History According to William Henry Scott

According to Chinese records, Filipinos went to China before the Chinese came to the Philippines.

As late as the Tang Dynasty (618-906), the Chinese only knew of Borneo, called Polo, as being between Taiwan and Java.

But by the tenth century, a luxury trade in foreign exotica coming up the Champa coast (Vietnam) from Srivijaya (Palembang) and the Strait of Malacca had become such an important part of China’s economy that the first emperor of the Sung Dynasty (960-1279) took steps to control it.

An edict of 972 indicates that Ma-i was part of that trade:

Five years later, the Song court established direct contact with Borneo.

A merchant from China named Abu Lu-hsieh (P’u was a common Chinese transliteration of Abu) persuaded the ruler of Brunei of the advantages of tributary status with China.

He volunteered to guide a Bornean vessel there with tribute envoys himself. The Bornean ruler agreed and his envoys presented a memorial which:

• requested the emperor to order the Cham ruler not to intercept Bornean ships that are blown there off course
• informed the court that Brunei was a 30 days’ sail from both Ma-i and Champa.

Thus, whatever route Abu Lu-hsieh may have used, these details suggest that:

• Borneo was already trading with both Ma-i and Champa
• the ordinary route to China was via Champa, not the Philippines

In 982, however, Ma-i traders appeared on the Canton coast with valuable merchandise for sale, presumably having sailed there direct.

China demanded tribute from underdeveloped states and tribes.

The tribute, preferably exotica like pearls or frankincense and myrrh, was an acknowledgement of the emperor’s primacy among human rulers, not a tax or direct source of revenue.

The tributary states did not become colonies or part of the imperial administrative system. They simply enrolled as independent states now occupying their proper niche in the Chinese cosmic order of things.

The envoys themselves were state guests. If they ranked as royalty in their own lands, they were treated as such in Peking, and confirmed in office by being enlisted as feudatory princes of the empire with regal seals and patents of office.

If they happened to die in China-a not uncommon fate for tropical potentates in northern climes-they were buried with royal honors it impressive tombs at state expense, and some direct descendant was pensioned off to stay and perform the filial sacrifices.

Those who came from little harbor principalities and lived off trade cherished these emblems of rank and prestige when driving bargains with their peers closer to home, and vied with one another to obtain them.

Sometimes they appealed for support against an aggressive competitor, but China rarely intervened militarily though it occasionally exerted pressure by refusing missions.,.-that is, by cutting off trade.

China’s recognition and granting of titles generally reflect the relative economic importance of the states receiving them, for in Chinese polity, the tribute system was the formality under which overseas trade was conducted. Sometimes the system was observed in fact, sometimes only in theory, and sometimes as a cover for profit and fraud.

The first Philippine tribute mission to China came from Butuan on March 17, 1001.

Butuan (P’u-tuan) is described in the Sung Shih (Sung History) as a small country in the sea to the east of Champa, farther than Ma-i, with regular communications with Champa but only rarely with China.

The text gives the sailing time to Ma-i as 2 days and Butuan as 7.

For 4 years, the Butuan leader, King Kiling (Ch’i-ling) sent missions every year.

On October 3, 1003, for example, Minister Li-ihan and Assistant Minister Gaminan presented red parrots in addition to the usual native products like tortoise shell.

Then in 1004, the court handed down an edict prohibiting their export of Chinese goods, gold, and silver, by direct market purchases, especially ceremonial flags and regimental banners to which they had taken a predilection. (“People from distant lands don’t understand rules and regulations,” a minister complained.)

In 1007 Kiling sent another envoy, I-hsii-han, with a formal memorial requesting equal status with Champa:

Your humble servant observes that the Emperor has bestowed 2 caparisoned horses and two large spirit flags on the Champa envoy; he wishes to be granted the same treatment and to receive the same favors.

Champa, however, was one of China’s oldest tributary states, having been sending missions since the 4th century, so the request was denied on the grounds that “Butuan is beneath Champa.”

Finally, a new ruler with the impressive Indianized name or title of Sri Bata Shaja tried again. In 1011 he sent one Likan-hsieh with a memorial engraved on a gold tablet, nort-Butuan products like “white dragon” camphor and Moluccan cloves, and a South Sea slave which he shocked the Emperor by presenting at the time of the imperial sacrifice to the earth god Fen-yin at the vernal equinox that year.

But a tributary state able to deliver such precious products as cloves (the Chinese thought they came from Arabia) was not to be ignored.

Accordingly, Butuan’s Likan-hsieh, together with Ali Bakti representing King Chiilan of Sanmalan, received the significant honor of military titles before departing-the Cherished Transformed General and the Gracious-to-Strangers General, respectively. A Butuan memorial was granted which exalted Butuan and requested flags, pennons, and armor “to honor a distant land.”

Pishaye

At the end of the 12th century, some Filipinos visited China on a very different kind of mission. Riding the southern monsoons of 1171 and 1172, Visayan ( P’i-she.tya) raiders struck the Fukien coast just south of Ch’iian-chou Bay, evidently staging in the Pescadores off the coast of Taiwan.

Governor Wang Ta-yu relocated 200 families to the area to support a coast guard detachment and offered a bounty for the raiders, tactics which quickly produced more than 400 captives and the death of all the leaders.

Probably it was also Visayans who attacked Liu-ngo Bay farther down the coast, where two of their chiefs were captured-three days after they had defeated the constabulary-by County Clerk Chou Tin~hen, who thought they had come from the Babuyan Islands.

Governor Wang, however, thought the P’i-she-ya were natives of the Pescadores, and Superintendent of Trade Chao Ju-kua, writing 50 years later, thought they were Taiwanese.

Chao’s account is difficult to take seriously, however: it includes fabulous details like escaping rape and plunder by dropping chopsticks to distract the raiders, and he thinks they made their attacks from bamboo rafts that could be folded up and carried around like collapsible screens.

A 1612 Ch’uani-chao gazetteer, on the contrary, specifically states that the P’i-she-ya raiders of 1172 used sea-going vessels. Moreover, a biography of Governor Wang makes it clear that they were similar enough to other merchantmen for coast guard patrols to falsely acct.:se some Cambodian traders of being P’i-she-ya in hopes of claiming the reward.

(After examining their cargo, the Governor released them with the comment, “P’i:-she-ya faces are as dark as lacquer and their language incomprehensible; those are not.”) 11

Since the natives of Taiwan do not appear in Chinese accounts as seafarers, these P’i-she-ya were more likely Filipino Visayans, known to the Chinese in the 14th century as slave-raiders who sold their captives at two ounces of gold apiece. 12

As a matter of fact, Visayan bards in the 17th century were still singing the romance of Datong Sumangga who made a raid on Grand China to win the hand of beautiful Princess Bugbung Humayanun of Bohol.

China seems to have “discovered” the Philippines not long after the Visayan raids.