Pirates of the Visayas in China
By Ambeth R. Ocampo, Philippine Daily Inquirer
While there are many references to the Philippines in ancient Chinese records, only a handful are available in English, all reproduced, wholly or partly, in the first chapter of “The Chinese Community in the Philippines” by Chen Ching-Ho (Tokyo, 1968). Surely, the Heritage Center in Intramuros headed by Tessie Ang See or the Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies at Ateneo de Manila University can undertake the necessary research and translations to fill the gaps in our early history. The standoff between the Philippines and China in the disputed Spratly Islands led me to two 10th-century references to the Philippines: the first a description of some islands made by an envoy from Brunei in China, and the second a reference to traders from Ma-I arriving in Canton in 982 A.D. carrying goods and treasures for trade.
What surprised me was a 12th-century account of pirates from the Visayas that attacked what is now part of southern Taiwan:
“Nearby is the country of P’i-she-yeh (Visayas). Their language is unintelligible, and they go naked and lead so primitive a life that is almost subhuman. Once during the Ch’un-lui era (1174-89), a chief of the country, at the head of several hundred of his men, suddenly came to Shui-ao, Wei-t-ou and other villages of Ch’uan-chou and wantonly committed slaughter and pillage.
“They showed a passion for iron vessels, spoons, and chopsticks. People would escape from their hands by shutting the door; then they would tear [these] off and take away the door knobs. When a spoon or a pair of chopsticks was thrown to them, they would stop to pick it up. When they saw an iron-clad cavalryman, they would rush forward to peel off his armor, showing no remorse even if their heads were lopped off left and right. In combat they employed javelins, to which was tied a rope more than a hundred feet long, for they valued the iron spearhead so highly that they could not let it be lost. They do not sail in a boat, but make a raft by tying bamboo canes together. When in danger they carry the raft on their shoulders down to the water and row away on it.”
These Visayan pirates are believed to have taken the sea route from the Philippines to China via Taiwan, unlike the 10th-century traders who went to Canton via Brunei. Fascinating are the old names given to the islands: P’i-she-yeh (Visayas), Ma-i or Ma-yi or Mait (Mindoro), Babuyan, Pu-li-lu (Manila), Li-yin (Zambales), Tung-liu (?), Hsin-li-han (?), and what was known as “The Three Islands” namely: Chia-ma-yen (Calamian), Pa-lao-you (Palawan) and Pa-chi-nung (Busuanga).
However, not all references to the islands and their people were negative or derogatory. In the 13th-century Chu fan chih (Description of Various Barbarians) by Chau Ju-kua (now respelled as Zhao Rugua), Mait is described as a country with over a thousand families living beside a creek, a place where “bronze images of gods, of unknown origin, [were] scattered about in the grassy wilderness.” He wrote, “Pirates seldom come to this country,” but didn’t explain whether this was due to the number of people, the island’s defenses, or maybe there was nothing worthy of a pirate attack.
Most significant was an observation that our ancestors were very, very honest:
“When trading ships enter the anchorage, they stop in front of the official’s place, for that is the place for bartering of the country. After a ship has been boarded, the natives mix freely with the ship’s folk. The chiefs are in the habit of using white umbrellas, for which reason the traders offer them as gifts.
“The custom of the trade is for the savage traders to assemble in crowds and carry the goods away with them in baskets; and, even if one cannot at first know them, and can but slowly distinguish the men who remove the goods, there will yet be no loss. The savage traders will after this carry these goods on to other islands for barter, and, as a rule, it takes them as much as eight or nine months till they return, when they repay the traders on shipboard with what they have obtained for the goods. Some, however, do not return within the proper term, for which reason vessels trading with Mait are the latest in reaching home.
“The products of the country consist of yellow wax, cotton, pearls, tortoise shell, medicinal betel nuts and yu-ta cloth; and the foreign traders barter for these porcelain, trade-gold; iron censers, lead, colored glass beads, and iron needles.”
Honesty was something described not only by Chinese traders but by the early Spanish settlers, too. In one account, our ancestors were described as hard-nosed businessmen who were careful with transactions that involved gold, such that you could give a Pinoy lots to drink and, though tipsy or even drunk, he would not make a mistake weighing gold on his scale.
One of the ways in which to come to an understanding is to see things from the perspective of another, the viewpoint of a rival. When diplomats reference the historic ties between the Philippines and China, they go beyond the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries; they go back a millennium to these early Chinese accounts of the pre-Spanish Philippines.
History can thus be a bridge or a wall between nations.
Visayan pirates in China, Part 2
By Ambeth R. Ocampo, Philippine Daily Inquirer
When I was in school I heard about Chau Ju-kua (1170-1228) and read the portions of his two-volume work, “Chu-fan chi” (Description of Barbarous Peoples), which referred to pre-Spanish Philippines. Searching for him on the Internet recently made me see the many changes in contemporary Chinese orthography. For example: the Chinese capital Peking has become Beijing; the founding father of China, Mao tse-tung, has become Mao Zedong; Chau Ju-kua has become Zhao Rugua and his book “Chu-fan-chi” has become “Zhufan zhi.” These cause some confusion in bibliographic and Internet searches. Nevertheless, Zhao Rugua’s description of the islands that were yet to become the Philippines and of the islanders who were yet to become indios and later Filipinos is one way to see what we were like long before Magellan was born.
The reference to Visayan pirates raiding 12th-century China comes from two contemporary sources: the “Sung shi” and “Zhufan zhi.” These accounts are almost exactly the same, and Chen Ching-ho in “The Chinese Community in the Philippines” (Tokyo, 1968) says the Sung shi copied from the Chu fan-chi (“Zhufan zhi”). Some readers directed me to a website where my last column on Pirates from the Visayas was posted with a comment saying that P’i-she-yeh was misidentified by Chen Ching-ho as the Visayas; it is actually part of Formosa or modern Taiwan. I reread the source for the column that states authoritatively: “[T]here is no doubt as to the identity of the P’i-she-yeh of the twelfth century with the Visayas.” Chen Ching-ho based this conclusion on a contemporary Chinese account that described the faces of the raiders from P’i-she-yeh as tattooed black. He also cited the “Sucesos de las islas Filipinas” (1609) by Antonio de Morga who described the Visayans as “a race of skillful navigators who were eager for pillaging raids.”
Aside from the two 12th-century accounts of the Visayan raids on southern China, there is another from the 14th-century travel account of Wang Ta-yuan who wrote of the Visayas and the Visayans as follows:
“The Visayas live in a remote land in the eastern sea, where the hills are flat and deserted and the fields are little tilled. There is not much planting. The climate is scorching hot. The natives are fond of pillaging. The males and the females both tie their hair in a topknot, tattoo their bodies here and there with ink, and wrap their heads with a piece of red silk to which a piece of yellow cloth is tied to make a tail. Their country has no chief, and the land produces nothing. At times they prepare dry provisions, row in a small boat, go to other barbarians, lie in ambush in wild mountains and remote valleys where no man lives, capture fish-catchers and fuel-collectors whom they happen to meet, and bring home and sell the prisoners to other countries, in which transactions they get two ounces of gold apiece. Men of that country make their living by this custom from generation to generation, for which reason the people of the eastern sea, upon hearing the name of Visaya, are all terrified and flee.” (Underscoring mine).
French Sinologist Terrien de Lacouperie, in his eight-volume work “The Languages of China before the Chinese” (1887), was the first to identify the P’i-she-yeh with the Visaya or Bisaya of the Philippines. Furthermore, an explanatory footnote by Friedrich Hirth and William Rockhill to their translation of the “Chu fan-chi” in 1911 reads:
“During the period A.D. 1174-1190 these raids on the Fukien coast were of frequent occurrence. The P’i-she-yeh were consequently established along the southwestern coast of Formosa at that time, but it seems probable that they were of Philippine origin. This belief is further strengthened by the statement of [Zhao Rugua] in the preceding chapter that the people of Liu-k’iu, the Formosans immediately to the north of the P’i-she-yeh, had regular trade relations with the Philippines (San-sii). It must be noted that the raiders came to China on rafts, not in boats as they would have done had they come directly from the Philippines.” (Underscoring mine).
More research is needed to ascertain the identity of these 12th-century Visayan pirates as well as the tradition of slave-raiding that goes even further back in time. Come to think of it, what is described as “slave raiding” in historical and archeological texts on pre-Spanish Philippines still exists today under another name—kidnapping. While most people think history is a useless academic subject and argue for its removal from present school curricula, it is history that helps us find context. When we go through our history and see beyond the memorized names, dates and places, we see how the past remains current and relevant in our times. The references to the 12th-century Visayan pirates do seem irrelevant except that in our present row with China over some islands and maritime territories, we are rediscovering the long historic links between our two countries. If I had another life I would probably study Chinese if only to see what references to the Philippines lie in ancient Chinese historical sources. Since I don’t have another life, I can only wish young Filipino historians will do this long overdue task.
By Ambeth R. Ocampo, Philippine Daily Inquirer
While there are many references to the Philippines in ancient Chinese records, only a handful are available in English, all reproduced, wholly or partly, in the first chapter of “The Chinese Community in the Philippines” by Chen Ching-Ho (Tokyo, 1968). Surely, the Heritage Center in Intramuros headed by Tessie Ang See or the Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies at Ateneo de Manila University can undertake the necessary research and translations to fill the gaps in our early history. The standoff between the Philippines and China in the disputed Spratly Islands led me to two 10th-century references to the Philippines: the first a description of some islands made by an envoy from Brunei in China, and the second a reference to traders from Ma-I arriving in Canton in 982 A.D. carrying goods and treasures for trade.
What surprised me was a 12th-century account of pirates from the Visayas that attacked what is now part of southern Taiwan:
“Nearby is the country of P’i-she-yeh (Visayas). Their language is unintelligible, and they go naked and lead so primitive a life that is almost subhuman. Once during the Ch’un-lui era (1174-89), a chief of the country, at the head of several hundred of his men, suddenly came to Shui-ao, Wei-t-ou and other villages of Ch’uan-chou and wantonly committed slaughter and pillage.
“They showed a passion for iron vessels, spoons, and chopsticks. People would escape from their hands by shutting the door; then they would tear [these] off and take away the door knobs. When a spoon or a pair of chopsticks was thrown to them, they would stop to pick it up. When they saw an iron-clad cavalryman, they would rush forward to peel off his armor, showing no remorse even if their heads were lopped off left and right. In combat they employed javelins, to which was tied a rope more than a hundred feet long, for they valued the iron spearhead so highly that they could not let it be lost. They do not sail in a boat, but make a raft by tying bamboo canes together. When in danger they carry the raft on their shoulders down to the water and row away on it.”
These Visayan pirates are believed to have taken the sea route from the Philippines to China via Taiwan, unlike the 10th-century traders who went to Canton via Brunei. Fascinating are the old names given to the islands: P’i-she-yeh (Visayas), Ma-i or Ma-yi or Mait (Mindoro), Babuyan, Pu-li-lu (Manila), Li-yin (Zambales), Tung-liu (?), Hsin-li-han (?), and what was known as “The Three Islands” namely: Chia-ma-yen (Calamian), Pa-lao-you (Palawan) and Pa-chi-nung (Busuanga).
However, not all references to the islands and their people were negative or derogatory. In the 13th-century Chu fan chih (Description of Various Barbarians) by Chau Ju-kua (now respelled as Zhao Rugua), Mait is described as a country with over a thousand families living beside a creek, a place where “bronze images of gods, of unknown origin, [were] scattered about in the grassy wilderness.” He wrote, “Pirates seldom come to this country,” but didn’t explain whether this was due to the number of people, the island’s defenses, or maybe there was nothing worthy of a pirate attack.
Most significant was an observation that our ancestors were very, very honest:
“When trading ships enter the anchorage, they stop in front of the official’s place, for that is the place for bartering of the country. After a ship has been boarded, the natives mix freely with the ship’s folk. The chiefs are in the habit of using white umbrellas, for which reason the traders offer them as gifts.
“The custom of the trade is for the savage traders to assemble in crowds and carry the goods away with them in baskets; and, even if one cannot at first know them, and can but slowly distinguish the men who remove the goods, there will yet be no loss. The savage traders will after this carry these goods on to other islands for barter, and, as a rule, it takes them as much as eight or nine months till they return, when they repay the traders on shipboard with what they have obtained for the goods. Some, however, do not return within the proper term, for which reason vessels trading with Mait are the latest in reaching home.
“The products of the country consist of yellow wax, cotton, pearls, tortoise shell, medicinal betel nuts and yu-ta cloth; and the foreign traders barter for these porcelain, trade-gold; iron censers, lead, colored glass beads, and iron needles.”
Honesty was something described not only by Chinese traders but by the early Spanish settlers, too. In one account, our ancestors were described as hard-nosed businessmen who were careful with transactions that involved gold, such that you could give a Pinoy lots to drink and, though tipsy or even drunk, he would not make a mistake weighing gold on his scale.
One of the ways in which to come to an understanding is to see things from the perspective of another, the viewpoint of a rival. When diplomats reference the historic ties between the Philippines and China, they go beyond the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries; they go back a millennium to these early Chinese accounts of the pre-Spanish Philippines.
History can thus be a bridge or a wall between nations.
Visayan pirates in China, Part 2
By Ambeth R. Ocampo, Philippine Daily Inquirer
When I was in school I heard about Chau Ju-kua (1170-1228) and read the portions of his two-volume work, “Chu-fan chi” (Description of Barbarous Peoples), which referred to pre-Spanish Philippines. Searching for him on the Internet recently made me see the many changes in contemporary Chinese orthography. For example: the Chinese capital Peking has become Beijing; the founding father of China, Mao tse-tung, has become Mao Zedong; Chau Ju-kua has become Zhao Rugua and his book “Chu-fan-chi” has become “Zhufan zhi.” These cause some confusion in bibliographic and Internet searches. Nevertheless, Zhao Rugua’s description of the islands that were yet to become the Philippines and of the islanders who were yet to become indios and later Filipinos is one way to see what we were like long before Magellan was born.
The reference to Visayan pirates raiding 12th-century China comes from two contemporary sources: the “Sung shi” and “Zhufan zhi.” These accounts are almost exactly the same, and Chen Ching-ho in “The Chinese Community in the Philippines” (Tokyo, 1968) says the Sung shi copied from the Chu fan-chi (“Zhufan zhi”). Some readers directed me to a website where my last column on Pirates from the Visayas was posted with a comment saying that P’i-she-yeh was misidentified by Chen Ching-ho as the Visayas; it is actually part of Formosa or modern Taiwan. I reread the source for the column that states authoritatively: “[T]here is no doubt as to the identity of the P’i-she-yeh of the twelfth century with the Visayas.” Chen Ching-ho based this conclusion on a contemporary Chinese account that described the faces of the raiders from P’i-she-yeh as tattooed black. He also cited the “Sucesos de las islas Filipinas” (1609) by Antonio de Morga who described the Visayans as “a race of skillful navigators who were eager for pillaging raids.”
Aside from the two 12th-century accounts of the Visayan raids on southern China, there is another from the 14th-century travel account of Wang Ta-yuan who wrote of the Visayas and the Visayans as follows:
“The Visayas live in a remote land in the eastern sea, where the hills are flat and deserted and the fields are little tilled. There is not much planting. The climate is scorching hot. The natives are fond of pillaging. The males and the females both tie their hair in a topknot, tattoo their bodies here and there with ink, and wrap their heads with a piece of red silk to which a piece of yellow cloth is tied to make a tail. Their country has no chief, and the land produces nothing. At times they prepare dry provisions, row in a small boat, go to other barbarians, lie in ambush in wild mountains and remote valleys where no man lives, capture fish-catchers and fuel-collectors whom they happen to meet, and bring home and sell the prisoners to other countries, in which transactions they get two ounces of gold apiece. Men of that country make their living by this custom from generation to generation, for which reason the people of the eastern sea, upon hearing the name of Visaya, are all terrified and flee.” (Underscoring mine).
French Sinologist Terrien de Lacouperie, in his eight-volume work “The Languages of China before the Chinese” (1887), was the first to identify the P’i-she-yeh with the Visaya or Bisaya of the Philippines. Furthermore, an explanatory footnote by Friedrich Hirth and William Rockhill to their translation of the “Chu fan-chi” in 1911 reads:
“During the period A.D. 1174-1190 these raids on the Fukien coast were of frequent occurrence. The P’i-she-yeh were consequently established along the southwestern coast of Formosa at that time, but it seems probable that they were of Philippine origin. This belief is further strengthened by the statement of [Zhao Rugua] in the preceding chapter that the people of Liu-k’iu, the Formosans immediately to the north of the P’i-she-yeh, had regular trade relations with the Philippines (San-sii). It must be noted that the raiders came to China on rafts, not in boats as they would have done had they come directly from the Philippines.” (Underscoring mine).
More research is needed to ascertain the identity of these 12th-century Visayan pirates as well as the tradition of slave-raiding that goes even further back in time. Come to think of it, what is described as “slave raiding” in historical and archeological texts on pre-Spanish Philippines still exists today under another name—kidnapping. While most people think history is a useless academic subject and argue for its removal from present school curricula, it is history that helps us find context. When we go through our history and see beyond the memorized names, dates and places, we see how the past remains current and relevant in our times. The references to the 12th-century Visayan pirates do seem irrelevant except that in our present row with China over some islands and maritime territories, we are rediscovering the long historic links between our two countries. If I had another life I would probably study Chinese if only to see what references to the Philippines lie in ancient Chinese historical sources. Since I don’t have another life, I can only wish young Filipino historians will do this long overdue task.
2 comments:
I suggest reading the book Barangay by William Henry Scott. His observation however or maybe his view on raiding was 'the economic system' at that time.
They needed workers to harvest the forest or fields and when they are done with their service they are either freed or sold of or the captive can buy himself out. At least that is how I remember it.
Good information by the way very informative.
Keep it up.
Good job writing this one,I have been longing for information like this.
As for the new generations, It is very hard to study history here in our country because all the school can teach us are "Tagalog and Spanish" histories, less than 1 percent is thought about our true past!
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