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)

Literacy of the Pre-Hispanic Filipinos

Although one of Ferdinand Magellan's shipmates, Antonio Pigafetta, wrote that the people of the
Visayas were not literate in 1521, the baybayin had already arrived there by 1567 when Miguel
López de Legazpi reported that, “They [the Visayans] have their letters and characters like those
of the Malays, from whom they learned them.” B1 Then, a century later Francisco Alcina wrote
about:

The characters of these natives, or, better said, those that have been in use for a few years in
these parts, an art which was communicated to them from the Tagalogs, and the latter learned it
from the Borneans who came from the great island of Borneo to Manila, with whom they have
considerable traffic...
From these Borneans the Tagalogs learned their characters, and from them the Visayans, so they
call them Moro characters or letters because the Moros taught them... [the Visayans] learned [the
Moros'] letters, which many use today, and the women much more than the men, which they
write and read more readily than the latter. B2
The baybayin continued to thrive in many parts of the Philippines in the first century of Spanish
occupation. Even before the end of the 1500's the Spaniards were already printing books in the
Tagalog script (see Literature), which indicates at least an adequate level of literacy. Some accounts
went so as far as to say that the literacy rate was practically 100%. A Jesuit priest, Father Pedro
Chirino wrote in 1604 that:

So accustomed are all these islanders to writing and reading that there is scarcely a man, and
much less a woman, who cannot read and write in the letters proper to the island of Manila. B3

And Dr. Antonio de Morga, a Spanish magistrate in the Philippines echoed Chirino's enthusiasm
in 1609:

Throughout the islands the natives write very well using [their letters]... All the natives, women
as well as men, write in this language, and there are very few who do not write well and
correctly. B4

These often quoted observations were exaggerations, of course; the historian William H. Scott
managed to turn up several examples from the 1590s of datus who could not sign affidavits or
oaths, and witnesses who could not sign land deeds in the 1620s. B5 Nevertheless, it appears that
wherever the baybayin was available, literacy was common not only among the elite but at all
levels of society.

Pre-Hispanic Writing Techniques

The pre-Hispanic Filipinos wrote on many different materials; leaves, palm fronds, tree bark and
fruit rinds, but the most common material was bamboo. The writing tools or panulat were the
points of daggers or small pieces of iron. Among the manuscripts in Charles R. Boxer's
collection, known as the Boxer Codex, there is an anonymous report from 1590 that described
their method of writing, which is still used today by the tribes of Mindoro and Palawan to write
their own script:

When they write, it is on some tablets made of the bamboos which they have in those islands, on
the bark. In using such a tablet, which is four fingers wide, they do not write with ink, but with
some scribers with which they cut the surface and bark of the bamboo, and make the letters. B6

Once the letters were carved into the bamboo, it was wiped with ash to make the characters stand
out more. Sharpened splits of bamboo were used with coloured plant saps to write on more
delicate materials such as leaves. But since the ancient Filipinos did not keep long-term written
records, more durable materials, such as stone, clay or metal, were not used. After the Spaniards
arrived Filipinos adopted the use of paper, pen and ink.
 A Hanunóo boy of Mindoro
carves letters into a piece
of bamboo. The Hanunóo
script is one of three
forms of the baybayin that
is still in use today.

The bamboo document and the dagger used to

write it.

From The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind

by David Diringer. 1948, p. 300.

Origin of the Baybayin

The word baybayin is a Tagalog term that refers to all the letters used in writing a language, that
is to say, an “alphabet” – although, to be more precise, the baybayin is more like a syllabary. It is
from the root baybáy meaning, “spell.” This name for the old Filipino script appeared in one of
the earliest Philippine language dictionaries ever published, the Vocabulario de Lengua Tagala
of 1613. Early Spanish accounts usually called the baybayin “Tagalog letters” or “Tagalog
writing.” And, as mentioned earlier, the Visayans called it “Moro writing” because it was
imported from Manila, which was one of the ports where many products from Muslim traders
entered what are now known as the Philippine islands. The Bikolanos called the script basahan
and the letters, guhit.

Another common name for the baybayin is alibata, which is a word

that was invented just in the 20th century by a member of the old
National Language Institute, Paul Versoza. As he explained in
Pangbansang Titik nang Pilipinas in 1939,

"In 1921 I returned from the United States to give public lectures on
Tagalog philology, calligraphy, and linguistics. I introduced the word
alibata, which found its way into newsprints and often mentioned by
many authors in their writings. I coined this word in 1914 in the New
York Public Library, Manuscript Research Division, basing it on the
Maguindanao (Moro) arrangement of letters of the alphabet after the
Arabic: alif, ba, ta (alibata), “f” having been eliminated for euphony's
sake." B7
Paul Rodriguez
Versoza's reasoning for creating this word was unfounded because no
Verzosa 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.

Many of the writing systems of Southeast Asia

descended from ancient scripts used in India
over 2000 years ago. Although the baybayin
shares some important features with these
scripts, such as all the consonants being
pronounced with the vowel a and the use of
special marks to change this sound, there is no
evidence that it is so old.

The shapes of the baybayin characters bear a

slight resemblance to the ancient Kavi script of
Java, Indonesia, which fell into disuse in the
1400s. However, as mentioned earlier in the
Spanish accounts, the advent of the baybayin in
the Philippines was considered a fairly recent
event in the 16th century and the Filipinos at
that time believed that their baybayin came
from Borneo.

This theory is supported by the fact that the

baybayin script could not show syllable final
consonants, which are very common in most
Philippine languages. (See Final Consonants) This
indicates that the script was recently acquired
and had not yet been modified to suit the needs of its new users. Also, this same shortcoming in
the baybayin was a normal trait of the script and language of the Bugis people of Sulawesi,
which is directly south of the Philippines and directly east of Borneo. Thus most scholars believe
that the baybayin may have descended from the Buginese script or, more likely, a related lost
script from the island of Sulawesi. Whatever route the baybayin travelled, it probably arrived in
Luzon in the 13th or 14th century.

Literature of the Ancient Filipinos

All early Spanish reports agreed that pre-Hispanic Filipino literature was mainly oral rather than
written. Legazpi's account of 1567, quoted earlier, went on to say:
They have their letters and characters... but never is any ancient writing found among them nor
word of their origin and arrival in these islands; their customs and rites being preserved by
traditions handed down from father to son without any other record. B8

The Boxer Codex manuscript from 1590, also mentioned earlier, reported that:

They have neither books nor histories nor do they write anything of length but only letters and
reminders to one another... [And lovers] carry written charms with them. B9

Aside from writing letters and poetry to each other, the ancient Filipinos adorned the entrances of
their homes with incantations written on bamboo so as to keep out evil spirits.

In the Spanish era Filipinos started to write on paper. They kept records of their property and
their financial transactions, and Fr. Marcelo de Ribadeneira said in 1601 that the early Filipino
Christians made little notebooks in which they wrote, “in their characters or letters” the lessons
they were taught in church. B10 They often signed Spanish documents with baybayin letters and
many of these signatures still exist in archives in the Philippines, Mexico and Spain. There are
even two land deeds written in baybayin script at the University of Santo Tomas. (See: Baybayin
Handwriting)

To take advantage of the native's literacy, religious authorities published several books
containing baybayin text. The first of these was the Doctrina Christiana, en lengua española y
tagala printed in 1593. The Tagalog text was based mainly on a manuscript written by Fr. Juan
de Placencia. Friars Domingo de Nieva and Juan de San Pedro Martyr supervised the preparation
and printing of the book, which was carried out by a Chinese artisan whose name was not
recorded for posterity.

For modern scholars the Doctrina is like the Rosetta Stone of baybayin writing and 16th century
Tagalog. Each section of the book is presented in three parts: first, the Spanish text then, the
Tagalog translation written in the Spanish alphabet, and finally the Tagalog written in the
baybayin script. The Doctrina is the earliest example of the baybayin that exists today and it is
the only example from the 1500s. The book also provides a view of how Tagalog was spoken
before Spanish had a chance to make its full impact on the language. (A facsimile of the Doctrina can be
purchased at a very low price at Reflections of Asia.)

The Doctrina of 1593 was printed using the woodblock method. That is, an entire page was
carved into a single block of wood. Ink was then applied to the block and a thin sheet of paper
was gently brushed onto it to pick up the engraved image. This method did not ensure regularity
in the shapes of the baybayin characters. However, when printing with moveable types came to
the Philippines in the beginning of the 1600s, baybayin letters began to take on more consistent,
though stylized shapes because each character was carved into its own moveable block. Fr.
Francisco Lopez used a set of these types in 1620 to produce his Ilokano Doctrina based on the
catechism written by Cardinal Belarmine, best know today as the first inquisitor of Galileo. The
typeface he chose was used in at least two earlier Tagalog books and today it is one of the most
popular baybayin styles among enthusiasts of the ancient script. (See Baybayin Styles) It was in this book
that Lopez attempted to reform the baybayin, which, in the view of most Spaniards, was
seriously flawed. (See Final Consonants)
Nevertheless, the Spanish friars used the baybayin script not only to teach their religion to the
Filipinos, but also to teach other clerics how to speak the local languages. The writers of the
early grammars encouraged their readers to learn the baybayin, as Fr. Francisco Blancas de San
Jose explained in his Arte y reglas de la lengua tagala of 1610:

Sometimes adjoining the Tagalog word written in Spanish letters I place the Tagalog characters
with which the same word is also written, in order that through them whoever can read them can
come to know the proper pronunciation of that word... For which reason those who wish to speak
well should learn to read Tagalog characters... B11

The baybayin was also described in Visayan grammar books of the 1600s such as Alonso de
Méntrida's Arte de la lengua Bisaya-Hiligayna de la isla de Panay, 1637, and Domingo
Ezguerra's Arte de la lengua Bisaya en la provincia de Leyte, 1663. However, Ezguerra's
example of the script contained printing mistakes. A kind of Spanish check mark was put in the
place of two different letters. Méntrida wrote the following about his typeface:

It is to be noted that our Bisayans have some letters with different shapes, which I place here; but
even they themselves do not agree on the shapes of their letters; for this reason, and because of
the limited types available, I have shown the characters according to the Tagalogs. B12

The Baybayin Method of Writing

The baybayin was a syllabic writing system, which means that each letter represented a syllable
instead of just a basic sound as in the modern alphabet. There were a total of 17 characters: three
vowels and 14 consonants, but when combined with the small vowel-modifying marks, called
kudlíts, the number of characters increased to 45. This way of writing is called an abugida. When
a person spelled a word orally or recited the baybayin, the individual letters were called babâ,
kakâ, dadâ, etc., but the original sequence of the letters was different to what it is today. This
“alphabetical” order was recorded in the Tagalog Doctrina Christiana.

“The abc. in the Tagalog language”

A U/O I/E HA PA KA SA LA TA NA BA MA GA DA/RA YA
NGA WA
Click on image for more information.
The Consonants & Kudlíts

In their simplest form, each consonant represented a syllable that was pronounced with an a
vowel (like the u in “up”). Simply adding a tick, dot or other mark to the letter, would change the
inherent a vowel sound. These marks were called kudlíts, or diacritics in English. A kudlit was
placed above a consonant letter to give it an i or e vowel sound. When it was placed below the
letter it changed the vowel sound to u or o.

Visit the Baybayin Tutorial to learn more about writing the baybayin script.

The Vowels

The three vowel characters were only used at the beginning of words and syllables, or syllables
without any consonant. There were only three vowels because the ancient Tagalogs, and many
other linguistic groups, did not distinguish between the pronunciations of i and e, or u and o until
Spanish words entered their languages. Even today these sounds are interchangeable in words
such as lalaki/lalake (man), babae (woman) and kababaihan (womanhood or womankind),
uód/oód (worm), punò (tree trunk) and punung-kahoy (tree), and oyaye/oyayi/uyayi (lullaby).

The vowel characters actually represented vowels that were preceded by a glottal stop. This
pronunciation was more common in the pre-Hispanic era but has changed over the centuries due
to the influences of western languages. This shift can be seen when early texts, such as the
Doctrina Christiana, are compared to modern Filipino. For example, we syllabicate the words
ngayón (today) and gagawín (will do) as follows: nga-yon and ga-ga-wín respectively. But the
baybayin text of the Doctrina reveals a different syllabic division. Ngayón was written, ngay-on,
and gagawin was written ga-gaw-in.

The R Sound

The Tagalogs used only one character for da and ra, . The pronunciation of this letter
depended on its location within a word. The grammatical rule has survived in modern Filipino
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).

However, this rule could not be relied upon in other languages, so when other linguistic groups
adopted the baybayin, different ways of representing the r sound were required. The Visayans
apparently used the d/ra character for their own words but used the la character for Spanish
words. (See Visayan examples.) Fr. Lopez's choice of d/ra or la seemed to be random in the Ilokano
Doctrina, which caused many corruptions of Ilokano words. (See excerpts from his Doctrina.) However, a
chart drawn by Sinibaldo de Mas in 1843 showed la doubling for the Ilokano ra while his
Pangasinan list showed no substitute for ra at all. The Bikolanos modified the d/ra character to
make a distinct letter for ra. (See the chart in Baybayin Styles.)

The Nga Character

A single character represented the nga syllable. The latest version of the modern Filipino
alphabet still retains the ng as a single letter but it is written with two characters. The ng is the
alphabet's only remaining link to its baybayin heritage.

Punctuation

Words written in the baybayin script were not spaced apart; the letters 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. || This fulfilled the function of a comma and a period, and indeed, of practically
any punctuation mark in use today. Although these bars were used consistently to end sentences,
they were also used to separate words, but in an unpredictable manner. Occasionally a single
word would be enclosed between these marks but usually sentences were divided into groups of
three to five words.

Final Consonants

The most confusing feature of the baybayin for non-native readers was that there was no way to
write a consonant without having a vowel follow it. If a syllable or a word ended with a
consonant, that consonant was simply dropped. For example, the letters n and k in a word like
bundók (mountain) were omitted, so that it was spelled bu-do.

The Spanish priests found this problem to be an impediment to the accurate translation of their
religious texts. So, when they printed a lesson in baybayin it was usually accompanied by a
Spanish translation and the same Tagalog text using the Spanish alphabet, as in the Doctrina
Christiana. Other priests simply stopped using the baybayin in favour of the alphabet. The first
attempt to “reform” the baybayin came in 1620 when Fr. Francisco Lopez prepared to publish
the Ilokano Doctrina. He invented a new kudlít in the shape of a cross. This was placed below a
baybayin consonant in order to cancel the inherent a sound. Lopez wrote:

The reason for putting the text of the Doctrina in Tagalog type... has been to begin the correction
of the said Tagalog script, which, as it is, is so defective and confused (because of not having any
method until now for expressing final consonants - I mean, those without vowels) that the most
learned reader has to stop and ponder over many words to decide on the pronunciation which the
writer intended. B13
Although Lopez's new way of writing provided a more accurate depiction of the spoken
language, native Filipino writers found it cumbersome and they never accepted it. In 1776, Pedro
Andrés de Castro wrote about their reaction to the invention:

They, after much praising of it and giving thanks for it, decided it could not be incorporated into
their writing because it was contrary to the intrinsic character and nature which God had given it
and that it would destroy the syntax, prosody and spelling of the Tagalog language all at one
blow... B14

Direction of Baybayin Writing

The baybayin was read from left to right in rows that progressed from top to bottom, just as we
read in English today. However, this has been a point of controversy among scholars for
centuries due to conflicting accounts from early writers who were confused by the ease with
which ancient Filipinos could read their writing from almost any angle. As the historian William
H. Scott commented,

The willingness of Filipinos to read their writing with the page held in any direction caused
understandable confusion among European observers who lacked this ability - and causes some
irritation to Tagalog teachers in Mangyan schools today. B15 [Note: The peoples collectively known as Mangyans still
use their own form of the baybayin in Mindoro.]

Some observers were mistaken to believe that the baybayin should be read vertically from
bottom to top in columns progressing from left to right because that was how the ancient
Filipinos carved their letters into narrow bamboo strips. However, it was simply a matter of
safety that when they used a sharp instrument to carve, they held the bamboo pointing outward
and they carved away from their bodies, just as modern Mangyans do today. (See photo above.) This
gave the appearance that they were writing from the bottom upward. However, this did not
necessarily mean that the text was supposed to be read that way too.

Although the ancient Filipinos did not seem to mind which way they read their writing, the clue
to the proper orientation of the text was the kudlíts, or diacritic marks that alter the vowel sound
of the letters. In syllabic scripts such as Kavi, Bugis and others closely related to the baybayin,
the text was read from left to right and the diacritics were placed above and below the characters
(i/e was above and u/o was below). When the ancient Filipinos carved the baybayin into the
bamboo strips, they placed the kudlíts to the left of the letter for the i/e vowel and to the right for
the u/o vowels. Thus, when the finished inscription was turned clockwise to the horizontal
position, the text flowed from left to right and the kudlíts were in their proper places, i/e above
and u/o below.
Variants of the Baybayin

Some writers have claimed that there were several different ancient
alphabets in the Philippines, which belonged to different languages and
dialects in Luzon and the Visayas. The number of scripts mentioned
usually ranges from 10 to 12. However, none of the early Spanish authors
ever suggested that there was more than one baybayin script. In fact, even
when they wrote about other Philippine languages, they usually referred to
the baybayin as “Tagalog” writing or as quoted earlier, Pedro Chirino
called it “the letters proper to the island of Manila.”

The baybayin was a single script, and just like the alphabet today, its
appearance varied widely according to each person's unique handwriting.
(See: The Baybayin as Written by Filipinos) When the printing press was introduced to the
Philippines, this variety was reflected in the typefaces. The misconception
that each province had its own alphabet arose in the 19th century, long
after the baybayin had fallen out of use. Authors who wrote about
Philippine culture, such as Eugène Jacquet (1831) and Sinibaldo de Mas
(1843), collected old samples of baybayin writing and classified them
according to where they were found or the language of the text. (See: Baybayin
Styles.) They were aware that these samples were variations of one script but,
later writers such as Pardo de Tavera and Pedro Paterno around the turn of
the century, assembled their own comparison charts from these samples
and other sources and labelled them as distinct “alphabets” from various
regions. (See: Paterno's Cuadro Paleografico) These charts were later reproduced in
schoolbooks of the 20th century with very little in the way of explanation
for their content. Thus, through generations of copying and recopying,
these individual samples, many of which were merely one person's
particular handwriting style, came to be known as distinct alphabets that
belonged to entire regions or linguistic groups.

The clearest example of this kind of misinterpretation is the baybayin

typeface that Francisco Lopez chose in 1620 for his Ilokano Doctrina and
for his Arte de la lengua yloca of 1627. It first appeared in two Tagalog
books, Arte y reglas de la lengua Tagala (1610) by Francisco Blancas de
San Jose and Vocabulario de lengua Tagala (1613) by Pedro de San The Lopez
Buenaventura. (See the chart on the right.) However, Eugène Jacquet called this style
the Ilokano alphabet in his Notice sur l'alphabet Yloc ou Ilog (1831)
"Ilokano" type
because it was used most notably in two Ilokano books. B16 But, as quoted font compared to
earlier, even Lopez said that he put “the text of the [Ilokano] Doctrina in earlier Tagalog
Tagalog type.” Still, the Lopez typeface is often mistakenly called the pre- fonts. From W.H.
Hispanic Ilokano alphabet. Scott (1994, p.
214.)
See Baybayin Styles for more about the different forms of the Baybayin.
Baybayin Lost
Although the baybayin had spread so swiftly throughout the Philippines in the 1500s, it began to
decline in the 1600s despite the Spanish clergy's attempts to use it for evangelization. Filipinos
continued to sign their names with baybayin letters throughout the 17th, and even into the 18th
century, though most of the documents were written in Spanish. Gaspar de San Agustín still
found the baybayin useful in 1703. In his Compendio de la lengua Tagala he wrote, “It helps to
know the Tagalog characters in distinguishing accents.” B17 And he mentioned that the baybayin
was still being used to write poetry in Batangas at that time. But in 1745 Sebastián Totanes
claimed in his Arte de la lengua Tagala that,

Rare is the indio who still knows how to read [the baybayin letters], much less write them. All of
them read and write our Castilian letters now. B18

However, Totanes held a rather low opinion of Philippine culture and other writers of the period
gave a more balanced view. Thomas Ortiz felt it was still necessary to describe the Tagalog
characters in his Arte y Reglas de la lengua Tagala of 1729 and as late as 1792 a pact between
Christians and Mangyans on the island of Mindoro was signed with baybayin letters, which is
not surprising because the Mangyans never stopped using their script.

Many people today, both ordinary Filipinos and some historians not acquainted with the
Philippines, are surprised when they learn that the ancient Filipinos actually had a writing system
of their own. The complete absence of truly pre-Hispanic specimens of the baybayin script is
puzzling and it has lead to a common misconception that fanatical Spanish priests must have
burned or otherwise destroyed massive amounts of native documents as they did so ruthlessly in
Central America. Even the prominent Dr. H. Otley Beyer wrote in The Philippines before
Magellan (1921) that, “one Spanish priest in Southern Luzon boasted of having destroyed more
than three hundred scrolls written in the native character.” B19 Historians have searched for the
source of Beyer's claim, but until now none have even learned the name of that zealous priest.
Furthermore, there has never been a recorded instance of ancient Filipinos writing on scrolls. The
fact that they wrote on such perishable materials as leaves and bamboo is probably the reason
why no pre-Hispanic documents have survived.

Although many Spaniards didn't hide their disdain for Filipino culture, the only documents they
burned were probably the occasional curse or incantation that offended their beliefs. There
simply were no “dangerous” documents to burn because the pre-Hispanic Filipinos did not write
at length about such things as their own beliefs, mythology, or history. These were the subjects
of their oral record, which, indeed, the Spanish priests tried to eradicate through relentless
indoctrination. But, in regard to writing, it can be argued that the Spanish friars actually helped
to preserve the baybayin by continuing to use it and write about it even after it fell out of use
among most Filipinos.

It is more likely that mere practicality was the main reason that the baybayin went out of style.
Although it was adequate for the relatively light requirements of pre-Hispanic writing, it could
not bear the burdens of the new sounds from the Spanish language and that culture's demand for
an accurate written representation of the spoken word. The baybayin could not distinguish
between the vowels i and e, or u and o, or the consonants d and r. It lacked other consonants too,
but more important, it had no way to cancel the vowel sound that was inherent in each
consonant. Thus consonants could not be combined and syllable final consonants could not be
written at all. Without these elements the meanings of many Spanish words were confused or lost
completely.

Social expediency was another reason for Filipinos to abandon the baybayin in favour of the
alphabet. They found the alphabet easy to learn and it was a skill that helped them to get ahead in
life under the Spanish regime, working in relatively prestigious jobs as clerks, scribes and
secretaries. With his usual touch of exaggeration, Fr. Pedro Chirino made an observation in 1604
that shows how easily Filipinos took to the new alphabet.

They have learned our language and pronunciation and write it as well as we do, and even better,
because they are so clever that they learn everything very quickly... In Tigbauan [Panay] I had a
small boy in school who in three months, by copying letters that I received in good script,
learned to write much better than I, and translated important papers for me most accurately,
without errors or falsehoods. B20

But if reasons of practicality were behind the demise of the baybayin, why did it not survive as
more than a curiosity? Why was it not retained for at least ceremonial purposes such as
inscriptions on buildings and monuments, or practiced as a traditional art like calligraphy in
other Asian countries? The sad fact is that most forms of indigenous art in the Philippines were
abandoned wherever the Spanish influence was strong and only exist today in the regions that
were out of reach of the Spanish empire. Hector Santos, a researcher living in California,
suggested that obligations to the Spanish conquerors prevented Filipinos from maintaining their
traditions:

Tributes were imposed on the native population. Having to produce more than they used to, they
had less time to pass on traditional skills to their children, resulting in a tightening spiral of
illiteracy in their ancient script. B21

Baybayin Found
In some parts of the Philippines the baybayin was never lost but developed into distinct styles.
The Tagbanuwa people of Palawan still remember their script today but they rarely use it. The
Buhid and especially the Hanunóo people of Mindoro still use their scripts as the ancient
Filipinos did 500 years ago, for communication and poetry. Dr. Harold Conklin described
Hanunóo literature in 1949:

Hanunóo inscriptions are never of magical import, nor are they on mythological or historical
topics. Written messages (love letters, requests etc.,) are occasionally sent by means of inscribed
bamboos, but by far the most common use of this script is for recording ambáhan [Hanunóo] and
urúkai [Buhid] chants. Both of these types consist largely of metaphorical love songs. B22
Dr. Fletcher Gardner described their postal system in 1943:

A bamboo letter is fastened in a cleft stick and placed by the trailside. The first passer-by, who is
going in the direction of the addressee, carries it as far as his plans allow and leaves it again by
the trail, to be carried on by some other person. Perhaps half a dozen volunteers may assist in
conveying the letter to its designation. B23

Today there are small under-funded movements working to preserve these living scripts, such as
the Mangyan Assistance & Research Center in Panaytayan, Mansalay, Mindoro, directed by
Antoon Postma and the Palawan State University Tagbanwa Script Project, aided by Dr. Jesus
Peralta jr. at the Philippine National Museum. In 1994, Hector Santos created several Hanunóo,
Buhid, and Tagbanuwa computer fonts for publishing and education as well as fonts for the
ancient baybayin.
(See A Philippine Leaf for more about these living scripts and Hector's fonts.)

The information revolution has allowed Filipinos to learn more about the pre-Hispanic era on the
Internet than was ever taught in Philippine schools. As a result many Filipinos are taking a new
interest in their own heritage and it is usually the baybayin that catches their attention first.
Through the use of computer fonts, the baybayin is now being used in graphic designs for web
sites, multimedia art, jewellery, compact discs, T-shirts, and logos. (See Baybayin Links) And for some
Pinoys, it seems that the path has come full circle. Whereas long ago the Visayan pintados were
tattooed according to their status in the community, today a growing number of young Filipinos
are getting tattooed with baybayin characters to show their pride in their heritage.

Paul Morrow
©2002