Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 435

434
THE ALPHABET reading and writing of the ancient characters became for the natives a lost art. We do not know whether the Spanish ecclesiastical authorities did the same in the Philippines as they did in Central America with the Maya books (see p. 125), and it is quite possible that the Philippine peoples were more fortunate, their scripts being non-pictographic and without apparent connection with "the salvation of souls." On the other hand, all the writing material used was perishable and the written documents, unless specially preserved, vanished within a few years, so that a deliberate wholesale destruction of books was unnecessary, and the undisguised contempt of the Spanish priests and the other authorities was probably sufficient to destroy in the more cultured natives any predilection for the indigenous art of writing, Not a single inscription, either on stone or pottery, or any other ancient document of indigenous origin, has been found in the Philippines.
However, as in the case of the Maya seript, and in even greater degree than in that case, all we know about the ancient Philippine writing, is based on the notes of the Spanish catholic priests, and, curiously enough, since there was apparently no "bishop Landa" (see p. 132) to destroy Philippine native libraries, so there was no similar personality who like Landa would have taken a real interest in the history and the customs of the Filipinos.
Indeed, the Spanish record of the Philippine scripts are rather casual. The extinct forms for the most part, with the exception of the Tagalog characters, are represented by very few specimens, and even some of these may be suspect. In the early years of Spanish domination, indeed, some catholic priests used the native writing for printing religious books for the natives, but even of these only very few copies have been preserved, the best known being the Belarmino or "Ilocano Short Catechism," published in Manila in 1631, and republished in 1895 by P. Francisco Lopez (Fig. 195, 3).
Spanish sources mention the following ancient characters of the Philippine natives (Fig. 153, col. 19-20, and Fig. 194): For the Tagalog language, four varieties (Fig. 194, 11-14); for Bisayan two varieties (Fig. 194, 17-18); for Ilocano, two (Fig. 194. 15-16); for Pangasinan, one (Fig. 194, 19), and one for Pampangan (Fig. 194, 20). Dr. Pardo de Taverawho, in 1884, was the first to carry out serious research on this matter pointed out that the difference between these various ancient characters was not fundamental. The main general difference consisted in the shapes of the letter ga, while the form of the ha was the most constant. The Iloco character lacked the letters tou and ha, because Ilocano does not possess these sounds. The Pangasinan had the letters a, ta and ha different from the Tagalog forms. The Pampangan lacked the letters ya, wa and ha; the first two seem to have been forgotten, because the corresponding sounds exist in Pampangan, while the ha does not exist