Datu Kalantiaw (Rajah
Bendahara
Bendahara ( Jawi: بنداهارا) is an administrative position within classical Malay kingdoms comparable to a vizier before the intervention of European powers during the 19th century. A bendahara was appointed by a sultan and was a heredi ...
Kalantiaw) (sometimes spelled Kalantiao) was once considered an important part of Philippine history as the one who created the first legal code in the Philippines, known as the
Code of Kalantiaw
The Code of Rajah Kalantiaw was a supposed legal code in the epic history Maragtas that is said to have been written in 1433 by Datu Kalantiaw, a chief on the island of Negros in the Philippines. It is now generally accepted by historians that the ...
in 1433. He was considered by Filipinos, particularly the Visayans, as the third head of Panay (an island in Visayas with four provinces: Aklan, Antique, Capiz and Iloilo). He was a source of fierce Filipino and Visayan pride for decades, until his authenticity was debunked by Historian
William Henry Scott in his
PhD thesis, ''Critical Study of the Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History'' relegating the once legendary historical figure into a mythical
Filipino
Filipino may refer to:
* Something from or related to the Philippines
** Filipino language, standardized variety of 'Tagalog', the national language and one of the official languages of the Philippines.
** Filipinos, people who are citizens of th ...
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
or an urban legend.
History
Kalantiaw's name first appeared in print in July 1913 in an article entitled "Civilización prehispana" published in the Philippine news-magazine ''Renacimiento Filipino''. The article mentioned 16 laws enacted by King Kalantiaw in 1433 and a fort that he built at Gagalangin, Negros, which was destroyed by an earthquake in the year A.D. 435 (not 1435). The article was written by Manuel Artigas who, only a year before, had provided the footnotes to an essay by José Marco, Reseña historica de la Isla de Negros.
In 1914, José Marco donated five manuscripts to Dr. James A. Robertson for the Philippine Library and Museum.
Robertson called Marco "a good friend to the institution" and his earliest contributions, "the greatest literary discovery ever made in the archipelago."
Among the documents was ''Las Antiguas leyendes de la Isla de Negros'', a two volume leather bound work that was supposedly written by a Friar José María Pavón in 1838 and 1839. The Code of Kalantiaw, in chapter 9 of part 1, was one of six translated documents that were dated before the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines. The original Code was purportedly discovered in the possession of a Panay datu in 1614. At the time of Pavón's writing in 1839 it was supposedly owned by a Don Marcelio Orfila of Zaragoza. On July 20, 1915, Robertson submitted a paper about the Kalantiaw Code to the Panama-Pacific Historical Congress in California and then published an English translation of the Code in 1917.
The historian
Josue Soncuya Josue is a name, a variant of the name Joshua. It may refer to:
Given name
* Josué Dubois Berthelot de Beaucours (1662-1750), French military officer
* Athanase Josué Coquerel (1820-1875), French Protestant theologian
* Josue Dupon (1864-1935), ...
published a Spanish translation of the code in 1917, and wrote about it in his book ''Historia Prehispana de Filipinas'' (''Prehispanic History of the Philippines''). Soncuya concluded that the Code had been written for
Aklan
Aklan, officially the Province of Aklan ( Akeanon: ''Probinsya it Akean'' k'ɣan hil, Kapuoran sang Aklan; tl, Lalawigan ng Aklan), is a province in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines. Its capital is Kalibo. The province is situated ...
because of the presence of two
Aklanon rather than
Hiligaynon words in the text, and the words Aklan,
Panay Island
Panay is the sixth-largest and fourth-most populous island in the Philippines, with a total land area of and has a total population of 4,542,926 as of 2020 census. Panay comprises 4.4 percent of the entire population of the country. The City ...
were added to later versions of Soncuya's translation (viz. "Echo en al año 1433–Calantiao–3° regulo").
In 1949,
Gregorio Zaide
Gregorio F. Zaide (May 25, 1907 – October 31, 1986) was a Philippines, Filipino historian, author and Politics of the Philippines, politician from the town of Pagsanjan, Laguna (province), Laguna in the Philippines. A multi-awarded author, Zaide ...
included the Kalantiaw Code in his Philippine Political and Cultural History with the words "Aklan, Panay" attached to the title. In 1956, Digno Alba declared in his book Paging Datu Kalantiaw that the Datu had set up his government in Batan and made it the capital of the sakup of Aklan.
On June 1, 1956, acting upon the request of the Municipal Council of Batan, the Philippine Historical Committee installed a marker in a tract of land near the bay. This was unveiled on December 8, 1956.
On February 11, 1957, President Ramon Magsaysay approved Executive Order No. 234 declaring the site as a national shrine. A former school building in the town was converted into the Kalantiaw Shrine by the Philippine Historical and Cultural Society and the Code of Kalantiaw was later inscribed there in brass.
Kalantiaw was honoured by the Philippine Navy in December 1967 when it acquired the World War II destroyer escort ''
USS Booth
USS ''Booth'' (DE-170) was a built for the United States Navy during World War II. She served in the Atlantic Ocean and then the Pacific Ocean and provided escort service against submarine and air attack for Navy vessels and convoys.
She was ...
'' from the United States and recommissioned it the
RPS ''Datu Kalantiaw''.
That vessel was the flagship of the
Philippine Navy
The Philippine Navy (PN) ( tgl, Hukbong Dagat ng Pilipinas, , Sea Army of the Philippines) ( es, Armada de Filipinas, , Ejército del Mar de las Filipinas) is the naval warfare service branch of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. It has an e ...
from 1967 to 1981.
On March 1, 1971, President Ferdinand Marcos instituted the "Order of Kalantiaw", an award "for services to the country in the areas of law and justice" (Executive Order No. 294).
Then January 24, 1973, President Ferdinand E. Marcos signed Presidential Decree No. 105 declaring national shrines such as sacred (hallowed) places and prohibiting desecration thereof.
On June 19, 1978 a 30-centavo postage stamp was released in honour of "Rajah Kalantiaw".
Debunking the Code
In 1965, William Henry Scott was a doctoral candidate at the University of Santo Tomas when the bibliographer Mauro Garcia suggested that for his thesis he examine the history of the Philippines before the arrival of the Spaniards. Garcia had received several fake documents from José Marco in the past, which made him suspicious of Marco's first discoveries upon which so much early history was based. He only showed a few of these forgeries to Scott so as not to prejudice his research, saving the most blatant fakes until after Scott had formed his own conclusions about Marco's work.
Historian
William Henry Scott asserted in his
PhD thesis, ''Critical Study of the Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History'' that there is no evidence that any Filipino ruler by the name of Kalantiaw ever existed or that the Kalantiaw penal code is any older than 1914. Scott successfully defended the thesis in 1968 before a panel of eminent Filipino historians which included
Teodoro Agoncillo
Teodoro Andal Agoncillo (November 9, 1912 – January 14, 1985) was a prominent 20th-century Filipino historian. He and his contemporary Renato Constantino were among the first Filipino historians renowned for promoting a distinctly nationalist ...
,
Horacio de la Costa, Marcelino Foronda, Nicolas Zafra, and
Gregorio Zaide
Gregorio F. Zaide (May 25, 1907 – October 31, 1986) was a Philippines, Filipino historian, author and Politics of the Philippines, politician from the town of Pagsanjan, Laguna (province), Laguna in the Philippines. A multi-awarded author, Zaide ...
. The thesis was published by University of Santo Tomas Press Press in 1968.
Aftermath
William H. Scott's exposé did not have an immediate effect on
Filipino society
The culture of the Philippines is characterized by cultural diversity. Although the multiple ethnic groups of the Philippine archipelago have only recently established a shared Filipino national identity, their cultures were all shaped by the ...
. On March 1, 1971, President Ferdinand Marcos instituted the "Order of Kalantiaw", an award "for services to the country in the areas of law and justice" (Executive Order No. 294). That same year a beauty pageant winner was crowned "Lakambini ni Kalantiaw" on the supposed anniversary of the Code (December 8), and the artist Carlos Valino Jr. depicted Kalantiaw issuing his commandments (See painting above). On January 24, 1973, Marcos also issued Presidential Decree No. 105, which declared that the Kalantiaw Shrine, and all national shrines, were sacred. The decree prohibited all forms of desecration including "unnecessary noise and committing unbecoming acts." Like Kalantiaw's Code, the penalty was hefty; "imprisonment for not less than ten (10) years or a fine not less than ten thousand pesos (P10,000) or both."
Gregorio F. Zaide, the author of countless school textbooks and a member of the very dissertation panel that examined Scott's thesis in 1968 remained silent but he continued to endorse the myth and even add his own details to it in books such as Heroes of Philippine History (1970), Pageant of Philippine History (1979), History of the Republic of the Philippines (1983), Philippine History (1984), and in reissues of his older works. Soon after Dr. Zaide's death in 1986 his daughter, Sonia M. Zaide, revised the books that she had co-authored with her father and removed most, but not all, of the material based on the Marco hoaxes.
In 1994 the playwright Rene O. Villanueva dramatized the life of Jose E. Marco and the creation of the Kalantiaw hoax in the play Kalantiaw, Kagila-gilalas na Kasinungalingan (The Amazing Lie). Villanueva's intriguing story proposed that Marco's motivation for creating his frauds was his intense admiration for his personal hero, Jose Rizal. Marco's ambition was to better the accomplishments of Rizal by inventing a glorious past to fill the gaps in Filipino history.
The NHI admitted that Kalantiaw was a hoax in 1998 when Chief Justice Andres Narvasa, who was about to receive the Kalantiaw Award, asked Malacañang to look into the matter. President
Joseph Estrada
Joseph Ejercito Estrada, (; born Jose Marcelo Ejercito; April 19, 1937), also known by the nickname Erap, is a Filipino politician and former actor. He served as the 13th president of the Philippines from 1998 to 2001, the 9th vice preside ...
gave him the award anyway. In 2005, the NHI, under the leadership of Ambeth Ocampo, made their opinion official when they submitted a resolution to President Arroyo to revoke the national shrine status of the Kalantiaw Shrine in Aklan.
That resolution, National Historical Institute (NHI) Resolution No. 12 of 2004, declared "
..that Code of Kalantiao/Kalantiaw has no Valid Historical Basis". The NHI called for: (1) the official affirmation that the Kalantiaw Code is a twentieth-century fraudulent work by Jose Marco, (2) the President of the Philippines cease to honor retiring Supreme justices and other international dignitaries with the 'Order of Kalantiaw', and (3) the revoking of Executive Order 234, which declared the municipality of Batan, Province of Aklan as a national shrine. This NHI resolution was approved by the Office of the President in 2005 and taken into effect immediately, despite strong protests from the people of the province of Aklan.
Some Filipinos, both scholars and non-scholars, continue to believe that the Code of Kalantiaw and the datu/chieftain who supposedly promulgated these laws actually existed. In a 2001 International conference presentation on 'The Philippine Judicial System', Dr. Raul Pangalangan, Dean, College of Law from the University of the Philippines said, "
..all ancient written laws of the Filipinos were lost with the exception of the Code of Maragtas and the Code of Kalantiaw, both from Panay Island." During the Philippine House of Representative 2nd Regular Session in August 2008, Congressman Aurora Cerilles referred to the signing of the Code of Kalantiaw in Panay saying, "That is why there is the so-called 'The Code of Kalantiaw,' where a person called Marikudo signed a treaty with Sumakwel".
Impact in Filipino literature, arts and culture
Before and despite of his inauthenticity, Kalantiao has left an indelible mark in the lives of Filipinos, embracing his character as part of their heritage.
Inside the
National Museum of the Philippines
The National Museum of the Philippines ( fil, Pambansang Museo ng Pilipinas}) is an umbrella government organization that oversees a number of national museums in the Philippines including ethnographic, anthropological, archaeological, and vis ...
(formerly the Legislative Building), Kalantiao is portrayed alongside 13 other sculptures of renowned historical lawmakers & legislators of the world on the entablature of the Senate Session Hall, which survived the rampant devastation of the
Battle of Manila of February 1945, and has been mostly restored to its pre-War state.
In 2003, President
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
Maria Gloria Macaraeg Macapagal Arroyo (, born April 5, 1947), often referred to by her initials GMA, is a Filipino academic and politician serving as one of the House Deputy Speakers since 2022, and previously from 2016 to 2017. She previously ...
signed executive order 236, consolidating the current
Philippine honours system and, in it, the "Order of Kalantiao" ceased being an honour. However, the Implementing Rules and Regulations
of the Executive Order did list the Order of Kalantiaw as one of the Honors of the Philippines.
The Central Philippine University in Iloilo has its own "Order of Kalantiao", a fraternity that was at the centre of a serious hazing incident in September 2001. Even the National Historical Institute (NHI) honoured Kalantiaw in 1989 by including him in volume 4 of their five volumes of Filipinos in History. The Gintong Pamana (Golden Heritage) Awards Foundation, a project of Philippine Time USA Magazine, rewards community leadership among Filipino-Americans with the "Kalantiaw Award". Buildings, streets and banquet halls throughout the Philippines still bear the name of the mythical ruler of Panay and tourists can still visit the Kalantiaw Shrine in Batan, Aklan or even pass by a local high school, Kalantiaw Institute.
In the movies, there is Alagad ni Kalantiao starred by Lito Lapid. In television, a fantasy series was aired in 1986 in
GMA Network
GMA Network (Global Media Arts or simply GMA) is a Philippine free-to-air television and radio network. It is the flagship property of publicly traded GMA Network, Inc. Its first broadcast on television was on October 29, 1961. GMA Network (f ...
entitled Mga Alagad ni Kalantiao about three people who each has a rod when formed in triangle transforms them into superheroes.
See also
*
Datu
''Datu'' is a title which denotes the rulers (variously described in historical accounts as chiefs, sovereign princes, and monarchs) of numerous indigenous peoples throughout the Philippine archipelago. The title is still used today, especial ...
Notes
References
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{{India-related topics in Philippines
People from Aklan
Visayan history
Visayan mythology
History of the Philippines (900–1565)
Filipino datus, rajas and sultans
Philippine mythology
Filipino nobility
Hoaxes in the Philippines