who flock to it of any in the world."[1] There were three other cities in the islands, Segovia and Cazeres in Luzon, and the city of the "most holy name of Jesus" in Cebú, the oldest Spanish settlement in the archipelago. In the first and third the Spanish inhabitants numbered about two hundred and in Cazeres about one hundred. In Santisimo nombre de Jesús there was a Jesuit college.
Although the Indians possessed an alphabet before the arrival of the Spaniards and the knowledge of reading and writing was fairly general they had no written literature of any kind.[2] A Jesuit priest who had lived in the islands eighteen years, writing not far from 1640, tells us that by that time the Tagals had learned to write their language from left to right instead of perpendicularly as was their former custom, but they used writing merely for correspondence. The only books thus far in the Indian languages were those written by the missionaries on religion.[3]
- ↑ Morga, p. 314.
- ↑ Friar Juan Francisco de San Antonio who went to the Philippines in 1724, says that "up to the present time there has not been found a scrap of writing relating to religion, ceremonial, or the ancient political institutions." Chronicas de la Apostolica Provincia de San Gregorio, etc. (Sampoloc, near Manila, 1735), i, pp. 149–150 (cited from Retana's Zúñiga, ii, p. 294.
- ↑ They used palm leaves for paper and an iron stylus for a pen. "L'escriture ne leur sert que pour s'escrire les uns aux autres, car ils n'ont point d'histoires ny de Livres d'aucune Science; nos Religieux ont imprime des livres en la langue des Isles des choses de nostre Religion." Relation des Isles Philippines, Faite par un Religieux qui y a demeure 18 ans, in Thévenot's Voyages Curieux. Paris 1663, ii (p. 5, of the "Relation"). This narrative is one of the earliest to contain a reproduction of the old Tagal alphabet. Retana ascribes it to a Jesuit and dates it about 1640: p. 13 of the catalogue of his library appended to Archivo del Bibliofilo Filipino, i. The earliest printed data on the Tagal language according to Retana are those given in Chirino's Relacion de las Islas Filipinos, Rome, 1604.
