University of Santo Tomas Baybayin Documents

Baybayin historically refers to a Brahmic syllabic script used in the Philippines for the Tagalog language before and early into the Spanish conquest. It uses three characters for standalone vowels and fourteen for consonants. Baybayin is an abugida, and each character can represent either a single consonant or vowel, or an entire syllable. Related syllabic scripts are still being used by the Palaw'an and Tagbanua peoples on Palawan Island as well as the Hanunuo and Buhid Mangyan peoples on Mindoro Island. ==Description==

The UST Baybayin documents cover two legal real estate transactions in 1613 (labelled as Document A dated February 15, 1613) and 1625 (labelled as Document B dated December 4, 1625) which are the "longest and most complete documents completely handwritten in baybayin". They are also the oldest known deeds of sale for land in the Philippines during the Spanish colonization. When Capiit died sometime between 1613 and 1625, Longar was remarried to Don Luis Castilla, who sold some lands to the University of Santo Tomas in 1629. When the ownership of Castilla was contested in court, he showed Documents A and B as proof of ownership. Since the university already acquired the land, the deeds of sale were later transferred into the university's custody. The baybayin documents were first shown in the public during the tercentenary of the university in 1911. That same year, the documents were first published in Libertas, a daily newspaper published by the university. ==Management==

Miguel de Benavides Library The Archives of the University of Santo Tomas (Archivo de la Universidad de Santo Tomas, or simply UST Archives) at the Miguel de Benavides Library take care of the documents. The original baybayin documents are not available to the public and only replicas of the documents are made available through the university archives' bulletin board on the fifth floor of the Central Library. ==References==