The following pages, embodying a survey (on a broad scale) of the chief characteristics of Philippine intellectual energy, in its various lines of art, science, letters, seem an objective worthy of the American scholar, who, to his own large group of aboriginal tongues at home, has now to add to his field of study a similarly far-reaching family of the many-toned dialects of Malaysia,—twenty-seven idioms at least in number,—according to Retana’s tabulation, whereof I give a list drawn from his latest bibliography of the Philippines,[1] where, enumerating the various works published in the several dialects in use in that archipelago, he has summarized them in the following table:
This bibliography, which we rightly may term wealthy in its two thousand six hundred and ninety-seven titles[2] of numbered pieces of literature, besides being based largely on the author’s own choice collection of Philippina, cites also fourteen other bibliographies of that archipelago.[3]
In his own list of Philippine languages, or branch-tongues, of this quarter of Malaysia, in all (as he gives them) thirty-seven in number, some are mentioned, that, except in a broad sense, will not easily be recognized as members of the distinctively Philippine family; such as Sanscrit, Chinese, Japanese, Javanese, Nahuatl of Central America, along with Kanaka or Ponapé,[4] Chamorro and Malgacho, or Malagasy, as we more familiarly style it, three dialects spoken in lands outside of the Philippine zone,—of Yap, or Guap, in the eastern Carolines, the Marianas, or Ladrones, and Madagascar respectively.
Wherefore, subtracting these nine foreign localized idiom-groups along with Malay (presumably ancestral tongue of the Philippines, as of other western Polynesian languages), though herein many scholars hold that Aeta, or Papuan, is mother, I have reduced the idioms peculiar (in large measure) to that archipelago itself to the number (given ahead)—twenty-seven.
On this question of race and idiom unity Zúñiga, whom I cite frequently in this sketch, says that the vocabularies of New Zealand, New Holland, New Guinea, and part of New Hebrides (gathered by Captain Cook) were all easily understood by him through his familiarity with Philippine dialects; that, moreover, from his knowledge of the racial and linguistic characteristics of nearly all South Sea islanders, especially of the peoples from Madagascar to Easter Island, including (he distinctly declares) the natives of the Friendly, or Society Isles, of the Sandwich and Marquesas groups, he was of opinion that aboriginal stock of all, in tongue and blood, including even the natives of Central America, was Aeta, or Papuan, otherwise styled (in the Philippines) Negrito.[5] As far back as the early part of the seventeenth century this same question of race and language identity of the Philippine people was treated by the Jesuit Chirino, of whom we shall say more further on; then later by another Jesuit scholar, at one time provincial superior of his society in the Philippines, Francisco Colín, in his Lavor evangelica, (Madrid, 1663); and by Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, a linguist of deserved eminence in the world of letters, formerly Jesuit. See his Catalogo (in six quarto vols., Madrid, 1800–1805), and you will learn very much about many strange things, among others, that the theory maintained by the English Wallace, the German Blumentritt, and later ethnologists, as to the identity of these Polynesians—Papuans and Malays—perhaps the only one now held by scholars—is venerably old, by two centuries and more. But really, in view of the apparently irreconcilable opinions of linguists on this topic, further discussion of it seems unprofitable.
As concerns the Philippines themselves, neither have their isles all been numbered, nor their sub-races and branch-idioms classified, except in what we may style a generic scheme.
Back now to our bibliographer. No study in mere humanities, it seems, could be more fascinating to your all-round scholar, and more fruitful especially to anthropologist, than with the guidance of Retana and other like gifted students of Philippina, to enlarge somewhat on this bibliographical theme, since in letters chiefly do men of upright mind find equipment for meditation of spirit, main source of all healthful, sober, intellectual recreation and work.
Our list of Philippina, as you will notice, although given merely in outline, embraces in its sweep across the literary horizon of that quarter of Malaysia many works of recognized merit in the several lines of intellectual energy—of history, archæology, ethnology, philology and natural philosophy; books, all of them, which, if perchance not masterpieces according to the higher standard of Caucasian scholarship, will yet be acknowledged of much interest, nay, of great value in the inspiration and development of scientific thought.
In this bibliographical skeleton, then, I shall point out those sources of information anent the Philippine Islands, wherein the scholar can best find a general description or history of them, the most trustworthy works on their very varied and multiform language, as well as other topics cognate with these. Hence these sub-sections into which my paper is split: (1) [Works of General Information]; (2) [Authorities on Philippine Dialects]; (3) [Some Literary Curios among Philippina]; (4) [Philippine Presses]; (5) [Introduction of Printing into the Philippines].