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.”

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 Superinten- dent 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.

An 1178 account of overseas trade was still unaware that some of China’s trading partners were on the eastern side of the South China Sea, and flatly says the world comes to an end just east of Java.14

But the Sung government, unlike preceding dynasties, encouraged Chinese merchants to carry their goods abroad in their own vessels and offered bonuses for doing so, while shipbuilding techniques improved and the mariner’s compass came into use.ts

Thus by 1206, cottonf-producing or -exporting Mindoro, Palawan, Basilan, and San-hsli (probably the islands between Mindoro and Palawan) were known, and by 1225 the Babuyanes also, and probably Lingayen, Luzon, and Lubang Island as well, and perhaps even Manila (Mali-lu).l 6 Meanwhile, the Emperor sought to redress an unfavorable trade balance by issuing edicts in 1216 and 1219 to encourage the export of porcelain and silkstuffs.

A century later, Malilu [Magundanao], Ma-i [Manila], Butuan, and Sulu were reported to be dependencies of Brunei.

In 1346, Maguindanao (Minto-lang) was mentioned. This new geographic knowledge presumably reflects a direct China-Philippines trade route plied by sea-going junks out of Fukienese ports that made their last land-fall at the southern headland of Taiwan.

By this time, Filipinos were making use of these vessels themselves. As Wang Ta-ytian says in his 1346 Tao I Chih Lueh:

The men often take [our] ships to Ch’iian-chou, where brokers take all their goods to have them tattooed all over, and when they get home, their countrymen regard them as chiefs and treat them ceremoniously and show them to the highest seat, without even fathers and elders being able to compete with them, for it is their custom so to honor those who have been to Tang [ie., China].

As a non-Filipino, Wang missed the point of the deference he reports.

In Spanish times, it was still the custom for Filipinos so to honor those who were well tattooed, for tattoos were the mark of personal valor in combat-though, of course, those purchased in China would have been bourgeoise counterfeits.

In 1368, the Ming came to power. Its first emperor promptly dispatched emissaries to invite, or persuade, other countries and tribes to send tribute missions.

Borneo responded in 1371, Okinawa in 1372, and Luzon in 1373. The even more energetic Yung Lo emperor during the first quarter of the 15th century sent a series of naval expeditions as far away as the shores of Africa (whence they brought back a giraffe for the imperial zoo), and cryptic official notices make it clear that the commercial and military implications of these armadas inspired a flurry of tribute missions from small lands politic enough to take the hint seriously.

Although these fleets under the command of Muslim Admiral Cheng Ho did not reach the Philippines, other imperial envoys did, and Filipino traders themselves probably witnessed the full nautical display in ports like Malacca.l9

A number of Philippine states responded to the emissaries who were sent out in 1403’:-1405 to announce the new reign and, as the Chinese expression had it, “cherish the barbarians and give them orders.”

On 17 October 1405, Luzon and Mao-li-wu (Cebu) presented tribute together with envoys from Java.

Its representative was a Muslim called Taonu Makaw.)22

Pangasinan (Feng-chia-hsi-lan) appeared 5 times during the next five years-Chieftain Kamayin on 23 September 1406, for example, and Chieftains Taymey (“Tortoise Shell”) and Liyli in 1408 and 1409-and on 11 December 1411 the Emperor tendered the Pangasinan party a state banquet.23

Sulu appears in Chinese records in 1368 attacking Borneo which was only driven off by Madjapahit troops from Java.

Sulu’s first tribute mission was in 1417, when three royal personages arrived with a retinue of 340 wives, relatives, ministers, and retainers, and presented a memorial inscribed on gold, and such tribute as pearls, precious stones, and tortoise shell.

They registered with the Board of Rites on 12 September as:

• Paduka Batara (Pa-tu-ko-pa-ta-la) of the east country
• Maharaja Kolamating (Ma-ha-la-ch’ih-ko-la-ma-ting) of the west country
• Paduka Prabhu (Pa-tu-ko-pa-la-bu) as what translates as “the wife of him from the caves” or, literally, “the troglodyte’s wife.“24

Paduka batara and Maharaja arc all Malay-Sanskrit titles of royal eminence, and Brunei records always call the primary ruler of Sulu, Batara).

On the 19th they were presented to the Emperor and received royal seals and investment as princes of the realm.

Paduka Batara was installed as the Eastern King and superior to the other two, Marahaja Kolamating as. the Western King, and Paduka Prabhu-who now turns out to be the ruler himself, not his wife or as the “Cave King.”

The word “cave” (tung) is actually the name of one or more border tribes in the mountains of southwest China who, if not actual cave-dwellers, were at least characterized as fierce or stalwart warriors. It probably indicates that Paduka Prabhu as culturally different from his two peers.

Perhaps he came from the coast of Borneo. It is noteworthy that camphor is listed among Sulu’s tribute gifts though in fact it comes from northeastern Borneo.

It is probable that Paduka Prabhu was Paduka Batara’s brother-in-law which might explain the confusion between him and his wife.

Be that as it may these were the kind of relations the Sultanate of Sulu would have with Sabah chieftains 300 years later.

On 8 October 1417, the Sulu delegates took their leave, proceeding down the Grand Canal accompanied by military escorts and laden with gifts and chinaware, court costumes, ceremonial insignia, caparir soned horses, 200 bolts of patterned silk, hundreds of thousands of copper coins, and enough gold and silver to cover the expenses of the trip and show a handsome profit besides. But in the government hostel in Tehchow, Shantung, Paduka Batara died.

Imperial ministers promptly arrived to construct a tomb with memorial arch and gateway, perform the Confucian sacrifices for a reigning monarch, and erect a memorial tablet which names him “Reverent and Steadfast” and was still standing a kilometer north of the city wall in 1935.

The deceased ruler’s eldest son, Tumahan, was proclaimed his successor, and his concubine, two younger sons, and 18 attendants were given accommodations and pensions to observe the appropriate three year mourning rites. The royal concubine and retainers were sent back to Sulu in 1423 in appropriate style, but the two sons remained behind.

What happened to them is told in a Tehchow gazetteer from the middle of the 18th century:

Besides the Chinese and Manchu population of this jurisdiction, there are two others-the Muslims, and the Wen and An families. Both practice the Muslim religion . . . . The two families Wen and An are the descendants of the Sulu king. The land of Sulu is in the midst of the Southeast Sea. During the Yung Lo period of the Ming Dynasty, its king, Paduka Batali, came to court, and on his way home died in Tehchow . . . His second son Wenhali and third son Antulu and some 18 followers stayed to tend the tomb. At that time, they could not mix with the Chi- nese because of their language, but the Muslims all took them in, and led their children and grandchildren to practice their Muslim customs, so they adopted their faith . . . Now there are 56 house- holds of them, scattered in the northern and western barrios, and they intermarry with the Muslim people.25

It will be noted that the Chinese account attributes the Sulu princes’ introduction into a Muslim community not to a common faith but to a common language. This language was Malay, the lingua franca of Southeast ‘Asian commerce at the time, and the medium by which Arabic terms were introduced into Philippine languages-except religious terms, which apparently came direct from the Koran. Muslim settlements were scattered all along the internal trade routes of China, and many of their mosques still stand on the banks of the old Grand Canal, once the eastern terminus of a sea route which began in the Persian Gulf. Paduka Batara would thus appear not to have been a Muslim himself.

But if he was the Sipad the Younger mentioned in the Sulu royal genealogy (tarsi/a), he had a Muslim son-in.-law, Tuan Masha-ika-mashayikh is a plural form of the Arabic honorific shaikh-and one of his grandsons was still living when the Sultanate of Sulu was founded. According to a later tradition, Tuan Masha-ika’s parents had been sent to Sulu by Alexander the Great, and if this Alexander was really Iskandar Shah of Malacca instead, he was Paduka Batara’s contemporary

Paduka Batara died on 23 October 1417 and was entombed on 20 November, and the Emperor’s memorial tribute was set up the following September. Unfortunately, its biographic content is limited to such expressions as the following:

Now then, the King, brilliant and sagacious, gentle and honest, especially outstanding and naturally talented, as a sincere act of true respect for the Way of Heaven, did not shrink from a voyage of many tens of thousands of miles to lead his familial household in person, together with his tribute officers and fellow countrymen, to cross the sea routes in a spirit of loyal obedience.27

It was because of this highly commendable conduct-the epitaph goes on-that the Emperor deigned to recognize him as paramount ruler of Sulu, suffered such unparalleled grief on learning of his demise, and ordered a sacrificial animal and sweet wine to be offered up so he would be known below the Nine Springs-i.e., in the land of the dead.

The epitaph is also a memorial to the tribute system. It expresses the basic philosophy concisely in a reference to the Hung Wu Emperor, founder of the Ming, who tried to enforce the system by closing China’s ports to foreign trade in 1372:

Of old, when our deceased father, First Emperor Kao Huang Ti, received the Great Mandate of Heaven, he extended order to ten thousand lands, and as the fragrant vapor of his deep humanity and virtuous generosity spread beyond the nearby regions to which it had brought happiness, those far away were sure to come.28 Not long after Paduka Batara’s interment, the Emperor dis- patched High Commissioner Chang Ch’ien to the Philippines on 15 December 1417. Commissioner Chang probably accompanied the military escort which took the young Tumahan back to Sulu, but his real mission was to bring Kumalalang, Mindanao, into line. (Kuma- lalang today is a rather backwater community at the head of Dumanguilas Bay on the road between Pagadian and Malangas in the province of Zamboanga del Sur.)

Chang Ch’ien had had plenty of experience on this sort of mission: for several years he had directed Borneo’s state affairs after installing the four-year-old heir of a Brunei ruler who died in Nanking. Now he presented impressive gifts to Kumalalang King Kanlai lpentun like velvet brocade and skeins of heavy silk yarn, and seems to have spent more than two years there for the Kumalalang ruler followed him back to China in 1420.

On 16 November 1420 Kanlai lpentun appeared at court with a large following which included his wife, children, and prime minister. On the 28th he sent up a personal petition:

Your Majesty’s simple–minded servant has been unable to un- derstand why, although he is the one selected by his countrymen, he still has not received the imperial command; pray have the mercy to grant his investiture and his country’s recognition.29 The petition received favorable action, the investiture ceremonies were celebrated, and the Kumalalang entourage feted and regaled to the last man. But on the way home, Kanlai Ipentun suffered the same fate as his Borneo and Sulu neighbors and died in Fukien on 27 May 1421. Board of Rites Manager Yang Shan arranged his funeral and interment, and the Emperor bestowed the posthumous title of “Vigorous and Peaceful” on him, and named his son La-pi as successor. Chang Ch’ien’s presence seems also to have had its effect in Sulu.

The western ruler sent a tribute mission in 1420, and in 1421 the eastern king’s mother sent her late son’s younger brother, Paduka Suli, while the Kumalalang ruler was still there. On 14 May, Paduka Suli left his mark in Chinese history by presenting a pearl weighing seven ounces, then spent two years there, presumably visiting his nephews in Tehchow since he took his late brother’s concubine back home with him. On 3 November 1424, young King La-pi of Kumalalang sent Chief Batikisan and others with a gold-engraved memorial, and the following week a number of other countries appeared, headed by Chief Sheng-ya-li-pa-yii (Sangilaya?) of Sulu.

This rush to Peking was the last of a series of missions which probably indicates a shift away from the old Brunei-Mindoro-Luzon track to new trading centers astride the direct spice route from the Southeast Sea. Unlike the rulers of Luzon, Mao-li’-wu, and Panga- sinan who were referred to as chieftains and who never sent memo- rials engraved on gold, the heads of state in Sulu and Mindanao were called by the Chinese term for monarch, wang, and were received with the same protocol as Iskandar Shah of Malacca, the most im- portant entrepot of Southeast Asia at the time and a favorite staging base for Cheng Ho’s fleets. 30 Sulu, with its pearl beds, access to Sa- bah camphor, and strategic location, seems to have inherited that

older Butuan-Champa trade route which avoided Srivijaya territory. Indeed, modern linguistic evidence suggests that the Taosugs original- ly migrated there from Butuan. But now trade route led not to Cham- pa but to Malacca, whose second ruler must have checked into the government hostel for tribute envoys in Peking right after those 350 Sulu delegates left for home. The mysterious land of Sulu, with its pearls so lustrous they glowed under the sea at night and royal princes settled right in Shan- tung province, soon appeared in popular literature. A Ming drama titled Hsia Hsi Yang (Voyage to the Western Ocean) pictures it as being on the way to India, and has its King Paduka Pasuli capture Cheng Ho’s ships for their cargos of silk and porcelain. The admiral escapes by a clever ruse: he lures the king on board to see a tree that bears porcelain instead of fruit. Paduka Pasuli introduces him- self, zarzu.ela-like, with a little song: The foggy dew lifts off the sea and morning brightly dawns; The ocean waves and breaking surf grow calm within the shoal; And long time living on the sea has been this land of mine-The moun- tain chief of ocean tribes, whose total peace pervades.31 But it was the real Paduka Suli’s seven-ounce pearl which cap- tured the Chinese imar;ination. Indeed, by the time Huang Hsin-tseng wrote his Hsi Yang Ch’ao-kung tien-lu (Record of tribute missions from the Western Ocean) in 1520, it had grown in size: When I saw in the Book of Han the story of the two-inch pearl, and read in the biographies of the Immortals how in the time of Empress Lii an edict was handed down calling for a three-inch pearl and that a certain Chu Chung presented one and was given 500 gold pieces, and then Princes Lu Yiian secretly gave Chung 700 gold pieces to get a four-inch pearl. I considered it all false. But now that the Starry Raft collection says the Sulu king presented a pearl weighing eight ounces, I begin to believe it. No wonder he was given a gold seal! For even if things from distant lands are not very valuable, this would be reason enough for people from distant lands to come to court ( ch. 1). Sulu also receives more space in official Ming annals than any other Philippine state. The Ta Ming Hui-tien (Great Ming compen- dium of laws), for example, records many administrative and fiscal details connected with its missions. The second section under “Board of Rites, ch. 64-Tribute, ch. 2,” gives a synopsis of its vassal rela- tions and a list of tribute offerings ( ch. 106), and a routinary entry at the end of the list of return gifts received by the envoys provides an insight into the tribute system itself: “They were granted the

standard price for their goods and products, minus the tariff duties” ( ch. 111). The section on “State banquets in local hostels for the maintenance of western and island barbarians” under the Provisions Accounting Office notes:

Country of Sulu. Yung Lo 15th year: one banquet. The king of this country came to court, passing through the prefectual way- stations, and was supplied with food and maintenance. He returned the same way (ch. 106).

Ten years later, however, budgetary cutbacks which ended the famous Cheng Ho naval expeditions also discontinued the banquets and established the following austerity in maintaining foreign envoys: Ordinary daily gift-rations. For each barbarian monarch-one pair of chickens, two pounds of meat, one bottle of wine, firewood, and cooking ingredients. For each of the king’s relatives–one pound of meat, one bottle of wine, firewood, and cooking ingredients. For each official and chieftain-a half pound of meat, half bottle of wine, firewood, and cooking ingredients. For his followers, women, petty officers, etc.-firewood only.32

Supplemented by other Chinese accounts, these bookkeeping details make it possible to outline Sulu’s growth as an international emporium. The earliest description-Wang Ta-yiian’s in 1346-men- tions only local products like “bamboo cloth” (abaca or ramie), bees- wax, tortoise shell, lake-wood “of middling quality,” and pearls, devoting most of its space to discussing the profits to be obtained from handling the last item. 33

A century later, the 1417 tribute mis- sion presented pearls, tortoise shell, and “precious stones”-which must have been imports-but Chinese pearls are listed among the Emperor’s return gifts. Significantly, the 1421 tribute list does not include pearls and that seven-ounce giant was presumably too per- sonal a gift to the Emperor to show up in the account books. But it does include high-priced non-Sulu products like brazilwood, black pepper, cubebs (piper longum), foreign tin, “plum blossom camphor” (i.e., first-class), and “rice-grain camphor” (broken fragments). Finally, in 1617, Chang Hsieh’s Tung Hsi Yang K’ao specifically describes a trading center whose inhabitants receive Chinese goods on credit from agents who are euphemistically called “hostages” so as not to offend the Spanish government which controlled the Manila galleon trade.

CoNCLUSIONS

The presence of Filipinos in China between 982 and 1427 is suggestive for the pre-colonial history of those peoples archaeologist

Wilhelm Solheim has called Nusantao-“southem island people.” None of these contacts were made on pioneering voyages of discovery, across sea routes already known in pursuit of commerce already pro- fitable. Butuan in the eleventh century and Sulu in the 15th were dealing. in non-Philippine products; spices, aromatics, silks, and por- celain. Merchants from Ma-i appeared in China only ten years after the establishment of an office of maritime trade in Kwangchow (Can- ton), a port with no seafaring tradition of its own. And 350 years later, Filipino merchants like Arabs in Malaysia, were traveling to Ch’tian-chou farther north in Fukienese vessels. By the late Sung, Ma-i was itself the central port for the exchange of local goods on a Borneo-Fukien route, and may well have been a Brunei outpost. Chinese accounts call it a “country” with officials imposing harbor regulations but mention no king, and it never sent a tribute mission of its own. The tribute missions themselves are even more suggestive, for they are limited to two very brief periods, the opening years of the Sung and Ming Dynasties when energetic new emperors were tightening up trading restrictions.

The Butuan missions are patent attempts to bypass Champa middlemen and were probably not repeated because they were suc- cessful, just as the Champa-Butuan trade itself was probably success- ful in bypassing Srivijaya controls south of Borneo. Luzon’s prompt response to the first Ming emperor’s closing of Chinese ports to foreign trade was probably an attempt also successful, to transfer Ma-i’s emporium to Manila Bay. The early 15th century Muslim envoy from Mao-li-wu may have been a step in the process, and the Pangasinan mission’s less successful attempts to participate directly in the Borneo-Mindoro-Luzon-Fukien trade. The first Sulu mission with its anomalous three “kings” and the recognition of one as su- perior to the others, may have been intended to consolidate its posi- tion on the new Malacca trade route by the formal alignment of political ties at home. It also seems to have attracted enough Chinese attention to its lucrative trade for the court to send an emissary to woo a Mindanao competitor in Kumalalang. It is noteworthy that there is no Arab shipping or trade route in the story. The late H. Otley Beyer theorized such a route passing up the coasts of Borneo and the Philippines to Korea via Japan, and concluded that the Ma-i merchants who reached Canton in 982 must have got there on Arab vessels.34 He pointed to an uprising in Can- ton in 758 and a massacre in 878 as motivation for a new Arab route, and the presence of Arabs in Korea in 846 as evidence of its existence. 35 Whatever the merits of its reasoning, however, ther

s no need for any theory in the first place: the facts are readily avail- able in the Braddell, Hourani, and Tibbetts studies of medieval Arab maritime commerce.36 Arab sailing directions during the Tang Dy- nasty describe a course from the Strait of Malacca northeast to Champa, where it divides either to follow the coast around to China or to head directly across the open sea to Canton, with a feeder line collecting spices and aromatics in Sumatran and Javanese entrepots where they presumably had been delivered in Nusanto bottoms. Fol- lowing the Canton disturbances, they simply withdrew to Tongkong (northern Vietnam) or Kalab on the Malay Peninsula, transshipping to local Chinese vessels there. During the Sung, they returned not to Canton but to Ch’lian-chou, where they played such a dominant role they were sometimes appointed to Chinese office, but by the end of the dynasty they found it more profitable to board the huge junks of China’s new merchant marine in Malaysian ports. Not until then do Arab sources refer to islands on the east side of the South China Sea. Beyer’s willingness to construct a theory on such slender evid- ence appears to be based on the assumption that commerce in the South China Sea had to be carried either in Arab shipping or Chinese: he evidently did not consider the possibUity of Filipinos conducting the trade themselves. Since his day, however, historians and archaeolo- gists alike have rediscovered the maritime capacity of the Malaya- Polynesian peoples, and the farflung extent of their trading ventures. In the first century, they were supplying European markets with cin- namon by delivering it to the African coast in outrigger canoes which Pliny, like Chao Ju-kua after him, thought were “rafts”-and in the 13th were delivering Sung porcelains to islands still unknown to the Chinese like Sulawesi. 37 And when the Portuguese reached Malacca

in the 16th, they were surprised to find native merchantmen of greater tonnage than their own naos.3s Magellan died in Mactan in 1521 just a century after Paduka Suli presented the seven-ounce pearl to the Emperor. At that time, Luzon ships were plying the waters between Manila, Timor, and Ma- lacca, three points which describe a triangle that includes all of in- sular Southeast Asia. If one wishes to speculate about the advent of Tang porcelains or Arabic Korans in the prehispanic Philippines, there- fore, a ready explanation is available namely, that they came in ves- sels built, owned, and m:::nned by islanders born within that triangle.