Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Prior to European contact in the sixteenth century, writing was known in the Philippines in the form of syllabic alphabets of the Indian type and probably of Indian descent. As in Central America, the Spanish conquistadores had little esteem for the native literary tradition and, in their efforts to Christianize the country, are thought to have burned or otherwise destroyed many manuscripts written on palm leaves and bamboo tubes. It is for this reason that palaeographic documentation is scanty. Except for the Mangyan script which is reportedly still occasionally used on the island of Mindoro, none of the ancient scripts have survived.The origin and transmission of the Philippine scripts is not documented, but on the basis of comparative analysis of variant forms of the individual letters, there is wide agreement among students of Philippine palaeography that they are derived from the Old Kawi script of Java which is itself of Indian extraction. A number of different forms are documented in extant manuscripts of different regional origin and language, but they are generally considered to be varieties of the same proto-alphabet, called Baybayin in Tagalog. It consists of 17 graphemes, three for independent Vs and 14 for Cs with inherent a (table 9). Indication of other Vs is by means of diacritics, following the Indian pattern. Judging from the alphabets that have been recorded by ... log in or subscribe to read full text