Origins[edit]

The origins of baybayin are disputed and multiple theories exist as to its origin.

Influence of Greater India[edit]

See also: Indian Sanskrit loanwords in Tagalog, Greater India, and Indianization of Southeast Asia

Indian cultural extent.

Historically Southeast Asia was under the influence of Ancient India, where numerous Indianized

principalities and empires flourished for several centuries
in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam. The influence of
Indian culture into these areas was given the term Indianization.[16] French archaeologist George
Coedes defined it as the expansion of an organized culture that was framed upon Indian originations
of royalty, Hinduism and Buddhism and the Sanskrit language.[17] This can be seen in
the Indianization of Southeast Asia, Hinduism in Southeast Asia and the spread of Buddhism in
Southeast Asia. Indian honorifics also influenced the Malay, Thai, Filipino and Indonesian honorifics.
[18]
 Examples of these include raja, rani, maharlika, and datu, which were transmitted from Indian
culture to Philippines via Malays and the Srivijaya empire.[citation needed] Indian Hindu colonists played a
key role as professionals, traders, priests and warriors.[19][20][21][22] Inscriptions have proved that the
earliest Indian colonists who settled in Champa and the Malay archipelago, came from the Pallava
dynasty, as they brought with them their Pallava script. The earliest inscriptions in Java exactly
match the Pallava script.[19] In the first stage of adoption of Indian scripts, inscriptions were made
locally in Indian languages. In the second stage, the scripts were used to write the local Southeast
Asian languages. In the third stage, local varieties of the scripts were developed. By the 8th century,
the scripts had diverged and separated into regional scripts.[23]
Isaac Taylor sought to show that baybayin was introduced into the Philippines from the Coast of
Bengal sometime before the 8th century. In attempting to show such a relationship, Taylor presented
graphic representations of Kistna and Assam letters like g, k, ng, t, m, h, and u, which resemble the
same letters in baybayin. Fletcher Gardner argued that the Philippine scripts have "very great
similarity" with the Brahmi script,[24] which was supported by T. H. Pardo de Tavera. According to
Christopher Miller, evidence seems strong for baybayin to be ultimately of Gujarati origin; however,
Philippine and Gujarati languages have final consonants, so it is unlikely that their indication would
have been dropped had baybayin been based directly on a Gujarati model.[25]

South Sulawesi scripts[edit]

David Diringer, accepting the view that the scripts of the Malay archipelago originate in India, writes
that the South Sulawesi scripts derive from the Kawi script, probably through the medium of
the Batak script of Sumatra. The Philippine scripts, according to Diringer, were possibly brought to
the Philippines through the Buginese characters in Sulawesi.[26] According to Scott, baybayin's
immediate ancestor was very likely a South Sulawesi script, probably Old Makassar or a close
ancestor.[27] This is because of the lack of final consonants or vowel canceller markers in baybayin.
South Sulawesi languages have a restricted inventory of syllable-final consonants and do not
represent them in the Bugis and Makassar scripts. The most likely explanation for the absence of
final consonant markers in baybayin is therefore that its direct ancestor was a South Sulawesi script.
Sulawesi lies directly to the south of the Philippines and there is evidence of trade routes between
the two. Baybayin must therefore have been developed in the Philippines in the fifteenth century CE
as the Bugis-Makassar script was developed in South Sulawesi no earlier than 1400 CE. [28]

Kawi script[edit]

The Laguna Copperplate Inscription.

The Kawi script originated in Java, descending from the Pallava script,[29] and was used across much
of Maritime Southeast Asia. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the earliest known written
document found in the Philippines. It is a legal document with the inscribed date of Saka era 822,
corresponding to 21 April 900 AD. It was written in the Kawi script in a variety of Old
Malay containing numerous loanwords from Sanskrit and a few non-Malay vocabulary elements
whose origin is ambiguous between Old Javanese and Old Tagalog. A second example of Kawi
script can be seen on the Butuan Ivory Seal, found in the 1970s and dated between the 9th and 12th
century. It is an ancient seal made of ivory that was found in an archaeological site in Butuan. The
seal has been declared as a national cultural treasure. The seal is inscribed with the word Butwan in
stylized Kawi. The ivory seal is now housed at the National Museum of the Philippines.[30] One
hypothesis therefore reasons that, since Kawi is the earliest attestation of writing in the Philippines,
then baybayin may have descended from Kawi.

Cham script[edit]

The Eastern Cham script.

Baybayin could have been introduced to the Philippines by maritime connections with the Champa
Kingdom. Geoff Wade has argued that the baybayin characters "ga", "nga", "pa", "ma", "ya" and "sa"
display characteristics that can be best explained by linking them to the Cham script, rather than
other Indic abugidas. Baybayin seems to be more related to southeast Asian scripts than to Kawi
script. Wade argues that the Laguna Copperplate Inscription is not definitive proof for a Kawi origin
of baybayin, as the inscription displays final consonants, which baybayin does not.[31]

History[edit]
From the material that is available, it is clear that baybayin was used in Luzon, Palawan, Mindoro,
Pangasinan, Ilocos, Panay, Leyte and Iloilo, but there is no proof supporting that baybayin reached
Mindanao. It seems clear that the Luzon and Palawan varieties started to develop in different ways
in the 1500s, before the Spaniards conquered what we know today as the Philippines. This puts
Luzon and Palawan as the oldest regions where baybayin was and is used. It is also notable that the
script used in Pampanga had already developed special shapes for four letters by the early 1600s,
different from the ones used elsewhere. There were three somewhat distinct varieties of baybayin in
the late 1500s and 1600s, though they could not be described as three different scripts any more
than the different styles of Latin script across medieval or modern Europe with their slightly different
sets of letters and spelling systems.[4]

Different baybayin handwritten varieties
Script Region Sample

Baybayin Tagalog region

Sambal variety Zambales

Ilocano variety, Ilocano: "Kur-itan" Ilocos

Bicolano variety, Bicolano: "Iskriturang Basahan" Bicol Region

Pangasinense variety Pangasinan

Visayan variety, Visayan: "Badlit" Visayas

Kapampangan variety, Kapampangan: "Kulitan" Central Luzon

Early history[edit]
An earthenware burial jar, called the "Calatagan Pot," found in Batangas is inscribed with characters
strikingly similar to baybayin, and is claimed to have been inscribed ca. 1300 AD. However, its
authenticity has not yet been proven. [1][32]
Although one of Ferdinand Magellan's shipmates, Antonio Pigafetta, wrote that the people of the
Visayas were not literate in 1521, the baybayin had already arrived there by 1567 when Miguel
López de Legazpi reported from Cebu that, "They [the Visayans] have their letters and characters
like those of the Malays, from whom they learned them; they write them on bamboo bark and palm
leaves with a pointed tool, but never is any ancient writing found among them nor word of their origin
and arrival in these islands, their customs and rites being preserved by traditions handed down from
father to son without any other record."[33] A century later, in 1668, Francisco Alcina wrote: "The
characters of these natives [Visayans], or, better said, those that have been in use for a few years in
these parts, an art which was communicated to them from the Tagalogs, and the latter learned it
from the Borneans who came from the great island of Borneo to Manila, with whom they have
considerable traffic... From these Borneans the Tagalogs learned their characters, and from them
the Visayans, so they call them Moro characters or letters because the Moros taught them... [the
Visayans] learned [the Moros'] letters, which many use today, and the women much more than the
men, which they write and read more readily than the latter." [14] Francisco de Santa Inés explained in
1676 why writing baybayin was more common among women, as "they do not have any other way to
while away the time, for it is not customary for little girls to go to school as boys do, they make better
use of their characters than men, and they use them in things of devotion, and in other things that
are not of devotion."[34]

Pages of the Doctrina Christiana, an early Christian book in Spanish and Tagalog, both in the Latin script and
in baybayin (1593).

The earliest printed book in a Philippine language, featuring both Tagalog in baybayin and
transliterated into the Latin script, is the 1593 Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Española y Tagala. The
Tagalog text was based mainly on a manuscript written by Fr. Juan de Placencia. Friars Domingo de
Nieva and Juan de San Pedro Martyr supervised the preparation and printing of the book, which was
carried out by an unnamed Chinese artisan. This is the earliest example of baybayin that exists
today and it is the only example from the 1500s. There is also a series of legal documents
containing baybayin, preserved in Spanish and Philippine archives that span more than a century:
the three oldest, all in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, are from 1591 and 1599.[35][4]
Baybayin was noted by the Spanish priest Pedro Chirino in 1604 and Antonio de Morga in 1609 to
be known by most Filipinos, and was generally used for personal writings and poetry, among others.
However, according to William Henry Scott, there were some datus from the 1590s who could not
sign affidavits or oaths, and witnesses who could not sign land deeds in the 1620s. [36]
Amami, a fragment of the Ilocano Lord's Prayer, written in Ilocano baybayin (Kur-itan, Kurdita), the first to use
krus-kudlít.[37][38]

In 1620, Libro a naisurátan amin ti bagás ti Doctrina Cristiana was written by Fr. Francisco Lopez,
an Ilocano Doctrina the first Ilocano baybayin, based on the catechism written by Cardinal
Belarmine.[37] This is an important moment in the history of baybayin, because the krus-kudlít was
introduced for the first time, which allowed writing final consonants. He commented the following on
his decision:[14] "The reason for putting the text of the Doctrina in Tagalog type... has been to begin
the correction of the said Tagalog script, which, as it is, is so defective and confused (because of not
having any method until now for expressing final consonants - I mean, those without vowels) that the
most learned reader has to stop and ponder over many words to decide on the pronunciation which
the writer intended." This krus-kudlít, or virama kudlít, did not catch on among baybayin users,
however. Native baybayin experts were consulted about the new invention and were asked to adopt
it and use it in all their writings. After praising the invention and showing gratitude for it, they decided
that it could not be accepted into their writing because "It went against the intrinsic properties and
nature that God had given their writing and that to use it was tantamount to destroy with one blow all
the Syntax, Prosody and Orthography of their Tagalog language." [39]
In 1703, baybayin was reported to still be in use in the Comintan (Batangas and Laguna) and other
areas of the Philippines.[40]
Among the earliest literature on the orthography of Visayan languages were those of Jesuit priest
Ezguerra with his Arte de la lengua bisaya in 1747[41] and of Mentrida with his Arte de la lengua
bisaya: Iliguaina de la isla de Panay in 1818 which primarily discussed grammatical structure.
[42]
 Based on the differing sources spanning centuries, the documented syllabaries also differed in
form.[clarification needed]

The Monreal stone, which is the centerpiece at the baybayin section of the National Museum of Anthropology.

The Ticao stone inscription, also known as the Monreal stone or Rizal stone, is a limestone tablet
that contains baybayin characters. Found by pupils of Rizal Elementary School on Ticao Island in
Monreal town, Masbate, which had scraped the mud off their shoes and slippers on two irregular
shaped limestone tablets before entering their classroom, they are now housed at a section of
the National Museum of the Philippines, which weighs 30 kilos, is 11 centimeters thick, 54 cm long
and 44 cm wide while the other is 6 cm thick, 20 cm long and 18 cm wide.[43][44]