History According to William Henry Scott

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, cotton-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.