Published February 13, 2023, 12:05 AM
WALA LANG
Looks
The Bisaya were called “pintados” for good reason. The author of the Boxer Codex’ chapter 5 admires their tattoos, “…done in the manner of illuminations, painting all parts of the body, such as the chest, stomach, legs, arms, shoulders, hands, and muscles …” Some had tattoos on their butts too. There were experts who worked with iron or brass rods heated on a fire. Women wore tattoos on their arms and hands.
(Tattooed couple)
Men wore elaborately colored g-strings that were dos brazas (about 11 feet) in length and ¾ brazas (about four feet) wide. Heads were covered with cloth with strips of gold worn like turbans.
Women wore double-layer skirts of stiped silk and collar-less blouses with sleeves that were either full-length or elbow-length. Blouses were loose and women would go around with bare midriff. High-status women kept blouse and skirt in place with gold fasteners and chains. Gold and ivory were valued for jewelry.
Both men and women kept their hair long and oiled and tied in a knot. Both sexes also wore several pairs of earrings, having more than one hole in their earlobes. Earrings called panica were doughnut-shaped while earrings shaped like roses were called pomaras. Women wore numerous bracelets of gold and ivory and both men and women wore gold and fiber rings on their legs, below their knees.
Governance
Villages were independent, with each having its own datu. There was constant warfare among them, over land, crops, real or perceived wrongs. Recall how Spanish conquistadors sometimes played one group against another to overcome resistance.
Datus and revered elders were respected, but in general, the aggrieved exacted reparation promptly and directly (“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”). In cases where both sides call it quits, peace is sealed with a blood compact wherein blood is drawn from the arms of the contending parties and both drink of it mixed with a special beverage.
Social structure
A datu could declare anyone he pleases as his slave. Parents sometimes sold children and siblings sold siblings to slavery in times of need or to settle some obligation.
The Spanish observer described a system of slavery, based on the type and length of service that a datu or a slave-owner could demand of the so-called slave. The description is vague and I read it as having three categories.
The first seems to be like slavery in the US South pre-Civil War. Slaves lived in or by the house of the master and were assigned to do household service (for women and children) or field work for able-bodied males.
The second category consisted of people who lived with their families elsewhere but who were obliged to do assigned work for say a certain number of days a week.
The third category included people who were basically free but who were called upon to join in battle or other non-recurring work.
Character
The Spanish did not admire the men. “In general, they are great idlers and enemies of work. They spend most of the year loitering and drinking…They have neither orchards nor vegetable gardens, nor fruit trees to cultivate because all their fruits are wild, sour, and bad tasting. Only the bananas are good.”
They are described as drinking and carousing when not busy caring for roosters and going to cockfights. The narrator added alcoholic beverages were made from coconut, palm, nipa, and rice. Trying to draw the locals away from old habits, the newcomers taught them checkers (dama) and chess.
Jose Rizal disagreed, saying that our ancestors became lazy when they realized that whatever they produced would go to the Spaniards anyway.
Occupations
Among the Bisaya were excellent carpenters and furniture makers, shipbuilders, blacksmiths, and goldsmiths.
With all the fighting among clans and villages, there was demand for weaponry. The Codex mentions daggers with wooden scabbards, lances, wooden shields, poison arrows, blowguns, helmets, breastplates, and armor made of the skin of certain fish, buffalos, or elephants that were then hunted in Jolo.
Shipbuilding was highly developed. Large ones, called barangay, were wind- and/or oar-powered ships that could hold 50 to 100 people and transport 500 to 600 fanegas of grain, each fanega measuring about two cubic feet.
The Boxer narrator was not impressed with architecture, although he did note that the Bisaya used bamboo trunks as thick as a man’s thigh and seven or eight yards long. He was not impressed with the cuisine, either, turning up his nose at the smelly dried fish (tuyô no doubt) that the natives liked and at the plain taste of the chicken, pork, and buffalo meat that were staples.
Family life
A suitor (and his family) had to give an agreed sum to the bride and her family. After marriage, the wife usually took over family resources. Wives were industrious, constantly engaged in spinning and weaving and working in fields. They preferred to have only one or two children and abortion was taken casually.
A husband could divorce his wife and marry someone else without difficulty but the discarded wife keeps whatever came from the husband and his family. Virginity was not an issue when wedding bells ring but pregnancy outside of wedlock marked a woman for life. At the same time, a cuckolded husband could kill the adulterers.
The funeral of a Datu was elaborate. He was laid in a coffin in a wake that lasted more than two months. Slaves were killed in the same manner that the deceased died. If the chief died by drowning, slaves were drowned. Ditto when the cause was stabbing, a fall down a cliff, whatever. When the chief died from sickness, slaves were either drowned or buried alive.
The scandalized and/or mesmerized conquistador-author wrote a lengthy account of the “biggest and most bestial vice … invented by the devil,” namely a “wheel or ring with rounded spurs…made of lead, brass, and in some cases gold,” which is worn like a ring on the “miembro del hombre.” Sorry I can’t figure out the fine details, but it’s fastened and held in place by a pin—it must be painful. Anyway, “thus they have access with the women, with whom they remain joined for a day or a night …”
Notes: (a) This article is based on Luis Donoso et. al., transcribers, translators, and editors, Boxer Codex (Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, Inc., 2016), chapter 5; and (b) Penis rings (the “devil’s invention”) is also known as sagra or sakra and is/was fairly common in Southeast Asia, notably in Borneo, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
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