Lit 261 February 13, 2019

Ma. Socorro Q. Perez, PhD

Larraine F. Fernando
MA FIL-LIT-I
Response/Reaction Paper #1: I-Oral Lore Precolonial Times (-1564)

“Magaling, datapoua hindi tola”

Whenever we go back to the history of the Philippine literature, we always remember a native
Filipino who made agave feedback to Padre Francisco de San Jose’s poem., Hhe said,: “Magaling,
datapoua hindi tola.” According to Virgilio Almarios’s Tungkulin ng Kritisismong Filipino, this
commentary of a “katutubo” can be considered as the first authentic criticism that we can record
in the history of criticisms in Philippine Literature. From this anecdote, we can assume that our
ancestors have standards for a good poem. That is to say, before Spaniards conquered our literature,
Filipinos are aware of the value or beauty of their literary works.

Bienvenido Lumbera and Cynthia Nograles Lumbera in their book, “Philippine Literature: A
History and Anthology” showed the literary development of Philippine literature by organizing
and classifying literary works following a political framework; thus they made five periodization
of Philippine literary history; Oral Lore From Precolonial Times (-1564) which is the focus of this
paper, Literature Under Spanish Colonialism (1565-1897), Literature Under U.S. Colonialism
(1898-1945), Literature Under The Republic (1946-1985), and Literature After EDSA (1986-
1995).
From the information or data presented by Bienvenido and Cynthia Lumbera, we can infer
that Filipinos have their own native syllabary and literature before the period of colonialism.
Although it is said that some of the proofs of pre-colonial culture had gone after the
Christianization of Filipinos and the rest of our literature were destroyed by the colonizers
believing that these were the works of devils, still they were still able to collect some work of pre-
colonial literature. These proofs of the past were the results of isolations from centers of colonial
power and resistance to colonial rule of the indigenous people, perhaps the reason why the
examples in the book were examples from indigenous culture.
One of the most common genres of literature during pre-Hispanic era wasis thean epic.
According to the authors, epic is the face of Philippine pre-colonial literature. E. Arsenio Manuel
named 13 epics in the Philippines. Some of these that are still known until today are, “Biag ni
Lam-ang” epic of Ilocanos that was first recorded in 1889, “Hinilawod” Pagan epic, “Hudhud”
epic of Ifugao (1908), and “Bantugan” epic of Maranaw. Manuel was able to analyze these oral
literatures and came up with common features of epics that show how our ancestors value their
culture and literature before the Spaniards came in the Philippines.
Bienvenido and Cynthia Lumbera provided examples of riddles, proverbs, short poems,
ambahan, songs, myths, folk tales, legend and epic that can really reflect thehave reflected society
life and culture before the Spaniards. It was ais common characteristic of literature at that time to
have a formulaic repetition, regular rhythmic and stereotyping characters for the natives to recall
the pieces when they perform or pass these oral literatures from one generation to another. These
conventions are common in epics since it is the only genre in pre-colonial literature that is too long
in form.
Oral literature wasis the language of daily life of our ancestors. It is their way to explainof
explaining what is happening in their environment, to remind themselves and the future generation
of the values they should possessed and what attitudes should be avoided, and to create stories that
can explain how things were started. These are very clear to the examples in the book where words
and concepts reflect the situations of the natives. The answer to a riddle of Aeta which is “pinya”
shows the agricultural side of the natives. Agung or the gong of the Bagobo, featured a musical
instrument of Bagobo. The values or the reminders of old folks to their children usually said in
proverbs like “Mayaman ka man sa sabi, dukha ka rin sa sarili.”, “Natutuwa kang pasalop, kung
singili’y napopoot.” Forgiveness and temper management can be seen as moral lessons in the
myth, “The Great Flood”. Some beliefs inon agricultural omens and dreams reflects in the stories
of “The Second Creation” and “Tungkung Langit and Alunsina”. We can see how B’laan value
their work when we noticed their song “Lamge” giving us their perception on how they view their
job. In a song “Pamuwa sa Bata” in Bukidnon, we can see the culture that maybe most of Filipinos
nowadays are still valuingstill value:, “Though he is not my own, I will take care of this baby, so
that when he grows up I can request him to do things for me.” In this line, maybe native in
Bukidnon believed that a parent or a guardian should provide for a child so that when he gets old,
there is someone who will take care of him, and this kind of thinking is still true to manysome
Filipinos today. Weaving and farming were also mentioned in the stories that actually tells us the
common livelihood of natives. It is also clear in the pre-colonial literatures that Christianity wasis
not present because of the absence of any word pertaining to the said religion. However, I just
noticed a line in a song of “Muyin Paru Ñinu” of Ivatan, “If I die, bury me not at the Cross of San
Felix…” that mentioned a place that can be a reference from of Spanish time. The place could
possible mean that this song has already an influence of Spanish. Since Lumbera included this
example, maybe one will argue that this is not an influence of Spanish but rather Deutsch since
they were the first western people that our natives had a contact with through trading. On the other
hand, it was also stated in the book that Filipinos had a culture that linked them with the Malays
of Southeast Asia that is possible to be influenced by other culture and ideas that can be transferred
to other countries they’re dealing with. Whatever the reason can be, it is good to note the effort of
the authors to gather all literatures and made a historization of literary works of the Filipinos in
different time.
It is a fact that pre-colonial literatures were destroyed and only few were revived, but I
believed those marks of creativity of the natives continued and developed even when colonizers
ruled the country.T and this love for art and literature is even developing up until today. These
literatures just changed or developed in forms, structures, themes, world views, conventions, and
style since a lot of influences affect it through the years due to experience of society and systems
of the world. Whatever that means, the most important thing to note in the chapter 1 of this book
is that pre-colonial oral literature is where all other literatures that Filipinos are enjoying nowadays
came from and these literatures are continuing their function in Filipino society – to record a
history in a creative way.

Lumbera, Bienvenido. “Towards A Revised History of Philippine Literature.” Revaluation Essays On Philippine
Literature and Popular Culture. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 1997. 3-49.
Lumbera, Bienvenido, and Cynthia Nograles. Lumbera. Philippine Literature: a History and Anthology. Published
and Exclusively Distributed by Anvil, 2005.