Pre-colonial Philippines: Women & Tolerance

Women's Status

• Women had equal status with men in pre-colonial Philippine society
• Women could divorce, own property, inherit, and lead barangays
• Women headed families, controlled finances, named children, and dictated marriage terms
• Heritage was traced through both parents, making the society largely matriarchal
• Women's opinions held significant weight in politics and religion, and they headed rituals as babaylans
• Men were required to walk behind their wives as a sign of respect
• The Spanish relegated women to their homes, demonized babaylans, and taught that women should be demure and powerless

Societal Tolerance

• Pre-colonial Filipinos were more tolerant than modern society
• Sexuality was not suppressed, and virginity before marriage was not prioritized
• Polygamy was practiced if men could support and love all their wives equally
• Homosexuals were tolerated, with some male babaylans dressing in drag
• Spirit mediums, or shamans, were also part of society
• In the Visayas, spirit mediums were known as babaylan, while the Tagalogs called them catalonan (katulunan)
• Often, babaylans or catalonans were women from prominent families
• Early Spanish missionaries reported men assuming the role of babaylan
• Some male babaylans dressed and acted like women, called asog by Visayans and bayugin by Tagalogs
• Father Francisco Alcina described asog as impotent men who considered themselves more like women
• The Boxer Codex added that bayog or bayoguin were priests dressed in female garb, impotent and marrying other males
• The term asog now refers to a tomboy or a woman acting like a man in Aklan
• There was no prostitution during the pre-colonial days

Government

• Ancestors practiced an early version of the Social Contract, a theory espoused by thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Rulers owed their right to rule based on the people's consent
• Corrupt or incompetent rulers could be removed by the people
• Datus came from the upper classes but could be removed by the lower classes if they were lacking in their duties
• Anyone, including women, could become a datu based on merits like bravery, wisdom, and leadership ability

Self-Sufficiency

• Ancestors were blessed with a resource-rich country and did not suffer from lack of food
• Forests, rivers, and seas provided plentiful meat, fish, and other foodstuffs
• They advanced their diet with farming techniques
• The Banaue Rice Terraces showcase the ingenuity of ancestors
• They had an advanced concept of agrarian equity
• Men and women worked the fields equally, and anyone could till public lands for free
• They cared for the environment with little to no concept of exploitation for profit
• Miguel Lopez de Legaspi reported the abundance of rice, fowls, and wine, as well as buffaloes, deer, wild boar, and goats in Luzon

Prolific Resources

• Gold was abundant in the precolonial Philippines and part of everyday attire
• A Samar datu named Iberein was rowed out to a Spanish vessel in 1543 wearing gold earrings and chains
• Gold artifacts recovered in the country came from the ancient kingdom of Butuan, a major center of commerce from the 10th to the 13th century
• Merchant ships traded with people from Survarnadvipa or "Islands of Gold," believed to be present-day Indonesia and the Philippines
• Treasures include ear ornaments called panika, bracelets known as kasikas, and the serpent-like gold chain called kamagi
• These gold ornaments were looted, melted, and sold by treasure hunters, disregarding their heritage as ancestors' bahandi (heirloom wealth)

Smooth Foreign Relations

• Pre-colonial Filipinos established trading and diplomatic relations with countries as far as the Middle East before the Spanish galleon trade
• Instead of cash, they exchanged precious minerals, manufactured goods, etc., with Arabs, Indians, Chinese, and other nationalities
• Many foreigners settled in the country after marveling at its beauty and people
• The Chinese were amazed by the Filipinos' honesty
• Chinese traders wrote about the Filipinos' sincerity and trusted clientele
• Some Chinese left their items on the beaches for the Filipinos to trade inland, and they received their bartered items upon return

Naval technology

• Ancestors made amazing marine architecture, such as the Visayan warship karakoa
• Early plank-built vessels dated back to the 3rd century BCE
• The karakoa is similar to Indonesia's korakora
• Historian William Henry Scott described the karakoa as sleek, double-ended warships of low freeboard and light draft with a keel on one continuous curve and a raised platform amidships for ship-to-ship contact
• The karakoa served as both a warship and a trading vessel
• The 1561 Legazpi expedition described it as a ship for sailing any place they wanted
• Reached places as far as Fukien coast in China where Visayan pirates pillaged the villages in the 12th century
• The karakoa achieved a speed of 12 to 15 knots, three times the speed of a Spanish galleon
• Fr. Francisco Combés wrote it could sail like birds

Judiciary

• Pre-colonial Philippines already possessed a working judicial and legislative system
• Life was governed by both unwritten and written statutes containing civil and criminal laws
• The datu and village elders promulgated the laws, announced and explained by a town crier called the umalohokan
• The datu and elders acted as de facto courts in disputes
• A local board of elders from different barangays acted as arbiters in inter-barangay disputes
• Penalties included censure, fines, imprisonment, and death
• Tortures and trials by ordeal were common, similar to those in medieval Europe
• Ifugao subjected parties to a "hot water" or "hot bolo" ordeal
• The accused had to dip their hands into boiling water or touch a scorching knife
• Other methods included giving lighted candles or asking people to chew rice and spit it out

Advanced weaponry

• Ancestors were proficient in war and knew how to make and fire guns and cannons
• Rajah Sulayman owned a 17-foot-long iron cannon
• They also constructed massive fortresses and body armor, such as the Moros' head-to-toe armor
• The Spanish exploited the regionalist tendencies of pre-colonial Filipinos
• This divide-and-conquer strategy enabled the Spanish to control the country for over 300 years

Professions

• Pre-colonial Filipinos excelled in various professions besides farming, hunting, weapon-making, and seafaring
• They were involved in mining, textiles, and smithing
• Locally-produced items such as pots, jewelry, and clothing were highly sought after and reached as far as ancient Egypt

Form of literacy

• Pre-colonial Filipinos educated themselves using the ancient writing system called baybayin
• Possessed a higher literacy rate than Madrid, Spain
• Father Chirino observed that "hardly a man, and much less a woman, who does not read and write"
• Morga wrote that very few "do not write it (baybayin) very well and correctly"
• Baybayin is believed to be one of the indigenous alphabets in Asia that originated from the Sanskrit of ancient India
• Baybayin comprised 17 symbols, and survived in a few artifacts and Father Plasencia's Doctrina Christiana en lengua Española y Tagala
• Ancestors used anything they could get their hands on as writing pads
• The Boxer Codex said that ancestors "have neither books nor histories nor do they write anything of any length but only letters and reminders to one another"
• Spanish missionaries destroyed manuscripts

Skull alteration

• In the ancient Visayas, beauty standards included a flat forehead and nose
• Visayans used a device called tangad to achieve these features
• The tangad was a comb-like set of thin rods put above the baby's forehead and fastened behind with bandages
• The continuous pressure resulted in elongated heads because babies' skulls are pliable
• Deformed skulls were recovered from burial grounds in the Visayan region
• Shape variations depended on where the pressure was applied
• Some had arched foreheads but were flat behind, others were flattened at both front and back, and a few were asymmetrical

Clothing

• Clothing reflected social standing and, for men, how many enemies they had killed
• Basic clothing included bahag (G-string) for men and malong (tube skirt) for women
• The material determined the wearer's status, with abaca reserved for the elites
• Warriors who killed enemies could wear red bahag
• A red pudong called magalong was the insignia of braves who killed an enemy
• The most prestigious kind of pudong was made of pinayusan tied and burnished to a silky sheen
• Lengthened with each feat of valor

Religion and sacrifices

• When a warrior died, a slave was tied and buried beneath his body
• Human sacrifices were required if one was killed violently or if someone from the ruling class died
• To honor the deceased, he was mourned for four days and laid on a boat that served as a coffin
• Then a living slave was tied beneath his body in this wretched way he died
• An alipin was sacrificed in the hope that ancestor spirits would take the slave instead of the dying datu
• Itatanun expeditions had the intention of taking captives from other communities for sacrifices
• They believed that the drying datu was being attacked by the spirits of men he once defeated, and to satisfy them was to kill a slave

Reproduction and childcare

• Having many children was undesirable and a disgrace
• Pregnant women were prohibited from eating kambal na saging which would cause them to give birth to twins which was considered an insult
• Abortion was practiced with the help of female abortionists, massage, herbal medicines, and even a stick
• Pregnant women with their second or third child would resort to abortion to get rid of their pregnancy because multiplying the offspring made them feel like pigs
• Visayans had a custom of abandoning babies with debilitating defects

Rites of passage

• Menarche (first menstruation) was a crucial period in womanhood, requiring an elaborate rite of passage
• The ceremony was known as "dating" among ancient Tagalogs
• It was held with the help of a catalonan (babaylan)
• During the ritual, the girl was secluded, covered, and blindfolded
• Isolation lasted 4 days for commoners, while the principal class had to undergo this process for a month and 20 days
• Ancestors blindfolded the girl so she wouldn't see anything dishonest and prevent her from growing up a bad woman
• Each morning, the girl was led to the river for her ritual bath with a catalonan or a male helper, but her feet did not touch the ground
• The girl was carried back home and rubbed with traditional male scents
• The girl might bear children, and have fortune in finding a husband to their taste, who would not leave them widows in their youth

Social statuses

• Social classes emerged when Filipinos started trading with outsiders
• There were 4 classes of pre-colonial Filipinos:
  • ruling datu class
  • wealthy warrior class called maharlika
  • timawa or freemen
  • alipin or uripon
• The alipin was divided into 2 sub-classes:
  • namamahay, those who owned their houses and only served their masters on an as-needed basis
  • saguiguilid who didn't own a thing nor enjoyed any social privileges
• Slaves could move up or down the pre-colonial social ladder
• An alipin could improve his social status by marriage
• An alipin could also buy his freedom from his master to obtain gold through war, by the grade of goldsmith, or otherwise
• Inter-class mobility could only happen one step at a time
• Other classes could be demoted to the slave class
• Datu could end up a low-ranked individual either because of poor leadership, or through an inter-barangay war

Courtship

• Paninilbihan was prevalent during the pre-colonial period
• Courtship took months or years before parents were convinced
• Men were required to give bigay-kaya, or a dowry
• If a man was favored, it was an especially bigger dowry was given to the favored son, especially if he was supposed to tie the knot with the chief's daughter
• With the Visayans, this dowry was usually given to the father-in-law, who would not entrust it to the couple until they had children
• There was also the panghimuyat or the payment for the mother's nocturnal efforts in rearing the girl to womanhood
• bigay-suso was the payment for the girl's wet nurse
• himaraw was the reimbursement for the amount spent in feeding the girl during her infancy
• Sambon was a bribe given to the girl's relatives among the Zambals
• Pamumulungan or pamamalae meant the groom's parents could meet the in-laws and make final arrangements before the marriage