Indianisation from Brunei, Java, Bali, Champa or India: Configurations of a Hindu-Buddhist Period in Philippine History

By : Erwin S. Fernandez

Page No: 31-52

Abstract
In another time and place, I argued that there exists a need to distinguish a Hindu-Buddhist period in Philippine history, which upon a cursory look of the various Philippine textbooks, old and current, would attest the lack of its placement on prehispanic civilisation. In all writings about Philippine and Southeast Asian history, the Philippines is missing in the treatment of the historic Hinduised or Indianised Southeast Asian region. In another article, I explored the possibility of a Hindu-Buddhist period in Philippine history. Now, in this essay, which is a revised version of the former, I lay the basis for restructuring of Philippine history by advocating for the inclusion of a Hindu-Buddhist period. That the Philippines is absent in any discussion of Indianisation is not only anomalous to say the least but more so ahistorical and highly improbable given the fact that geographically the Philippines is not isolated as many tend to believe. The Philippines was part and parcel of this Hindu-Buddhist world before the coming of Islam and Christianity. Although J.G. Casparis and I.W. Mabbett (1992: 304) wrote that “Very little is known of the early history and religion of the eastern zone before the sixteenth century,” which refers to the Philippines, their conclusion is passé since new sources had come out. I would focus on Ming texts, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, some archaeological sites, oral literatures,scripts and a number of artefacts to have a say on the state of the peoples of the islands before the coming of Muslim missionaries.

Author
Erwin S. Fernandez : University of Salamanca, Spain.
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/SEAR.2025.50.2