Hoaxes in Philippine History

NOTES IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

The Philippine archipelago has a very rich oral tradition. In fact, the various Filipino ethnolinguistic groups have a collection of their own epics, legends, folk tales and mythology. These tales have been utilized by historians to examine the culture and society of precolonial Philippines. But in the absence of other corroborating evidence, they tend to be unreliable historical sources. Oral literature, by its very nature, is transmitted orally through generations, and thus, is vulnerable to alterations. Still, these tales are valuable historical sources because they embody the collective consciousness of the Filipino people.

Frauds in History

 -refers to the legends and other oral stories that were once believed to be reliable historical facts, but further research has exposed their inconsistencies and questionable features. The inclusion of this category in Philippine history was done to inform readers of the Philippine historical hoaxes in order that we can delineate what constitutes history and what belongs to the purview of fiction.

Below are ten of the hoaxes and frauds in Philippine history:

1. Code of Kalantiaw - was a mythical legal code in the epic story Maragtas written in 1433 by Datu Kalantiaw, the chief of Negros. It precribed extremely brutal punishments to criminals.
2. Legend of the Ten Bornean Datus - refers to the ten chieftains who allegedly ventured to the Island of Panay boarding a boat called balangay (or barangay) to evade the tyrannical ruler of Borneo, Datu Makatunaw.
3. Code of Maragtas - was a document dated between 1200 to 1250 which tells the story of the arrival of the ten datus from Borneo who allegedly bought the island of Panay from the Aetas for a golden salakot.
4. Rajah Bendahara Kalantiaw - was one of the mythical characters in Jose E. Marco's Maragtas Legend. He became the chief of Negros (or Aklan) two hundred years after the rule of Datu Bangkaya.
5. Datu Puti - was the supposed leader of the ten Bornean datus. Under his command, they reached Siwaragan (now San Joaquin), Iloilo.
6. Datu Sumakwel - headed the Bornean datus upon the return of Datu Puti to Borneo. He ventured to the mountains in search of a local deity named Bulalakaw.
7. Povedano Map - was geographical map illustrated by a certain encomendero by the name of Diegus Lope Povedano of Buglas Island which shows his many land travels and sea voyages with the King of Spain, including that in the year 1572.
8. Povedano Calendar - was a manuscript that showed a wheel composed of twelve-month year, and seven-day week time calculation in baybayin. It was supposedly a replica of the calendar used by the precolonized inhabitants of the Philippines.
9. Tasaday - was a group of tiny people who emerged, in 1971, from a rain forest in mountains of the Philippines. They were uncivilized and had thought of the forest as being the whole world itself, with them as the only people living in it.
10. Princess Urduja - was a mythical, legendary warrior-princess who ruled the kingdom of Tawalisi in the province of Pangasinan. She was said to have personally took part in waging battles and engaged in duels with other warriors

The story of Datu Kalantiaw is often mistaken to be part of the epic of ten intrepid chiefs who founded Visayan civilization as much as 800 years ago, as told in an ancient and mysterious document called the Maragtas. This document, however, was an ordinary book written in 1907 by Pedro Monteclaro in which he compiled the local legends of the Visayas from mainly oral traditions and a few written documents that were fairly modern in their origins. Monteclaro never mentioned a chief by the name of Kalantiaw in his Maragtas.

Some of the Maragtas legends are a part of Visayan folklore and they are a source of fierce pride for many Visayans today. The stories of the ten datus or chiefs might have been told for generations and they are perfectly believable, as far as legends go, if we put aside the modern additions such as obviously phoney "original" manuscripts and the use of precise but utterly uncorroborated dates from the pre-colonial era.

After all, it is not hard to believe that exiles could have sailed from Borneo to settle in Panay. Why not? Even though there are no ancient documents to show that Chief Sumakwel and his followers actually existed, there is much archaeological and foreign documentary evidence of regular trade and travel at that time between the Philippines and its neighbours.

But while Monteclaro's misguided nationalism, combined with the blatant dishonesty of other writers who embellished his work, blurred the line between legends and hard historical facts, the story of Kalantiaw is more alarming because he was never a part of the Philippines' history or even its oral traditions. Kalantiaw was an utter hoax from the beginning.

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 each 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.

1. 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 to 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.

Arbitration is still the custom of those Philippine cultures that were never conquered by the Spaniards.

2. The second reason is the lack of evidence for Kalantiaw even as a legend of oral history. 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. In almost 400 years of documented Philippine history – from Magellan's arrival in 1521 until the second decade of the 20th century – no such legend was ever recorded. Kalantiaw even escaped the attention of Pedro Monteclaro when he published the Maragtas legends in 1907. This is very suspicious considering that there are more stories today about Kalantiaw than there are about any of the ten datus of the Maragtas.

Did the Spaniards suppress the legend of Kalantiaw? This accusation is usually the first thing that history buffs reach for when they need to explain a gap in Philippine history. If the Spaniards 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 – even though his methods of torture were no more sadistic than those of the Spanish Inquisition.

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

3. 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. Scott eventually traced the ultimate origin of Kalantiaw back to a single person, José E. Marco of Pontevedra, Negros Occidental, who definitely did not live in the 1400s. In 1913, Marco 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. (For more about the life of Jose Marco

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 that 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 jewelry 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 that 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. 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! In short, pre-colonial Filipino authors supposedly wrote in ancient Filipino letters but applied to them Spanish spelling conventions in an era before any Spaniard had set foot in the Philippines.

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 Forasteros 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 Borneo 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 that 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 with a brass plaque 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. 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.

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 that 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 take him seriously and despite Kalantiaw's growing renown, a new generation of academics began to question the dogma of a half century of Philippine historiography.

In 1965 William Henry Scott was a doctoral candidate at the University of Santo Tomas when the bibliographer Mauro Garcia suggested that for his thesis he examine the history of the Philippines before the arrival of the Spaniards. Garcia had received several fake documents from José Marco in the past, which made him suspicious of Marco's first discoveries upon which so much early history was based. He only showed a few of these forgeries to Scott so as not to prejudice his research, saving the most blatant fakes until after Scott had formed his own conclusions about Marco's work.

Scott focused his investigation by tracing the original source of every single reference to the pre-Hispanic history of the Philippines in the four standard college text books in use at that time. K8 He examined the original documents and searched archives and museums the world over for supporting documents and artifacts. He questioned the top historians of the day about their sources of information. He interviewed the friends and colleagues of Jose E. Marco and he examined their correspondence with him. In the matter of Kalantiaw, all the information was traced back to a single source; José E. Marco. Scott summarized the results of his painstaking investigation in just two sentences:

The José E. Marco contributions to Philippine historiography… appear to be deliberate fabrications with no historic validity. There is therefore no present evidence that any Filipino ruler by the name of Kalantiaw ever existed or that the Kalantiaw penal code is any older than 1914. K9

Scott successfully defended his thesis before a panel of eminent Filipino historians, some of whom had formerly endorsed many of the facts of Philippine history that he had proved false. 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.

The Die-Hard Lie

William H. Scott's exposé did not have an immediate effect on Filipino society. On March 1, 1971, President Ferdinand Marcos instituted the "Order of Kalantiaw", an award "for services to the country in the areas of law and justice" (Executive Order No. 294). That same year a beauty pageant winner was crowned "Lakambini ni Kalantiaw" on the supposed anniversary of the Code (December 8), and the artist Carlos Valino Jr. depicted Kalantiaw issuing his commandments (See painting above).

On January 24, 1973, Marcos also issued Presidential Decree No. 105, which declared that the Kalantiaw Shrine, and all national shrines, were sacred. The decree prohibited all forms of desecration including "unnecessary noise and committing unbecoming acts." Like Kalantiaw's Code, the penalty was hefty; "imprisonment for not less than ten (10) years or a fine not less than ten thousand pesos (P10,000) or both."

In 1976, the National Historical Institute (NHI) published the pamphlet, Datu Bendahara Kalantiaw, containing a short biography of the chief, which included several specific pre-colonial dates and the obligatory comparison to Solomon, complete with an anecdote of one of his judicial cases as an example of his wisdom. The pamphlet also contained the Code itself, quoted from the 1970 edition of History of the Filipino People by Teodoro Agoncillo and Milagros Guerrero.

Some historians, like Agoncillo, did not give up on Kalantiaw immediately, although others had already dismissed the legend even before Scott's thesis was published. Once his irrefutable proofs were made public, even the foremost historians were persuaded to remove the myth from their books. However, one astonishing exception was Gregorio F. Zaide, the author of countless school textbooks and a member of the very dissertation panel that examined Scott's thesis in 1968. According to Scott,

During the revalida [oral examination], not a single question was raised about the chapter, which I called "The Contributions of Jose E. Marco to Philippine historiography". K10

Despite this opportunity to challenge Scott's thesis directly on the matter of Kalantiaw, Zaide apparently remained silent but he continued to endorse the myth and even add his own details to it in books such as Heroes of Philippine History (1970), Pageant of Philippine History (1979), History of the Republic of the Philippines (1983), Philippine History (1984), and in reissues of his older works. Soon after Dr. Zaide's death in 1986 his daughter, Sonia M. Zaide, revised the books that she had co-authored with her father and removed most, but not all, of the material based on the Marco hoaxes.

Nevertheless, the ghost of Kalantiaw continues to haunt Filipinos some 40 years after the hoaxes were exposed. He is still portrayed on the ceiling of the old Senate hall in Manila and the Philippine government still awards the "Order of Kalantiaw" to retiring justices. The Central Philippine University in Iloilo has its own "Order of Kalantiao", a fraternity that was at the centre of a serious hazing incident in September of 2001. Even the NHI continued to honour Kalantiaw in 1989 by including him in volume 4 of their five volumes of Filipinos in History. The Gintong Pamana (Golden Heritage) Awards Foundation, a project of Philippine Time USA Magazine, rewards community leadership among Filipino-Americans with the "Kalantiaw Award". Buildings, streets and banquet halls throughout the Philippines still bear the name of the imaginary ruler of Panay and tourists can still visit the Kalantiaw Shrine in Batan, Aklan or even pass by a local high school, Kalantiaw Institute.

Old school textbooks are revised to include relativley recent events such as the People Power Revolution of 1986 but the fictitious codes of Kalantiaw and Maragtas remain untouched, as in A History of the Philippines by Leogardo et al. (1986) K11 In newer textbooks, authors of the old school still retell the obsolete theories and fallacies of Philippine history although some now make cynical attempts to present a fair and enlightened view by merely inserting brief, and often dismissive, notes about rival “opinions.” Take for example these lines from Edgardo E. Dagdag’s 1997 high school textbook, Kasaysayan at Pamahalaan ng Pilipinas (History & Government of the Philippines):

It is good to examine the contents of the Kalantiaw Code, even though it is not believed to be an authentic written law by some historians such as Professor W. Henry Scott, because it can be seen here what kind of society the ancient Filipinos wanted to create.
…Filipinos wanted to have a society that was religious and God-fearing; with respect for authority, the elderly, women and the environment; and which valued life and a person’s word. K12

One wonders just how closely the author examined the content of the Kalantiaw Code when he wrote this charitable description of such a saintly community. Would a society that "valued life" have wanted such an irrational legal code wherein 14 of its 18 laws inflicted the most gruesome deaths, mutilations and tortures? The bibliography in the book does not list any works by W. Henry Scott so it can be assumed that the author was not familiar with Scott’s absolutely incontrovertible proofs that debunked the Kalantiaw myth so thoroughly. Otherwise, he would have known that the Code and all the legends surrounding it were in fact 20^th century fabrications and thus could not possibly show "what kind of society the ancient Filipinos wanted to create."

Inferior textbooks are not likely to vanish soon if the textbook/bribery scandal at the Department of Budget and Management in 1999 was any indicator of the state of the educational system in the Philippines. However, the situation is not completely hopeless. For although the Philippine public may be slow to shrug off the Kalantiaw myth, recent generations of students have come to know it as a fraud rather than a fact. The gradual effect of this teaching is starting to show. In 1994 the playwright Rene O. Villanueva dramatized the life of Jose E. Marco and the creation of the Kalantiaw hoax in the play Kalantiaw, Kagila-gilalas na Kasinungalingan (The Amazing Lie). Villanueva's intriguing story proposed that Marco's motivation for creating his frauds was his intense admiration for his personal hero, Jose Rizal. Marco's ambition was to better the accomplishments of Rizal by inventing a glorious past to fill the gaps in Filipino history.

It is only now, since most of the old guard has passed on, that the new generation of historians have been able to set the records straight. The NHI finally admitted that Kalantiaw was a hoax in 1998 when Chief Justice Andres Narvasa, who was about to receive the Kalantiaw Award, asked Malacañang to look into the matter. President Joseph Estrada gave him the award, anyway.

In 2004, the NHI, under the leadership of Ambeth Ocampo, made their opinion official when they submitted a resolution to President Arroyo to revoke the national shrine status of the Kalantiaw Shrine in Aklan, which, of course, enraged some Aklanons.

Today some people still cite the courage and wisdom of Kalantiaw as they continue to heap accolades upon him and the oblivious recipients of those Kalantiaw awards. However, a sober look at Kalantiaw's Code reveals that his magnificent courage was merely brutality and his exalted wisdom was in fact incredible insanity. Kalantiaw's defenders insist that his legend must be true simply because he has always inspired them as a part of their heritage. But while they portray such a maniac as a Filipino hero, they disregard what gross slander they lay on the character of all Filipinos. Fortunately, the people of the Philippines need never bear this shame because Kalantiaw never really existed.

Legend of the Ten Bornean Datus

The Ten Bornean Datus Epic refers to the ten chieftains who allegedly ventured to the Island of Panay boarding a boat called balangay (or barangay) to evade the tyrannical ruler of Borneo, Datu Makatunaw. The datus, believed to be the fathers of precolonial Philippines, were the following: Datu Puti (and wife, Piangpangan), Datu Sumakwel (and wife, Kapinangan), Datu Bangkaya (and wife, Katurong), Datu Paiborong (and wife, Pabilaan), Datu Paduhinogan (and wife, Tibongsapay), Datu Dumangsol, Datu Libay, Datu Dumangsil, Datu Domalogdog, and Datu Balensuela.

According to the legend, upon the arrival of the datus, the local inhabitants of the islands, the Aeta, grew terrified but the diplomatic Datu Puti said to Marikudo, the chief of the natives, that they had peaceful intentions. Later both parties entered into a trade alliance. Marikudo invited the datus to a feast, during which the ten chiefs negotiated the purchase of Panay Island for a golden salakot. Since the Aetas found the land overwhelmingly vast for them, they retreated to the forest, leaving the Datus with the land which they divided among themselves (namely Aklan, Irong Irong and Hamtik), leading to the birth of Philippine population and culture.

However, recent studies discovered the irregularities of the said legend, and thus, it must not be believed as a reliable source of facts on precolonial Philippines.

Arguments of Authenticity

But still, these studies are contested, though History per se is limited to "written" historical accounts, the legend is is considered "spoken" historical account and part and parcel of Filipino Culture. The legend is important part of the life, culture and identity of Ilonggo people and inhabitants of Panay Island. There is no argument that the roots of the word "Barangay" came from "Balangay" the boat used by the Ten Bornen Datu and their families. Until now, the head of the Barangay is a "Barangay Captain" the only head of a government unit in the world named after a captain of a boat.

Code of Maragtas

The Maragtas Legend was believed to be a document which dated between 1200 to 1250. The document claimed that there were ten Bornean datus (or chieftain) who arrived in the island of Panay to escape from the tyranny of a certain Datu Makatunaw of Borneo. The datus allegedly bought the Island of Panay from Marikudo, the chief of the Aeta group, for a golden salakot (in English: hat). These datus and their families were said to be the people responsible for populating the entire Visayan region, and for forming a confederation of barangays called Madya-as under the leadership of Datu Sumakwel. This legend is now commemorated in the yearly Ati-atihan festival since the late 1950s when it officially became a part of the feast of Santo Niño in Kalibo, Aklan.

Fictitious Book

This legend was previously accepted by many historians; however, recent scrutiny of scholars shows that the Maragtas is actually a fictitious book of Visayan oral local legends written by Pedro Monteclaro, a Visayan public official and poet, in Iloilo in 1907. He wrote the book in the Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a languages of Panay. Monteclaro used the word maragtas to mean “history,” although until the present, the said term has only been known in referral to his compilation.

Monteclaro was said to unusually put high importance to pre-hispanic myths and legends as an important part of Visayan cultural heritage; thus, he collected the various stories of the elderly of Panay and published them in his Maragtas. There have been studies stating 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. He did refer to two old written documents; however, he stated that he did not publish them due to their poor condition and he did not imply that they were transcribed in his book.

A Hoax

Renowned historian William Henry Scott, in his doctoral dissertation at the University of Santo Tomas, made a painstaking investigation into all the sources of information about the Philippines before the coming of the Spaniards. He proved in his dissertation that the original Maragtas book 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. On top of that, Scott found that the Maragtas Code was but merely an invention of Guillermo Santiago-Cuino's mind who probably based it on Monteclaro's book and published in 1938.

* From WikiPilipinas: The Hip 'n Free Philippine Encyclopedia