This document is a work of Austin Craig. Craig was an Associate Professor of History at the University of the Philippines. This work was presented to the Philippine Academy at its open meeting in University Hall, Manila, October 13, 1914.
We are presenting this document here as it is in the University of Michigan digital library except for the first page and part of the last page (page 14) where they are formatted for better read.
The Philippine History of which one is apt to think when that subject is mentioned covers hardly a fourth of the Islands' bookrecorded
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.). They are solider ground than any plausible explanations that Manila hemp (abaka) 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 lass. Nor, to accept them, is recourse Ineeded to farfetched deductions like Zufiiga'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 Roe is a bird used in Moro ornament, tile "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 tlHe Far East, Cambridge, 1904) states that by the beginning of the Chou dynasty
(B. C. 1122-255) intercourse had been estalblished 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)
Read on ...
The naturalist will reveal further evidence of long land separation such as the dissimilar neighboring Mindoro and Lubang suggest, the anthropologist will re-write for us the story of the Philippines' former peoples by discovering relationships with the Borneans and Formosan tribes, and perhaps with northern Japanese, whose development has been less rapid so that they are now in stages from which the Filipinos have emerged. The geologist may, too, recognize here the monuments of unhewn stone which make the world-route of that wonderful ancient people whose difficultly distinguished memorials have been found on every continent.
Yet for all these, because scientific speculation is liable to err, the man-made records of civilized China, wherein are many other references obtainable through intelligent research, must be the balance and check to keep our restoration of the forgotten plast within due bounds.
A thousand years of Philippine history before the coming of the Spaniards / by Austin Craig
Presented before the Philippine academy at its open meeting in University hall, Manila, October 13, 1914.
Author: Craig, Austin, 1872-
The United States and its Territories, 1870 - 1925: The Age of Imperialism
University of Michigan Digital Library
