Pinoys in China before 1500 (2)

Paulita Roa

NOW it can be told that long before the Europeans set their sails in search  for the “new world” in the 15th century, the Filipinos already traveled half the globe and even reached the imperial court of China 500 years earlier! Thanks to the prodigious research of the late William Henry Scott, an American lay missionary and an acknowledged Philippine Prehistorian–one who is an expert on that long period in time before writing was invented and before anyone like Pigafetta, Magellan’s chronicler wrote about our country and people. Scott once said that aside from archaeology, one of the ways for us to know about our ancient history, is to look for the old records of the neighboring countries about the Philippines. He found a wealth of information from the 10th century imperial records of China and it helped that he was fluent in Mandarin.

I shared excerpts from the book titled “Filipinos in China Before 1500” by Scott and his friend, Go Bon Juan’s translation on several reports taken from the Song Shi (Sung History) records about a small country in the sea called Pu-duan (Butuan) that had regular communications with Champa (Vietnam).This time, let me give you excerpts taken from a 1612 Quanzhou gazetter about another group of Filipinos who visited China on a different mission. This is a record of a raid that happened 500 years ago:

Riding the southern monsoons of 1171 and 1172, Pi-she-ya (Visayan) raiders struck the Fujian coast just south of Quanzhou Bay, evidently staging the Pescadores off the coast of Taiwan. Governor Wang Ta-you relocated 200 families to the area to support a coast guard detachment and offered a bounty for the raiders, tactics which quickly produced more than 400 captives and the death of all raiders.Probably it was also the Visayans who attacked Liu-e Bay farther down the coast, where two of their chiefs were captured, three days after they defeated the constabulary. the country clerk Zhou Ding-zhen, thought that they came from the Babuyan Islands, Gov. Wang, however, thought that the Pi-she-ya were natives of the Pescadores and Superintendent of Trade Zhao Ru-gua writing 50 years later thought they were Taiwanese.

Zhao’s account is difficult to take seriously for it includes fabulous deetails like escaping rape and plunder by dropping chopsticks to distract the raiders, and he thinks that they made their attacks from bamboo rafts that could be folded up and carried around like collapsible screens. A 1612 Quangzhou gazetter on the contrary, specifically states that the Pi-she-ya raiders of 1172, used sea-going vessels. Coast guard patrols falsely accused some Cambodian merchantmen of being Pi-she-yas with the hope of claiming some reward, but the Governor released them with the comment, “Pi-she-ya faces are as dark as lacquer and their language incomprehensible; those are not.” Since the natives of Taiwan did not appear in Chinese accounts as seafarers, these Pi-she-yas were more likely Filipino Visayans, known to the Chinese in the 14th century as slaveaiders who sold their captives at two ounces of gold apiece. As a matter of fact, Visayan bards of the 17th century were still singing about the romance of Datong Sumangga who made a raid in Grand China to win the hand of the beautiful Princess Bugbung Humayanun of Bohol (Scott 1989 : 4-5).

China seems to have “discovered” the Philippines not long after the Visayan raids. The Chinese started trading around 1206 with Mindoro, Palawan, Basilan and San-xu–probably the islands between Mindoro and Palawan. Then, they went to Lingayen, Luzon and Lubang islands and Manila known as Ma-li-lu.In 1403 to 1405, Mindoro, Marinduque and Pangasinan known as Feng-jia-xi-lan sent their envoys with tributes to the Chinese emperor. Sulu’s first tribute mission appeared in 1417 though Sulu first appears in Chinese records in 1368 with an attack on Borneo and they were driven out the by Madjapahit troops from Java.

The 1417 first tribute mission from Sulu was no less grand for three royal personages arrived with a retinue of 340 wives, ministers and retainers. They presented a memorial inscribed in gold (just like what Butuan did 400 years earlier), and gave a splendid tribute of pearls, precious stones and tortoise shell. They were registered on the Board of Rites on the 10th of September as Paduka Batara of the east country, Maharaja Kolamating of the west country and Paduka Prabhu. Paduka, Batara and Maharaja are all Malay Sanskrit titles of royal eminence and Brunei records always addressed the primary ruler of Sulu as Batara. Two days later, they were presented to the Emperor and received royal seals and investments as princes of the realm (Scott 1989:7). (to be concluded)