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Experts cast doubts on 'ancient' baybayin tablet


A stone tablet recently discovered to have baybayin writing has excited local scholars, with some hailing it as the first known stone artifact containing the ancient Tagalog alphabet, a script believed to have arrived in Luzon in the 13th or 14th century. “Malaki ang maitutulong nito para i-reconstruct hindi lang yung kultura pero pati yung gamit ng syllabary," says Professor Ricardo Ma. Nolasco of the UP Linguistics Department. But other experts on the baybayin have cast doubts on any ancient origins, with some believing that the tablet found in Masbate, now known as the "Rizal stone," doesn’t even pre-date the 20th century and the writing itself was produced by a modern hobbyist. "My first gut reaction is that this is not an ancient artifact. The baybayin letters shapes are obviously influenced by the Tagalog and Ilokano Doctrinas that were produced in Spanish printing presses. The writing just looks too modern," says Paul Morrow, a Canadian who has been studying the script for years and has written extensively on the subject. Scholars of the script discussing the find on the web site baybayin.com and other forums mostly agreed that the tablet is not that old.

The "Rizal Stone" may not be that old. Photo from press release of Prof. Ricardo Nolasco
Christian Cabuay, a teacher of baybayin in California who has written a book on the language, says, “Regarding the stone, my colleagues and I believe it to be a modern creation as it doesn't match any ‘old’ ways that we used to write. There are missing elements such as kudlits, periods and commas." Tell-tale kudlits Morrow said that the baybayin is definitely not pre-colonial, noting that the absence of kudlits —diacritical marks used to indicate the appropriate vowels to be used— and separators —vertical lines indicating the breaks between sentences— was suspicious. "I would be surprised if it is even pre-20th century," he said. "I can't see anything I could definitely call a kudlit. It is highly unlikely that an inscription of this length would not have one CV syllable in which the vowel was "i" or "u". Morrow explained to GMA News Online that kudlits are a basic feature of baybayin writing. "Without them it is impossible to combine consonants with the vowels 'e', 'i', 'o' or 'u'," he said. On the other hand, Morrow pointed out what appeared to be "+" marks in the inscription —a diacritical mark only introduced much later, by a friar named Francisco Lopez. However, Morrow also said that these marks may just be "random damage" to the stone or a problem with how it was photographed. "These are probably unintended tricks light, blemishes in the photo, or compression artifacts in the image files," he explained. Forensic analysis Christopher Ray Miller, a linguist in Canada who is working on a book on the baybayin, closely examined an image of the stone and argues that it could not have been written before the Spaniards arrived in the 17th century. “I did an in-depth forensic analysis of several of the letters that clearly could only be copied from the typographic shapes used in the 1620 ‘Belarmino’ Ilocano catechism," Miller wrote GMA News Online via Facebook. "The letter shapes are unlike any other authentic specimens of Filipino baybayin handwriting but instead, resemble a typeface that was developed for a Spanish printing press in the early 1600s," said Morrow. “This is the most common style of baybayin writing that is shown in modern textbooks but it was a Spanish typeface, not the handwriting of any Filipino who ever lived." He adds that if the word was meant to be "Bathala," the person who inscribed it was not familiar with pre-colonial baybayin spelling, as the top row contains the sequence ba ta ha la. "The T has no ‘a’ vowel and therefore it should have been omitted. Also, according to William H. Scott’s ‘Barangay, Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture and Society,’ only the Tagalogs and Zambals recognized a deity named Bathala," says Morrow. He clarified that while the stone has not been verified as authentic, there is also no evidence that it is a hoax. "It could have been an innocent exercise of a 20th century baybayin enthusiast who lacked some basic knowledge about the script and had no intention of deceiving anybody... Or it could be a hoax," Morrow said. — with TJ Dimacali, GMA News
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