"}},"i":0}}]}" id="mwAnc">.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 32px}.mw-parser-output .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;margin-top:0}@media(min-width:500px){.mw-parser-output .templatequotecite{padding-left:1.6em}}
There were no kings or lords throughout these islands who ruled over them as in the manner of our kingdoms and provinces; but in every island, and in each province of it, many chiefs were recognized by the natives themselves. Some were more powerful than others, and each one had his followers and subjects, by districts and families; and these obeyed and respected the chief. Some chiefs had friendship and communication with others, and at times wars and quarrels... When any of these chiefs was more courageous than others in war and upon other occasions, such a one enjoyed more followers and men; and the others were under his leadership, even if they were chiefs. These latter retained to themselves the lordship and particular government of their own following, which is called barangay among them. They had datos and other special leaders [mandadores] who attended to the interests of the barangay. [54]
The term paramount datu or paramount ruler is a term applied by historians to describe the highest ranking political authorities in the largest lowland polities or inter-polity alliance groups in early Philippine history, [55] such as those in Maynila, Tondo, the Confederation of Madja-as in Panay, Pangasinan, Cebu, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, and Sulu. [2] [4]
Different cultures on the Philippine archipelago referred to the most senior datu using different titles: [4] In Muslim polities such as Sulu and Cotabato, the paramount ruler was called a sultan; [4] in Tagalog communities, the equivalent title was lakan; [4] in communities which historically had strong political or trade connections with Indianized polities in Indonesia and Malaysia, [56] the paramount ruler was called a rajah; [56] [4] among the Subanon people of the Zamboanga Peninsula, the most senior thimuay is referred to as the thimuay labi , [57] or sulotan in more Islamized Subanon communities. [58] In some other portions of the Visayas and Mindanao, there was no separate name for the most senior ruler, so the paramount ruler was called a datu, [56] [4] although one datu was identifiable as the most senior. [3] [59]
The noble or aristocratic nature of datus and their relatives is asserted in folk origin myths, [28] was widely acknowledged by foreigners who visited the Philippine archipelago, and is upheld by modern scholarship. [5] Succession to the position of datu was often (although not always) hereditary, [5] [3] and datus received their mandate to lead from their membership in an aristocratic class. [4] Records of Chinese traders and Spanish colonizers [56] describe datus or paramount datus as sovereign princes and principals. Travellers who came to the Philippine archipelago from kingdoms or empires such as Song and Ming dynasty China, or 16th-century Spain, even initially referred to datus or paramount datus as "kings", even though they later discovered that datus did not exercise absolute sovereignty over the members of their barangays. [5] [3]
The Filipino worldview has had a conception of the self or individual being deeply and holistically connected to a larger community, expressed in the language of Filipino psychology as kapwa. [60] This Indigenous conception of self strongly defined the roles and obligations played by individuals within their society. [61]
This differentiation of roles and obligations is more broadly characteristic of Malayo-Polynesian [5] and Austronesian [62] cultures where, as Mulder explains: [61]
"...Social life is rooted in the immediate experience of a hierarchically ordered social arrangement based on the essential inequality of individuals and their mutual obligations to each other."
This "essential inequality of individuals and their mutual obligations to each other" informed the reciprocal relationships (expressed in the Filipino value of utang na loob ) that defined the three-tiered social structure typical among early Philippine peoples.
In some cases, such as the more developed sakop or kinadatuan in the Visayas (e.g., Panay, Bohol and Cebu), origin myths and other folk narratives placed the datu and the aristocratic class at the top of a divinely sanctioned and stable social order. [63] These folk narratives portrayed the ancestors of datus and other nobles as being created by an almighty deity, just like other human beings, but the behavior of these creations determined the social position of their descendants. [64]
This conception of social organization continues to shape Philippine society today despite the introduction of western, externally democratic structures. [61]
The "authority, power, and influence" of the datu came primarily from his recognized status within the noble class. [3]
A datu's political legitimacy was not only determined by birth, but was also dependent on one's "personal charisma, prowess in war, and wealth". [3]
The office of datu was normally passed on through heredity, [5] and even in cases where it was not passed on through direct descent, only a fellow member of the aristocratic class could ascend to the position. [5] In large settlements where several datus and their barangays lived in close proximity, paramount datus were chosen by datus from amongst themselves more democratically, but even this position as most senior among datus was often passed on through heredity. [3]
In Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, Antonio de Morga noted this succession through heredity:
These principalities and lordships were inherited in the male line and by succession of father and son and their descendants. If these were lacking, then their brothers and collateral relatives succeeded... When any of these chiefs was more courageous than others in war and upon other occasions, such a one enjoyed more followers and men; and the others were under his leadership, even if they were chiefs. These latter retained to themselves the lordship and particular government of their own following, which is called barangay among them. They had datos and other special leaders [mandadores] who attended to the interests of the barangay. [54]
Since the culture of the pre-colonial societies in the Visayas, northern Mindanao, and Luzon were largely influenced by Hindu and Buddhist cultures, the datus who ruled these principalities (such as Butuan Calinan, Ranau Gandamatu, Maguindanao Polangi, Cebu, Bohol, Panay, Mindoro and Manila) also shared many customs of royalties and nobles in Southeast Asian territories, especially in the way they used to dress and adorn themselves with gold and silk. The measure of the prince's possession of gold and slaves was proportionate to his greatness and nobility. [65] The first Western travellers, who came to the archipelago, observed that there was hardly any "Indian" who did not possess chains and other articles of gold. [66]
The Spanish colonizers who came in the 1500s acknowledged the nobility of the aristocratic class within early Philippine societies. [8] De Morga, for example, referred to them as principalities. [47]
Once the Spanish colonial government had been established, the Spanish continued to recognize the descendants of pre-colonial datus as nobles, assigning them positions such as Cabeza de Barangay. [40] Spanish monarchs recognized their noble nature and origin. [67]
When travelers came to the Philippines from cultures which were under a sovereign monarch, these travelers often initially referred to the rulers of Philippine polities as monarchs, implying recognition of their powers as sovereigns. [4]
Some early examples were the Song dynasty traders who came to the Philippines and referred to the ruler of Ma-i as a huang, meaning king [56] – an appellation later adopted by the Ming dynasty courts when dealing with the Philippine archipelago cultures of their own time, such as Botuan and Luzon. [56]
The Spanish expeditions of Ferdinand Magellan in the 1520s and Miguel López de Legazpi in the 1570s initially referred to paramount datus (lakans, rajahs, sultans, etc.) as kings, though the Spanish stopped using this term when those under the command of Martin de Goiti first travelled to the polities in Bulacan and Pampanga in late 1571 [68] and realized that the Kapampanan datus had the choice to not obey the wishes of the paramount datus of Tondo (Lakandula) and Maynila (Rajahs Matanda and Sulayman), leading Lakandula and Sulayman to explain that there was "no single king over these lands", [68] [4] and that the influence of Tondo and Maynila over the Kapampangan polities did not include either territorial claim or absolute command. [4]
Junker and Scott note that this misconception was natural, because both the Chinese and the Spanish came from cultures which had autocratic and imperial political structures. It was a function of language, since their respective sinocentric and hispanocentric vocabularies were organized around worldviews that asserted the divine right of monarchs. As a result, they tended to project their beliefs into the peoples they encountered during trade and conquest. [5] [4] [69]
The concept of a sovereign monarchy was not unknown among the various early polities of the Philippine archipelago, since many of these settlements had rich maritime cultures and traditions and traveled widely as sailors and traders. The Tagalogs, for example had the word "hari" to describe a monarch. As noted by Fray San Buenaventura (1613, as cited by Junker, 1990 and Scott, 1994), however, the Tagalogs only applied hari (king) to foreign monarchs, such as those of the Javanese Madjapahit kingdoms, rather than to their own leaders. "Datu", "rajah", "lakan", etc., were distinct unique words to describe the powers and privilege of indigenous or local rulers and paramount rulers. [4]
Although early Philippine datus, lakans, rajahs, sultans, etc., were not sovereign in the political or military sense, they later came to be referred to as such due to the introduction of European literature during the Spanish colonial period. [70]
Because of the cultural and political discontinuities that came with colonization, playwrights of Spanish-era Philippine literature such as comedias and zarzuelas did not have precise terminologies to describe former Philippine rulership structures, and began appropriating European concepts, such as king or queen to describe them. [70] Because most Filipinos, even during precolonial times, related with political power structures as outsiders, [61] this new interpretation of royalty was accepted in the broadest sense, and the distinction between monarchy as a political structure versus membership in a hereditary noble line or dynasty was lost. [70]
The much-broader popular conception of monarchy built on Filipino experiences of "great men" being socially separate from ordinary people [61] rather than the hierarchical technicalities of monarchies in the political sense, persists today. Common Filipino experience does not usually draw distinctions between aristocracy and nobility vis a vis sovereignty and monarchy. Datus, lakans, rajahs, and sultans are referred to as kings or monarchs in this non-technical sense, particularly in 20th-century Philippine textbooks. [5]
The technical distinction between these concepts have been highlighted again by ethnohistorians, historiographers, and anthropologists belonging to the critical scholarship tradition. [5]
The title of "honorary datu" has been conferred to foreigners and non-tribe members by the heads of local tribes and principalities. During the colonial period, some of these titles carried legal privileges. For example, on January 22, 1878, Sultan Jamalul A'Lam of Sulu appointed the Baron de Overbeck (an Austrian who was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire's consul-general in Hong Kong) as Datu Bendahara and as rajah of Sandakan, with the fullest power of life and death over all the inhabitants. [71] On the other hand, in the Philippines, the Spaniards did not grant honorary titles; instead, they created nobiliary titles over conquered territories in the archipelago to reward high Spanish colonial officials. These nobiliary titles are still used in Spain by the descendants of the original holders, such as the Count of Jolo. [72] [73] [74]
The various tribes and claimants to the royal titles of Indigenous peoples in the Philippines have their own particular customs in conferring local honorary titles, which correspond to the specific and traditional social structures of some Indigenous peoples in the country. [75]
In unhispanized, unchristianized and unislamized parts of the Philippines, there exist other structures of society, which do not have hierarchical classes. [20] [76]
The present-day claimants of the precolonial royal or noble title and rank of datu are of two types: the descendants of Islamic precolonial polity rulers in Mindanao, and the descendants of the Christianized datus. This second group are those that live in the predominantly Catholic mainstream Filipino society. They are:
In the mainstream Philippine society that is predominantly Catholic, the descendants of the principalities are the rightful claimants of the ancient sovereign royal and noble ranks of the pre-conquest kingdoms, principalities, and barangays of their ancestors (such as the realm of the Christianized last datu of the Cuyonon tribes). These descendants of the ancient ruling class are now among the landed aristocracy, intellectual elite, merchants, and politicians in the contemporary Filipino society, and have ancestors that held the titles of Don or Doña, which were used by Spanish royalties and nobilities during the Spanish colonial period, and is still in use. [42] [78]
Article VI, Section 31 of the 1987 Constitution explicitly forbids the creation, granting, and use of new royal or noble titles. Titles of honorary datu conferred by various ethnic groups to certain foreigners and non-tribe members by local chieftains are only forms of local award or appreciation for some goods or services done to a local tribe or to the person of the chieftain, and are not legally binding. Any contrary claim is otherwise unconstitutional under Philippine law. [79]
Through the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997, the republic also protects the peculiar situation of tribal minorities and their traditional Indigenous social structures. It allows members of Indigenous minority tribes to be conferred with traditional leadership titles, including the title datu, in a manner specified under the law's implementing rules and guidelines (Administrative Order No. 1, Series of 1998, of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples specifically under Rule IV, Part I, Section 2, a-c), which reads: [80]
From the above-mentioned ordinance of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, the current usage of the title datu for newly created offices of leadership of tribal minorities does not accord nobility, which is forbidden by the Constitution of the republican state. [79]
Heads of dynasties belong to one of the three kinds of sovereignty. The other two are heads of states and traditional heads of the Church (both Roman Catholic and Orthodox). The authority that emanates from this last type is transmitted through an authentic apostolic succession, [81] i.e., direct lineage of ordination and succession of office from the Apostles (from St. Peter, in the case of the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church – the pope). [82] [83]
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Seclusion and Veiling of Women: A Historical and Cultural ApproachFor most Southeast Asians, social life is rooted in the immediate experience of a hierarchically ordered social arrangement based on the essential inequality of individuals and their mutual obligations to each other. This tangible world blends into the surrounding (not morally obliging) space of nature and wider society that appears as the property of others – be they religious figures, politicians, officials, landlords and/or economic powerholders. Whereas this area may be seen as a "public in itself", it is not experienced as "of the public" or "for itself". It is the vast territory where "men of prowess" (Wolters 1999: 18–19) compete for power, the highly admired social good (King 2008: 177). Accordingly, society is reduced to an aggregate of person-to-person bonds that are supposedly in good order if everybody lives up to his or her ethics of place.
{{cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (help)