American Austin Craig’s ‘Gems of Philippine Oratory ‘(1924) is one book that brings together some of the significant elocutions from Mindanao. It includes three Muslim oratorical speeches that for the life of me have never been used by educators in yearly literary tilts.
Taken from Chinese dynastic annals translated in Dutch Pieter Groeneveldt’s Notes on the Malay Archipelago in 674 AD, Queen Sima’s “Ancient Honesty and Supremacy of the Law,” was delivered in Kalang or Dj-Apo, which corresponds to Cotabato region.
On the other hand, Dato Ubal’s “A Patriotic Threat that was Made Good” was delivered April 1596 and is quoted by Dr. Jose P. Rizal, borrowing from Argerensola’s account, in his notes in Antonio Morga’s “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.”
Moreover, Sultan Kudrat’s “The Stupidity of Submitting to Spanish Sovereignty” was
addressed to the Malanaos of the Lake, or Lanao region, in 1638; it is recorded in friar Luis de Jesus’ “History of the Recollect Missions.”
In toto, we are reproducing the historical declamations.
First: Queen Sima’s “Ancient Honesty and Supremacy of the Law”:
“Our country has had an enviable reputation for honesty. It has been our custom not to disturb even things dropped in the road, leaving these for their owner’s return, that he whose they rightfully are may recover them however long his delay.
“A ruler from faraway, an Arab, doubted our fame and thought to test it by sending a bag of gold to be left in the road as a trap.
“For three years it remained in the road. For three years those of our people who saw it passed around it. It was left for you, the expectant future ruler, to be careless.
“You thought that your rank privileged you to not turn out, so you stepped over the purse.
Yet you should have set the example. You ought to have been the most careful of all.
“Because your rank is greater your fault is graver. Death was the penalty at first in my mind but my ministers have dissuaded me. Then, because your fault was in your feet, I would have had them cut off, but even that my ministers advise is too severe a penalty.
“I sentence you to have the toes of both feet cut off, to remind you to set a better example, as a warning to others, and to prove that in our land no one is so high in rank as to be above the law.”
Second: Dato Ubal’s “A Patriotic Threat that was Made
Good”:
“Countrymen, I have killed a beef animal and invited you to the feast that the sacrifice may consecrate, and you witness, my solemn vow to dare and do in defence of our native land. “We are here in our own country and have neither offended nor declared war upon the Castilians. Yet a Spaniard who calls himself governor of Mindanaw says that he has bought, from his king over the seas, the right to conquer us and to rule in our land for two generations, during his own lifetime and that of another who shall succeed him.
“A self-confessed hireling, he has brought his fellow mercenaries and has been fighting along the Rio Grande against the soldiers of Salalila Longa, our leader on sea and land.
“Should our Buhahayen patriots dignify with honorable warfare those who fight only for plunder and pay? In what way do they differ from pirates, these who prate of religion and service to their God but who think only of gold and care not how dishonorably they get it? Such are not deserving of being met steel to steel, shield against shield.
“Their leader deserves death, but not as a soldier, and then, leaderless, his ruffian band will leave us in peace. I myself will shorten his purchased governorship by one life, his own.
“Hear now my vow. May a thunderbolt strike me on land, a cayman [crocodile] devour me inthe sea, and may never a woman look with favor on Ubal if I rid not the land of the Buhahayanes of this mercenary invader.”
And third, Sultan Kudrat’s “The Stupidity of Submitting to Spanish Sovereignty”: “You men of the Lake, forgetting your ancient liberty, have submitted to the Castilians. Such submission is sheer stupidity. You cannot realize to what your surrender binds you. You are selling yourselves into slavery to toil for the benefit of these foreigners.
“Look at the regions that have already submitted to them. Note how abject is the misery to which their peoples are now reduced. Behold the condition of the Tagalogs and of the Bisayans whose chief men are trampled upon by the meanest Castilian. If you are of no better spirit than these, then you must expect similar treatment. You, like them, will be obliged to row in the galleys. Just as they do, you will have to toil at the shipbuilding and labor without ceasing on other public works. You can see for yourselves that you will experience the harshest treatment while thus employed.
“Be men. Let me aid you to resist. All the strength of my sultanate, I promise you, shall be used in your defence.
“What matters it if the Castilians at first are successful? That means only the loss of a year’s harvest. Do you think that too dear a price to pay for liberty?”
Elocution pieces are more than just speeches with messages; they reflect the sentiment of those who first delivered it. Also, the oratories carry historical import and they often remind us that the great Mindanao leaders in the past were not without knowledge and knowhow.
