The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 36]

198

THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 36

the gulf and kingdom of Bengal, from which
(through the strait of Sincapura) it seems very
probable that the first settlers of these islands came,38
38 The following statement by Dr. David P. Barrows - who is
chief of the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, Manila, and is
probably our best authority on this subject-presents the latest
view regarding the origin of the Filipinos, adopted after much
patient and enthusiastic research in that field by him and other
American ethnologists. It may be found in the recently-published
Census of the Philippine Islands, i, pp. 4II-417.
"Ethnologically, no less than geographically, the Philippines
belong to the Malay archipelago. With the exception of the
aboriginal dwarf blacks, the Negritos, who are still found inhabiting the forests in a great number of localities, all the tribes of
the islands, whether Christian, Mohammedan, or Pagan, are, in
my belief, derived from the Malayan race. We probably have
in these tribes two types which represent an earlier and a later
wave of immigration; but all came from the south, all speak
languages belonging to one common stock, and all are closely
related in physical type and qualities of mind. As representative
of the first migratory movement may be named the Igorot, the
mountain head-hunter of Northern Luzon; and of the latter
almost any of the present Christian or Mohammedan tribes. The
migratory period of this latter type, which constitutes the great
bulk of the present population of the islands, is almost covered
by the early historical accounts of the exploration and settlement
of the Far East.
"Four hundred years ago, when the Portuguese discoverers and
conquerors reached southeastern Asia, they found the long peninsula in which the continent ends, and the islands stretching south
and east in this greatest and most famous of archipelagoes, inhabited
by a race which called itself Malayu. On the island of Java this
race had some ten centuries before been conquered by Brahmin
Hindus from India, whose great monuments and temples still
exist in the ruins of Boro Budor. Through the influence and
power of the Hindus the Malay culture made a considerable advance, and a Sanskrit element, amounting in some cases to twenty
per cent. of the words, entered the Malayan languages. How far
the Hindu actually extended his conquests and settlements is a
most interesting study, but can hardly yet be settled. He may have
colonized the shores of Manila Bay and the coast of Luz6n, where
the names of numerous ancient places show a Sanskrit origin. The
Sanskrit element is most pronounced in the Tagalog and Moro
tongues. (Pardo de Tavera, El Sanscrito en la lengua Tagala.)
"Following the Hindus into the Malay archipelago came the