Pinoys in China before 1500 (3)

A. PaulitaRoa

HERE are excerpts taken from the book of the same title by William Henry Scott with Chinese translation by Go Bon Juan, 1989, Chinese Studies Program, De La Salle University, Taft Ave., Manila:

Sulu’s first tribute mission to the Chinese imperial court was in 1417, where three royal personages arrived with a retinue of 340 wives, ministers and retainers and presented a memorial inscribed on gold and such tribute as pearls,precious stones and tortoise shell. The Emperor then installed Sulu’s three royal heads. PadukaBatara was installed as the Eastern King and superior to the two. Maharaja Kolomating as the Western King, and PadukaPrabhu as the Cave King. The last was probably an indication that he was culturally different from his two peers.

On October 8, 1417, the Sulu delegates took their leave, proceeding down the Grand Canal accompanied by military escorts and laden with gifts like chinaware, silk, court costumes, horses, hundreds of thousands of copper coins, enough gold and silver to cover the expenses of the trip and show a handsome profit besides.

But PadukaBatara died in a government hostel in Dezhou, Shandong. Imperial ministers promptly arrived to construct a tomb with a memorial arch and gateway, performed the Confucian sacrifices for a reigning monarch, and erected a memorial tablet that named him as Reverent and Steadfast. This tomb still stands to this day and is located just a kilometer north of the city. Months after PadukaBatara was buried, the Emperor’s memorial tribute was set up. Unfortunately, its biographic content is limited to such expressions as the following:

“Now then, the King, brilliant and sagacious, gentle and honest, especially outstanding and naturally talented, as a sincere act of true respect for the Way of Heaven, did not shrink from a voyage of many tens of thousands of miles to lead his familial household in person, together with his tribute officers and fellow countrymen, to cross the sea routes in a praiseworthy spirit of loyal obedience.”

The eldest son of the deceased, Dumahan was proclaimed his successor. His concubine, two younger sons and 18 attendants were given accommodations and pensions to observe the appropriate three year mourning rites. Then, in 1423, the royal concubine and retainers were sent back to Sulu in appropriate style. But the two sons and 10 followers remained to tend the tomb. Their descendants can be found in Dezhou to this day.

Four years later, another ruler from Mindanao, GanlaiYibendum from Kumalalang, now, a backwater community between Pagadian and Malangas of Zamboanga del Sur, also died in China. He was given a grand funeral and the Emperor bestowed a posthumous title of “Vigorous and Peaceful” on him.

It is interesting to note that Sulu received more space in the Ming annals than any other Philippine state. Unlike the rulers of Pangasinan who were referred to as chieftains, and who never sent memorials engraved in gold, the heads of states in Sulu and Butuan were called by their Chinese term for monarch as “Wang” and were received with the same protocol as Iskander Shah of Malacca, who as then the most important entrepot of Southeast Asia.

Sulu with its pearl beds, having unlimited access to the Sabah camphor and its strategic location, seems to have inherited that older Butuan-Champa (Vietnam) trade route which avoided Srivijaya territory. Then, there was a Sulu ruler named PadukaSuli who, on May 14, 1421 left his mark in Chinese history by presenting a pearl weighing seven ounces to the Emperor. He captured the Chinese imagination with his fabulous gift that ninety nine years later, this was mentioned in the 1520 record of tribute missions from the Western Ocean and is quote in part:

“…the Sulu King presented a pearl weighing eight ounces, I begin to believe it. No wonder he was given a gold seal! For even if things from distant lands are not valuable, this would be reason enough for people from distant lands to come to the court.”

Whether the pearl weighed seven or eight ounces, PadukaSuli created such a big impression to the whole imperial court that decades later, they still talked and wrote about his gift.

Magellan came to the archipelago in 1521, just a century after the Sulu ruler presented the seven ounce pearl to the Chinese Emperor. At that time, Luzon ships were plying the waters between Manila, Timor and Malacca, three points which describe a triangle that includes all of insular Southeast Asia. If one wishes to speculate about the advent of Tang porcelains or Arabic Korans in the prehispanic Philippines, therefore, a ready explanation is available–namely, that they came in vessels built, owned and manned by islanders born within that triangle.