The Psychology of the Filipino (continuation)

Title

Language

Spanish

Year

1924

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

90 The Psychology of the Filipino By Hon. Norberto Romualdez Associate Justice of the Supreme Court <f the Philippine Islands As to Anatomy, it seems that there was a belief among the early Filipinos that brothers and sisters were parts of one and the same intestine, so that when brothers or sisters qu:;,rrel ttmong themselves, the parents, by way of rebuke admonish them saying, in Bisayan of Leyte, for instance: a yaw kamo hin away, kay magsumpay man la kamo kin tinae. (Do not quarrel, because you partake of the same intestine). Thus, in Sebuan and Panayan Bisayan, a brother or sister is called utod, which means to cut or part cut from a whole. In Leyte and Samar Bisayan, a brother or sister is bugto, which means to break. In Tagalog, brother or sister is kapattd, which means to break, and is called also kaputol, because puiol means to cut. In Pampangan, brother or sister is kapatad, from patad which also means to break. In Pangasinan, the. natural brother or sister is called agin kapultot na pail, and in Bikolan kaputol sa pusod. Either of these two phrases means literally brother or sister partaking of the same intestine. The liver was considered on,e of the most important organs of the human body. The word patay (dead or to kill) is a contraction of pa (an old preposition indicating direction) and the word atlfy (liver , In some Bisayan regions, it was believed that the liver comes out fro111 a big wound on any part of the body. As far as morality is concerned, our customs and laws clearly s!Hn\· that our notion of right and wrong, of what was just and unjust, were highly developed. Attempts against life, per:::on, honor, chastity, and property were severely punished, as we find in the Coqe of Kalantiaw, which I mentioned before. Permit me to cite some statements made by foreign writers about the Filipino morality and hone!<ty. The Spanish orientalist, Pedro Ordonez de Cevallos, says the following about the Filipino woman in his "Viaje del Mundo", edited in Madrid in 1614: "The women are extremely chaste, and no kind of lewdness nor faithlessness agairn;t their hw•band will be observed among them; on the contrary, they are ordinarily virgin, and the married woman have but one husband; in spite of all, God multiplies them in large number by His Divine Decrees, and in a town of about 1.500 inhabitants, there can be found more than 200() boys and girls, none of whom is illegitimate.'' The early Indonesian immigrants did not practise polygamy, whi..:h exists only in some regions of Mindanaw, such institution having been imported there with the Mohamedanism. Ince~t was believed to be punished by God, as we have indicated. With regard to good faith and honesty . i u contracts, the following aecount of the Chinese trader ·wan Ta-Yuan, \Hitt.en in the 14th century, is worthy of note. This trader says: "The natives and the traders, having agreed upon the price, the forin~r were ailewed to take away the goods, and later, they brought the amount of native products. The 91 traders trusted them for they never failed to live up to their stipulated bargains." This is confirmed by another Chinese author, named Ghan Ju-ka, in his work on Chinese and Arabian Commerce written in the 13th eentury. h). l:conomics. As to cconomi('S, the Filipino had limited needs, and had and still has, these fertile lands where K ature generously and perennially offers him her fruits and products. During the pre-Spanish tiines, agriculture chiefly consisted. in the cultivation of paltiy, which was, and is, the commodity of first necessity in Filipino life. He had the karabaw for a working animal. Industry ~hen was mainly weaving and fishing. Thia slide is a plow, 9'l Here is a ~omb. Here i1 a cart called "kanga": Here is a fi1herman: Commerce consisted in the sale of of the forest, sold in tyangis (open wax, honey, and such raw product8 markets), and in markets proper. 93 This is the picture of a tyangi or faia: Commercial relation;; with foreigner:> were chiefly with Chinese traders, many of whom permanently settled in this country and brought with them their ideas of <'a.rpentry, agriculture, black-smith· i ng, and even their superstitions. Hence it is that in our dialects we have inany Chinese words incorporated .into our native speech. The words uysit (fortunate) , buysit ( un• fortunate) are Chinese words very much used in the Tagalog dialect. Thf- la;;t word buysit is sometinieS used in Tagalog to mean troublesome, molestfnl, or vexatious. The Chinese words sinke (new), tampowa or tampo (excess of something) are also much used in the Bisayan of Le.rte. Some Tagalog names for relationship like koya, ditse and others are pure Chinese words. Ti· ghoy (a lamp) pothaw (hatchet), Leyte Bisayan name for iron, are also Chinese. (1'o be continued.) ............... ~ What a Dikmma ! A good little boy, not lo:1g ago, was out in the forest gathering flowers. A terrible storm came on, In order to keep dry he crnwled into a hollow log. \Vhen the rain began to fall, the log began to swt:ll, untill the boy could get neither o:ie way nor the other. He thought his end had come. He thought of all the wrong he had done and the good he could have done but which he neglected. And when he recalled to mind that he had not asked his friends to sub:$Cribe to The Little Apostle and to become himself a little Apostle, he felt so small that he could crawl right out of the log without any difficulty. If the cap fits you, wear it!

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