5
information about it that Hervas had. Neither of these men apparently saw a copy of the book, limiting themselves to extracts from
Hervas, but they perpetuated an earlier reference of the utmost importance.
Shortly after the two Germans published their notices of the 1593 Doctrina an entry appeared of a book printed at Manila in 1581. Jose Mariano Beristain y Sousa, a learned Mexican writer, issued in 1819-21 a bibliography of Spanish-American books, in which he listed alphabetically the authors, giving a short biography of each and adding a list of his works. Under Juan de Quinones we find:
"'Arte y Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala,' Imp. en Manila, 1581."31
No specific authority is given for this entry, but in his sketch of the life of Quinones Beristain cited as sources, Juan de Grijalva, Nicolas Antonio, Gaspar de San Agustin, and Jose Sicardo. It would seem logical that one of these must have mentioned such a work as printed in Manila in 1581, but in tracing down the sources no such precise notice is found.
Grijalva simply said that Quinones "concerned himself with Tagalog and made a vocabulary and grammar of it."32 Antonio33 referred to [14] Grijalva, and carried the matter no further. San Agustin, describing the Franciscan chapter of 1578, wrote:
"It was determined moreover in this chapter that P. Fr. Juan de Quinones, prior of the Convent of Taal in Tagalos, and Fr. Diego de Ochoa, prior of Bacolor in Pampanga, should compose and fashion grammars, dictionaries, and confessionaries in the two languages [respectively Tagalog and Pampanga] in which they had ventured; which they executed very promptly and well, and these were of great use to those who came to these islands, for they had these by which they could study the languages."34
Later, San Agustin, again mentioning Quinones, referred to Grijalva, and added as an additional source for his information Tomas
de Herrera. Sicardo35 added nothing new. Herrera, not cited directly by Beristain, may however have been the source from which the
"Imp." of his entry came. Herrera wrote:
"He [Quinones] was the first to have learned the Tagalog language of which he published a grammar and dictionary as an aid to the
ministers of the gospel."
If Beristain read this, he may have been misled by the Latin of "published,"36 in lucem edidit, which may indeed mean printed and published, but also means quite properly published in the sense of written in manuscript and copied and circulated. We agree with Schilling37 that this latter meaning was the one intended. One other statement that Quinones' works were printed may derive from the same misunderstanding. About the year 1801 Pedro Bello wrote an account, still in manuscript and unpublished, of the writings of the Augustinians. His remarks on Quinones, first printed by Santiago Vela38, we believe are only an extension of Herrera's in lucem edidit.
This same confusion in terminology has been used39 to support Beristain's claim by introducing as evidence the letter of Philip II of May 8, 1584. Salazar, the Bishop of Manila, probably shortly after the Synod of 1582, had written the King a letter, now unfortunately lost, in which [15] he spoke of a decision to standardize linguistic works. In answer to the Bishop, the following letter in the form of a royal cedula was sent:
"To the President and Judges of my Royal Audiencia situated in the city of Manila in the Philippine Islands.--It has been told me on behalf of Don Fray Domingo de Salazar, Bishop of that place, that it was agreed that no priest might make a grammar or vocabulary, and that if it were made it might not be published before being examined and approved by the said Bishop, because otherwise there would result great differences and disagreements in the doctrine; and this having been seen by my Council of the Indies, it was agreed that I should order this my cedula which decrees that when any grammar or vocabulary be made it shall not be published or used unless it has first been examined by the said Bishop and seen by this Audencia."40
Here again the word publicado is brought forth to prove that the letter referred to printed works, but here again the term is equally applicable to manuscript works in common use and generally available.
Further evidence that there was no printing as early as 1581 is to be found in a letter41 from Juan de Plasencia, a Tagalist of great re-nown, to the King, dated from Manila, June 18, 1585, in which he reported on the state of missionary work in China and Japan, and added that he had written a grammar and a declaration of the whole Doctrina in the most common language of the Philippines, and that he was then making a dictionary, concluding by asking the King to send decrees ordering those works to be printed in Mexico at the expense of the Exchequer. Is it likely that Plasencia would have so written if an Arte y Vocabulario had been printed four years earlier? Furthermore, San Antonio, recording the book on the customs and rites of the Indians written by Plasencia at the request of the Governor Santiago de Vera, and dated October 24, 1589, said that it was not printed "because printing houses had not yet come to this country."42
6
We then conclude with regard to Beristain's entry, that although there existed in manuscript an Arte y Vocabuldrio Tagalo by Juan de Quinones, there is no evidence of the existence of any book printed for [16] him from wood-blocks or in type. Santiago de Vela43 suggests the possibility that there might have been a xylographic Arte of 1581, but Schilling44 questions this in the face of the complete lack of reference to such a printed work by any 17th or 18th century writer, and the tenuous notices of Bello and Beristain; yet to say categorically that no such work was printed would be foolhardy in the face of the scanty early records and the appearance of this Doctrina, a single copy of which has just been discovered.
The first important work devoted solely to the early history of the Philippine press was by T.H. Pardo de Tavera, who in 1893 published his study of printing and engraving in the Philippines. He there recorded a 1593 Doctrina, but adamantly refused to accept it on the hearsay evidence of others. His account is valuable because it shows that there may have been a copy of the Doctrina in Java in 1885, and so we quote from it at some length:
"A learned Dutch orientalist, Dr. J. Brandes, wrote me in 1885 from Bali-Boeleleng (Java) telling me that in 1593 at Manila there was printed a Doctrina Christiana in Spanish-Tagalog, with the proper characters for the latter language. Other orientalists, at the last Congress in London in 1891, gave me the same information. Nonetheless, no one told me where he had read such a thing, nor much less that he had managed to see such a book, although inspecting a rare book which I acquired in Paris (Alter, Ueber die tagalische sprache, Vienna, 1803), I saw that the author cited such a Doctrina Christiana and said that he knew of its existence through Abbe Hervas. This is an error, and without doubt such a Doctrina was in manuscript, because in 1591 [he should have said 1593] there was no press in Manila nor in any part of the archipelago, and today we know for certain and positively that the first book issued there appeared in 1610."45
Pardo de Tavera was the first to call attention to Alter, and through him to Hervas, and in all probability the orientalists at the Lon-don Congress had seen the Doctrina cited by one of these or Adelung. But he rejects that evidence in no uncertain terms. Mitigat-ing somewhat his assurance, he speaks following the above-quoted passage of printing in China, and [17] differentiates between xylographic and typographic printing, and since he was obviously thinking in terms of printing on a press with movable type his conclusions are not too extreme.
In 1896 appeared Jose Toribio Medina's La Imprenta en Manila, which was up to then the best, most complete and most scholarly work on early Philippine printing, and is today with its subsequent additions and corrections the standard bibliography of the subject. There Medina cited most of the authorities we have already quoted, the letter of Dasmarinas, Fernandez' Historia eclesiastica, Aduarte, Adelung, Beristain and Pardo de Tavera. Then, basing his conclusions strongly on the Dasmarinas letter and the note of Adelung, he listed46 as number one in his bibliography the Doctrina of 1593 in Spanish and Tagalog, and as number two the Doctrina in Spanish and Chinese of the same year. This is a verdict which has stood the test of time, and