Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

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

Page 438

FURTHER-INDIAN BRANCH
437
Because of this deficiency, a modern scholar (Costantino Lendoyro, The Tagalog Language, 1909) suggested that the ancient Tagalog character was not a real alphabet and was never used for practical purposes; he also writes "had it ever acquired any appreciable hold on the native mind, it could never have been so easily eradicated and superseded by the Spanish one." This suggestion is too far reaching; I do not think it is acceptable.
Nowadays, the Tagals use the Roman alphabet, introduced by the Spaniards, with the addition of the cerebral nasal ng for a sound peculiar to Tagalog.
Tagbanua and Mangyan Characters
Exactly 60 years ago, European scholars were surprised to hear that the ancient Philippine scripts were not completely out of use; in 1886, the French scholar A. Marche mentioned the existence of the Tagbanua character; in 1890, the Spaniard P. A. Paterno published a Mindoro alphabet; the whole Mindoro material available at the time was examined and published in 1895 by A. B. Meyer, A. Schadenberg and W. Foy (Die Mangianenschrift von Mindoro). Since Spain ceded the Philippine Islands to the U.S.A. (in 1898), many hundreds of pieces of inscribed bamboos have been collected in the islands of Mindoro and Palawan, and they are now preserved in American collections. The great majority of the written "documents" are Mangyan, but some of them are in the Tagbanua character, for instance, about 25 inscribed cylinders deposited at the Library of the University of Michigan. The whole subject has been thoroughly dealt with quite recently by Dr. Fletcher Gardner (Philippine Indic Studies, "INDIC BULLETIN" No. 1, Series of 1943, The Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, Texas, 1943; with an extensive bibliography). In 1939, Dr. Gardner succeeded in obtaining from all over the southern half of Mindoro, various specimens of Mangyan writing, some of which are written on bamboo, and others on ordinary paper.
Varieties of Scripts
The Tagbanua character (Fig. 194, 21, and Fig. 195, 2) does not seem to have varieties; Dr. Gardner points out that it "varies only slightly in writings from various hands collected over a period of 35 years," whilst the Mangyan character has several forms for many characters and at least two quite distinct varieties, the Buhil (Fig. 194, 27-30, and 195, 4) and the Mangyan proper (Fig. 194, 22-26, and 195, 5). The latter can be divided into a few sub-varieties, the most important being those of Bulalacao and Mansalay. However, all the types agree fairly closely, although the Buhil character seems to be more elaborate than the others. As Dr. Gardner points out, the style of the Buhil script is quadrate, that of the Hanono-0 is angular, and that of the Tagbanua is rounded.