Sinawali comes to America

Here in California it is officially Filipino American History Month. The celebration is also observed by Filipino organizations throughout the United States.

One important contribution of Filipino Americans to American culture is in the area of martial arts. And there is an interesting link here that we can tie in with the subject of this blog specifically to the towns of Macabebe and Masantol in Pampanga. Both these towns were previously one town known as Macabebe.




The old chronicles of Zhao Rugua (Chao Ju-Kua) mention cotton and silk material that was imported into Sanfotsi, but does not tell us how these fabrics were used. In Ma Tuan-lin's geographical encyclopedia of the Sung Dynasty, he mentions several instances of fabrics sent to the Chinese emperor as gifts from Sanfotsi.

In 962, the king Li-si-lin-nan-ni-ji-lai sent "beautiful fabrics" along with his envoys to the emperor. In 975, hats, belts and silk garments were sent as gifts, and in 1082, the Sanfotsi king's daughter sent textile gifts to the maritime prefect who refused to receive them until he had permission from the imperial palace.

Zhao Rugua mentions mats coming from Sanfotsi, Sansu and Tanjungwulo. The mats from Sanfotsi were considered the best in quality. These mats were said to be made from a plant resembling the rattan palm.

Macabebe was a famous center for silk and cotton weaving and for the production of mats and sugar sacks (bayones). The town held a monopoly on the production of rayadillo military uniforms. The Philippines in general has long been famous for mats, and Macabebe was considered a prime source of high quality mats that were made of the fiber of the wild banana, known as abaca, of sasa palm leaves, and other materials. The sasa palm may be the rattan-like plant mentioned by Zhao Rugua. Abaca was also spun into thread for clothing and such cloth was called sinamay and was very popular with the natives but too coarse for most foreigners. Weaving in Macabebe was done with a native loom made of wood and cord.



A rattan palm (Source: Hort Log, http://hortlog.blogspot.com/2009/04/thorny.html)



Sasa palms (Source: Mongabay.com, http://travel.mongabay.com/indonesia/images/kali8915.html)


According to Hugo H. Miller in the late 20th century, the Macabebe cloth traders, mentioned by Leo Giron in the video above, were often small landowners whose families 'tended the farm' while they were gone. Only a minority had any investments in their own business and most borrowed money at high interest rates from a few wealthy Macabebe families. Some also took loans, often unsecured, of goods from Chinese merchants.

When my father was young in Masantol, the children would help make mats from sasa leaves that my grandmother would sell to supplement the income of my grandfather, who was a Philippine Scout. So, this activity was still thriving up until World War II.

The fabrics, mats and other products were traded all over the Philippines from northern Luzon, where Giron hailed from, to Mindanao in the South. The merchants usually sold the materials to families with whom they had developed special relationships who in turn sold them to others in the area.


Giron and Filipino martial arts in America

Giron created his own style of Filipino martial arts that incorporated the two-handed Estilo Macabebe and Sinawali forms of fighting. The rods used for this martial art form in the Philippines were often made from fan palm trees. The first graduate of Giron's style was Dan Inosanto.

Inosanto was one of the few students of the fighting style of famed martial arts star Bruce Lee, which is known as Jeet Kune Do. He was the only student granted the right to teach the highest third level of Jeet Kune Do. But Inosanto is also famed as the man who taught Lee "how to wield the chuks," i.e., the Okinawan weapon known as the nunchaku. Inosanto used the nunchaku in a two-handed style known as double nunchaku.


Inosanto uses double nunchaku starting at 0:27 in the video.


Inosanto had many noteworthy students including his daughter Diane Lee Inosanto, who is also a martial arts star; the late Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee; Paul Vunak; and even Denzel Washington trained with Inosanto for the movie "The Book of Eli." The stick fighting organization known as The Dog Brothers was formed at the Inosanto Academy in Marina Del Rey.

Often when one sees any type of double weapon fighting in Hollywood movies there is an influence from the double sinawali or "weaving" style of Macabebe. For example, Filipino martial arts were used as models for the Star Wars franchise through the influence of Roel Robles and Jonathan Soriben. The use of two blades in Star Wars is known in the story as Jar'Kai.



Anakin Skywalker uses double light sabers briefly against Count Dooku (starting at 1:40) in Star Wars Episode II.


Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Hamm, Margherita Arlina. Manila and the Philippines. London: F.T. Neely, 1898, 59-60.

Mendel, Bob. "The Nunchaku," Black Belt Aug. 1994, 19.

Ma, Duanlin, and Léon Hervey de Saint-Denys. Ethnographie des peuples étrangers à la Chine: ouvrage composé au XIIIe siècle de notre ère. Atsume gusa, 4. Genève: H. Georg, 1876, 559-564.

Maclennan, Marshall S. The Central Luzon plain. 1980, 78.

Miller, Hugo Herman. Economic Conditions in the Philippines. Boston: Ginn and Co, 1920, 423.

Philippines, Ignacio Villamor, and Felipe Buencamino. Census of the Philippine Islands Taken Under the Direction of the Philippine Legislature in the Year 1918. Manila: Bureau of printing, 1920, 236.

Notes on place names in Zambales and Pampanga

In various parts of the world, we come across a type of sacred geography that views geographical locations as corresponding to the body parts of a deity or deities.

Among Hindus, for example, the Sakta-pithas are considered sacred pilgrimage sites that each correspond with a specific body part of the goddess Sakti. The Buddhists have a similar system.

In the regions of Zambales and Pampanga in the Philippines that have been of major focus in this blog, there are some indications of a similar type of sacred geography. The town known as Betis, once the largest population center in Luzon but now absorbed into the municipality of Lubao, was originally known as Bitis, for example by Gov. Francisco de Sande in 1576. The latter word means "foot" in the local Kapampangan language.

Bitis is in fact located at the foothills of Mt. Pinatubo where the elevation begins to rise from the flat plains of Pampanga. Therefore, the name might indicate the foot or bottom of the mountain. Another nearby district of Lubao is known as Pasbul, which means "gate" possibly indicating this area was a thoroughfare to the mountain area.

Taking into account the common Austronesian practice of quadripartite division, there are some indications that this general area may have been conceived of as consisting of four "bodies." From Bitis toward the South, there are two placenames indicating parts near the top of the body. At the southern end of the Zambales range, of which Mt. Pinatubo is a part, sits Olongapo, the name derived from the Ulo ng Apo "Head of the Lord/Elder." To the southeast, across the Manila Bay and at the southern end of pampang-style agricultural system that runs from Lower Pampanga and through Bulacan is the ancient city of Tondo.

Tondo is believed to be derived from the Kapampangan word tundun which means "nape" or "back of the neck."

So from Bitis at the feet of the mountains of Pinatubo and Arayat going southwest, you have Olongapo "Head of the Lord," along the coast of Subic Bay, and to the southeast Tondo "Back of the Neck" along the Manila Bay.

Now in the opposite direction from Bitis are again the mountains of Pinatubo to the northwest and Arayat to the northeast. This area around the mountains is generally considered "central" as the directional word paralaya "toward Arayat" for "East" indicates. The Kapampangan word for "North" is ulu or pang-ulu. The ulu in this name is related to the ulo in "Ulo ng Apo" above with both words derived from Proto-Austronesian *ulu "head."

In Kapampangan the meaning of "head" for ulu and pangulu has been lost and the words now mean either "North" or "headwater," i.e. the origin of a river or stream. However, when the words were originally derived to indicate "North," ulu and pangulu still may have retained at least a secondary meaning of "head." Thus, the northern direction would have been associated with some place to the north that was thought of again in terms of the "head" body part.

So, there were four bodies in this hypothesis, all with their feet coming together in Bitis. The two bodies extending to the north had their central parts located apart at the east and west in Mts. Arayat and Pinatubo respectively with the heads again coming together in the north i.e. ulu or pangulu. The top parts of the two bodies extending to the South were Olongapo and Tondo both locations offering access to the open sea through the Subic and Manila bays respectively.

Now, the midsection of the southern bodies is also possibly indicated by a secondary directional system associated with the winds and used by fishermen. In this system, "South" is indicated by the word malaut "on the sea," while "North" is balas or "sand" meaning the type of sand common in the estuarine areas of Lower Pampanga. The south wind is also known as kalautan indicating the wind blowing off the ocean. This would indicate that this southern "center" was located along the northern beach line of the Pampanga Bay, probably at the mouth of the Pampanga River. The names for the directions "southwest" or abagat, the wind that blows in the high tide, and for south-by-southeast or ikat-aldo panlaut "sunrise by the sea" also strengthen this location of the southern center.


Click image for larger version

If this suggested sacred geography is correct, we can only guess at what bodies may have been suggested by the ancients. Possibly the two northern bodies could have been those of the deities Apung Mallari and Apung Sinukuan, associated with Mts. Pinatubo and Arayat respectively, but sufficient clues are lacking.

That the ancient peoples in this region may have seen their country as a type of the world in microcosm may be seen in their making Pinatubo and Arayat as the homes of the Moon and Sun respectively. As skilled mariners, they knew that the perceptions of the rising and setting luminaries was relative and could be expanded to all locations. Therefore the four bodies of the country could represent a smaller version of the four corners of the world in Austronesian quadripartite thinking.


Land of sacred earth and pottery

The region of Zambales (Sambali) and Pampanga were linked with the sacred earth of the volcanoes, and the pottery made from this earth I have suggested in this blog.

Many place names link up with these two themes. Joel Pabustan Mallari has noted that the capitals of Zambales and of Bataan to the south (where Olongapo is located) both have names that denote ancient types of pots i.e., Iba and Balanga respectively. Iba is also the former name of a village in Mabalacat near the Pampanga-Zambales border.

Pottery-making continues to this day in locations like Apalit in Pampanga, Calumpit in Bulacan, Victoria in Tarlac and San Leonardo in Nueva Ecija. However, older testimony indicates that pottery-making was once more widespread.

Many geographical names or terms indicate features or resources connected with the earth and soil. For example, as already mentioned, one term for the northern direction is balas, which means simply "sand" with a secondary connotation of sand specifically associated with estuarine areas. Diego Bergaño in the 18th century mentions a type of ancient earthenware known as balasini which he describes as:

"Loza antigua, que parece está hendida, no lo estando: hay poco, ya." ('Ancient earthenware, it appears to crack, no longer made: very few are left.')

-- Diego Bergaño (1732), Vocabulario de la lengua Pampangan en romance.

The word balasini may be derived from balas, and indeed modern potters still use balas-type sand as a temper in making certain types of pots. These antique wares that were still present in Bergaño's time may be related to the valuable earthenware Ruson-tsubo that were traded to Japan in earlier times.

Mallari mentions a number of places that appear to indicate some link with ancient quarrying:

Balas (sand) common name for barangays in Bacolor, Mexico and Concepcion; Sapangbato (lake of stones) in Angeles; Mabatu-batu (rocky) in [S]an Francisco, Magalang; Banlic (sand or mud after a flood) in Cabalantian, Bacolor; Planas (coral stones) in Porac.

The name Porac itself has a difficult etymology. It could be related to purac "pandan tree," burak "mud/lahar," or other similar words. I would not be surprised if it is a corruption of the word pila or pilac "clay." The archaeologist Robert Fox had reported that he saw what he thought were ancient quarries in Porac. Today, Porac is a major quarrying site, which may be one reason that archaeological finds are rather frequent in this area. Possibly in ancient times, Porac was a source of clay used for pottery and other uses.

In concluding, one last indication of the link with pottery and geography comes from ancient Kapampangan cosmology. The words suclub and sicluban are drawn from the same root meaning lid or cover and particularly referring to the lid of an earthenware pot. Suclub also means "horizon," and the phrase meto sicluban banua means vault or mantle of the sky. The ancients apparently viewed the world as a great pot with the sky as the lid or cover, which reminds us of the Penglai pot (hu) heaven in Chinese mythology.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Mallari, Joel Pabustan. "Adobe and Pumice: Upon these rocks," Singsing vol. 3, no. 1, 17-19.

__, "Ancient quarrying in Pampanga," Singsing vol. 3, no. 1, 18.

__, "Tracing the early Kapampangan boat people," Singsing vol. 3, no. 2, 58-9.

__, "The dying kuran technology of Capalangan," Singsing vol. 5, no. 1, 45-50.

Tantingco, Robby. "Time and space according to ancient Kapampangans," Singsing vol. 2, no. 4, 19-21.

The Royal Way

In the first Google Earth image below, the main river leading from the Manila Bay to the confluence at the southern portion of Masantol is shown.

The river is flanked by two massive dikes or earthen barriers. Masantol was formerly a barangay (district) of the now-sleepy and backward town of Macabebe. When the Spanish first arrived in this area, Macabebe was one of the largest population centers of what is now the Philippines. The confluence could be known in the local languages as "sambal" or "sabang" and this is the area that I equate with the medieval Zabag.

About half the distance to Masantol is one of its barangays known as Malauli. It is at this point that the water turns from salt/brackish to freshwater. Here also local legend says that the king who opposed Martin de Goiti and the invading Spaniards resided, although now it is very sparsely populated. He is known variously as Rajah Bambalito or Rajah Soliman. Click on the images below for the full image size.


Click on image for full view

Medieval texts also state that the king of Zabag lived in a estuary that was salty during high tide and sweet during low tide. One could view such an area as the real beginning of the river, the point at which the sea, represented by saltwater, ends.

In this blog, I have suggested that the king of Zabag was the "Lord of the River" and thus his position at the entrance point would have been traditional. However, we should note that the divergence area of salt and sweet water may have varied over long periods. The king would guarded the way to the emporium at the sabang/confluence or Zabag.



Click on image for full view

In the image above, we see a closeup of the confluence near the southern end of Masantol town proper (Barangay Santa Lucia). The dikes, known as pangpang, pampang and bangbang, give the local province its name of "Pampanga." These massive dikes, unlike anything else in the province with houses and roads built on top, begin here at the confluence and end at the mouth of the river along the Manila Bay.



Click on image for full view

In addition to guarding the way to the market of Zabag, the king would even more important control the recognized waterway for visiting the sacred mountains of Pinatubo and Arayat to the north. Visitors could continue on boat using the rivers to reach Betis from where they presumably would proceed on foot. The distance from Masantol to Pinatubo is about 28.5 miles as the crow flies, and 19.5 miles to Arayat.



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You can grab this image above with your mouse, or use the arrows, to navigate up the river toward Masantol.

Google Earth: 'Pangpang' System of Lower Pampanga

Google Maps has expanded its satellite photo coverage of the Lower Pampanga region making it easier to see the extent of the system of rivers, canals, flooded rice fields and fish-ponds. It is this system of transplanting agriculture that gives the province its name from the Kapampangan pangpang "canal, dike."



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The Lower Pampanga drainage and irrigation system is delineated by the dark green area from Minalin and Lubao to the north, to just south of Orion on the Bataan peninsula to the southwest, and to the outskirts of Manila on the southeast. Formerly this system extended to Tondo, which is now a part of Metro Manila.



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A closer view showing the rivers and canals. You can use the arrows to pan about, and zoom in/out with the plus/minus buttons; or move the map by 'grabbing' it with your mouse.

Article: Social hierarchy in Pampanga

The following reconstruction of social hierarchy in Pampanga based on Bergano and various other sources should be helpful in understanding the political situation in pre-contact Lusung.

Pagbansag

The Pagbansag were hereditary titles, the "pag-" prefix indicating those titles that are passively obtained i.e. by birth. Many of the pagbansag are related to the clan or village that first settled an area or mountain. Pagbansag connected with the land cannot be given away or taken away in native thought as they belong to the ancestors. This caused quite a bit of friction over the concept of land "ownership" during colonial times.

Pagbansagan -- The highest title in the land meaning "the one who bestows hereditary titles (pagbansag)". In the common practice, the Pagbansangan is the lawgiver and the supreme judge in matters of law. Also, in most cases the person is also an heriditary priest or shaman and grants priesthoods to others. The Pagbansagan of Pinatubo would grant titles for the sulip (banua) of Pinatubo, or those districts (danay) primarly fed by the rivers and streams of that volcano. When a tipon is called between these districts the Pagbansagan naturally officiates and carries "veto" power. In a national crisis, the Pagbansagan appoints commanders and deputies, while the danay provide their own troops and supplies.

Calili -- Hereditary priest/priestess.

Ari -- This title means literally "king" or "queen." An Ari is an hereditary ruler as the word Ariyan means "of royal blood, prince, princess." The Ari generally rule over geographical districts. The Pagbansagan is the Ari of the sulip/banua. None of the Ari, including the Pagbansagan, had autocratic power but ruled through a combination of political, legal and spiritual portfolios. When clans were able to attain rulership over lands outside the traditional danay, the clan leaders known as Dapu or Nunu became rulers in a thalassocracy.

Dapu -- Also known as Nunu or "grandparents" these were the leaders of clans who could hold power across danay or establish their own kingdoms in other lands. These titles were hereditary but also had elective qualities and did not involve the Pagbansagan. The Dapu or Nunu of major clans were very powerful. The genealogy of the clan could also be called nunu. It was generally traced back to the Talampacan or great-great-grandparents and reckoned bilaterally. However, clans could unite through blood pacts usually involving a marriage, or the ritual drinking by the Dapu of a bit of each other's blood mixed with native wine (alac or sasa).

Dayang -- A "Lady" or "Dona." May be related to the word daya "blood" indicating bilineal or matrilineal inheritance of certain titles.

Laquin -- A "great man," probably a contraction of lalaqui-an. These titles often connoted some kind of spiritual lordship over some element, activity, object, etc.

Gat -- Possibly a foreign title as Bergano lists neither gat or pamagat. Also, some of the words compounded with "Gat-" look foreign i.e., maitam in Gatmaitam may come from the Moro languages in the South. These surnames may represent the ancient marriages with nobility from Brunei and Sulu. Gat has a connotation similar to "Don" in Spanish.

Basal -- A governor, apparently related to the blacksmith caste.

Punsalang -- A captain, probably hereditary, related to the old noble clan of Pinatubo and Apung Mallari.

Hereditary offices. These were all honorable positions although some may be difficult to understand as such today. For example the pagbansag Manalang means "the one who propagates the Talang tree," which alone does not sound very noble until one understands that the Talang was very sacred in this region.

Bansag

These were appointed offices. Some like the title of Ucum could also be granted as hereditary titles.

Alili -- Appointed priest/priestess.

Ucum -- Also probably Nucum. A judge, a "mayor" of a large population center or ucuman.

Bansagan -- General or Captain-General.

Bansag -- Captain or Maestro-de-Campo.

Guinu -- A chief or lord. The equivalent of "datu" in other areas. Usually the ruler of at least a barangay. The Guinu were established mostly by merit although a good genealogy was always helpful.

Datu -- The title of Datu also existed in some areas. Originally this meant the captain of a ship known as a barangay, and also the settlement of the same name. As with the Guinu, the power of the Datu could vary widely. One barangay might be dozens of times larger than another. Some datus might command a "fleet" of barangays. The position of Datu was generally earned.

Una -- A captain, especially of a land force.

Biuisan -- Anyone who receives taxes or tribute (buis) for any reason. Some of the pagbansag were also Biuisan.

Other appointed offices similar to those of the pagbansag in most cases, but not hereditary.