Relacion de las Costumbres de Los Tagalogs

• In the social structure described:

  • Dato
  • Nobles or Maharlika
  • Commoners or Aliping namamahay
  • Aliping sa guiguilir
• Commoners or Aliping namamahay:

  • Can marry
  • Serve their master with half of their cultivated lands
  • Accompany their master beyond the island and row for him
  • Live in their own houses, lords of their property and gold
  • Children can inherit parents' properties and rank, protected from slavery and sale
• Aliping sa guiguilir or Slaves:

  • Serve master in house and cultivated lands
  • Can be sold by master
  • Can ransom themselves to become namamahay by paying at least five taels of gold
• 1.     Nobles or Maharlika

     Free-born

     Do not pay tax or tribute to the dato, but must accompany him in war, at their own expense

     After marriage, they could not move from one barangay to another without paying a certain fine in gold Chieftain (Dato) Nobles (Maharlika) Commoners (Aliping namamahay) Slaves (Aliping saguiguilir)
• 1.     Dato

       Chief of the barangay whom governed, obeyed, and reverenced

       “Corresponded to our knights”

       The subject who committed any offense against them or spoke but a word to their wives and children, was severely punished.
• Idol-worship 

     Bathala – “all powerful” or “maker of all things”

     Dianmasalanta – patron of lovers and of generation

     Lacapati & Idianale – patrons of the cultivated lands and of husbandry
• Catolonan

     Either a man or a woman

     An honorable position held by people of rank.
• Mangagauay

     Witches who deceived by pretending to heal the sick.

     They induced maladies by their charms which can cause death.
• Manyisalat

     Same as mangagauay

     They had the power of applying remedies to lovers that they would abandon and despise their own wives.
• Mancocolam

     Emits fire that cannot be extinguished from himself at night, once or oftener each month.
• Hocloban

       Another kind of witch of greater efficacy than the mangagauay.

       Without the use of medicine, they can kill or heal whom they chose.
• Silagan

       They kill anyone clothed in white by tearing out and eating the liver of the victim.
• Magtatanggal

       His purpose was to show himself at night to many persons, without his head or entrails.
• Osuang

       Equivalent to “sorcerer”

       They fly, murder men and eat their flesh.

       This was only among the Visayas Islands; among the Tagalogs these did not exist.
• Mangagayoma

       Another class of witches that make charms for lovers out of herbs, stones, and wood, which would infuse the heart with love.
• Sonat

       Equivalent to “preacher”

       They help people to die, at which time they predict the salvation or condemnation of the soul.

       Held by people of high rank
• Pangatahojan

       A soothsayer and predicts the future.
• Bayoguin

       A “cotquean”, a man whose nature inclined toward that of a woman
•    The legitimate children inherited equally except in the case where the father and mother showed a slight partiality by such gifts as two or three gold taels, or perhaps a jewel. Adopted children inherit the double of what was paid for their adoption.
•    If the wife has no parents or grandparents, she enjoys her dowry.
•    Unmarried women can own no property, in land or dowry, for the result of their labors accrues to their parents.
•    In the case of a divorce before birth of children, if the wife left the husband and marry another man, all her dowry fell to the husband.
•    If the woman left but did not marry, the dowry was returned.
•    When the husband left his wife, he lost half of the dowry and the other half was returned to him.
•    If he possessed children at the time of his divorce, the whole dowry and the fine went to the children.
•    Upon the death of the wife in a year’s time they had no children, the parents returned one-half of the dowry to the husband.
• Upon the death of the husband, one-half of the dowry was returned to the relatives of the husband.