The Indian influences in early Philippine polities, particularly the influence of the
Srivijaya
Srivijaya ( id, Sriwijaya) was a Buddhist thalassocratic empire based on the island of Sumatra (in modern-day Indonesia), which influenced much of Southeast Asia. Srivijaya was an important centre for the expansion of Buddhism from the 7th ...
and
Majapahit
Majapahit ( jv, ꦩꦗꦥꦲꦶꦠ꧀; ), also known as Wilwatikta ( jv, ꦮꦶꦭ꧀ꦮꦠꦶꦏ꧀ꦠ; ), was a Javanese Hindu-Buddhist thalassocratic empire in Southeast Asia that was based on the island of Java (in modern-day Indonesia ...
thassalocracies on cultural development, is a significant area of research for scholars of Philippine, Indonesian, and Southeast Asian history,
and is believed to be the source of
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
and
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
elements in early Philippine culture, religion, and language.
Because the Indonesian
thassalocracies of Srivijaya and Majapahit acquired many of these Hindu and Buddhist elements through
Indianization, the introduction of such elements to early Philippine cultures has sometimes been referred to as ''indianization''.
In more recent scholarship, it is termed ''localization'',
as in, e.g., localization of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs.
Some scholars also place the Philippine archipelago within the outermost reaches of the Indosphere, along with Northern Vietnam, where the Hindu and Buddhist elements were not directly introduced by Indian travellers.
The most updated scholarship notes that there is no evidence of direct political or economic interaction between India and the various polities of the Philippine archipelago prior to the Philippines' European colonial era. Scholars such as Osbourne and Jocano instead suggest that "indirect cultural influence"
mostly arrived through these early Philippine polities' relations with the
Srivijaya
Srivijaya ( id, Sriwijaya) was a Buddhist thalassocratic empire based on the island of Sumatra (in modern-day Indonesia), which influenced much of Southeast Asia. Srivijaya was an important centre for the expansion of Buddhism from the 7th ...
and
Majapahit
Majapahit ( jv, ꦩꦗꦥꦲꦶꦠ꧀; ), also known as Wilwatikta ( jv, ꦮꦶꦭ꧀ꦮꦠꦶꦏ꧀ꦠ; ), was a Javanese Hindu-Buddhist thalassocratic empire in Southeast Asia that was based on the island of Java (in modern-day Indonesia ...
empires.
during the 10th through the early 14th centuries. This updates the theories of earlier scholars, who posited that Indian elements in Philippine culture suggested relations between the two societies as early as the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE.
This also places the Philippines and the northern part of Vietnam outside the pattern of "Indianization" which took place elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
History
Historians prior to the later part of the twentieth century such as Zaide and Manuel generally believed that Srivijaya and Majapahit played a significant role in the development of cultures throughout the Philippine archipelago, although the degree of Srivijayan influence was later questioned in seminal works by Jocano and Scott.
Hindu and Buddhist influences first reached
Nusantara or Maritime Southeast Asia as early as the first century.
Jan Gonda
Jan Gonda (14 April 1905 – 28 July 1991) was a Dutch Indologist and the first Utrecht professor of Sanskrit. He was born in Gouda, in the Netherlands, and died in Utrecht. He studied with Willem Caland at Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht (since 1990 ...
, The Indian Religions in Pre-Islamic Indonesia and their survival in Bali, in , pp. 1-54 There are two major theories for the arrival of Hinduism in the region, both focusing on Indonesia. The first is that South Indian sea traders brought Hinduism with them, and second being that Indonesian royalty welcomed Indian religions and culture, and it is they who first adopted these spiritual ideas followed by the masses. Either way, Indonesian islands adopted both Hindu and Buddhist ideas, fusing them with pre-existing native folk religion and Animist beliefs.
This meant that the Buddhism and Hinduism introduced into the Philippine archipelago by the Srivijaya and the Majapahit were of a distinctly (Insular) Southeast Asian variant,
as Osborne, in his 2004 history of Southeast Asia, notes:
''Much, but not all, of this culture was absorbed by the local population and joined to their existing cultural patterns. ��Because Indian culture “came” to Southeast Asia, one must not think that Southeast Asians lacked a culture of their own. Indeed, the generally accepted view is that Indian culture made such an impact on Southeast Asia because it fitted easily with the existing cultural patterns and religious beliefs of populations that had already moved a considerable distance along the path of civilization. ��Southeast Asians, to summarize the point, borrowed but they also adapted. In some very important cases, they did not need to borrow at all.''"
Possible influence through early contacts with the Srivijaya
Popular literature and some 20th century history textbooks often suggest that Hindu and Buddhist cultural influences first came to the Philippines through early contacts with the
Srivijaya
Srivijaya ( id, Sriwijaya) was a Buddhist thalassocratic empire based on the island of Sumatra (in modern-day Indonesia), which influenced much of Southeast Asia. Srivijaya was an important centre for the expansion of Buddhism from the 7th ...
n and Majapahit thassalocracies. Jocano notes, however, that there is insufficient physical evidence
to suggest that Philippine polities traded extensively with the Srivijayan empire. He suggests that contact between Philippine polities and the Srivijaya was probably limited to small-scale trade.
Influence through trade with the Majapahit
Jocano suggests that the Hindu and Buddhist cultural influences on Philippine cultures actually probably came through the
Majapahit
Majapahit ( jv, ꦩꦗꦥꦲꦶꦠ꧀; ), also known as Wilwatikta ( jv, ꦮꦶꦭ꧀ꦮꦠꦶꦏ꧀ꦠ; ), was a Javanese Hindu-Buddhist thalassocratic empire in Southeast Asia that was based on the island of Java (in modern-day Indonesia ...
, as evidenced by significant archeological findings:
''"Philippine-Indonesian relations during precolonial times became intensified during the rise of the Majapahit Empire. It was during this time that much of the so-called Indian cultural influence reached the Philippines through Indonesia. But what penetrated into our country, particularly in the seaport communities, was already the modified version of the original Hindu cultural traits."''
Manifestations of cultural influence
Because physical evidence regarding the degree to which India influenced the Philippines prior to the
Spanish conquista is rather sparse, scholars have held differing views on this matter over the years. Preeminent Filipino Anthropologist
F. Landa Jocano (2001) notes:
''"Except for a few artifacts and identified loanwords that have been accepted as proofs of Indian-Philippine relations, there are meager intrusive materials to sustain definite views concerning the range of Indian prehistoric influence in the country. Many generalizations hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
have so far been advanced merely obscure the basic issues of Philippine cultural development. Even archeological data, mostly trade items, must be critically evaluated before they are judged as evidence of direct contacts."''
Jocano lists the various streams of the evidence which support the assertion that this influence reached the Philippines include:
''"Syllabic writing; artifacts in the form of different figurines made of clay, gold, and bronze that were dug in various sites in the Philippines; and 336 loanwords identified by Professor Francisco to be Sanskrit in origin, with 150 of them identified as the origin of some major Philippine terms."''
The Agusan image
One major artifact often presented as physical evidence of early Indian influence in the Philippines is the "
golden image of Agusan" artifact, a 1.79 kilogram, 21 carat
Mataram-period gold image discovered by a
Manobo
The Lumad are a group of Austronesian indigenous people in the southern Philippines. It is a Cebuano term meaning "native" or "indigenous". The term is short for Katawhang Lumad (Literally: "indigenous people"), the autonym officially adopt ...
woman named Bilay Campos in
Esperanza, Agusan in 1918.
H. Otley Beyer
Henry Otley Beyer (July 13, 1883 – December 31, 1966) was an American anthropologist, who spent most of his adult life in the Philippines teaching Philippine indigenous culture. A.V.H. Hartendorp called Beyer the "Dean of Philippine ethnolo ...
interpreted the image as that of a
Sivaite goddess, but with the religiously important hand signals improperly copied by local (probably Mindanao) workmen. Thus it suggests that Hinduism was already in the Philippines before Magellan arrived, but also suggests that the early Filipinos had an imperfect version of Hinduism which they got from the Majapahit.
[H. Otley Beyer, "Outline Review of Philippine Archaeology by Islands and Provinces," Philippine Journal of Science, Vol.77,Nos.34 (July–August 1947),pp. 205-374]
The Laguna copperplate inscription
Another artifact often presented as physical evidence of early Indonesian and Indian influence in the Philippines is the 10th century
Laguna Copperplate Inscription
The Laguna copperplate inscription ( tl, Inskripsyon sa binatbat na tanso ng Laguna, literal translation: ''Inscription on flattened copper of Laguna'') is an official acquittance inscribed onto a copper plate in the Shaka year 822 (Gregorian ...
(LCI), found in 1989 and deciphered in 1992 by Dutch anthropologist
Antoon Postma
Antoon Postma ( Hanunó'o: Buhid: ᝀᝈ᜔ᝆᝓᝈ᜔ ᝉᝓᝐ᜔ᝆ᜔ᝋ) (28 March 1929 – 22 October 2016) was a Dutch anthropologist who married into and lived among the Hanunuo, a Mangyan sub-tribe in southeastern Mindoro, Philippines. ...
, and famous as the earliest known written document found in the Philippines.
The (LCI) was written in a variety of the
Old Malay
Malay was first used in the first millennia known as Old Malay, a part of the Austronesian language family. Over a period of two millennia, Malay has undergone various stages of development that derived from different layers of foreign influen ...
language, using the
Old Kawi script,
and contains numerous loanwords from
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
and a few non-Malay vocabulary elements whose origin may be
Old Javanese
Old Javanese or Kawi is the oldest attested phase of the Javanese language. It was spoken in the eastern part of what is now Central Java and the whole of East Java, Indonesia. As a literary language, Kawi was used across Java and on the island ...
. The use of Sanskrit loanwords is considered evidence of Indian cultural influences on the cultures of the Malay Archipelago, which in turn had close trade and cultural ties with early Philippine polities, including those mentioned in the LCI.
Sanskrit loanwords and scripts
According to Jocano, a total of 336 loanwords were identified by Professor
Juan R. Francisco to be Sanskrit in origin, "''with 150 of them identified as the origin of some major Philippine terms.''"
Many of these loanwords concerned governance and mythology, which were the particular concern of the
Maginoo
The Tagalog ''maginoo'', the Kapampangan ''ginu'', and the Visayan ''tumao'' were the nobility social class among various cultures of the pre-colonial Philippines. Among the Visayans, the ''tumao'' were further distinguished from the immediate ...
class, indicating a desire of members of that class to validate their status as rulers by associating themselves with foreign powers.
Indian honorifics
Indian honorifics are honorific titles or appendices to names used in the Indian subcontinent, covering formal and informal social, commercial, and religious relationships. These may take the form of prefixes, suffixes or replacements.
Native hon ...
also influenced the
Filipino honorifics.
[Krishna Chandra Sagar, 2002, An Era of Peace, Page 52.] Examples of these include Raja, Rani, Maharlika, Datu, etc. which were transmitted from Indian culture to Philippines via Malays and
Srivijaya empire
Srivijaya ( id, Sriwijaya) was a Buddhist thalassocratic empire based on the island of Sumatra (in modern-day Indonesia), which influenced much of Southeast Asia. Srivijaya was an important centre for the expansion of Buddhism from the 7th t ...
.
The origins of various pre-colonial
native Filipino scripts such as the
Baybayin
(, ''pre-kudlít'': , ''virama-krus-kudlít'': , ''virama-pamudpod'': ; also formerly commonly incorrectly known as alibata) is a Philippine script. The script is an abugida belonging to the family of the Brahmic scripts. Geographically, it ...
, the
Visayan as badlit, the
Ilocano kur-itan/kurditan, and the
Kapampangan kudlitan, can be traced to the
Brahmic scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient In ...
of India and first recorded in the 16th century.
[.]
Folk literature
The most prominent example of Indian cultural influence on early Philippine folk literature is the case of the
Maharadia Lawana, a
Maranao epic which tells a local version of the Indian epic
Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages ...
,
first documented by Filipino anthropologist
Juan R. Francisco in the late 1960s. Francisco believed that the Ramayana narrative arrived in the Philippines some time between the 17th to 19th centuries, via interactions with Javanese and Malaysian cultures which traded extensively with India.
Some Philippine High School textbooks
[Halilli, Maria Christine (2004), Philippines History, pp. 46] have also suggest that the Ilocano epic
Biag ni Lam-ang may have been influenced by Hindu epics the
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the K ...
and
Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages ...
, although the textbooks do not substantiate this claim.
Most of the scholarship around the poem focus instead on the incorporation of syncretistic elements from
Roman Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, with no mention of supposed Indian influence.
Philippine anthropologists and historiographers such as
F. Landa Jocano suggest that such Hindu influences probably arrived in the Philippines through the extensive trade local cultures had with the
Majapahit empire during the 14th through 16th centuries,
although earlier scholars such as
Juan R. Francisco and
Josephine Acosta Pasricha had suggested earlier dates for this influence, during the 9th to 10th century AD.
"Indirect Indianization" through Maritime Southeast Asia
"Indianization" in Maritime Southeast Asia
Historically
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...
was under the influence of
Ancient India
According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by ...
, where numerous
Indianized principalities and empires flourished for several centuries in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the southern part of Vietnam, with cultural influence also spreading indirectly to the mostly Austronesian cultures of the Philippine archipelago and the highly sinified culture of Northern Vietnam.
The influence of Indian culture in these areas was given the term ''indianization''.
French archaeologist,
George Cœdès
George Cœdès (; 10 August 1886 – 2 October 1969) was a 20th-century French scholar of southeast Asian archaeology and history.
Biography
Cœdès was born in Paris to a family of supposed Hungarian-Jewish émigrés. In fact, the family was ...
, defined it as the expansion of an organized culture that was framed upon Indian originations of royalty,
Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
and
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
and the
Sanskrit language
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
.
This can be seen in the
Indianization of Southeast Asia,
spread of Hinduism and
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
.
"Indirect Indianization" in the Philippines
Historiographers — both from Southeast Asia in general,
and the Philippines specifically
— agree that the impact of "indianization" in Philippines was indirect in nature,
occurring through contacts with the
Majapahit
Majapahit ( jv, ꦩꦗꦥꦲꦶꦠ꧀; ), also known as Wilwatikta ( jv, ꦮꦶꦭ꧀ꦮꦠꦶꦏ꧀ꦠ; ), was a Javanese Hindu-Buddhist thalassocratic empire in Southeast Asia that was based on the island of Java (in modern-day Indonesia ...
culture.
Orborne (2004) notes that Vietnam and the Philippines did not participate in the main wave of Indianization:
''"In the case of Vietnam, who were in this period living under Chinese rule, the process of Indianization never took place. For a different reason – distant geographical location – neither did the Philippines participate in this process."''
Jocano furthers:
''"The Philippines is geographically outside the direct line of early commerce between India and the rest of Southeast Asia. Moreover, the island world of Indonesia, with Sumatra and Java controlling the traffic of trade, functioned as a sieve for whatever influence (cultural, social, and commercial) India might have had to offer beyond the Indonesian archipelago. ..hus, it can be said that Indian Influence filtered into the Philippines only indirectly."''
Degree and nature of "influence" in the Philippines
Regardless of how and when it actually happened, Historiographers specializing in Southeast Asia note that this "influence" was cultural and religious, rather than military or political in nature. For example, Osborne, in his 2004 history of Southeast Asia, notes:
''Beginning in the 2nd and third centuries C.E. there was a slow expansion of ndiancultural contacts with the Southeast Asian region. It was an uneven process, with some areas receiving Indian influence much later than others, and the degree of influence varying from century to century. ..Indianization did not mean there was a mass migration of Indian population into Southeast Asia. Rather, a relatively limited number of traders and priest scholars brought Indian culture in its various forms to Southeast Asia where much, but not all, of this culture was absorbed by the local population and joined to their existing cultural patterns.''
Osborne further emphasizes that this "indianization" of Southeast Asia did not per-se overwrite existing indigenous patterns, cultures, and beliefs:
"''Because Indian culture “came” to Southeast Asia, one must not think that Southeast Asians lacked a culture of their own. Indeed, the generally accepted view is that Indian culture made such an impact on Southeast Asia because it fitted easily with the existing cultural patterns and religious beliefs of populations that had already moved a considerable distance along the path of civilization. ��Southeast Asians, to summarize the point, borrowed but they also adapted. In some very important cases, they did not need to borrow at all.''"
Localization of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs
Milner (2011)
suggests that the cultural adaptation of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs in Maritime Southeast Asia is better characterized as "localization," which Wolters (1999) describes as a process by which foreign ideas ("specifically Indian materials"
) could be "fractured and restated and therefore drained of their original significance" in the process of being adopted into "various local complexes."
See also
*
Rajahnate of Butuan
Butuan also called the Butan Rajanate and the Kingdom of Butuan (; Butuanon: ; ; ) was a precolonial Philippine polity centred on the northern Mindanao island in the modern city of Butuan in what is now the southern Philippines. It was known f ...
*
Rajahnate of Cebu
Cebu, or Sugbu, also called the Cebu Rajanate, was an Indianized raja (monarchical) mandala (polity) on the island of Cebu in the Philippines prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. It is known in ancient Chinese records as the ...
*
Indosphere
Indosphere is a term coined by the linguist James Matisoff for areas of Indian linguistic and cultural influence in South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is commonly used in areal linguistics in contrast with Sinosphere.
Influence
The Tibeto-B ...
*
Greater India
Greater India, or the Indian cultural sphere, is an area composed of many countries and regions in South and Southeast Asia that were historically influenced by Indian culture, which itself formed from the various distinct indigenous cultures ...
*
Indian Filipino
Indian Filipinos are Filipinos of Indian descent who have historical connections with and have established themselves in what is now the Philippines. The term refers to Filipino citizens of either pure or mixed Indian descent currently residing ...
*
History of Indian influence on Southeast Asia
*
List of India-related topics in the Philippines
References
{{India-related topics in Philippines
History of the Philippines
Indosphere
Indian diaspora by country