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Baybayin: Surat Bisaya

MO1 — Sun, 15 Mar 2020 11:40:59 +0000

https://prehispaniccebu.wordpress.com/2020/11/02/surat-bisaya/?fbclid=IwAR0c3WbOE-USQB3V4Yy7paNkvV_qzKa-LyzrzOVYi1gaFFhlrSd9_bN4u5Y

Surat Bisaya

DBCantillas Etymology and Origins November 2, 2020 2 Minutes

House Bill 1022 or the “National Writing System Act” was previously approved last April 23, 2018 and declares Baybayin as the country’s national writing system and thus aims to put the script to use in street signs, public facilities, government halls, publications and even food labels. Many linguists, historians and several Filipinos were upset that other Philippine scripts are ignored.

Prehispanic writing system has enjoyed a resurgence over the past few years with some Filipinos taking interest in learning as their means of tracing one’s roots and connecting with one’s culture. Of our 17 accounted Philippine syllabaries, systems of consonant plus vowel syllables, only four (4) remain in use among indigenous communities of present-day according to UNESCO.

Brahmic Scripts

Prehispanic Philippine syllabaries are the writing systems that developed (and soon flourished) all over the Philippines. Many of the Southeast Asian writing systems clearly descended from ancient alphabets used in India over 2000 years ago. In the languages of Sumatra, Sulawesi as well as Philippines, the native name for letter, or script, is the indigineous term: surat. By the 21st century, various Filipino cultural organizations simply collectively referred the scripts as suyat.

The country’s surat–or suyat–are related closely to other Southeast Asian writing, nearly all are abugidas or alpha-syllabary where any consonant is pronounced with the inherent vowel /a/ following it; using diacritical marks to express other vowels. It developed from South Indian Brahmi scripts utilized in Asoka Inscriptions and Pallava Grantha–type of writings during the ascendancy of India’s Pallava dynasty around the 5th century.

Surat (Suyat)

Baybayin does not encompass an entirety of writing systems being just one of those 17 prehispanic scripts present around the Philippines. Widespread use was likewise reported among other coastal-groups like the Bisaya, Iloko, Pangasinan, Bikol, and Pampanga in the 16th century. H.B. 1022 critics worry that relegating the Baybayin would erase the diversity that continue to exist and also perpetuate Tagalog-centric national identity.

The Visayans have Surat Bisaya, Suwat Bisaya or Sulat Bisaya (aka Badlit; Surat is historically the more appropriate name for Visayan scripts). It is written from left to right and requires “no spaces” between words. Space is applied only after ends of a sentence or punctuation, although in its modern writing it usually contains spaces after each word to enhance readability of the narrative. Artifacts found with Surat inscriptions then deciphered through our Visayan language included the Calatagan Pot, Monreal Stones (two) and Limasawa Pot.

When the Spaniards arrived, they studied and used surat to communicate with the early Filipinos; and teach Catholicism. As Filipinos soon started to learn the Roman alphabet from the Spanish, the use of our native scripts especially in lowland places began to disappear. Meanwhile, surat of Sulu and Maguindanao were replaced by the Arabic alphabet around the 14th and 15th centuries, respectively.

Phonemes and Diacritics

Surat Bisaya has 20 (originally from 18) phonemes: 15 primary consonants and 5 (from 3) vowels. Basic consonants (or sinugdanan na katingog)–b, k, d, g, h, l, m, n, ŋ (ng), p, r, s, t, w, j (y)–followed by inherent vowel /a/, are as follows: Ba, Ka, Da, Ga, Ha, La, Ma, Na, Nga, Pa, Ra, Sa, Ta, Wa, Ya.

Five vowels (the pantingog) are: A, U, O, I, E. In prehispanic period, Bisaya only had three vowel-phonemes: /a/, /i/, and /u/. This was later expanded into five (5) with the introduction plus integration of some Hispanic-words: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/.

Kudlit (or diacritical marks) enables the writer to change the default /a/ sound of any of our basic consonants via using the same character. Put that kudlit below the syllable to change the consonants default vowel to /u/ or /o/, or above the syllable for /i/ or /e/. Spaniards even introduced to terminate consonants default vowel as well as various panulbok (“punctuation marks”).

House panel approves use of Baybayin as country’s national writing system – Audrey Morallo (philstar.com)

MO1 — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 14:05:54 +0000

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/04/23/1808717/house-panel-approves-use-baybayin-countrys-national-writing-system

House panel approves use of Baybayin as country’s national writing system

Audrey Morallo (philstar.com) – April 23, 2018 – 7:05pm

MANILA, Philippines — Filipinos may have to learn to write in and read Baybayin, a pre-Spanish script of the Philippines, after a House committee approved a bill designating it as the country’s official national writing system.

The House Committee on Basic Education and Culture has approved House Bill 1022, or the proposed “National Writing System Act,” which seeks to declare Baybayin as the Philippines’ national writing system, generate a greater awareness on its plight and develop wider appreciation for its importance and beauty.

The bill, filed by Rep. Leopoldo Bataoil (Pangasinan), was supported by the Department of Education, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and Buhayin, a Baybayin advocacy group.

“The importance of writing in general and of the alphabet in particular for the preservation and progress of civilization is incalculable,” Bataoil said in a press release from the House Press and Public Affairs Bureau.

If passed into law, the measure will require all manufacturers of locally-produced food products to inscribe Baybayin scripts and provide a Baybayin translation on their labels.

The proposed law will also mandate local government units to included Baybayin signs for street names, public facilities, public buildings and other necessary signage for public offices like hospitals, fire and police stations, community centers and government halls.

Newspapers and other print publications will also be required to provide a Baybayin translation of their names, according to the bill.

Government agencies will also be directed to disseminate knowledge and information about Baybayin by distributing reading materials on all levels of education and in government and private agencies and offices.

Bataoil said that these materials would raise awareness on Baybayin as the national writing system. He added that appropriate training should be conducted for the proper handling of these documents.

The NCAA together with DepEd, the Department of Interior and Local Government and the Commission on Higher Education will formulate the implementing rules and regulations of the bill.

Comparative table of Baybayin variations by Pedro Paterno, 19th century.

MO1 — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 03:19:10 +0000

Comparative table of Baybayin variations

In the 19th century Pedro Paterno published this comparative table of the various baybayin variations.

Baybayin the correct term for our pre-Spanish syllabary not “Alibata”.

Baybayin – The Ancient Script of the Philippines by Paul Morrow

MO1 — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 22:14:05 +0000

Baybayin – The Ancient Script of the Philippines by Paul Morrow

This language of ours is like any other,
it once had an alphabet and its own letters
that vanished as though a tempest had set upon
a boat on a lake in a time now long gone.

“To My Fellow Children”,
attributed to Jose Rizal, 1869
English translation by P. Morrow

The tempest in Rizal’s verse struck the Philippines in the 16th century. It was the Spanish Empire and the lost alphabet was a script that is known today as the baybayin.

Contrary to the common misconception, when the Spaniards arrived in the islands they found more than just a loose collection of backward and belligerent tribes. They found a civilization that was very different from their own. The ability to read and write is the mark of any civilization and, according to many early Spanish accounts, the Tagalogs had already been writing with the baybayin for at least a century. This script was just beginning to spread throughout the islands at that time. Furthermore, the discovery in 1987 of an inscription on a sheet of copper in Laguna is evidence that there was an even more advanced script in limited use in the Philippines as far back as the year 900 C.E. (See The Laguna Copperplate Inscription)

Continue at: http://www.mts.net/~pmorrow/bayeng1.htm

Baybayin: The Lost Filipino Script (Part 1) by Indio Historian

MO1 — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 22:00:43 +0000

Baybayin: The Lost Filipino Script (Part 1) by Indio Historian

The Baybayin as we know it today is an ancient Filipino system of writing, a set of 17 characters or letters that had spread throughout the Philippine archipelago in the sixteenth century. The graphic contours of the Baybayin are distinguished by smoothly flowing curvilinear strokes that convey both suppleness and strength.

For some history enthusiasts, never ever ever ever call Baybayin “Alibata”. This name was invented by Paul Versoza who thought that Baybayin came from Arabic and thus named it ‘Alif-bata,’ the first letters of the Arabic script. Recent studies suggest that Baybayin may have come from Sanskrit, the ancient Indian script, brought to the Philippine shores by Indian traders.

Where did the name Baybayin come from? The word ‘baybay’ in ancient Tagalog means ‘to spell’ or in modern Filipino, ‘syllable.’ As early as 900 AD, there are tidbits of evidences that the ancients in our islands had a sophisticated way of writing. As to why it quickly disappeared comes from the fact that we were never a print culture like China and Korea, that used paper and built large libraries of scrolls to preserve their history, their memory. Another factor is the effective colonization of Spain by the forcing of the houses of ‘natives’ to be gathered around a town-square called ‘reducciones’ close to the church and the alcaldes for the close supervision of the Spanish authorities.

Continue at: http://indiohistorian.tumblr.com/post/13097309564/baybayin-the-lost-filipino-script-part-1-the

Documentary: Itinaga sa Bato – Baybayin Documentary written by Howie Severino and directed by Cris Sto. Domingo

MO1 — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 20:23:12 +0000

Documentary: Itinaga sa Bato – Baybayin Documentary written by Howie Severino and directed by Cris Sto. Domingo

Part 1

Part 2

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/227829/publicaffairs/iwitness/itinaga-sa-bato-documentary-by-howie-severino

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2010078/

Many Filipinos are in the dark about their pre-colonial past, or Philippine history before the Spaniards came.

That past is coming to light with Amaya, the first prime-time teleserye about Philippine society and culture before Europeans knew these existed. But even that history is based on what Spanish chroniclers wrote about the islanders they called indios.

A recently discovered stone may change all that. A doormat for many years outside a Masbate classroom, the stone slab was cleaned by school children, revealing beneath the hardened mud writing in the ancient Filipino script called baybayin.

Is it really a window into our pre-colonial past, or simply the work of a more recent hobbyist?

Howie Severino and his documentary team accompany scientists to Ticao Island in Masbate as they try to authenticate the stone’s origins and unlock its secrets. What does the writing say?

Their investigation leads Howie’s team’s to living baybayin writers in Manila trying to keep the ancient script alive, convinced that it is an essential element in Filipinos’ modern identity and a way for them to stand tall in a globalizing world where many languages, and the cultures they represent, are vanishing.

Book review: “Baybayin Atbp.: Mga Pag-aaral at Pagpapayaman ng Kulturang Pilipino” – Why is baybayin relevant today? Ime Morales

MO1 — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 19:41:37 +0000

Book review: Why is baybayin relevant today?

Text and photo by IME MORALES

If you think that baybayin, or the alibata, as it has come to be known in recent times, is simply our Filipino ancestors’ way of writing, then the contents of “Baybayin Atbp.: Mga Pag-aaral at Pagpapayaman ng Kulturang Pilipino” (Teresita B. Obusan, Raymond M. Cosare, and Minifred P. Gavino) will awaken your curiosity and, hopefully, your spirit. It is true, first of all, that baybayin is the indigenous writing form invented by our great grandfathers. But it is also true that it is much more than that.

During a September 28 lecture organized by UP Tomo-Kai in Palma Hall, UP Diliman, social worker and writer Dr. Teresita B. Obusan said that the baybayin is a symbol of our culture and a means to study and understand mysticism. She explained, “We did not copy this. It was created by our ancestors and it becomes us.”

In the booklet, which was printed earlier this year and written in the vernacular, she writes: “Baybayin is a gift from heaven, given to us through our ancestors; it is a legacy for the Filipino people… and it is our responsibility to take care of it and nurture it.”

Article continues at: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/278915/lifestyle/reviews/book-review-why-is-baybayin-relevant-today

Book: Estudio de los antiguos alfabetos filipinos by Cipriano Marcilla y Martín (1895)

MO1 — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:53:56 +0000

Estudio de los antiguos alfabetos filipinos (1895)

Author: Cipriano Marcilla y Martín
Publisher: Tipo-litografia del asilo de huérfanos
Year: 1895
Language: Spanish

The Calatangan Pot inscription

MO1 — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 19:43:16 +0000

A new translation of the Calatangan Pot inscription

The Calatangan Pot is a prehispanic (14th-16th century) artifact containing an inscription around the neck. It is said to be one of the earliest expressions of prehispanic writing in the Philippines, and there have been several attempts at translating the inscription. Rolando Borrinaga is the latest person to offer an translation of the script, based on old Bisayan and old Tagalog alphabets. An earlier attempt to decipher the Calatangan Pot incription was made by University of the Philippines’ Ramon Guillerm

***

The mystery of the ancient inscription
The Inquirer, 23 May 2009

AFTER 50 years of enigma, the text inscribed around the shoulder of the Calatagan Pot, the country’s oldest cultural artifact with pre-Hispanic writing, may have been deciphered as written in the old Bisayan language.

Diggers discovered the pot in an archeological site in Calatagan, Batangas, in 1958. They sold it for P6 to a certain Alfredo Evangelista.

Later, the Anthropological Foundation of the Philippines purchased the find and donated it in 1961 to the National Museum, where it is displayed to this day.

The pot, measuring 12 centimeters high and 20.2 cm at its widest and weighing 872 grams, is considered one of the Philippines’ most valuable cultural and anthropological artifacts. It has been dated back to the 14th and 16th centuries.

***

The Calatagan Pot
by Hector Santos
© 1996 by Hector Santos
All rights reserved.

http://www.bibingka.com/dahon/mystery/pot.htm

In the early 1960′s, an artifact was offered by treasure hunters to National Museum staff as they were working on a nearby excavation. It was the Calatagan pot, the first pre-Hispanic artifact with writing to be found. As such, it is the best known and written about among all artifacts with writing. Even at that, it is still undeciphered.

Calatagan Pot The late Dr. Robert Fox brought the pot to the offices of the Manila Times to ask help from its editor, Chino Roces, in deciphering the writing around the mouth of the pot. The newspaper, as a result, commissioned the sculptor Guillermo Tolentino, an expert on Philippine syllabaries, to decipher the writing. Tolentino had a hard time with certain letters so he, as a spiritist, reportedly summoned his special powers to come up with a translation.

The authenticity of the pot has been questioned since it first showed up. For one thing, no other pot has been found decorated with writing. Carbon dating was reportedly done on the pot but the results pointed to such an extremely early date that it had to be rejected. Dr. Fox wanted to do some thermoluminescence testing but didn’t live to see it done.

Nevertheless, the pot may still be authentic. It would have been very easy for a forger to write something decipherable on the pot, especially text which made sense. Anyone attempting to create a phony artifact would probably have done so. As it was, the strangeness of the characters and the direction of writing (or to be more precise, the direction in which the artisan wrote the letters) gives us something to think about.

Juan Francisco, a respected Philippine paleographer, did some analysis of the letters in his 1973 book, Philippine Palaeography. He could not decipher the writing, however. His analysis mainly consisted of classifying the letters as curvilinear, lineo-angular, or a combination of the two. I cannot see the usefulness of such a classification because there is no benefit from its use, whether in trying to find the script’s heritage or in classifying it among the known scripts of the world. His book contains good sketches of all the letters though, which makes the section on the Calatagan pot in his book not entirely useless.

The writing on the pot goes around its mouth. The letters look similar to those of classic Philippine scripts (Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Buhid, and Hanunóo) but some appear to be oriented in strange ways. Some show a similarity to older scripts used in Indonesia, suggesting an earlier development of classic Philippine scripts.

The symbols are divided by stop marks into six groups (which may be phrases), each consisting of five or seven symbols.

Calatagan Writing

What is strange and maybe significant about the writing is the apparent direction in which the artisan wrote it. A look at the pot will show that the artisan engraved the letters into the soft clay in a direction going to the left looking at the pot as it stands right side up.

He apparently misjudged the length of the writing and ran out of space so that its last few letters go under the starting point. This gives us a clue as to the literacy of the artisan.

We know that ALL Southeast Asian scripts share a common ancestor and were meant to be read and written from left to right. (Forget what others have said about having observed Tagbanwans writing on bamboo slats in a direction away from their body. You have seen classmates in grade school writing on paper oriented at an angle with respect to their body so that they appeared to have been writing vertically, have you not?)

There are two possibilities:

1. The artisan could well have been from modern times and may have trying to create a phony artifact but had an authentic sample to copy from. He may not have been aware of the direction of writing and so copied the sample from right to left. The result would have been a phony pot with an authentic inscription.

2. Perhaps the pot was authentic but the artisan, illiterate. He had a favorite curse or prayer written on a strip of bamboo or palm leaf. He wanted to use that phrase to decorate the pot.

Being illiterate, he had a 50% chance of going the wrong way which unfortunately he did, verifying Murphy’s Law yet one more time. He also ended up misjudging the length of the writing and had to go under the starting point to get everything written down.

If he had held the written sample right side up while copying it, the letters would be shown in their correct orientation. However, if he held the sample upside down the letters can be viewed in their proper orientation by looking from above the pot.

There may be other possibilities but the fact remains that the successful decipherment of an unknown script requires enough samples to be available.

If the Calatagan pot turns out to be a fake, its creator may either have been a bumbling fool who did not know much about scripts or a very sophisticated forger who could have introduced mysterious symbols deliberately to send paleographers wondering what they represented. A fool may have been dumb enough to copy a written sample in the wrong direction but would a sophisticated forger do so?

In the end, it would be easier to assume that the pot is authentic because it is hard to understand why a forger would do things the way he did in making the pot. But it would also be terribly uncomfortable to work on something not knowing whether a fool or a sophisticate really put one over you.

The mystery of the pot can somewhat be cleared up by doing new tests today. But maybe the pot is like an old toy that was put away in the closet as one got older. Someday, a new family member will rediscover it and play with it again.

Additional Reading

1. Francisco, Juan R. “Philippine palaeography,” in Philippine Journal of Linguistics special monograph 3 (Quezon City, 1973).
2. Potet, Jean-Paul G. “Morphologie du Philippin.” Doctoral dissertation, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Paris, 1983.
3. Santos, Hector. “Artifacts with writing revisited” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:5 (June 1995), 1.
4. —–. “Errors in earlier Calatagan material” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:5 (June 1995), 1-2.
5. —–. “Other pre-Hispanic writing artifacts” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:2 (February 1995), 1.
6. —–. “The Calatagan pot” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:2 (February 1995), 4-5.
7. —–. “The writing on the Calatagan jar” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:5 (June 1995), 3-5.

Original article by Hector Santos at: http://www.bibingka.com/dahon/mystery/pot.htm

The Butuan Silver Strip by Hector Santos

MO1 — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 19:58:57 +0000

The Butuan Silver Strip
by Hector Santos
© 1996 by Hector Santos
All rights reserved.

http://www.bibingka.com/dahon/mystery/silver.htm

The Butuan area has been a rich source of material from ancient Philippines for both treasure hunters and trained archaeologists. So it was in the mid-seventies when a team from the National Museum of the Philippines excavating a site was told that a strip of metal with some kind of writing had been found by a treasure hunter.

Fortunately, the artifact was already in the hands of Proceso Gonzales, the city engineer of Butuan. He understood the importance of the find and took possession of it.

Butuan Silver Strip

The metal strip was found inside a wooden coffin by treasure hunters who were looking for ceramic and gold objects that could be sold for high prices to private collectors. According to Dr. Jesus Peralta, similar burials in wooden coffins in the vicinity of Butuan had previously been found to contain human remains with skulls that have been artificially deformed. This practice was apparently limited to Southern Philippines, the beauty standard for such head shapes never finding its way to Luzon.

Ceramics and ornaments were usually placed in the coffins, the ceramic pieces dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. If the metal strip was found within a typical coffin, it would have logically come from the same era.

While the metal piece could have come from foreign shores, the safest and most conservative position one can take is that an artifact belongs in the place where it was found unless it can be proven otherwise.

The letters were cut into the piece of metal with a knife. The difficulty of making curved lines on metal with a knife is apparent in the clumsy shapes of the letters. The strip measures 17.8 x 1.3 cm.

Peralta reports that the late Dr. Boechari of Indonesia identified the script as “similar to a Javanese script that had been in use from the 12th to the 15th century” (late Kavi?).

At this time, the writing has not been convincingly deciphered nor have the letters in the strip been identified. A successful transliteration would not guarantee a decipherment because of the brevity of the sample, though.

A companion piece with similar writing was also reportedly found in the same coffin. However, the owner refused to part with it because he believed it held the key to the location of a treasure hoard. How he hoped to use that piece to locate the treasure without translating the message is not known. Neither do we know why it is that piece and not the one he gave up that holds the secret.

That second piece will play an important role in solving the mystery of the Butuan silver strip.

Additional Reading

Butuan Silver Strip Deciphered?
by Hector Santos
© 1996 by Hector Santos
All rights reserved.

“Butuan paleograph deciphered using Eskaya script” by Jes Tirol (in UB Update) attempts to show that a “translation” of the Butuan silver strip had been done by using the Eskaya script. A clipping of this article was provided by Antoon Postma of Mindoro, who in turn obtained it from the late William Henry Scott of Mountain Province. This proves that “real” scholars do share information.

Eskaya is a secret organization based on the island of Bohol. Its members claim that their ancestors arrived on the island in 677 A.D. from Sumatra. Tirol writes:

One of the books of the Eskaya of Bohol is entitled Unang Katawhan Sa Bohol (First People of Bohol). According to the book, Dangko and his 12 children of 11 boys and one girl and his men arrived in Bohol in 677 A.D. They started from Sumatra-Manselis which is the western side of Sumatra, Indonesia on board a “Lutsa.” (See: “Lorcha,” Webster Int’l Dictionary, Unabridged.)

The only daughter of Dangko got married to a chieftain of Butuan. From that time on until the present, the inner psyche of an Eskaya is geared towards Butuan. Since the center of Eskaya culture is now at Biyabas, Guindulman, Bohol, the migrant Eskaya in Butuan maintain close contact with the Eskaya of Bohol.

Further on, Tirol continues:

The Butuan Kingdom is no more. Its literature and writings are gone, except for the Butuan paleograph. But the Eskaya of Bohol is still existing with their system of writing. It is logographic system not alphabetic, and therefore older than the Malayan-Bisayan recorded by the Spanish writers. The Eskaya scrupulously transmitted their system of writing and literature by conducting classes. At present, classes are conducted every Saturday and Sunday.

The Eskaya were once part of the Butuan thalossocracy. There is therefore no reason to doubt that the system of writing of the present Eskaya is the same as that of Butuan of olden times. But due to passage of time and cultural intrusions there will be variations, but basically it should be the same.

A chart showing values for the symbols of the Eskaya script provided by Jesus T. Peralta of the National Museum is shown on the Eskaya page. There are many interesting things in the chart. One is that Eskaya writing system includes symbols for numerals, even one for “zero.” It also includes symbols for consonant clusters, a characteristic that was not a feature of old Philippine languages. However, the most interesting thing for me was that some of the symbols can be seen on the Calatagan jar.

A cursory look at the script chart shows that similarities between symbols whose values are closely related are not there. I get the impression that this was an artificially created script, perhaps devised by one individual. It does not seem to be a writing system that had evolved over several generations.

Be that as it may, let us now examine the translation provided by Tirol. The figure below relates the symbols on the silver strip to those of Eskaya and their corresponding phonetic values and meanings.

Translation Chart

The translation reads as follows:

This 821 year when Liyuxie (Les Ece) traveled, I accompanied the trip and returned the next year. I was in good condition.

I will repeat the Eskaya sound and Meaning columns from the above chart below for those who find them hard to read.

1    Ce        “His , Her, This”
2    Ual       “eight (8)”
3    Tre       “2″
4    Oy        “1″
5    Pong      “Apong” means “year”
6    De        “De Ra” means
7    Ra        “When he left”
8    Les       “Les Ece” same as
9    Ece       “Liyuxie” the ambassador of Butuan Kingdom to China in 1011 A.D.
10   Ciuo      “Ciou Cod Col Ning”
11   Cod        means
12   Col       “I accompanied the trip”
13   Ning
14   Gue       “Gue Apong” means
15   Pong      “Return the next year”
16             The period punctuation mark
17   Co        “I or me”
18   Gre       “Co Greyalo” means “I was in good condition or I am well

Quoting W.H. Scott (Filipinos in China Before 1500; Manila, 1989, p. 4.), Tirol explains:

In the year 1003 A.D., King Kiling of Butuan sent his ambassadors, Liyihan and Jiaminan to the Sung Court of China. In 1011 A.D., another king of Butuan, Sri Bata Shaja (Xi-li-ba-da-sha-zhi) sent Liyu-xie to china with a memorial engraved on a gold tablet. Liyu-xie obtained a recognition from China that Butuan had equal status with Vietnam (Champa) as China’s tributary.

Regarding the date, Tirol does not explain 821 but says:

The experts of the National Museum estimated the date of the paleograph between the 12th to 15th century. The date of the trip of Liyuxie which is being referred to, occurred in the 11th century. This difference of one century is acceptable in archeology. The paleograph was found in Butuan and the inscriptions refer to an important person of Butuan.

The silver strip was found with material dated 14/15th century not as early as the 12th century as Tirol wrote. While it is true that 821 in the Islamic calendar would be the equivalent of our 15th century, the characters of the proposed translation would have lived four centuries before the artifact came into existence. That certainly is too much water under the bridge to establish a connection.

More studies on the Eskaya can verify whether there is truth to their claimed connection to an ancient group of people from Sumatra or whether they came up in recent times and developed an artificial script for secret messages.

Additional Reading

1. Peralta, Jesus T. “The Butuan palaeograph: ethnographic implications of an ancient script,” in Archipelago 6:A-55 (1979): 31-33.
2. Santos, Hector. “Artifacts with writing revisited” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:5 (June 1995), 1.
3. —–. “Butuan silver strip deciphered?” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:5 (June 1995), 6-7.
4. —–. “Other pre-Hispanic writing artifacts” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:2 (February 1995), 1.
5. —–. “The Butuan Silver Strip” in Sulat sa Tansô, 2:2 (February 1995), 3.
6. Tirol, Jes B. “Butuan paleograph deciphered using Eskaya script,” in UB Update 1:4 (1990): 6 ff. (Note: A University of Bohol publication.)
7. —–. “ESKAYA OF BOHOL: Origin of Its System of Writing” in The Bohol Chronicle XL: 10 (July 11, 1993), 3 ff.

Original Article at: http://www.bibingka.com/dahon/mystery/silver.htm

Baybayin: Pre-Spanish Philippine writing system

MO1 — Mon, 22 Feb 1999 02:25:30 +0000

Baybayin

Baybayin is a pre-Spanish Philippine writing system. It is a member of the Brahmic family and is recorded as being in use in the 16th century. It continued to be used during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines up until the late 19th Century.

The term Baybay literally means “to spell” in Tagalog. Baybayin was extensively documented by the Spanish. Some have attributed it the name Alibata, but this name is incorrect. (The term “Alibata” was coined by Paul Rodriguez Verzosa after the arrangement of letters of the Arabic alphabet alif, ba, ta (alibata), “f” having been eliminated for euphony’s sake.” ) Versoza’s reasoning for creating this word was unfounded because no evidence of the baybayin was ever found in that part of the Philippines and it has absolutely no relationship to the Arabic language. Furthermore, no ancient script native to Southeast Asia followed the Arabic arrangement of letters, and regardless of Versoza’s connection to the word alibata, its absence from all historical records indicates that it is a totally modern creation. The present author does not use this word in reference to any ancient Philippine script.

Modern scripts in the Philippines, descended from Baybayin, are Hanunó’o, Buhid, Tagbanwa, the Kapampangan script and the Bisaya script.
Baybayin is one of a dozen or so individual writing systems used in Southeast Asia, nearly all of which are abugidas where any consonant is pronounced with the inherent vowel a following it— diacritical marks being used to express other vowels (this vowel occurs with greatest frequency in Sanskrit, and also probably in all Philippine languages).

Origins

Baybayin was noted by the Spanish priest Pedro Chirino in 1604 and Antonio de Morga in 1609 to be known by most, and was generally used for personal writings, poetry, etc. According to William Henry Scott, there were some datus from the 1590s who could not sign affidavits or oaths, and witnesses who could not sign land deeds in the 1620s. There is no data on when this level of literacy was first achieved, and no history of the writing system itself. There are at least six theories about the origins of Baybayin.

Kawi

Kawi originated in Java, and was used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia.
Laguna Copperplate Inscription.

The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the earliest known written document found in the Philippines.
Butuan Ivory Seal

It is a legal document, and has inscribed on it a date of Saka era 822, corresponding to April 21, 900 AD Laguna Copperplate Inscription#cite note-bibingka-1. It was written in the Kawi script in a variety of Old Malay containing numerous loanwords from Sanskrit and a few non-Malay vocabulary elements whose origin is ambiguous between Old Javanese and Old Tagalog. One hypothesis therefore reasons that, since Kawi is the earliest attestation of writing on the Philippines, then Baybayin may be descended from Kawi.

A second example of Kawi script can be seen on the Butuan Ivory Seal, though it has not been dated.

An earthenware burial jar, called the “Calatagan Pot,” found in Batangas is inscribed with characters strikingly similar to Baybayin, and is claimed to have been inscribed ca. 1300 AD. However, its authenticity has not yet been proven.

Old Sumatran “Malay” scripts

Another hypothesis states that a script or script used to write one of the Malay languages was adopted and became Baybayin. In particular, the Pallava script from Sumatra is attested to the 7th century.

Sulawesi

The Liboginese and/or Makassarese scripts of Sulawesi could have been introduced or borrowed and adapted into Baybayin.

Old Assamese

Assamese is a variant of Eastern Nagari script, a precursor to Devanagari. This hypothesis states that a version of this script was introduced to the Philippines via Bengal, which evolved into Baybayin.

Cham

Finally, an early Cham script from Champa—in what is now southern Vietnam and southeastern Cambodia—could have been introduced or borrowed and adapted into Baybayin.

Characteristics

The writing system is an abugida system using consonant-vowel combinations. Each character, written in its basic form, is a consonant ending with the vowel “A”. To produce consonants ending with the other vowel sounds, a mark is placed either above the consonant (to produce an “E” or “I” sound) or below the consonant (to produce an “O” or “U” sound). The mark is called a kudlit. The kudlit does not apply to stand-alone vowels. Vowels themselves have their own glyphs. There is only one symbol for D or R as they were allophones in most languages of the Philippines, where D occurred in initial, final, pre-consonantal or post-consonantal positions and R in intervocalic positions. The grammatical rule has survived in modern Filipino, so that when a d is between two vowels, it becomes an r, as in the words dangál (honour) and marangál (honourable), or dunong (knowledge) and marunong (knowledgeable), and even raw for daw (he said, she said, they said, it was said, allegedly, reportedly, supposedly) and rin for din (also, too) after vowels. This variant of the script is not used for Ilokano, Pangasinan, Bikolano, and other Philippine languages to name a few, as these languages have separate symbols for D and R.

Two styles of writing

Pre-Spanish “style”
In the original form of the Baybayin script, a stand-alone consonant (consonants not ending with any vowel sound) cannot be indicated unambiguously; therefore, such consonants were simply not written, and the reader would fill in the missing consonants through context. For example, the letters n and k in a word like bundók (mountain) were omitted, so that it was spelled bu-do.
Virama Kudlit “style”

The original writing method was particularly difficult for the Spanish priests who were translating books into the native language. Because of this, Francisco López introduced his own kudlit in 1620 that cancelled the implicit a vowel sound. The kudlit was in the form of a “+” sign, in reference to Christianity. This cross-shaped kudlit functions exactly the same as the virama in the Devanagari script of India. In fact, Unicode calls this kudlit the Tagalog Sign Virama. See sample above in Characteristics Section.

“Nga” character

A single character represented “nga”. The current version of the Filipino alphabet still retains “ng” as a digraph, viz, a single letter composed of two characters.

Punctuation

Words written in baybayin were written in a continuous flow, and the only form of punctuation was a single vertical line, or more often, a pair of vertical lines (||). These vertical lines fulfill the function of a comma, period, or unpredictably separate sets of words.

Usage

Baybayin historically was used in Tagalog and to a lesser extent Kapampangan speaking areas. Its use spread to Ilokanos when the Spanish promoted its use with the printing of Bibles. Related scripts, such as Hanunóo, Buhid, and Tagbanwa are still used today, along with Kapampangan script. Currently, Baybayin itself is experiencing an artistic revival of sorts, used to convey a Pre-Hispanic feeling as well as a symbol of Filipino identity. Most activist groups used Baybayin as part of their logo using the script for the acronyms (such as the Baybayin K for Anakbayan) alongside the use of a baybayin-inspired latin script. Baybayin tattoos and brush calligraphy are growing in popularity. It is also used in the Latest Philippine Banknotes Issued Last Quarter of 2010. The word used in the bills was “Pilipino” and is used not only as artistic design but a security feature.

From Wikipedia