Jose E. Marco's Kalantiaw Code: Implications for Philippine Historiography and Filipinos' Historical Consciousness

Jose E. Marco's Kalantiaw Code: Implications for Philippine Historiography and Filipinos' Historical Consciousness

Introduction

This proposed study started as a simple examination of the infamous antiquarian from the island of Negros in the Visayan region, Jose E. Marco, and his many alleged 'historical works' that influenced the writings of Philippine history. Many Philippine historians considered Marco to have revolutionized the dissemination, and perhaps the manufacturing, of pre-colonial Philippine documents during the early twentieth century. Frankly, the task is daunting because there are many avenues of inquiry that required close examination to even cover the tip of this 'confabulation.'

Therefore, for this research, I have decided to narrow down my focus on the implications of discovering and proving that the Kalantiaw Code of fourteen thirty-three had no historical basis apart from its only known reference mentioned in the two-volume Pavon manuscript presented in nineteen fourteen by Filipino antique collector Jose E. Marco to the Director of Philippine National Library, James A. Robertson. The perceived historical significance and authenticity of this alleged ancient penal code from the Visayan region has persisted despite being proven as a work of historical fiction.

In terms of available literature on the issue of Marco and his 'historical' works, there are several scholars such as William Henry Scott, John N. Schumacher, Augusto de Viana and Michael Salman, who have already examined certain aspects of Marco's historical contributions. However, they all seemed to focus on contesting the authenticity of various historical documents linked to Marco, or looking at the motivation/s behind the creation and publication of these fraudulent documents.

On the other hand, there is not much discourse on the kind of public responses and the possible social impacts of revelation surrounding these fraudulent documents that I believe can provide further understanding of Philippine society as well as the shaping of Philippine historiography. The only comprehensive study on the impacts (or lack thereof) of the exposure of these forgeries is that of independent Philippine scholar Paul Morrow's online article "Kalantiaw: The Hoax." In his article, Morrow examines how Philippine state institutions and Filipino academic scholars continued to propagate the validity of the Code of Kalantiaw even though it had been debunked along with other documents related to Jose Marco.

I would like to expand this inquiry by examining how Filipino scholars, different government institutions, and the Filipino public responded to Scott's potentially-devastating findings, which were associated with these important pre-hispanic source materials. I will do this by addressing why Scott's revelation was largely ignored for several decades since nineteen sixty-eight, even though many prominent Filipino historians such as Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Gregorio Zaide did not challenge a foreign scholar's claims against the validity of these documents. Given the various responses and reactions of Filipinos to the Code of Kalantiaw issue, I would like to further examine the reasons behind such responses (or lack thereof). There are two main questions that I will address in this project: (one) why this potentially-charged historical issue did not evoke a much stronger reaction from Filipinos (particularly from Filipino scholars and government institutions such as the Department of Education, Culture and Sports); and (two) what does this tell us about Philippine society and how it perceives the significance of pre-colonial history in the Filipino national consciousness.

Jose E. Marco and his pre-colonial 'Code of Kalantiaw'

The antiquarian and stamp collector from the island of Negros in the Visayan region by the name of Jose E. Marco became part of ancient Philippine historiography when he presented several manuscripts containing significant historical information about ancient Filipino society to James A. Robertson, Director of Philippine National Library, in nineteen fourteen. One of these source materials was the Pavon manuscript, Las antiguas de leyendas de la isla de Negros (Ancient Legends of the Island of Negros) that was allegedly written by Father Jose Maria Pavon y Araguro, a Spanish secular priest in the Diocese of Cebu, during the mid-nineteenth century. This two-volume manuscript supposedly contained the only reference to one of the oldest penal codes in pre-colonial Philippines, the so-called Code of Kalantiaw promulgated by Datu Kalantiaw from the island of Panay in fourteen thirty-three.

Anyone who has read or who is familiar with the Code of Kalantiaw took notice of Datu Kalantiaw's harsh approach in enforcing social order within his chiefdom. In Philippine schools, Filipino students are taught about Datu Kalantiaw's laws, which clearly emphasized that he ruled with an iron-fist to ensure obedience and order from his people. However, upon close examination of the actual laws listed in the penal code (see Appendix I), there are contradictions and the laws themselves are just plain outrageous. When I first learned about these laws in secondary schools, I began to wonder what kind of society would actually enforce such peculiar and brutal laws because there seemed to be no rationale behind them.

Despite the peculiarity and absurdity of the penal code of Kalantiaw, both Filipino and non-Filipino scholars immediately embraced it as a definitive source of existence of ancient Philippine legal system. Moreover, throughout the early and mid-twentieth century Philippine scholars referred to Marco's documents such as the Pavon manuscript as the key to understanding ancient Philippine civilization and society.