Ancient Philippines: Pre-Islamic, Pre-Christian

excerpt taken from Peter Gordon Gowing, Muslim-Filipinos: Heritage and Horizon (Quezon City, Phils.: New Day Publishers, 1979)

NOTE: images in this article are not included in the book
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[page 11] It is popular in some circles today to say that before the coming of Islam and Christianity, the Philippines were inhabited by one people. That statement is reasonably accurate insofar as it refers to the fact that the majority of the inhabitants of the Archipelago were racially the same (that is, Malays except for the Negritos), spoke related if differentiated languages and practiced similar but differentiated customs. The statement of course, is not accurate in any meaningful socio-political sense -- which is the way most of those

[page 12]who say it want it to be taken, for they usually follow up the statement with the broadside charge that Islam and Christianity served to divide the one Filipino people into two hostile camps (e.g., Casiño, 1975 :26 and Ver, 1976 :2-3) . Nothing in the evidence from Philippine prehistory supports a conclusion that before the coming of Islam and Christianity, the scattered groups of inhabitants were undivided, living in anything like pristine peace and harmony. On the contrary, early Spanish chroniclers and Filipino folk traditions originating from pre-Islamic, pre-Christian times suggest `that inter-barangay and inter-island rivalry and warfare were common; and that hostility often existed between highland and lowland, inland and coastal groups (cf. Ph, clan, 1959 :15-18) . If anything in the history of the Filipinos served to bring about a sense of "solidarity" among large numbers of them, and prepared the way for the emergence of national consciousness, it was the adoption of Islam by some Filipinos and of Christianity by others. What happened` was the rise of two nationalities -- where before there had been no nationality -- one Filipino Muslim, and the other Filipino Christian. Historical circumstances have thrust these two nationalities into one Philippine State and the problems of their religious, social, economic and political accommodation to each other have impeded the achievement of a unified consciousness. Dean Cesar Majul (1966b:304) makes the -same point in other terms:
Certainly,  almost  up  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  there  was  no  such thing as a Filipino people in  the  sense we now understand it.   It is  well known that  the   Christian   natives  of  the  Archipelago   generally  came  to   be  called "Indios," and the  Moslems of the  South "Moros."   But there are many historical factors which have  contributed to the progressive transformation  of the "Indio" and  "Moro" into  Filipinos  belonging  to  a  national  community,    This  process, not unaccompanied by  conflict, has  been  gradual  but inevitable.


The  ancestors  of  the  Malay inhabitants  of  the  southern  Philippines  who  adopted  Islam  were  much  like  the  Malay  inhabitants  of the  other  Philippine  islands.    In  the  course  of  many `centuries, beginning  three  or  four  millenia  B.C.,  they  had  migrated  across  the
shallow  seas  in  frail  boats   (barangays)   from  the  Southeast  Asia mainland  and  the  Indonesian  Archipelago.    They  established  small, scattered  communities along the island coasts.   In time, some groups

[Page 13] followed the rivers inland and became farmers,  while  those remaining on the coast took their living from both land and sea as agriculturalists, fishermen, traders  or adventurers.

Very  little  is  actually  known  about  the  pre-Islamic  peoples  of Mindanao and  Sulu  but. it is  evident that they were far from  being "one  people" before the  coming  of  Islam.  Centuries  of  ethnic  differentiation  had  occurred  among  southern   Philippine  inhabitants prior  to  Islam's  arrival.    For  example,  it is commonly  believed,  on the  basis  of  legends  common  to  the  two  groups,  that  the  Tiruray and Maguindanao were once one people but were separated at the time Islam  was introduced  into  Mindanao.   Stuart  Schlegel  (1972 :25-30) has persuasively argued from lexico-statistical analysis and other cultural  data  that  the  Tiruray  are  related  much  more  closely  to  the upland,  swidden-farming,  rain-forest-dwelling  groups  of  the  Cotabato  cordillera  (e.g.,  the Tagabili  and  Bilaan)  than  to  the  lowlandMaguindanao.    Moreover,  lexicostatistical  dating  suggests  that  the common  ethnic ancestry  of  the Tiruray and  Maguindanao  may have separated as  long ago as 1800  B.C.   Certainly the  two  groups  were related  by trade and  barter, and  were  possibly  allies  in  local  or regional  squabbles.   It  is likely that  there  were  formal  pacts,  cast in the idiom of  brotherhood,  which cemented their relations from time to  time.   But  they  were  not "one  people."


It  is  also  clear  that  the  pro-Islamic  peoples  of  Mindanao  and Sulu  were  not  isolated  from  the  cultures  of  their  neighbors  to  the north or south.  For instance, some scholars  (e.g., Spoehr, 1973 :21-22) have  suggested, ' on  linguistic  and  other  evidence,  that  the  present-day  taugimba   (farmers  of   inland  Jolo)   might  be  descendants  of earlier Samalan-speaking inhabitants who had migrated t~o Jolo from the  south,  from  Borneo  or  the  islands  of   northeastern  Indonesia. Eventually,  according  to  this  theory,  they  were  pushed  inland  and later assimilated  by an aggressive,  maritime  people--_-tauhigad  (people  of  the  coast)--who  had  intruded   (900  years  ago?)   from  the north, from the Visayas or northern  Mindanao.   Today they are one people,  the Tausug,  but  there  is  a  residual  distinction  between  the taugimba  and  the  tauhigad  which  lingers  still  in  that  society.


Archaeological,  linguistic,   folkloric  and  other  studies  indicate that Mindanao and  Sulu  enjoyed fluent trade  with  Indonesia,  China and  Indo-China  from  at  least  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century.   Buansa  (modern  Jolo)  was  a  major  trading  post in  the  Sulu Archipelago  before  the  coming  of  Islam.    Scholars  are  not  agreed on  the  extent  to  which  the  Malay  peoples  of  Mindanao  and  Sulu had  been  subject,  if  ever,  to  the  successive  Indonesian  empires  of Srivijaya and  Majapahit,  or to the lesser  powers  based  on  Sulawesi and  Borneo.    But  that  there  were  interrelationships  of  some  sort

[Page 14]
cannot be doubted. The languages, dress, pottery and other manufacturing arts, features of adat (customary law), traces of pre-Islamic religious beliefs and mythology, and other aspects of present-day Moro culture, testify abundantly to the influence wrought by many centuries of contacts with both the mainland island societies of Southeast Asia, and also with China.