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 (abaká) 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 class. Nor, to accept them,
is recourse needed to farfetched deductions like Zuñiga'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 shell,
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 passed 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 establishing this early date.
The last of the early three possible references to the Philippines,
classed 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 passed 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 passed 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 fashion. 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 assumption 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,
Djapa 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 shell, 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 latitude 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), assorted colored parrots,
"pinka-birds"--whatever these may have been, and other gifts were
presented to their powerful neighbor. A title of "Left Defender
of the office of the Four Inner Gates" came to the ambassador who,
by cleverly seeking to relinquish this title 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 embassies, 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.
"Ships 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 ship 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 superstition, 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 assembling 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 horsemen 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, Washington, 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 grassy
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' ships anchored 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 shore
people at once went on board, mixing in friendly fashion 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 shell, medicinal betel nuts,
and native cloth, for imported porcelain, trade gold, iron censers,
leads, colored glassbeads 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 shore, steep as the walls of a house.
Each tribe had about a thousand families (which seems to be only
another way of saying that the tribes were large rather than an
effort at statistics) and they lived in wattled huts in commanding
situations difficult of access. The sight of women bringing water
from the streams in jars gracefully and easily carried on the head,
two or three being borne one above another, still amazes and interests
us as it did the Chinese geographer's informant.
In more remote valleys lurked the negritoes, nesting in the trees
the author alleges. They were stunted in stature, with eyes round
and yellow, curly hair, and teeth exposed by their parted lips. In
groups of three or five they would ambuscade some unwary wayfarer and
many fell victims to their cunning and deadly arrows. But throwing
a porcelain bowl would make them forget their murderous purpose and
off they would go, leaping and shouting in joy.
The country folk evidently did not inspire in the traders the same
confidence these felt toward the Manilans. Their ships would anchor
in midstream and none went ashore till there had been sent one or
two hostages to be retained till the trading was over. Drum beating
announced their arrival, when the local traders raced for the ship
carrying, evidently as samples, cotton, yellow wax, and home made
cloth, and coconut heart mats, whatever this last may have meant. In
case of disagreement over prices the chiefs of the traders came
in person, when, after a mutually satisfactory settlement had been
reached, there would be presents given,--silk umbrellas, porcelain
and rattan baskets, probably the first two from the visitors and the
last from the people. Then the barter was concluded ashore. Three
or four days was the usual stop in each place when the ships sailed
to another anchorage, for each of the settlements was independent
of its neighbors. The Chinese goods were porcelain, black damask,
and other silks, beads of all colors leaden sinkers for nets, and tin.
Polillo, on the Pacific coast, was also, but less frequently,
visited, to obtain two prized varieties of coral. There local
customs and commercial usages were the same as on the other side of
the archipelago, but though the settlements were more populous the
coral was hard to get and so there was little trade. The coast, too,
was dangerous, with the sea full of "bare ribs of rock with jagged
tooth-like blasted trees, their points and edges sharper than swords
and lances." Ships tacked far out from shore in passing to avoid
these perils, and besides the people were "of cruel disposition and
given to robbery."
Northern Formosa, during this period, was not visited by Chinese for
there were no goods of special importance to be gotten there while the
people were also given to robbery, but Formosan goods,--yellow wax,
native gold, buffalo tails, and jerked leopard-meat, were brought to
the Philippines for sale.
For 1349, in an unpublished translation by Mr. Rockhill of "A
Description of the Barbarians of the Isles (Tao-i-chih-lio) by Wang
Ta-yuan is mentioned the "three archipelagoes," if that is the proper
way to distinguish between Chao-ju-kua's Sanhsu and the present
San-tao. Islands were for the Chinese merely places distant by a
sea route from each other rather than our "bodies of land completely
surrounded by water."
This author's region was to the east of a very curious range of
mountains if one may translate the name "taki-shan." It was divided
by a triple peak and there was range upon range of mountains which
suggests to Mr. Rockhill the Pacific coast of Luzon south of Cape
Engaño.
As now, the soil was poor and the crops sparse, while the heated
climate was variable.
The old question of a lost white tribe, attributed so often to
Mindoro, is raised by mention of "some males and females," being
"white." Perhaps the breeding principle that a second cross sometimes
reverts to the original type may be the explanation. Chinese mestizos
have seemed to me whiter here than European blends with Filipinas
where no Chinese strain was present. Their delicate beauty suggests
the Caucasians from whom the earliest Chinese may have taken wives
in the remote past before they came to the "eighteen provinces." The
first Spaniards comment also on exceedingly fair Filipinas and as
the Caucasian type is the European ideal of beauty it probably
resulted that such mixed marriages as occurred were with these
Chinese mestizas. The prejudice of new converts against pagans,
linked with the humiliation to which the Chinese residents in the
Philippines were subject during Spain's rule here, led to covering
up and ignoring all Chinese relations and is a very good reason why
even where known there is today reluctance to admit descent from the
oldest of civilized races. Yet before the Spaniards came both in the
Philippines and in the lands from which successive immigrations of
Filipinos have come, the Chinese traders ranked with the aristocracy
and Chinese wives were sought by royalty.
A trait by no means died out was a fondness for jewelry shown by
stowaways on board junks for Chinchew. When their money was all
expended on personal adornments they returned home, there to be
honored as travelled personages, the distinction of having visited
China raising them above even their own fathers and the older men.
The 1349 account of Mai, or Manila, credits the people with "customs
chaste and good." Both men and women wore their hair done up in a
knot and clothed themselves in blue cotton shirts. Since the earlier
notice, within the century and a quarter interval, Hindu influence
had become manifest for a sort of suttee is related. New widows with
shaven heads would lie fasting beside their husband's corpses for seven
days. Then if still alive they could eat but were never permitted to
remarry and many when the husband's body was placed on the funeral pyre
accompanied it into the flames. The region must have been populous for
on the burial of a chief of renown two or three thousand slaves would
be buried in his tomb. The imports show more luxuries; red taffetas,
ivory and trade silver figuring in the later list.
Sulu comes in for mention with fields losing their fertility in the
third year of cultivation. Sago, fish, shrimps and shell fish made up
the diet and the people, with cut hair, wore black turbans as may now
be seen in parts of Borneo, and dressed in sarongs. Boiling seawater
for salt, making rum and weaving were their occupations ashore, and
dyewoods of middling quality, beeswax, tortoise-shell and pearls,
surpassing in roundness and whiteness, were their exports.
Laufer (Relations of Chinese to the Philippines, p. 251) gives 1372
as the date of the first tribute embassy to China from the Philippine
peoples under their present name of "Luzon-men," then designating
principally Manilans (Ming Chronicles chap. 323, p. 110 according
to his reference). Luzon was then stated to be situated in the South
Sea very close to Chinchew, Fukien province.
The ruler of the great Middle Kingdom in return sent an official to
the king of Luzon with gifts of silk gauze embroidered in gold and
colors. The commentator adds a well founded caution against accepting
the word "first" as meaning anything other than that the chronicler
was unfamiliar with previous notices.
Laufer quotes from the Ming Chronicles of the Malayan tribe
F'ing-ka-shi-lau whom he concludes are the Pangasinanes, inhabitants of
the western and southern shores of Lingayen Bay, Luzon, but in earlier
days apparently extending further north. Early in the XV century they
had a small realm of their own, sending an embassy to China in 1406
and presenting the emperor as gifts "with excellent horses, silver
and other objects" and receiving in return paper money and silks. In
1408 the chief was accompanied by an imposing retinue of two headmen
from each village subject to his authority and these in turn each
accompanied by some of his retainers. This time the imperial gifts
were paper money for the sub-chiefs and for each hundred men six
pieces of an open-work variegated silk, for making coats, and linings.
Besides a 1410 embassy from Pangasinan there was another tribute
party from Luzon headed by one Ko-Ch'a-lao who brought products of
his country, among which gold was most prominent. This last party
came because in 1405 the Emperor Yung-lo had sent a high Chinese
officer to Luzon to govern that country. Here is definite political
identification with the Chinese empire. In 1407 it is probable this
moral force of respect for the superior culture of what was the Rome of
the Orient witnessed also a physical demonstration, for in that year
the eunuch Cheng-ho set sail, with his 62 large ships bearing 27,800
soldiers, on the expedition which explored as far as the Arabian Gulf
and required the nominal allegiance of the numerous countries visited
during repeated voyages extending over thirty years.
Ian C. Hannah states in his "Eastern Asia: A History" that outside
the North of Toh Chow, in Shantung province, by a little mosque,
is yet marked the burial place of a former sultan of Sulu who died
on a visit to the Emperor Yung-lo in 1417.
In the same year, Sulu's eastern, western and village rajahs with
their wives, children and headmen all came to the Chinese court with
tribute, and another tribute mission from Sulu arrived in 1420.
About the middle of the XV century, Doctors Hose and McDougall
in their history of Borneo (Pagan Tribes of Borneo, London, 1912,
chap. 1) assert, a Bisayan was king of Brunei. This Alakber Tala,
later to be called Sultan Mohammed, introduced Arabic doctrines
into his kingdom and the use of Arabic writing made his reign the
beginning of Brunei's local recorded history. His great grandnephew,
Makoda Ragan, had Arab and Chinese as well as Bisayan blood, a fact
remembered to this day by having representatives of these three races
officiating at the king's coronation, and the fourth official on these
occasions is dressed in ancient Bisayan costume. Makoda Ragah, also
called Sultan Bulkiah, is spoken of as the most heroic character in
Bornean history and conquered the Sulu islands, and sent expeditions
to Manila, the second time seizing the place. His wife, the first
queen of the Philippines of whom we know, was a Javan princess. This
great king was accidentally killed by his wife's bodkin. It was this
monarch or his son who died in 1575 that so impressed the chronicler
of Magellan's expedition.
Corroboration for this considerable historic association comes in
the Chinese jars found in the oldest burial caves as well as prized
among the more remote hill tribes as ancestral possessions, handed
down from so remote an antiquity that their origin has long been
forgotten and they are now venerated as objects that came from heaven
(Fay Cole: Chinese Pottery in the Philippines). The four-toed dragon
claw designs place them among the Chinese manufacture of not later
than the last of the XIV century.
Legend is not lacking, either, for a tradition of Tapul (Saleeby: The
Origin of the Malayan Filipinos, p. 1) relates that a Chinese rajah who
anchored his boat at the south of their island had his daughter stolen
in the night by the "dewas." She was hidden in a bamboo stalk and there
found by the solitary male who had hatched out of a roc's egg. Their
daughter, the earliest recorded Chinese mestiza, was, according to
Doctor Saleeby again, the grandmother of the Chiefs of Sulu.
The very name Luzon is not the time-honored rice mortar, La-sung,
but Luzong of which John Crawfurd (History of the Indian Archipelago,
vol. 1, p. 324) says: "The term, I have no doubt, is Chinese, for the
Chinese, who destroy the sound of all other native names of countries,
or use barbarisms of their own, apply the word Lusong familiarly and
correctly." They even associate it with their famous dynasty of that
name and have a joke of their own at the expense of the Spaniards
(B. Laufer: The Chinese in the Philippines).
Naming in pairs is common enough by Chinese to make it seem more
than a mere coincidence that these islands are called "Liu sung,"
while their neighbors to the north were originally "Liu Kiu."
(Translation, by Hon. W. W. Rockhill, of a Chinese book of 1349,
by Wang Ta-yuan, Description of the Barbarians of the Isles
(Tao-i-chih-lio).)
San-tao.
It is to the east of Ta-ki-shan. (1). It is divided by a triple peak,
and there are range upon range of mountains. The people live along
the roadsides. The soil is poor and the crops sparse. The climate
is of varying degrees of heat. Among the males and females some
are white. The men knot their hair on the tops of their heads; the
women do it up in a chignon behind. They wear a single garment. The
men frequently get on board junks and come to Ch'uanchou (in
Fu-kien). When the brokers there have got all the money out of
their bags for ornaments for their persons, they go home, where
their countrymen show them great honor at which even fathers and old
men may not grumble, for it is a custom to show honor to those who
come from China. The people boil seawater to make salt, and ferment
sugar-cane juice to make liquor. They have a ruler (or chief). The
natural products are beeswax, cotton, and cotton stuffs. In trading
with them use is made of copper beads, blue and white porcelain cups,
small figured chintzes, pieces of iron and the like. Secondary to them
there is T'a-p'ei, Hai-tan, Pa-numg-ki, Pu-li-lao, Tung-liu-li. They
are only noted here as they have no very remarkable products.
1) The San hsü of Chao Ju-kua were Kia-ma-yen (Calamian), Pa-lao-yu
(Palawan?), and Pa-ki-nung (Busuanga?). The San-tao of our author
seems to be a more restricted area, presumably the coast south of
Cape Engano, which may be his Ta-ki shan. The San hsü of Chao were
dependencies of Ma-i which probably included all of the northern and
western portions of Luzon, if not all the island.
2) Chao Ju-kua states that in San hsü were "many lofty ridges and
ranges of cliffs which rise steep as the walls of a house."
3) T'a-pei defies identification. Hai-tan is found already
in Chao's book, it is the Aeta, the Negrito aborigines of the
Philippines. Pa-nung-ki must be an error for Pa-ki-nung; Pu-li-lao
is Chao's P'u-li-lu (Polillo island) and Tung Liu-li is also in all
likelihood an error for Tung Liu-hsin and may mean "Eastern Luzon." See
Hirth and Rockhill, op. sup. cit., 160, where these names are wrongly
divided; we should read Li Kin and Tung Liu-hsin.
In reference to what our author says of white colored natives in
the Philippines, I have been assured that such is the fact; I,
unfortunately, cannot now recall on which island they have been
found. (Mindoro, probably albinos.--A. C.)
Ma-i.
The island is flat and broad. It is watered by a double branched
stream. The soil is rich. The climate is rather hot. In their customs
they are chaste and good. Both men and women do up their hair in a
knot behind. They wear a blue cotton shirt. When any woman mourns her
husband, she shaves her head and fasts for seven days, lying beside her
husband. Most of them nearly die, but if, after seven days, they are
not dead, their relatives urge them to eat. Should they get quite well
they may not remarry during their whole lives. There are some even who,
to make manifest their wifely devotion, when the body of their dead
husband has been consumed, get into the funeral pyre and die. At the
burial of a chief of renown they put to death two or three thousand
slaves to bury with him. The people boil sea-water to make salt,
and ferment treacle to make spirits. The native products are cotton,
beeswax, tortoise-shell, betelnuts and chintzes. The goods used
in trading are caldrons, pieces of iron, colored cotton stuffs, red
taffetas, ivory, sycee shoes and the like. The natives and the traders
having agreed on prices, they let the former carry off the goods and
later on they bring the amount of native products agreed upon. The
traders trust them, for they never fail to keep their bargains.
Cf. Chu-fan-chih Hirth and Rockhill, op. sup. cit., 159-162. It refers
to the custom of the people building their dwellings along the banks of
streams and not in villages. It refers also at length to the honesty
of the natives in their dealings with the Chinese traders. The custom
of suttee was evidently introduced into the islands subsequent to Chao
Ju-kua's time (1225), brought there of course, from India or Java,
otherwise the earlier writer would probably have noted it.
Su-lu.
This place has the Shih-i island as a defense. The fields of the
island of three years cultivation are lean; they can grow millet
and wheat. The people eat shahu (sago), fish, shrimps, and shell
fish. The climate is half hot. The customs are simple. Men and women
cut their hair, wear a black turban, and a piece of chintze with a
minute pattern tied around them. They boil sea-water to make salt,
and ferment the juice of the sugar-cane to make spirits. They earn
a living by weaving chu pu. They have a ruler. The native products
include laka-wood of middling quality, beeswax, tortoise-shell,
and pearls. These Su-lu pearls are whiter and rounder than those
got at Sha-li-pa-tan (Jurfattan of the Arabs, on Malabar coast),
Tisan-kiang (gulf of Manár), and other places. Their price is very
high. The Chinese use them for head ornaments. When they are off-color
they are classed as "unassorted." There are some over an inch in
diameter. The large pearls from this country fetch up to seven or
eight hundred ting. All below this are little pearls. Pearls worth
ten thousand taels and upwards, or worth from three or four hundred
to a thousand taels, come from the countries of the western Ocean and
from Ti-san-kiang (near Ceylon); there are none here (in Su-lu). The
goods used in trading here are dark gold, trade silver Pa tu-la
cotton cloth, blue beads Chu (choufu) china-ware, pieces of iron,
and such like things. Hsi-yang chao-kung tien-lu, 1.20 (Su-lu) says,
"this country is in the Eastern Sea. Its trade centre is the island of
Shih-ch'i. In 1417 its eastern raja Pa-tu-ko pa-ta-la, its western raja
Pa-tu-ko pa-su-li, and its village raja Pa-tu-ko pa-la-pu came with
their wives, children, and headmen to court with tribute. Again in 1420
there came a tribute mission from Su-lu. See Rouffaer, op. sup. cit.,
IV., 391. He gives us the equivalents of these names, Paduka Bohol,
Paduka Suli, and Paduka Prabu. Duarte Barbosa, 203, says of the Sulu
(Solor) islands that "all around this island the Moros gather much
seed pearl and fine pearls of perfect color and not round."
SPANISH UNRELIABILITY; EARLY CHINESE RULE OVER PHILIPPINES; AND REASON
FOR INDOLENCE IN MINDANAO
Mr. Salmon's "Modern History," London, 1744, Vol. I, pp. 92-93.
The Portuguese were no sooner in possession of Malacca, but they
discovered the Moluccas or Spice islands; at which time Magallanes
returning home and not being rewarded according to his expectations,
as has been hinted above, offered his service to the Emperor Charles
the Fifth, proposing to discover a passage to these very Spice islands
by sailing westward, which he apprehended would bring them within the
Emperor's share, according to the agreement above mentioned, that all
countries which should be discovered westward should belong to Spain,
as all the discoveries eastward were to belong to Portugal.
The Spaniards who lived to return home again, gave a very extravagant
account of the inhabitants which has since appeared to have little
truth in it. They afterwards sailed into the 50th degree of South
latitude, where they pretended to meet with a monstrous race of
giants, which have never been heard of since; and, among other
improbable stories, tell us that their way of letting blood there
was by chopping a great gash in their arms and legs with a hatchet,
instead of using a lancet; and the way of vomiting their patients
was by thrusting an arrow a foot and a half long down their throats.
So little credit is to be given to some discoverers, especially where
they happen to be people of no judgment, and who have little regard
for truth, as it happened in this case where the commander, Magellan,
and most of the officers died in the voyage, and very few besides
the common sailors returned to give an account of the expedition.
Magellan was killed in a skirmish with the natives; having a little
before his death received intelligence that the Molucca islands,
which he came out in search of, were not far distant; and his ships,
afterwards pursuing the voyage, arrived at Tidore, one of the Moluccas,
on the 8th day of November, 1521. In these islands they were kindly
received by the respective Princes and suffered to build a fort and
erect a factory at Tidore; they also left one of their ships which
was leaky there to be refitted, which the Portuguese afterwards took
as a prize and ruined their factory.
These islands were probably first peopled from the continent of China,
being formerly under the Emperor of China's government; who deserted
them, it seems, on account of their being too remote from the rest of
his dominion; but their religious rights, as well as several other
customs they retained when the Spanish came thither, show that the
people were of Chinese extraction.
The Mindanayans are said to be an ingenious, witty people and active
enough when they have a mind to it; but for the most part very lazy
and thievish, and will not work unless compelled to it by hunger; but
our author attributes their want of industry chiefly to the tyranny
of the government, which will not suffer them to enjoy the wealth
they acquire, and therefore they never endeavor to lay up anything.