The precise origins of baybayin are not well-defined. Precolonial evidence of indigenous communication practices is scant because few written records from the time period have survived. This is because cultural and historical information were, instead, generally
preserved orally.
Indian origins Despite the writing system's unclear origins, scholars agree that baybayin descends from the
Brahmi script of
ancient India. This was made possible by the indirect
Indianization of the Philippines during
the archipelago's precolonial period. Various aspects of Indian languages were introduced to the Philippines likely through Indonesia to the south, where writing systems related to baybayinlike the
Kawi scriptwere used.
Isaac Taylor sought to show that was introduced into the Philippines from the
Coast of Bengal sometime before the 8th century. In attempting to show such a relationship, Taylor presented graphic representations of
Kistna and
Assam letters like g, k, ng, t, m, h, and u, which resemble the same letters in . Fletcher Gardner argued that the Philippine scripts had "very great similarity" with the
Brahmi script, which was supported by
T. H. Pardo de Tavera. According to Christopher Miller, evidence seems strong for to be ultimately of
Gujarati origin; however, Philippine and Gujarati languages have final consonants, so it is unlikely that their indication would have been dropped had been based directly on a Gujarati model.
Kawi The
Kawi script originated in
Java, descending from the
Pallava script, and was used across much of
Maritime Southeast Asia. The
Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the earliest-known written document found in the Philippines. It is a legal document with the inscribed date of
Saka Era 822, corresponding in the
Proleptic Gregorian Calendar to 21 April 900 AD. It was written in the Kawi script in a variety of
Old Malay containing numerous loanwords from Sanskrit and a few non-Malay vocabulary elements whose origin is ambiguous between
Old Javanese and
Old Tagalog. A second example of Kawi script can be seen on the
Butuan Ivory Seal, found in the 1970s and dated between the 9th and 12th centuries. It is an ancient seal made of ivory that was found in an archaeological site in
Butuan, inscribed with the word
Butwan in stylized Kawi, and now in the
National Museum of the Philippines. One hypothesis therefore reasons that, since Kawi is the earliest attestation of writing in the Philippines, then may have descended from Kawi.
South Sulawesi scripts David Diringer, accepting the view that the scripts of the
Malay Archipelago originate in India, writes that the
South Sulawesi scripts derive from the
Kawi script, probably through the medium of the
Batak script of
Sumatra. The Philippine scripts, according to Diringer, were possibly brought to the Philippines through the
Buginese characters in
Sulawesi. According to Scott, 's immediate ancestor was very likely a South Sulawesi script, probably
Old Makassar or a close ancestor. This is because of the lack of final consonants or
vowel canceler markers in . South Sulawesi languages have a restricted inventory of syllable-final consonants and do not represent them in the
Bugis and
Makassar scripts. The most likely explanation for the absence of final consonant markers in is therefore that its direct ancestor was a South Sulawesi script. Sulawesi lies directly to the south of the Philippines and there is evidence of trade routes between the two. must therefore have been developed in the Philippines in the fifteenth century CE as the Bugis-Makassar script was developed in South Sulawesi no earlier than 1400 CE.
Cham script could have been introduced to the Philippines by maritime connections with the
Champa Kingdom. Geoff Wade has argued that the characters "ga", "nga", "pa", "ma", "ya", and "sa" display characteristics that can be best explained by linking them to the
Cham script, rather than other Indic abugidas. According to Wade, seems to be more related to other Southeast Asian scripts than to the Kawi script. Wade argues that the Laguna Copperplate Inscription is not definitive proof for a Kawi origin of , as the inscription displays final consonants, which does not. A century later, in 1668,
Francisco Alcina wrote:
Usage during the Spanish colonial period The earliest printed book in a Philippine language, featuring both Tagalog in and transliterated into the Latin script, is the 1593
Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Española y Tagala. The Tagalog text was based mainly on a manuscript written by
Fr. Juan de Placencia. Friars Domingo de Nieva and Juan de San Pedro Martyr supervised the preparation and printing of the book, which was carried out by an unnamed Chinese artisan. This is the earliest example of that exists today, and it is the only example from the 1500s. There is also a series of legal documents containing , preserved in Spanish and Philippine archives that span more than a century: the three oldest, all in the
Archivo General de Indias in Seville, are from 1591 and 1599. In 1620,
Libro a naisurátan amin ti bagás ti Doctrina Cristiana was written by Fr. Francisco Lopez, an
Ilocano Doctrina the first
Ilocano baybayin, based on the catechism written by
Cardinal Bellarmine. In 1703, was reported to still be in use in the
Comintan (
Batangas and
Laguna) and other areas of the Philippines. Among the earliest literature on the orthography of
Visayan languages were those of Jesuit priest Ezguerra with his in 1747 and of Mentrida with his in 1818 which primarily discussed
grammatical structure. Based on the differing sources spanning centuries, the documented
syllabaries also differed in form. The Ticao stone inscription, also known as the
Monreal stone or Rizal stone, is a limestone tablet that contains characters. Found by pupils of
Rizal Elementary School on
Ticao Island in Monreal town,
Masbate, which had scraped the mud off their shoes and
slippers on two irregular shaped
limestone tablets before entering their classroom, they are now housed at a section of the
National Museum of the Philippines, which weighs 30 kilos, is 11 centimeters thick, 54 centimeters long and 44 centimeters wide while the other is 6 centimeters thick, 20 centimeters long and 18 centimeters wide. at the National Museum Of Anthropology Historically, baybayin was used in
Tagalog and
Kapampangan-speaking areas. It spread to
Ilocos and
Bicol through catechisms administered by friars in the early colonial period.
Pedro Chirino, a Spanish priest and
Antonio de Morga noted in 1604 and 1609 that most Filipino men and women could read baybayin. Before the colonial period, it was largely reserved for writing personal notes, messages, poetry, and signing documents, and not for record keeping or longform writing like books. During the colonial period, Filipinos began keeping paper records of their property and financial transactions, and would write down lessons they were taught in church. The curved shape of the letter forms of is influenced by this practice; straight lines would tear the leaves. Once the letters were carved into the bamboo, they were wiped with ash to make the characters stand out. In some parts of the country, such as
Mindoro the traditional writing technique has been retained.
Decline Baybayin fell out of use in much of the Philippines under
Spanish rule. Learning the Latin alphabet also helped Filipinos to make socioeconomic progress, as they could rise to relatively prestigious positions such as clerks, scribes and secretaries. Between 1751 and 1754, Juan José Delgado wrote that "the [native] men devoted themselves to the use of our [Latin] writing". The ambiguity of vowels i/e and o/u, the lack of syllable-final consonants, and of letters for some
Spanish sounds may also have contributed to the decline of baybayin. The rarity of pre-Hispanic baybayin texts has led to a common misconception that fanatical Spanish priests must have destroyed the majority of native documents. Anthropologist and historian
H. Otley Beyer wrote in
The Philippines before Magellan (1921) that, "one Spanish priest in Southern Luzon boasted of having destroyed more than three hundred scrolls written in the native character". In fact, historians have been unable to verify Beyer's claim, Hector Santos has suggested that, although Spanish friars may have occasionally burned short documents such as incantations, curses, and spells (for the Church deemed them evil), there was no systematic destruction of pre-Hispanic manuscripts. Morrow also notes that there are no recorded instances of pre-Hispanic Filipinos writing on scrolls, and that the most likely reason why no pre-Hispanic documents survived is because they wrote on perishable materials such as leaves and bamboo. There are also no reports of Tagalog written scriptures, as the Filipinos kept their theological knowledge in oral form while using the Baybayin for secular purposes and talismans. The scholar Isaac Donoso claims that the documents written in the native language and in native scripts played a significant role in the judicial and legal life of the colony and noted that many colonial-era documents written in baybayin still exist in some repositories, including the library of the University of Santo Tomas. He also noted that the early Spanish missionaries did not suppress the usage of the baybayin script but instead may have even promoted it as a measure to stop
Islamization, since the Tagalog language was moving from baybayin to
Jawi, the Arabized script of Islamized Southeast Asian societies. Paul Morrow also suggests that Spanish friars helped to preserve baybayin by continuing its use even after it had been abandoned by most Filipinos. ==Contemporary usage and revival==