Pila Historical Society Foundation Inc.
Pila in Ancient Times
By Cynthia Ongpin Valdes
Laguna de Bay, especially along its coasts and rivers, was highly accessible to foreign vessels bringing merchants with goods to trade for local products. Movement of goods and people also flowed into the Laguna de bay area from Manila Bay, linking it with the wider geographical area including Sta. Ana, or Lamayan. Flat, arable land and bountiful protein foods, such as fish and eels, made the Laguna de Bay area a highly attractive place. Chroniclers have long fantasized that kingdoms and chiefdoms flourished here in pre-Hispanic times. Judging from the wealth of ceramics recovered in the area, it can be surmised that the people in this area were quite prosperous.
In 1958, Dr. Robert Fox of the Anthropology Division of the National Museum led a team that conducted a controlled archeological excavation at Calatagan, Batangas. He published his findings the following year, making people in the area suddenly aware that their environs were a rich source of pots and other artifacts highly desired by dealers and collectors. Later archeologists jokingly refer to Dr. Fox as the person who trained the first pothunters. Needing assistance from the local people, he indeed taught workers rudimentary methods of archaeology – or “how to dig posts out of the ground.” Using their newly acquired skills, these diggers moved to other parts of Batangas, as well as Laguna and Mindoro to dig for pots as lucrative means of livelihood.
In the mid-1960s, news spread like wildfire that celadon had been discovered in Gatid by an enterprising ex-farmer turned dealer. It led to mad rush of diggings in the neighboring barrios of Pinagbayanan and Duhat followed by Victoria, Bay, Lumbang and Sta. Rosa. Qingbai, early blue and white, celadon, brown-glazed wares, lead-glazed, spotted qingbai and rare underglaze red wares were found. Those were the days of the great Laguna pot rush. Small stores and roadside stalls of antique pottery for sale could be found on both sides of the highway leading from Pila to Sta. Cruz.
The Esso-Elizalde Project
Hoping to make some sense out of the pot hunting frenzy, Esso Standard Philippines together with Mr. and Mrs. Manuel Elizalde decided to provide funds for a archaelogical project focused on the Laguna de Bay area. The project was led by Ms. Julita G. Fernandez and Ms. Amelia O. Rogel, graduate students of anthropology at the University of the Philippines, supervised by Dr. Fox and Mr. Avelino Legaspi of the Anthropology Division of the National Museum.
Ten archaeological excavations were conducted from May to October 1967 first in Balibago in Talim Island, Rizal, and then in Pinagbayanan and Bagong Pook, Pila and Lumban, Laguna. One hundred fifty-three graves dating from the 12th to the 15th centuries were exposed at three of the four sites. Trade pottery was used to date the sites and provide a time range for the occupation of the area.
An Exciting Discovery: Cremation
Although Prof. H. Otley Beyer, pioneering scholar in archaeology, had previously noted the practice of cremation in Novaliches, the team members believed they had discovered – for the time in Philippine archaeology – evidence of actual cremation. About 40% of the cremated remains were buried in the soil while 60% were placed in medium-sized jars, sometimes found covered with a bowl.
Artifacts for a Museum
Mr. and Mrs. Elizalde donated to the town of Pila some 250-300 specimens, including celadon dishes with fish motifs, celadon censers, qingbai and blue and white jarlets, small lead-glazed water droppers and teapots, qingbai double gourd vessels, large grey-glazed ewers, figurines of carabao with riders in plain and spotted qingbai, and brown wares of all sizes and shapes. Iron and glass bracelets, and colored beads and earrings that appear to be gold or copper were also part of the donation, as was a building – the Pila Museum – in which the artifacts were displayed. In 1994, the contents of this building were transferred to a heritage building, formerly Escuela Pia, by the Pila Historical Society Foundation.
Locsin-USC Archaeological Project
Earlier, in 1961-1962, Mr. and Mrs. Leandro Locsin had conducted systematic excavations in Sta. Ana. They uncovered hundreds of graves and carefully recorded their finds. In September 1967, together with researchers from the University of San Carlos (USC), they embarked on another project, this time in Pila’s barrio of Pinagbayanan. Archaeologist Rosa C. P. Tenazas supervised the project.
These excavations involved two sites within an area of roughly one hectare. During the 12th to the 14th centuries, two successive settlements inhabited and/or used the area as burial grounds. At these two sites, evidence of cremations in secondary burial jars were discovered.
The First Settlements
Dr. Tenazas and her team determined that Pinagbayanan, settled during the Song-Yuan period (13th-14th centuries), was a hospitable environment. A lowland area, it would have been suitable for growing rice. Spindle whorls discovered in the graves also showed that the people practiced weaving.
The discovery of many water droppers led Dr. Tenazas to hypothesize that there might have been a Chinese settlement in the area that practiced calligraphy. Ceramic historians later contended that the presence of such artifacts does not mean that these objects were used in recipient countries, such as the Philippines, for the same purposes for which they were manufactured in China. Current thinking is that wares exported by the Chinese to the countries of the Nanghai (South Seas) were a surplus from the domestic market. In China, there were minyao (people’s wares). However, the same kilns produced such wares such as the balimbing and kendi to fill specific orders from the Southeast Asian market1.
Fertility and Ritual
In Pinagbayanan, a remolding of ordinary pottery net sinkers into male and female symbols indicates, according to Dr. Tenazas, a preoccupation with fertility or ancestor worship. However, phallic objects also readily call to mind a Hindu-Buddhistic influence. The phallus (linga or lingam) in Hindu iconography is considered an attribute of the Hindu god, Shiva.
A nearby barrio is still called Linga. Yet another town is called Nanhaya, which could be in reference to Nanhai, a term used to refer to the South Seas during the Song-Yuan era.
Burial Practices
Cremation burials at the Pinagbayanan sites were either directly in a pit (12 burials) or in a container or vessel (38 burials). The vessels ranged from a small brown, four-eared jar to large brown stoneware jars, which accounted for about two thirds of the 38 burials. In one instance, the burial was in a tall “sophisticated gray-glazed pouring vessel.”
According to Dr. Tenazas, the cremation burials at Pinagbayanan were secondary burials. This means that, after a primary burial to allow the body to decompose, the bones were collected and burned in some form of ritual before a second burial. Dr. Tenazas reported that secondary burials have a long history in Southeast Asia,2 although no ethnographic record of secondary cremation occurs among existing primitive groups in the Philippines.3
The practice of burning exhumed bones is a ritual of purification. Henry Ling Roth, writing in 1896 on the indigenous people of Sarawak and British North Borneo (now Sabah) tells of the beliefs that, after burning, the “spirit is as clean as though washed in gold.”
According to Dr. Tenazas, climatic changes causing massive erosion appear to have forced the early settles to abandon Pinagbayanan. It was used as a burial site during the 14th to the 15th century. The population is believed to have moved.
1Balimbing refers to a star-like fruit (averrhoa carambola). Kendi is drinking vessel with spout but no handle; the term is said to be derived from the Indian term “kundika”.
2Amalia de la Torre of the National Museum recently uncovered secondary jar burials in Ulilang Bundok, Calatagan, Batangas, although she did not encounter any traces of cremation.
3Among the earliest of Southeast Asian secondary jar burials are those from the Niah Great Cave in Sarawak. In these burials, which date to the 2nd millennium BC, locally made earthenware jars were used to rebury cremated or burned remains. Burned remains are differentiated from cremation in that lower heat was used during the burning process.
Conclusions
The huge volumes of ceramics found in the Laguna de Bay area as well as in Calatagan, Batangas and Puerto Galera and other sites in Mindoro indicate that traders brought these materials into the area. Although the Chinese had become heavily involved in the trade in the 12th and 13th centuries, no other evidence exists to suggests they settled in the places were they traded, except perhaps to wait for the monsoon to pass. From the ceramics, however, it may be surmised that prosperous settlements – not necessarily Chinese – flourished in the region.
In his astute 13th century document, Zhao Rugua has provided us with clear descriptions of the exchange of goods and social interaction that occurred between Chinese traders and the early inhabitants of Ma-I and the other islands belonging to it. According to Zhao Rugua, the Chinese bartered their “porcelain trade wares, trade metals, tripod vessels, black lead, variegated glass beads, iron needles, etc”… for the indigenous products of cotton, yellow wax, pearls, tortoiseshells, medicinal betel nuts, and Yuta cloth.”
Elements of a Hindu or Hindu-Buddhistic culture-as described by Zhao Rugua in the Zhufanshi, and as have surfaced in evidences of cremation at Pinagbayanan, phallic symbols and place names provide an intriguing glimpse of Hindu, Buddhist and Chinese influences.
More recent research has not provided many additional clues. Hard evidence of any Indian or Chinese settlement in the Philippines prior to the 16th century does not exist. Prehistorians and archaeologists believe that the earliest voyagers plying the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean were Southeast Asians, who were influenced by the places they visited.
With the limited archaeology that has been done in Pila and its environs, much has been brought to light about previously little-known facets of human behavior in the historically and archaeologically rich Laguna de Bay area.
Reports from the Song Annals
As superintendent of foreign trade at the port of Quanzhou in Fujian Province, Zhao Rugua compiled earlier records of maritime trade as well as detailed accounts of trade procedures practiced by contemporary merchants, sailors and foreign traders in the island world of Southeast Asia. He completed in 1225AD the Zhufanshi (Record of Various Barbarians). The documents proves that the Philippines, then know by various other names, had for some time been an attractive market for Chinese goods.
Zhao Rugua provides in his account a captivating description of what the early trader might have encountered in the country of Ma-I, which lies to the north of Po-ni, now believed to be Borneo.
“More than one thousand families have settled there on the two banks of the stream. Some of the natives wear cloth like sheets, loosely thrown over themselves; others use the loincloth only to cover their bodies… Copper statues of the Buddha are set up all over the grassy land, but no one knows were the statues came from…”
Chinese Dynasties
Tang 618-906
Five Dynasties 907-959
Northern Song 960-1126
Sourthern Song 1127-1279
Yuan 1280-1368
Ming 1369-1644
Ching 1645-1912
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cynthia O. Valdes is an independent researcher and ceramic historian. As a member and former President of the Oriental Ceramic Society of the Philippines, she has been involved in ceramic studies for more than 20 years. She has published popular and academic papers in both local and international publications. She has traveled all over China and Southeast Asia, lecturing in the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and the Field Museum of Natural History in the United States. Her latest publication is “Pang-alay: Ritual Pottery in Ancient Philippines,” done jointly with Ayala Museum and the Oriental Ceramic Society of the Philippines.
REFERENCES
Beyer, H. Otley. 1947. Outline Review of Philippine Archaeology by Islands and Provinces. The Philippine Journal of Science, Vol 77, July-August.
Tenazas, Rosa C.P. 1968. A Report on the Archaeology of the Locsin-University of San Carlos Excavations in Pila, Laguna, September 4, 1967 to March 19, 1968.
Sta. Maria, Felice and Laxina, Ben A. 1983. Household Antiques & Heirlooms. Quezon City: GCF Books.
Fernandez, Julita G. and Rogel, Amelia O. 1967. Digging in the Past. Manila: Esso Silangan.
Locsin, Leandro and Cecilia. 1967. Oriental Ceramics Discovered in the Philippines. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Company.
Solheim II, Wilhelm G. 1981. Philippine Prehistory. People and Art of the Philippines. L.A., United States: Regents of the University of California.
Laguna de Bay, especially along its coasts and rivers, was highly accessible to foreign vessels bringing merchants with goods to trade for local products. Movement of goods and people also flowed into the Laguna de bay area from Manila Bay, linking it with the wider geographical area including Sta. Ana, or Lamayan. Flat, arable land and bountiful protein foods, such as fish and eels, made the Laguna de Bay area a highly attractive place. Chroniclers have long fantasized that kingdoms and chiefdoms flourished here in pre-Hispanic times. Judging from the wealth of ceramics recovered in the area, it can be surmised that the people in this area were quite prosperous.
In 1958, Dr. Robert Fox of the Anthropology Division of the National Museum led a team that conducted a controlled archeological excavation at Calatagan, Batangas. He published his findings the following year, making people in the area suddenly aware that their environs were a rich source of pots and other artifacts highly desired by dealers and collectors. Later archeologists jokingly refer to Dr. Fox as the person who trained the first pothunters. Needing assistance from the local people, he indeed taught workers rudimentary methods of archaeology – or “how to dig posts out of the ground.” Using their newly acquired skills, these diggers moved to other parts of Batangas, as well as Laguna and Mindoro to dig for pots as lucrative means of livelihood.
In the mid-1960s, news spread like wildfire that celadon had been discovered in Gatid by an enterprising ex-farmer turned dealer. It led to mad rush of diggings in the neighboring barrios of Pinagbayanan and Duhat followed by Victoria, Bay, Lumbang and Sta. Rosa. Qingbai, early blue and white, celadon, brown-glazed wares, lead-glazed, spotted qingbai and rare underglaze red wares were found. Those were the days of the great Laguna pot rush. Small stores and roadside stalls of antique pottery for sale could be found on both sides of the highway leading from Pila to Sta. Cruz.
The Esso-Elizalde Project
Hoping to make some sense out of the pot hunting frenzy, Esso Standard Philippines together with Mr. and Mrs. Manuel Elizalde decided to provide funds for a archaelogical project focused on the Laguna de Bay area. The project was led by Ms. Julita G. Fernandez and Ms. Amelia O. Rogel, graduate students of anthropology at the University of the Philippines, supervised by Dr. Fox and Mr. Avelino Legaspi of the Anthropology Division of the National Museum.
Ten archaeological excavations were conducted from May to October 1967 first in Balibago in Talim Island, Rizal, and then in Pinagbayanan and Bagong Pook, Pila and Lumban, Laguna. One hundred fifty-three graves dating from the 12th to the 15th centuries were exposed at three of the four sites. Trade pottery was used to date the sites and provide a time range for the occupation of the area.
An Exciting Discovery: Cremation
Although Prof. H. Otley Beyer, pioneering scholar in archaeology, had previously noted the practice of cremation in Novaliches, the team members believed they had discovered – for the time in Philippine archaeology – evidence of actual cremation. About 40% of the cremated remains were buried in the soil while 60% were placed in medium-sized jars, sometimes found covered with a bowl.
Artifacts for a Museum
Mr. and Mrs. Elizalde donated to the town of Pila some 250-300 specimens, including celadon dishes with fish motifs, celadon censers, qingbai and blue and white jarlets, small lead-glazed water droppers and teapots, qingbai double gourd vessels, large grey-glazed ewers, figurines of carabao with riders in plain and spotted qingbai, and brown wares of all sizes and shapes. Iron and glass bracelets, and colored beads and earrings that appear to be gold or copper were also part of the donation, as was a building – the Pila Museum – in which the artifacts were displayed. In 1994, the contents of this building were transferred to a heritage building, formerly Escuela Pia, by the Pila Historical Society Foundation.
Locsin-USC Archaeological Project
Earlier, in 1961-1962, Mr. and Mrs. Leandro Locsin had conducted systematic excavations in Sta. Ana. They uncovered hundreds of graves and carefully recorded their finds. In September 1967, together with researchers from the University of San Carlos (USC), they embarked on another project, this time in Pila’s barrio of Pinagbayanan. Archaeologist Rosa C. P. Tenazas supervised the project.
These excavations involved two sites within an area of roughly one hectare. During the 12th to the 14th centuries, two successive settlements inhabited and/or used the area as burial grounds. At these two sites, evidence of cremations in secondary burial jars were discovered.
The First Settlements
Dr. Tenazas and her team determined that Pinagbayanan, settled during the Song-Yuan period (13th-14th centuries), was a hospitable environment. A lowland area, it would have been suitable for growing rice. Spindle whorls discovered in the graves also showed that the people practiced weaving.
The discovery of many water droppers led Dr. Tenazas to hypothesize that there might have been a Chinese settlement in the area that practiced calligraphy. Ceramic historians later contended that the presence of such artifacts does not mean that these objects were used in recipient countries, such as the Philippines, for the same purposes for which they were manufactured in China. Current thinking is that wares exported by the Chinese to the countries of the Nanghai (South Seas) were a surplus from the domestic market. In China, there were minyao (people’s wares). However, the same kilns produced such wares such as the balimbing and kendi to fill specific orders from the Southeast Asian market1.
Fertility and Ritual
In Pinagbayanan, a remolding of ordinary pottery net sinkers into male and female symbols indicates, according to Dr. Tenazas, a preoccupation with fertility or ancestor worship. However, phallic objects also readily call to mind a Hindu-Buddhistic influence. The phallus (linga or lingam) in Hindu iconography is considered an attribute of the Hindu god, Shiva.
A nearby barrio is still called Linga. Yet another town is called Nanhaya, which could be in reference to Nanhai, a term used to refer to the South Seas during the Song-Yuan era.
Burial Practices
Cremation burials at the Pinagbayanan sites were either directly in a pit (12 burials) or in a container or vessel (38 burials). The vessels ranged from a small brown, four-eared jar to large brown stoneware jars, which accounted for about two thirds of the 38 burials. In one instance, the burial was in a tall “sophisticated gray-glazed pouring vessel.”
According to Dr. Tenazas, the cremation burials at Pinagbayanan were secondary burials. This means that, after a primary burial to allow the body to decompose, the bones were collected and burned in some form of ritual before a second burial. Dr. Tenazas reported that secondary burials have a long history in Southeast Asia,2 although no ethnographic record of secondary cremation occurs among existing primitive groups in the Philippines.3
The practice of burning exhumed bones is a ritual of purification. Henry Ling Roth, writing in 1896 on the indigenous people of Sarawak and British North Borneo (now Sabah) tells of the beliefs that, after burning, the “spirit is as clean as though washed in gold.”
According to Dr. Tenazas, climatic changes causing massive erosion appear to have forced the early settles to abandon Pinagbayanan. It was used as a burial site during the 14th to the 15th century. The population is believed to have moved.
1Balimbing refers to a star-like fruit (averrhoa carambola). Kendi is drinking vessel with spout but no handle; the term is said to be derived from the Indian term “kundika”.
2Amalia de la Torre of the National Museum recently uncovered secondary jar burials in Ulilang Bundok, Calatagan, Batangas, although she did not encounter any traces of cremation.
3Among the earliest of Southeast Asian secondary jar burials are those from the Niah Great Cave in Sarawak. In these burials, which date to the 2nd millennium BC, locally made earthenware jars were used to rebury cremated or burned remains. Burned remains are differentiated from cremation in that lower heat was used during the burning process.
Conclusions
The huge volumes of ceramics found in the Laguna de Bay area as well as in Calatagan, Batangas and Puerto Galera and other sites in Mindoro indicate that traders brought these materials into the area. Although the Chinese had become heavily involved in the trade in the 12th and 13th centuries, no other evidence exists to suggests they settled in the places were they traded, except perhaps to wait for the monsoon to pass. From the ceramics, however, it may be surmised that prosperous settlements – not necessarily Chinese – flourished in the region.
In his astute 13th century document, Zhao Rugua has provided us with clear descriptions of the exchange of goods and social interaction that occurred between Chinese traders and the early inhabitants of Ma-I and the other islands belonging to it. According to Zhao Rugua, the Chinese bartered their “porcelain trade wares, trade metals, tripod vessels, black lead, variegated glass beads, iron needles, etc”… for the indigenous products of cotton, yellow wax, pearls, tortoiseshells, medicinal betel nuts, and Yuta cloth.”
Elements of a Hindu or Hindu-Buddhistic culture-as described by Zhao Rugua in the Zhufanshi, and as have surfaced in evidences of cremation at Pinagbayanan, phallic symbols and place names provide an intriguing glimpse of Hindu, Buddhist and Chinese influences.
More recent research has not provided many additional clues. Hard evidence of any Indian or Chinese settlement in the Philippines prior to the 16th century does not exist. Prehistorians and archaeologists believe that the earliest voyagers plying the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean were Southeast Asians, who were influenced by the places they visited.
With the limited archaeology that has been done in Pila and its environs, much has been brought to light about previously little-known facets of human behavior in the historically and archaeologically rich Laguna de Bay area.
Reports from the Song Annals
As superintendent of foreign trade at the port of Quanzhou in Fujian Province, Zhao Rugua compiled earlier records of maritime trade as well as detailed accounts of trade procedures practiced by contemporary merchants, sailors and foreign traders in the island world of Southeast Asia. He completed in 1225AD the Zhufanshi (Record of Various Barbarians). The documents proves that the Philippines, then know by various other names, had for some time been an attractive market for Chinese goods.
Zhao Rugua provides in his account a captivating description of what the early trader might have encountered in the country of Ma-I, which lies to the north of Po-ni, now believed to be Borneo.
“More than one thousand families have settled there on the two banks of the stream. Some of the natives wear cloth like sheets, loosely thrown over themselves; others use the loincloth only to cover their bodies… Copper statues of the Buddha are set up all over the grassy land, but no one knows were the statues came from…”
Chinese Dynasties
Tang 618-906
Five Dynasties 907-959
Northern Song 960-1126
Sourthern Song 1127-1279
Yuan 1280-1368
Ming 1369-1644
Ching 1645-1912
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cynthia O. Valdes is an independent researcher and ceramic historian. As a member and former President of the Oriental Ceramic Society of the Philippines, she has been involved in ceramic studies for more than 20 years. She has published popular and academic papers in both local and international publications. She has traveled all over China and Southeast Asia, lecturing in the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and the Field Museum of Natural History in the United States. Her latest publication is “Pang-alay: Ritual Pottery in Ancient Philippines,” done jointly with Ayala Museum and the Oriental Ceramic Society of the Philippines.
REFERENCES
Beyer, H. Otley. 1947. Outline Review of Philippine Archaeology by Islands and Provinces. The Philippine Journal of Science, Vol 77, July-August.
Tenazas, Rosa C.P. 1968. A Report on the Archaeology of the Locsin-University of San Carlos Excavations in Pila, Laguna, September 4, 1967 to March 19, 1968.
Sta. Maria, Felice and Laxina, Ben A. 1983. Household Antiques & Heirlooms. Quezon City: GCF Books.
Fernandez, Julita G. and Rogel, Amelia O. 1967. Digging in the Past. Manila: Esso Silangan.
Locsin, Leandro and Cecilia. 1967. Oriental Ceramics Discovered in the Philippines. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Company.
Solheim II, Wilhelm G. 1981. Philippine Prehistory. People and Art of the Philippines. L.A., United States: Regents of the University of California.