippines, the missionaries, for generation and generation of island-pupils had relied wholly on MS. copies of Padre Bugarín’s dictionary.

In Pangasinán, or Caboalan, dialect used in the province of the same name in Luzon, we have another linguistic treasure—the Arte of Mariano Pellicer, of the same brotherhood, reprinted at Manila, in 1862, from the edition of 1690, whereof in the course of time, as writers tell us, it came to pass that up to about the middle of the present century only one copy survived. Then re-cast by Pellicer, in 1840, it was re-published by him some twenty years later.

Of the Cuyona dialect I note two works of merit,—one (p. 113) an explanation of the Christian Doctrine (Manila, 1871), by the Recoleto missionary, Pedro Gibert de Santa Eulalia, edited by the Dominican Mariano Cuartero, first bishop of St. Isabel, or Elizabeth, of Jaro, in the island of Panay, one of the four suffragans of Manila, an industrious scholar, editor of many works in Indian dialects, whom the reader, however, is not to confound with another prelate of the same name, Recoleto bishop of Nueva Segovia, in Luzon, nephew of the former, who, in this one respect, was like his uncle—author of no book: while the other Cuyona treasure, whereof there are very few in that language, (“poquisimos libros,” says Retana, p. 230), seven titles in all comprising the bibliography of that tongue, is the Plan of Religion (Manila, 1886), by the same industrious and scholarly Gibert.

In the Gaddan idiom, wherein only two books have been printed, both very devotional in character, is a Catechism (Manila, 1833), and the Pathway to Heaven (ib., 1873), by Dominican missionaries in the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela, in Luzon.

In the Aeta language of the Negritos, or little black men, perhaps the primitive race of the Philippines—whose name I have encountered in many forms of spelling, as Ata, Ataa, Aeta, Agta, Aita, Ita, Itaa,[3] there are similarly, only two works known to Retana, whose bibliographical notices have been of so much value,—one a Report on the Philippine Islands (Paris, 1885), addressed to the French Minister of Public Instruction by J. Montano, a book of over two hundred and nine pages, illumined with numerous phototypes, and, what renders it of exceptional value, enriched with vocabularies, “the first,” Retana declares, in Aeta, Bilaan, Manobo (of the natives of Mindanao), Sámal and Tagacaolo dialects.

As companion volume to the above, though far smaller in bulk, is a little treatise (Dresden, 1893), of double authorship, the German A. B. Meyer giving therein a very interesting Aeta vocabulary, and his Dutch co-laborer, H. Kern, a comparative study of the same tongue, which he traces to Malay ancestry.