how the kalantiaw hoax passed as reality for a while
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historians. It is only in recent years that history's frontiers have been
explored by both historians and archaeologists. By means of intensive
researchers in ancient
Legends and Hoaxes about the Malay Settlers. The legends surrounding the
settling of the Philippines by Malay migrants are notably celebrated in the
According to one legend, at around 1250 A.D., ten datus and their families left
the kingdom of Borneo and the cruel reign of sultan Makatunaw to seek their
freedom and new homes across the seas. In Sinugbahan, Panay, they negotiated
the sale of Panay's lowlands from the Negrito dwellers, led by their Ati king
Marikudo and his wife Maniwantiwan. The purchase price consisted of one gold
saduk (native hat) for Marikudo and a long gold necklace for Maniwantiwan. The
sale was sealed by a pact of friendship between the Atis and the Bornean Malays
and a merry party when the Atis performed their native songs and dances. After
the party, Marikudo and the Atis went to the hills where their descendants
still remain, and the Malay datus settled the lowlands. One of Aklan, Panay's
fascinating festivals to this day is the ati-atihan, a colorful mardi gras
celebrating the legendary purchase of Panay's lowlands. It is held in Kalibo
annually during the feast day of Santo Niño in January. The riotous
participants, with bodies painted in black and wearing bizarre masks, sing and
dance in the streets, re-enacting the ancient legend of the welcome held by the
Atis for the Malay colonizers.
The Maragtas goes on to describe the formation of a confederation of barangays
("Madya-as") led by one Datu Sumakwel, who passed on a code of laws for the
community. The fictitious story also alleges the expansion of the Malay datus
to other parts of the Visayas and Luzon. Although previously accepted by some
historians, including the present authors, it has become obvious that the
Maragtas is only the imaginary creation of Pedro A. Monteclaro, a Visayan
public official and poet, in Iloilo in 1907. He based it on folk customs and
legends, largely transmitted by oral tradition.
The story of Kalantiaw is more alarming because he was never a part of
Philippine history or legend; Kalantiaw was an utter hoax.
The Incredible Code of Kalantiaw
Throughout the latter half of the 20th century Filipino students were taught
about the vicious and bizarre laws that were said to have been enacted by one
Datu Kalantiaw in the year 1433 on the island of Panay. Many of his
commandments contradicted one an other and his punishments were extremely
brutal, usually having no relation to the severity of the crime committed.
Offences to the law ranged from as light as singing at night to as grave as
murder. Those convicted supposedly were made slaves, beaten, lashed, stoned,
had fingers cut off, were exposed to ants, drowned, burned, boiled, chopped to
pieces or fed to crocodiles.
So, why should we not believe this story that has been taught as history for so
many years in Filipino schools? There are three good reasons.
The first reason is the lack of historical evidence. There are simply no
written or pictorial documents from that time in Philippine history. There are
no documents from other countries that mention the great Kalantiaw either.
There is also no evidence that Philippine culture ever spawned such a barbaric
set of laws. The early Spanish accounts tell us that Filipino custom at that
time allowed even the most serious lawbreakers to pay a fine or be placed into
servitude for a time in cases of debt. As the missionary Francisco Colín wrote
in 1663:
In the punishment of crimes of violence the social rank of the slayer and slain
made a great deal of difference. If the slain was a chief, all his kinsfolk
took the warpath against the slayer and his kinfolk, and this state of war
continued until arbiters were able to determine the amount of gold which had to
be paid for the killing… The death penalty was not imposed by public
authority save in cases where both the slayer and slain were commoners, and the
slayer could not pay the blood price. K1
Arbitration is still the custom of those Philippine cultures that were never
conquered by the Spaniards.
The second reason is the lack of evidence for a Kalantiaw legend. Many ardent
admirers of the Datu, who disdain all historical evidence to the contrary,
claim that he has long been a part of Visayan culture and heritage. This is
simply not true. The Spaniards never recorded any Filipino legend about
Kalantiaw. If they were aware of such a legend they had no reason to suppress
it because those Spaniards who were sympathetic to the Filipinos could have
presented the mere existence of the Code as proof that their ancestors were
civilized, just as many Filipinos do today, while detractors could have pointed
to the maniacal Datu himself as proof of their savagery.
It is certain that there were no legends of Kalantiaw before the 20th century.
The Aklanon historian Digno Alba was a young man at the start of that century.
He looked for Kalantiaw in local folklore in the 1950s but did not find him. On
May 5, 1967 the historian William H. Scott wrote to Alba and asked him:
When you were a child, Don Digno, did not the old folks of Aklan have stories
about Kalantiaw even before the discovery of the Pavón documents in 1913? Were
there no popular legends or folklore that the elders told their grandchildren?
To which Alba replied in a letter from Kalibo, Aklan dated May 15, 1967:
I had tried to get stories or legends from the present generations of Aklanons
living in Batan… but not one old man can tell me now. K2
The third and most important reason to reject the Kalantiaw myth is its source.
If Kalantiaw was not a historical figure or a legendary character, where did he
come from? Many writers on this subject didn't bother to mention where they
obtained their information. Some, like Digno Alba, simply created "facts" from
thin air. The ultimate origin of Kalantiaw was traced by William Scott back to
a single person who definitely did not live in the 1400s. He was José E. Marco
of Pontevedra, Negros Occidental and in 1913 he claimed to have discovered the
Pavón documents that were mentioned in Scott's letter to Digno Alba. These
documents, which contain the Code of Kalantiaw, were in fact Marco's own
creation. Kalantiaw eventually became the most successful of many hoaxes in
Marco's career of almost 50 years as a forger and fraud.
The Origin of Kalantiaw and the Pavón Manuscripts
Kalantiaw's name first appeared in print in July of 1913 in an article entitled
Civilización prehispana published in Renacimiento Filipino. K3 The article
mentioned 16 laws enacted by King Kalantiaw in 1433 and a fort that he built at
Gagalangin, Negros which was destroyed by an earthquake in the year A.D. 435
(not 1435). The article was written by Manuel Artigas who, only a year before,
had provided the footnotes to a poorly written essay by José Marco, Reseña
historica de la Isla de Negros. K4.
More details about Kalantiaw emerged a year later, in 1914, when José Marco
donated five manuscripts to the Philippine Library & Museum. Among the
documents was Las antiguas leyendes de la Isla de Negros, a two volume leather
bound work which was supposedly written by a Friar José María Pavón in 1838
and 1839. K5 The Code of Kalantiaw, in chapter 9 of part 1, was one of six
translated documents that were dated before the arrival of the Spaniards in the
Philippines. The original Code was purportedly discovered in the possession of
a Panay datu in 1614. At the time of Pavón's writing in 1839 it was supposedly
owned by a Don Marcelio Orfila of Zaragoza. In 1966 the Philippine government
asked the government of Spain for the return of the original Code of Kalantiaw
by the descendants of Marcelio Orfila but the Police Commissioner there could
not find any record of that family in the city of Zaragoza.
For several decades José Marco didn't explain, at least in writing, where he
got Friar Pavón's manuscripts but it seems that he had a ready explanation to
tell privately. The anthropologist and historian Henry Otley Beyer related this
story to his colleague, Mauro Garcia, in the early 1950s. As the story goes,
Pavón was the priest in the town of Himamaylan, Negros in the 1840s. When that
town was looted during the revolution in 1899, Marco's father was among some
looters who had stolen what they thought was a chest of coins or jewellery but
when it was accidentally dropped in the river it became so heavy that they
realized that it was full of papers which were apparently the Pavón
manuscripts.
However if this story was true, José Marco would have had to explain why he
didn't use this wealth of information or even mention these documents when he
wrote his Reseña Historica in 1912. Perhaps Marco saw the flaw in his story
so, when he explained the origin of the manuscripts to the Philippine Studies
Program at the University of Chicago in 1954, he said that he had got them from
an old cook who once worked at the convent in Himamaylan where Pavón had
lived. It was this old cook, he said, who had stolen the manuscripts during the
looting and then, evidently, sold them to Marco in 1913.
Mistakes in the Pavón Manuscript
Aside from the doubtful origin of the Code of Kalantiaw and Pavón's Leyendes
which contains it, these documents themselves are both highly suspicious. The
title of the Code is The 17 theses, or laws of the Regulos [Datus] in use in
150 since 1433 (sic) but there are actually 18 laws listed, which cover
approximately forty different offences, and not 16 laws as reported by Artigas
in 1913. And of course, the dates in the title make no sense. In the 1800s it
was still common to abbreviate dates by omitting the first one or two digits of
a year but never the final digits. Therefore the number 150 was not a
contraction of the year 1500. It could only mean 1150 which is just as
nonsensical as 150. The second chapter in part two of Leyendes tells about the
building of Kalantiaw's fortress in 433. Although this number is a correct
abbreviation of 1433, the same year in which Kalantiaw allegedly wrote his
laws, the document which shows that date was supposedly written in the year
1137! And in spite of the fact that ancient Filipinos had no clocks or a
measure of time equal to one hour, Kalantiaw's third law condemns a man to swim
for three hours if he cannot afford to care for his wives while his fifth law
metes out the punishment of a one hour lashing.
"Exact" translation of a 1489 document from the Pavón manuscripts of 1838-1839
Improbable dates are typical of all the documents that José Marco claimed to
have discovered. The presumed author of Leyendes, José María Pavón,
translated the Code of Kalantiaw and five other pre-Hispanic documents, but he
did not explain how he had calculated their dates. He himself even wrote that
the ancient Visayans did not keep track of the years for any extended length of
time, yet his "exact" translation of a document that was supposedly written in
1489, decades before western culture made contact with the Philippines,
mentioned the "first Friday of the year" and years with "three numbers alike,
as for instance 1777". It also mentioned coins of King Charles V of Spain who
was not even born until the year 1500.
And the anachronisms are not limited to the pre-Hispanic documents. Pavón was
just as confused about his own era. Upon completing his masterwork, Pavón
dedicated Leyendes to the King of Spain on August 1, 1839. Spain had no king at
that time; the 8 year old child Queen Isabella II had held the throne since
1833 under the regency of her mother, Maria Christina. There was no king again
until 1874.
When Pavón described an ancient Visayan calendar in 1838-39 he happened to
write that November was called "a bad month, for it brought air laden with
putrefied microbes of evil fevers". The word microbe was not invented until
1878 and Louis Pasteur only developed his theory that infectious germs could be
transmitted through the air in the 1850s.
Pavón included the pre-Hispanic Visayan alphabet that Fr. Francisco Deza had
supposedly recorded in 1543 but he was not born until in 1620. Another document
was signed by Deza on March 23, 14, which was either six years before his birth
or 94 years after, depending on which century was intended for the year ??14.
That same document was stamped, "Parish of Ilog of Occidental Negros" with a
note, "R.S. in the province and town above named on the twenty first of the
month of July in the year 17…" There was no province of Negros Occidental in
those centuries or in Pavón's time. The island of Negros was not divided until
1890.
The examples of ancient Visayan writing in Leyendes looked very similar to
others that were allegedly discovered by José Marco and they contained the
same mistakes. Even though the ancient Filipino letters were used in these
documents, the words were not written in the syllabic method of the Philippines
but were spelled phonetically in the Spanish style. That is to say, it seemed
that each Spanish letter was merely substituted by an ancient Filipino letter.
This is wrong because in all other forms of ancient Filipino and Malaysian
writing, each letter represented a complete syllable whereas Spanish letters
(our modern letters) represent only basic sounds. Also, there were no marks
above or below the letters to indicate vowels other than "A" and there was no
character for the "NGa" syllable. It was substituted by a combination of the
letters "N" and "G" with a large Spanish tilde (~) placed above!
Pavón's own writing was also curious. The title pages of Leyendes were
obviously hand drawn but made to look as though they were printed text. Various
type styles were mixed and the uppercase "I"s were even dotted. (As in the
example shown above.) The spelling throughout the two volumes of Leyendes was
also erratic. The spelling in volume 1, which was written in 1838, was similar
to spelling of the 1500s. For the second volume in 1839, Pavón wrote that he
had adopted the "many changes in spelling" contained in the latest dictionary
of the Spanish Royal Academy and indeed the style of volume 2 was proper for
that time, though not consistent with that dictionary. However Pavón did not
explain how he was able to employ these new spellings in a document he wrote
back in 1837 when he did not yet know about them in 1838. That document was
Brujerías y los Cuentos de Fantasmas and it was also "discovered" by José
Marco.
Who was José María Pavón?
Friar José María Pavón y Araguro acknowledged many sources of information
for his books: untraceable informants, unknown documents and authors who were
were already deceased or not even born yet or who, due to other circumstances,
could not have written the documents that were ascribed to them. Thus, it is no
small coincidence that Pavón's own life story, as described in his
manuscripts, was equally dubious.
Pavón claimed that he arrived in the Philippines in 1810 but there are no
records to support this. He also wrote that he had lived in the convent of his
parish of Himamaylan since at least July 17, 1830 but according to the Libro de
Cosas notables of Himamaylan, he actually took charge of that parish 12 years
later on September 7, 1842. He wrote that he completed Las Antiguas Leyendes in
Himamaylan in 1839 which was the same year the Guía de Forasteros listed him
as a Professor of Syntax and Rhetoric at the seminary in Cebu. This is the
earliest known record of the real José María Pavón.
The Guía de Foresteros or "Foreigner's Guide" contained a directory of various
government officials and it was released annually during the Spanish era. It
always listed Pavón with a "D." (for "Don") before his name, which meant that
he was a secular priest. But Pavón, the author, often signed his name as "Fray
José María Pavón", which implied that he was a friar in a religious order.
He even mentioned taking a trip to Boreno with some "companions of the habit".
Pavón claimed that he was a schoolboy in 1788 in Seville, Spain. One of his
supposed classmates at that time was Fray Jorge G. de Setién who was also
mentioned in José Marco's Reseña histórica as the author of a travel book
about the Philippines in 1779. If we suppose that Setién was a very precocious
infant in 1779, he and Pavón were no younger that 9 years of age in 1788. This
would have made Pavón at least 87 years old in 1866 when he was known to be
the parish priest of Cebu.
It is obvious that the real José María Pavón did not write the Pavón
manuscripts. It is more likely that his name was simply plucked from the
records of history to be used in a very ambitious but clumsy hoax.
Embellishments to the Myth
The Kalantiaw hoax was created by José Marco but it soon took on a life of its
own. Frauds and scholars alike began to build a history on the foundation of
his artificial legend. Marco and Kalantiaw instantly attained a veneer of
legitimacy when Dr. James A. Robertson acquired the new "discoveries" for the
Philippine Library and Museum in 1914. On July 20, 1915, Robertson submitted a
paper about the Kalantiaw Code to the Panama-Pacific Historical Congress in
California and then published an English translation of the Code in 1917.
In that same year a Spanish version of the Code was published and discussed by
Josué Soncuya in six chapters of his Historia Prehispana. K6 Soncuya, a native
of Banga, Aklan, bestowed upon the great lawmaker the title "Rajah Kalantiaw"
and he concluded that the Code was written for Aklan, Panay and not Negros
because he had spotted two Aklanon words in the text. He overlooked the fact
that the title of the book which told the tales of Kalantiaw was The Ancient
Legends of the Island of Negros and that it was supposedly written on that
island by José Pavón whose manuscripts were allegedly discovered there by
José Marco, a native of Negros, and according to those manuscripts, Kalantiaw
built his fortress on the island of Negros.
Nevertheless, the Kalantiaw legend was successfully transplanted into the soil
of Panay. Perhaps his devotees thought that the better fertilized land of the
Maragtas legends would provide him a little more credibility. In 1949 Gregorio
Zaide included the Kalantiaw Code in his Philippine Political and Cultural
History with the words "Aklan, Panay" attached to the title. And even though
Digno Alba could find no evidence for Kalantiaw as a legend, he declared in his
book Paging Datu Kalantiaw (1956) that the Datu had set up his government in
Batan and made it the capital of the sakup of Aklan. K7 On December 8, 1956 a
historical marker was erected in Batan in honour of Kalantiaw. In the following
year, 1957, a former school building in the town was converted into the
Kalantiaw Shrine by the Philippine Historical and Cultural Society and the Code
of Kalantiaw was later inscribed there in brass. The museum even boasts an
"original manuscript" of the Code.
In 1966 Sol H. Gwekoh released new details in the Sunday Times about the life
of Datu Bendahara Kalantiaw, son of Rajah Behendra Gulah. He was born in 1410
and became the third Muslim ruler in Panay at the age of 16. Kalantiaw is
thought by many to belong to a long genealogy of Muslim rulers but it is
clearly evident in his own Code that he was not even a Muslim. He was an
animist. His Code punished offences against anitos, diwatas, venerated trees
and animals, and clay idols. Aside from this, it is slightly ironic that Gwekoh
gave the exalted Datu the name "Bendahara" because it is actually an old
Visayan word which means "prime minister" or second in power to the top datu.
It has a similar meaning in modern Malay.
Other unidentified writers are often quoted throughout the Internet for many
contradicting stories about Kalantiaw. (See: Postscript.) Some maintain that he
was not only the third ruler of Panay, but that he was also the third in a
dynasty of rulers named Kalantiaw. His father was not Rajah Gulah but King
Kalantiaw I who captured the town of Batan in 1399 with Chinese adventurers.
Incredible though it may seem, the elder Kalantiaw I gave his name to both his
sons, Kalantiaw II and Kalantiaw III. Kalantiaw II was not the father of the
more famous Kalantiaw III but his brother! Even harder to believe is that there
is an exact date for when Kalantiaw III supposedly issued his famous
commandments - December 8, 1433. Many more stories abound about the life, the
loves, the battles, the duels and the death of Kalantiaw. The title of his Code
simply called him Kalantiaw, the 3rd "regulo" or "petty king".
Kalantiaw was honoured by the Philippine Navy in December 1967 when it acquired
the World War II destroyer escort USS Booth from the United States and
recommissioned it the RPS Datu Kalantiaw. It was lost during typhoon Clara on
September 20, 1981.
DE-170 USS Booth was renamed RPS Datu Kalantiaw in 1967.
In 1970 the popular historian Gregorio Zaide speculated in Great Filipinos in
History that Kalantiaw's real name was Lakan Tiaw or "Chief of Brief Speech".
Lakan is a common prefix to Tagalog names which once meant "paramount ruler".
Incredibly Zaide even reproduced a direct quote from the noble king, "The law
is above all men". However the most shocking aspect of Zaide's claims was that
he wrote them while knowing full well that the Kalantiaw legend was proved
decisively to be a hoax two years earlier.
The History of Kalantiaw Refuted
José Marco continued to produce forgeries almost until his death in 1963 but
with ever diminishing success. By the 1950s genuine scholars could no longer
tak The Code of Kalantiaw, a code of laws said to have been promulgated by Datu
Kalantiaw of Aklan in 1433, was also previously accepted by historians and
lawyers. But it has been proven to be a fraud. The Code of Kalantiaw was
contained in a set of documents sold by Jose E. Marco, a collector and author
from Negros Occidental, to Dr. James E. Robertson, Director of the Philippine
Library and Museum, in 1914. Robertson then published an English translation of
the penal code, and Filipino scholars came to accept the code as a deliberate
hoax.
Renowl
wikang Filipino
CONTENTS
Legends of Maragtas
Pedro Monteclaro
Legend Becomes History
Confederation of Madyaas
Code of Maragtas
Verdict on Maragtas
Result of Discoveries
Postscript
Bibliography
RELATED ARTICLES
Monteclaro's Foreword to
the Readers of Maragtas
The Kalantiaw Hoax
HOME
The Maragtas Legend
How do historians know about events that occurred in the Philippines before the
time of the Spaniards? How do they know the names of the people who lived then
and the things they did if there are almost no authentic written documents from
that era?
Much of what we know about the prehispanic era came to us through legends.
These are stories that were not written but were spoken by each generation to
its following generation. Many legends are usually nothing more than stories
about the creation of the world, the first man and woman and such. It is easy
to see that these are not meant to be regarded as fact. There are some legends
that may have a been based on actual events but they are not reliable records
of the past because legends can change with each telling. Often a teller's
memory can be weak or mistaken or the teller may even add or remove parts of
the story just to spice it up.
This article is about one legend called Maragtas but not the Maragtas that was
once taught to Filipino school children. This article is about a modern myth
that surrounds a book entitled Maragtas. And, just like the legends of old,
this one has been “spiced up” too. In this case, however, the legends have
become confused with history. And, as we shall see, when history and legend are
mixed, the stories often sound better but the truth always suffers.
The Legends of Maragtas
The stories known as the Maragtas are legends that may have been based on
actual events in the remote past. They are about the ten datus or chiefs who
escaped the tyranny of Datu Makatunaw of Borneo and emigrated to the island of
Panay. There they bought the lowland plains of the island from Marikudo, the
leader of the indigenous Aytas. According to the legend, these ten chiefs and
their families are the very ancestors of the entire Visayan population. This is
the legend that has been celebrated yearly in the Ati-atihan festival since the
late 1950’s when it became a part of the annual feast of the Santo Niño in
Kalibo, Aklan.
Pedro Monteclaro's Maragtas
Even though these legends have been known for generations, the word maragtas
itself was unknown until it was used as the title of a book by Pedro Alcantara
Monteclaro in 1907. M1 He wrote Maragtas in the Hiligaynon and Kinaray-á
languages of Panay and the word maragtas was merely intended to mean "history".
To this day the word maragtas is known only in connection to his book.
Monteclaro regarded legends as an important part of Visayan heritage so he
collected the various stories of the elderly of Panay and published them in his
Maragtas. Some people have claimed that Monteclaro actually translated Maragtas
from an ancient prehispanic manuscript but in the preface of the book he
clearly stated that he himself was its author. And although he did refer to two
old written documents, he said that he did not publish them due to their poor
condition and he did not imply that they were transcribed in his book.
Read Monteclaro's entire preface to Maragtas in
Foreword to the Readers.
Monteclaro did not assign any specific dates to these supposedly ancient
documents. One, he said, belonged to his grandfather and the other belonged to
the grandfather of an 82 year old man whom he had met in his hometown of
Miag-ao. Monteclaro said that he managed to copy these documents in 1901 even
though they were almost completely illegible.
The fact that these documents were said to have been written on paper and that,
at best, these sources date back only to two generations before 1901
(Monteclaro claimed one to be five generations old) places them firmly within
the period of the Spanish occupation. Also, in the epilogue, Monteclaro stated
that he had consulted with all the old men of every town because, he wrote:
...my documents did not give me clear and complete data on the things of the
past. M2
The publisher of Maragtas, Salvador Laguda, even noted that:
According to the author, this Maragtas should not be considered as containing
facts all of which are accurate and true, because many of his data do not tally
with what we hear from old men. M3
A large part of Maragtas appears to be based on a work written in 1858 by Fr.
Tomás Santarén, and published in 1902 under the title Historia de los
primeros datos. M4 It was a translation of one document of the mid 1800’s and
another older document. Santarén did not mention from what language these
documents were translated and he described the older document simply as old but
not ancient. Another note by the publisher of Maragtas may reveal its
connection to this work by Santarén as well as the source of Santarén’s
information.
The scattered sources from which this work is written came from the friars who
tried to keep a record of what they had done and seen in this island. M5
Once Legend, Now History
Despite such clear disclaimers, later historians still came to regard Maragtas
as an actual ancient document. This is probably due to the many misleading
translations of Monteclaro's book.
Some writers deliberately mistranslated the parts of his foreword that referred
to the two documents mentioned earlier. See: Foreword to the Readers.
Most deliberately excluded the sections that reveal the work to be modern,
(i.e. the chapters which deal with the Spanish era and the original publisher's
notes).
And all the translators seemed to have turned a collective blind eye to
Monteclaro’s free use of Spanish words such as dios, junta, negrito, and
volcán in a document they claimed to be prehispanic.
Nor did they draw attention to the fact that much of the book was written in a
subjective style and in the third person, past-tense. That is to say, the parts
which dealt with what, according to them, should have been contemporary
information (languages, commerce, law, social customs etc.) were presented in
the style of a modern history book rather than an account written by someone
who had lived at that time. For example, here is the description of an offence
punishable by slavery:
The most serious and most severely punished offence was laziness. M6
It is unbelievable that any legal code would present its laws in this manner.
Also, this particular statement is inaccurate because there were other offences
mentioned in Maragtas that were punished by mutilation and death. Incredibly,
later writers would compile these descriptions, call them “The Code of
Maragtas” and then claim that they were written in the year 1212!
The misconceptions surrounding Maragtas were further reinforced when even the
highly respected historian, Dr. Henry Otley Beyer called it a prehispanic
document. In Philippine Saga which he wrote with Jaime C. de Veyra in 1947, he
mentioned a manuscript from Panay known as Maragtas and “the ancient writing
in which it was originally inscribed". M7 Then in his Outline Review of
Philippine Archaeology of 1949 he wrote the following:
A remarkable ancient document known as the “Maragtas,” dating probably from
about 1225, was preserved in Panay and transliterated into romanized Visayan in
the early Spanish days. M8
Unfortunately, lesser historians have accepted these statements without
question and many teachers still repeat them confidently today.
In 1957 anthropologist Tom Harrison wrote a preface to a translation of
Maragtas by Manuel Carreon wherein he referred to Monteclaro not as the author
of Maragtas but merely the transcriber of an ancient Philippine legend. M9
The Confederation of Madya-as
In Maragtas, Monteclaro also told the story of the creation of the
Confederation of Madya-as in Panay under the rule of Datu Sumakwel and he gave
the details of its constitution. In spite of the importance that should be
placed on such an early constitution and his detailed description of it,
Monteclaro gave no source for his information. Also, it appears that the
Confederation of Madya-as is unique to Monteclaro's book. It has never been
documented anywhere else nor is it among the legends of the unhispanized tribes
of Panay.
The Code of Maragtas
Even though Monteclaro did describe the customs and rules of Sumakwel's
community, he never made reference to any Code of Sumakwel or Code of Maragtas.
Indeed Maragtas was simply the title of his own book and a word which was
supposed to mean "history". Thus any Code of Maragtas that predated his book
would be highly suspect from the start.
In fact, the Maragtas Code only first appeared in an article entitled El
Código de Maragtás written by Guillermo Santiago-Cuino in 1938. M10 These
were a set of laws which were said to have been enacted in the year 1212. This
code was allegedly translated by Santiago-Cuino from "ancient Filipino
writing". He claimed that he had found these documents in the mountains of
Madya-as and that he was accompanied by a Bishop Gabriel Reyes at the time.
However, when Reyes was asked about the incident by a relative, Jaime de Veyra
of the National Language Institute, he said that he did not know Santiago-Cuino
nor had he ever been to the Madya-as mountains. Guillermo Santiago-Cuino never
produced his original document for the public or any believable proof for his
essay.
Santiago-Cuino probably took the date of the Code of Maragtas from a work by
Josué Soncuya, Historia prehispana de Filipinas (1917). M11 The year 1212 is
the date that Soncuya gave for the emigration of the ten datus. He based this
on two unpublished documents from Mambusao, Capiz and Bugasong, Antique which
were never recognized to be prehispanic by any historian. In fact, these said
documents were not dated as such but were assigned this date by local school
teachers who had prepared chronicles for their towns to submit to the National
Library in 1911. Aside from this, Soncuya's calculations are generally quite
unreliable. For example, by his estimation, the year 1212 is 16 generations
after the year 1160. Obviously, 16 human generations could not fit into a span
of only 52 years.
The Verdict on Maragtas
Maragtas was finally placed in its proper perspective as a book of legends
rather than historical fact in 1968 by William Henry Scott. For his doctoral
dissertation at the University of Santo Tomas, Scott made a painstaking
investigation into all the sources of information about the Philippines before
the coming of the Spaniards.
Rather than merely plagiarizing past historians, Scott examined the original
documents and searched archives and museums the world over for supporting
documents and artefacts. He questioned the top historians of the day about
their sources of information and consulted with many experts in other fields
such as language, geology, archaeology and anthropology. He scoured the vast
collection of prehispanic material amassed by his personal friend, Dr. H. Otley
Beyer. He interviewed the friends, colleagues and relatives of the figures
behind the stories such as Pedro Monteclaro and Jose E. Marco and he examined
their correspondence.
William Henry Scott proved in his dissertation that Maragtas and the
Confederation of Madya-as were not actual ancient documents from long ago but
only legends that were collected and in some cases possibly concocted by Pedro
Monteclaro and published in 1907 in his book entitled Maragtas. As for the
Maragtas Code, Scott found that it was merely an invention of Guillermo
Santiago-Cuino's mind which was probably based on Monteclaro's book and
published in 1938.
Scott successfully defended his dissertation before a panel of eminent Filipino
historians, some of whom had formerly endorsed and promoted the erroneous facts
of Philippine history. The panel included Teodoro Agoncillo, Horacio de la
Costa, Marcelino Forondo, Mercedes Grau Santamaria, Nicholas Zafra and Gregorio
Zaide. Scott's meticulous research was published in 1968 in his book
Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History and since then
no historian has contested his conclusions. M12
The Result of Scott's Discoveries
By the 1960's the better scholars already had some doubts regarding Maragtas
and they avoided mentioning it in their works. Scott's thesis confirmed their
suspicions. However, it was many years before the writers of school textbooks
noticed Scott's findings. Most continued to reprint their old texts while
others wrote new books that still contained the old mistakes. Take for example
this quote from Ang Pagsulong ng Pamayanan (1981):
Maragtas' Code is the premier example of written law and it has been considered
the oldest because it was in effect from 1250. M13
Not only is this statement wrong but its authors seem to believe that Maragtas
was a person and not a book.
Jose Villa Panganiban used Maragtas to trace the origin of the Tagalog language
in the preface of the very popular English-Tagalog Dictionary by Fr. Leo James
English in 1965. M14 To this day it remains unrevised in spite of many
reprintings.
Even one member of Scott's dissertation panel did not appear to be eager to set
the record straight. Gregorio Zaide continued to include information from
Maragtas in works such as Pageant of Philippine History in 1979, History of the
Republic of the Philippines in 1983 and Philippine History 1984 which he
co-authored with his daughter, Sonia Zaide. M15
While making an effort to correct the errors of the past, some historians
mistook Maragtas to be one of the many hoaxes of Philippine history rather than
a mere legend. When Sonia Zaide revised History of the Republic of the
Philippines in 1987, she mistakenly described Maragtas as a fraudulent
document:
The legends surrounding the settling of the Philippines by Malay migrants are
notably celebrated in the ati-atihan festival and perpetrated by hoaxers in the
fraudulent documents containing the Maragtas chronicle and the Code of
Kalantiaw. M16E
Zaide clarified her opinion on the following page:
Although previously accepted by some historians, including the present authors,
it has become obvious that the Maragtas is only the imaginary creation of Pedro
A. Monteclaro, a Visayan public official and poet, in Iloilo in 1907. He based
it on folk customs and legends, largely transmitted by oral tradition. M17E
It would be unfair to brand Pedro Monteclaro a hoaxer or his book a fraudulent
document because he never claimed that Maragtas was anything more than a
collection of legends. Any frauds involving his book were perpetrated by other
later writers who misrepresented it as an authentic ancient document.
1998 Paul Morrow
Latest revision: 4 April, 2004
Postscript
To this day ignorance and misunderstanding of the true nature of Maragtas is
still prevalent throughout Philippine society even among its highest
institutions and organizations. Evidence of this can be seen in the following
list of web sites:
Supreme Court of the Philippines
A Brief History. Management Information Systems Office of the Philippine
Supreme Court. Copyright © 1998 SUPREME COURT. Author not identified.
Department of Education, Republic of the Philippines
Looking Back; Important Dates in Philippines History. Education News.
Vol. 7, No.4. April 2001. Author not identified.
Governor's Office, Province of Antique
Antique Provincial Profile, League of Provinces of the Philippines.
Copyright 2001 Author not identified.
Mayor's Office, City of Iloilo
The Exciting Blend of East and West. Author not identified.
Madya-as Heritage Foundation Inc.
Save Madya-as, Save Panay. Author not identified
Akaenon.Com