History and Places : The Laguna Copper Plate

Here is an interesting piece  on ancient Philippine history. This part of our history is not found in our history books and not taught in our schools. Before our country was christianized by Spain, we were an Islamic kingdom. But before we were Islamized by the Arabs were we once a part of a Hindu kingdom? These ancient  artifacts being found in different parts of our country seem to prove that we were once. 

Laguna Copper Plate

Laguna Copperplate Inscription (also shortened to LCI) is the earliest known written document found in the Philippines. The plate was found in 1989 by a sand laborer working on Lumbang River near the outlet to Laguna de Bay, in Barangay Wawa, Lumban, in the Lagunaprovince.The inscription on the plate was first deciphered by Dutch anthropologist Antoon Postma.^[1][2]

The Laguna Copperplate Inscription was found in 1989 near the mouth of the Lumbang River near Laguna de Bay, by a man who was dredging sand to turn into concrete. Suspecting that the artifact might have some value, the man sold it to an antique dealer who, having found no buyers, eventually sold it to the National Museum of the Philippines landing in the hands of Alfredo E. Evangelista, head of its Anthropology Department.^[8].^[5]

The discovery of the plate has highlighted the evidence of cultural links present between theTagalog people of this time and the various contemporary civilizations in Asia, most notably the Javanese Medang Kingdom, the Srivijaya empire, and the Middle kingdoms of India, a topic in Philippine history of which not much is presently known.

It was in the National Museum a year later that the Dutch anthropologist and Mangyan language expert Antoon Postma noticed that the writing on the inscription was similar to an ancient Indonesian script called Kavi. Postma translated the script and found the document dated itself to the Saka year 822, which in the old Hindu calendar corresponded to approximately 900 A.D. in the Gregorian calendar.^[3] This meant that the document pre-dated the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, taking the pre-Hispanic written history of the Philippines to about the same time as the reference to the Philippines found in the official Chinese Sung History for the year 972.

The Laguna Copperplate Inscription, among other discoveries made in recent years in the country such as the Golden Tara of Butuan and 14th century pottery and gold jewellery artifacts found in Cebu, is highly important in revising the ancient history of the Philippines, which prior to the LCI discovery was considered by some western historians to be culturally isolated from the rest of Asia, as no evident pre-Hispanic written records were found at the time. Noted Philippines historian William Henry Scott debunked these theories in 1968 with his Prehispanic Source materials for the Study of Philippine History which was subsequently published in 1984.^[10] The LCI sheds light on the ancient Philippine history, which until the time of Scott was largely ignored because of the dominantly Hispanic-derived culture present during the Spanish occupation. This document is considered a National treasure and rests in the National Museum of the Philippines in Manila.


Source : 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia