Code of KalantiawMonique Diana Fandagani

The Code of Kalantiaw was a mythical legal code in the epic story Maragtas. It is said to have been written in 1433 by Datu Kalantiaw, a chief on the island of Negros in thePhilippines. It was actually written in 1913 by Jose E. Marco as a part of his historical fiction Las antiguas leyendas de la Isla de Negros (Spanish, "The Ancient Legends of the Island of Negros"), which he attributed to a priest named Jose Maria Pavon.

"The 17* Theses, or Laws of the Regulos

[Datus]in use in 150 since 1433

(sic)Issued in the year 1433 - Kalantiaw - 3rd Regulo"

**

Article I

You shall not kill, neither shall you steal, neither shall you do harm to the aged, lest you incur the danger of death. All those who infringe this order shall be condemned to death by being drowned in the river, or in boiling water.

Article II

You shall obey. Let all your debts with the headman be met punctually. He who does not obey shall receive for the first time one hundred lashes. If the debt is large, he shall be condemned to thrust his hand in boiling water thrice. For the second time, he shall be beaten to death.

Article 3

Obey you: let no one have women that are very young nor more than he can support; nor be given to excessive lust. He who does not comply with, obey, and observe this order shall be condemned to swim for three hours for the first time and for the second time, to be beaten to death with sharp thorns.

Article IV

Observe and obey; let no one disturb the quiet of the graves. When passing by the caves and trees where they are, give respect to them. He who does not observe this shall be killed by ants, or beaten to death with thorns.

Article V

You shall obey; he who exchanges for food, let it be always done in accordance with his word. He who does not comply, shall be beaten for one hour, he who repeats the offense shall be exposed for one day among ants.

Article VI

You shall be obliged to revere sights that are held in respect, such as those of trees of recognized worth and other sights. He who fails to comply shall pay with one month's work in gold or in honey.

Article VII

These shall be put to death; he who kills trees of venerable appearance; who shoot arrows at night at old men and women; he who enters the houses of the headmen without permission; he who kills a shark or a streaked cayman.

Article VIII

Slavery for a doam (a certain period of time) shall be suffered by those who steal away the women of the headmen; by him who keep ill-tempered dogs that bite the headmen; by him who burns the fields of another.

Article IX

All these shall be beaten for two days: who sing while traveling by night; kill the Manaul; tear the documents belonging to the headmen; are malicious liars; or who mock the dead.

Article X

It is decreed an obligation; that every mother teach secretly to her daughters matters pertaining to lust and prepare them for womanhood; let not men be cruel nor punish their women when they catch them in the act of adultery. Whoever shall disobey shall be killed by being cut to pieces and thrown to the caymans.

Article XI

These shall be burned: who by their strength or cunning have mocked at and escaped punishment or who have killed young boys; or try to steal away the women of the elders.

Article XII

These shall be drowned: all who interfere with their superiors, or their owners or masters; all those who abuse themselves through their lust; those who destroy their anitos (religious icons) by breaking them or throwing them down.

Article XIII

All these shall be exposed to ants for half a day: who kill black cats during a new moon; or steal anything from the chiefs or agorangs, however small the object may be.

Article XIV

These shall be made slave for life: who have beautiful daughters and deny them to the sons of chiefs, and with bad faith hide them away.

Article XV

Concerning beliefs and traditions; these shall be beaten: who eat the diseased flesh of beasts which they hold in respect, or the herb which they consider good, who wound or kill the young of the Manaul, or the white monkey.

Article XVI

The fingers shall be cut-off: of all those who break anitos of wood and clay in their alangans and temples; of those who destroy the daggers of the catalonans(priest/priestess), or break the drinking jars of the latter.

Article XVII

These shall be killed: who profane sites where anitos are kept, and sites where are buried the sacred things of their diwatas and headmen. He who performs his necessities in those places shall be burned.

Article XVIII

Those who do not cause these rules to be obeyed: if they are headmen, they shall be put to death by being stoned and crushed; and if they are agorangs they shall be placed in rivers to be eaten by sharks and caymans.

Finis.

This is the fraudulent Code of Kalantiaw which first appeared in Ancient Legends of the Island of Negros (volume 1, chapter 9), a book ascribed to a ficticious friar named José María Pavon but was actually a forgery by José E. Marco (1877?-1963) who claimed to have discovered it in 1913. Almost nobody questioned the authenticity of the Code for over 50 years until historian William Henry Scott exposed it and many other historical frauds in 1968. Unfortunately, it is still thought to be true in many circles today.

The story of Datu Kalantiaw is often mistaken to be part of the epic of ten intrepid chiefs who founded Visayan civilization as much as 800 years ago, as told in an ancient and mysterious document called the Maragtas. This document, however, was an ordinary book written in 1907 by Pedro Monteclaro in which he compiled the local legends of the Visayas from mainly oral traditions and a few written documents that were fairly modern in their origins. Monteclaro never mentioned a chief by the name of Kalantiaw in his Maragtas. 

But while Monteclaro's misguided nationalism, combined with the blatant dishonesty of other writers who embellished his work, blurred the line between legends and hard historical facts, the story of Kalantiaw is more alarming because he was never a part of the Philippines' history or even its oral traditions. Kalantiaw was an utter hoax from the beginning.

THE INCREDIBLE CODE OF KALANTIAWThroughout the latter half of the 20th century Filipino students were taught about the vicious and bizarre laws that were said to have been enacted by one Datu Kalantiaw in the year 1433 on the island of Panay. Many of his commandments contradicted each other and his punishments were extremely brutal, usually having no relation to the severity of the crime committed. Offences to the law ranged from as light as singing at night to as grave as murder. Those convicted supposedly were made slaves, beaten, lashed, stoned, had fingers cut off, were exposed to ants, drowned, burned, boiled, chopped to pieces or fed to crocodiles.So, why should we not believe this story that has been taught as history for so many years in Filipino schools? 

So, why should we not believe this story that has been taught as history for so many years in Filipino

schools? 

There are three (3) good reasons.

1. The first reason is the lack of historical evidence.

There are simply no written or pictorial documents from that time in Philippine history. There are no documents from other countries that mention the great Kalantiaw either. There is also no evidence that Philippine culture ever spawned such a barbaric set of laws. The early Spanish accounts tell us that Filipino custom at that time allowed even the most serious lawbreakers to pay a fine or to be placed into servitude for a time in cases of debt.

As the missionary Francisco Colín wrote in 1663:

In the punishment of crimes of violence the social rank of the slayer and slain made a great deal of difference. If the slain was a chief, all his kinsfolk took the warpath against the slayer and his kinfolk, and this state of war continued until arbiters were able to determine the amount of gold which had to be paid for the killing… The death penalty was not imposed by public authority save in cases where both the slayer and slain were commoners, and the slayer could not pay the blood price. K1

Arbitration is still the custom of those Philippine cultures that were never conquered by the Spaniards.

2. The second reason is the lack of evidence for Kalantiaw even as a legend of oral history. Many ardent admirers of the Datu, who disdain

all historical evidence to the contrary, claim that he has long been a part of Visayan culture and heritage. This is simply not true. In almost 400 years of documented Philippine history – from Magellan's arrival in 1521 until the second decade of the 20th century – no such legend was ever recorded. Kalantiaw even escaped the attention of Pedro Monteclaro when he published the Maragtas legends in 1907. This is very suspicious considering that there are more stories today about Kalantiaw than there are about any of the ten datus of the Maragtas.

Did the Spaniards suppress the legend of Kalantiaw?

This accusation is usually the first thing that history buffs reach for when they need to explain a gap in Philippine history. If the Spaniards were aware of such a legend they had no reason to suppress it because those Spaniards who were sympathetic to the Filipinos could have presented the mere existence of the Code as proof that their ancestors were civilized – just as many Filipinos do today – while detractors could have pointed to the maniacal Datu himself as proof of their savagery – even though his methods of torture were no more sadistic than those of the Spanish Inquisition.

It is certain that there were no legends of Kalantiaw before the 20th century. The Aklanon historian Digno Alba was a young man at the start of that century. He looked for Kalantiaw in local folklore in the 1950s but did not find him. On May 5, 1967 the historian William H. Scott wrote to Alba and asked him:

When you were a child, Don Digno, did not the old folks of Aklan have stories about Kalantiaw even before the discovery of the Pavón documents in 1913? Were there no popular legends or folklore that the elders told their grandchildren?

To which Alba replied in a letter from Kalibo, Aklan dated May 15, 1967:

I had tried to get stories or legends from the present generations of Aklanons living in Batan… but not one old man can tell me now. K2

3. The third and most important reason to reject the Kalantiaw myth is its source.

 If Kalantiaw was not a historical figure or a legendary character, where did he come from? Many writers on this subject didn't bother to mention where they obtained their information. Some, like Digno Alba, simply created "facts" from thin air. Scott eventually traced the ultimate origin of Kalantiaw back to a single person, José E. Marco of Pontevedra, Negros Occidental, who definitely did not live in the 1400s. In 1913, Marco claimed to have discovered the Pavón documents that were mentioned in Scott's letter to Digno Alba. These documents, which contain the Code of Kalantiaw, were in fact Marco's own creation. Kalantiaw eventually became the most successful of many hoaxes in Marco's career of almost 50 years as a forger and fraud.

EXPOSÉ

William H. Scott's exposé did not have an immediate effect on Filipino society. On March 1, 1971, President Ferdinand Marcos instituted the "Order of Kalantiaw", an award "for services to the country in the areas of law and justice" (Executive Order No. 294). That same year a beauty pageant winner was crowned "Lakambini ni Kalantiaw" on the supposed anniversary of the Code (December 8), and the artist Carlos Valino Jr. depicted Kalantiaw issuing his commandments.

It is only now, since most of the old guard has passed on, that the new generation of historians have been able to set the records straight. The NHI finally admitted that Kalantiaw was a hoax in 1998 when Chief Justice Andres Narvasa, who was about to receive the Kalantiaw Award, asked Malacañang to look into the matter. President Joseph Estrada gave him the award, anyway.

In 2004, the NHI, under the leadership of Ambeth Ocampo, made their opinion official when they submitted a resolution to President Arroyo to revoke the national shrine status of the Kalantiaw Shrine in Aklan, which, of course, enraged some Aklanons.

Today some people still cite the courage and wisdom of Kalantiaw as they continue to heap accolades upon him and the oblivious recipients of those Kalantiaw awards. However, a sober look at Kalantiaw's Code reveals that his magnificent courage was merely brutality and his exalted wisdom was in fact incredible insanity.

Kalantiaw's defenders insist that his legend must be true simply because he has always inspired them as a part of their heritage. But while they portray such a maniac as a Filipino hero, they disregard what gross slander they lay on the character of all Filipinos. Fortunately, the people of the Philippines need never bear this shame because Kalantiaw never really existed.