Philippine progress prior to 1898 : $b a source book of Philippine history to supply a fairer view of Filipino participation and supplement the defective Spanish accountsCraig, Austin
History
Philippine progress prior to 1898 : $b a source book of Philippine history to supply a fairer view of Filipino participation and supplement the defective Spanish accounts
Craig, Austin
Philippines
Now this voyage
on a map works out that they passed the Philippines about the time
that marooning the priest on an island was under discussion, and, as
St. John notes (The Indian Archipelago, London 1853, Vol. I, p. 103),
"The Philippines * * * occupy the only part of the Archipelago liable
to hurricanes." Apparently the land was then unfamiliar to these
early navigators.
No voyages of discovery were attempted by the Chinese but,
creeping along the coast, they finally came to the Malay
Peninsula and they worked from one island to another in the Indian
Archipelago. (Groeneveldt, p. 1.) By this roundabout course in
connection with the great island of Borneo, then called Polo and
noted to have sent envoys to China in 518, 523 and 616, we find the
Sulu islands suggested. The reference reads "at the east of this
country is situated the land of the Rakshas (or lawless persons, or
pirates.)" These were stated to have the same customs as the Poli
people, unerring in throwing a saw-edged (wooden) discus knife,
but using other weapons like those in China, in ways resembling
Cambodia and with products like Siam's. Murder and theft were
punished by cutting off the hands and adultery by chaining together
the legs for a year. In the dark of the moon came the sacrifices,
bowls of wine and eatables set adrift on the surface of the water,
as Bornean tribes supposed to be akin to the Bisayans and Tagalogs
now are doing. The Polans collected coral and trained parrots to talk,
and so probably did the men of Sulu. In their ears were the teeth of
wild beasts and a piece of home-made cotton cloth was wrapped about
their waists, sarong fashion. Their markets they held at night and
they were accustomed to keep their faces covered.
Next in point of time is a reference through Southern Formosa,
called by the Chinese P'i-sho-ye, which the author of "China before
the Chinese" (De Lacouperie) believes is only a miscalling of Bisaya,
and former Consul Davidson of Formosa corroborates this both on Chinese
authority (Ma Touan-lin) and from local traditions. (Davidson: The
Island of Formosa Past and Present, New York, 1903).
"Bands of uncivilized Malays" from the south drove into the interior
the Formosans with whom the Chinese earlier had been familiar. So on
the next expedition from the mainland, in 605, the Chinese leader was
surprised to find on the coast strange inhabitants with whom he could
not communicate. His surmise that the newcomers were Malays led the
next expedition to take with it interpreters from different southern
Malayan islands, of whom at least one made himself understood. The
immigrants kept up communication with Luzon and on their rafts raided
coast towns of China, as will be later seen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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