Bakit Dakilang Lahi ang kantang napili ko?

Dahil ang tulang Sa Aking mga Kabata ay naglalahad tungkol sa Inang

Bayan. Ang kantang Dakilang Lahi ay tumutukoy din sa Inang Bayan na
Pilipinas. Ang tula at ang kantang ito ay parehas ang gustong iparating na
mensahe sa mga nakakabasa at nakakakinig nito. Ito ay ang pag mamahal
sa wika natin, pag papahalaga sa bansa natin at ang pagkagising ng ating
mga mamamayan sa mga suliranin ng ating bansa.
Trivia:
Bagaman, may ilang mga dalubhasa sa kasaysayan na nagsasabing walang
patotoo na si Rizal ang may-akda ng tula at panlilinlang ito. Pinaghihinalaan
ang mga makatang sina Gabriel Beato Francisco o Herminigildo Cruz ang
tunay na may-akda.
No original manuscript, in Rizals own hand, exists for Sa Aking Mga
Kabata, traditionally believed to be his first poem.
Rizal had 35 years to publish or assert authorship. He did not. The poem was
published posthumously, a decade after his execution, as an appendix to
Kun sino ang kumatha ng Florante: Kasaysayan ng Buhay ni Francisco
Baltazar at pag-uulat nang kanyang karunungat kadakilaan (Manila:
Libreria Manila-Filatelico, 1906.) by the poet Herminigildo Cruz as follows:
Provenance
Tracing the provenance of the poem to its source, Cruz claims to have
received the poem from his friend, the poet Gabriel Beato Francisco, who got
it from a certain Saturnino Raselis of Lukban, a bosom friend of Rizal and
teacher in Majayjay, Laguna, in 1884.
Raselis is alleged to have received a copy of this poem from Rizal himself, a
token of their close friendship.
Unfortunately, Raselis name does not appear in Rizals voluminous
correspondence, diaries or writings. When Jaime C. de Veyra established the
definitive canon of Rizals poetry in 1946 with a compilation published in the
series Documentos de la Biblioteca Nacional de Filipinas (Documents from
the National Library of the Philippines) Sa Aking Mga Kabata was not
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published in the original Tagalog but in a free Spanish translation of the

Tagalog by Epifanio de los Santos as A mis compaeros de niez.
Tagalog, according to the 8-year-old Rizal, has its own alphabet and letters. It
goes back to pre-Spanish times. The precocious child even compared Tagalog
with Latin, English, Spanish and the language of angels, whatever that is.
Second look
Filipinos raised on textbook history that depicts Rizal as a superhuman
genius should give the poem a second look and ask, Was it really written by
an 8-year-old from Calamba just learning to read at his mothers knee?
The poem could not have been written in 1869 when Rizal was eight based
on the use of the letter k, which was a reform in Tagalog orthography
proposed by the mature Rizal.
In Rizals childhood they spelled words with a c rather than k. Further,
the word kalayaan (freedom) is used twice. First, in the third line of the first
stanza, there is mention of sanlang kalayaan (pawned freedom).
Was Rizal aware of the colonial condition at this young age? Kalayaan
appears the second time in the last line of the second stanza.
Encounter with kalayaan
These two references ring a bell because kalayaan as we know it today was
not widely used in the 19th century. As a matter of fact, Rizal encountered
the word first in the summer of 1882 when he was 21 years old!
In a letter to his brother, Paciano, dated Oct. 12, 1886, Rizal related
difficulties encountered with Schillers Wilhelm Tell that he was translating
from the original German into Tagalog:
Im sending you at last the translation of Wilhelm Tell by Schiller which was
delayed one week, being unable to finish it sooner on account of my
numerous tasks. Im aware of its many mistakes that I entrust to you and my
brothers-in-law to correct. It is almost a literal translation. Im forgetting
Tagalog a little, as I dont speak it with anyone.

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 I lacked many words, for example, for the word Freiheit or liberty, one
cannot use the Tagalog word kaligtasan of course because this means that
he was formerly in some prison, slavery, etc. I encountered in the translation
of Amor Patrio the noun malay, kalayahan that Marcelo del Pilar used. In the
only Tagalog book I have, Florante [at Laura], I dont find an equivalent
noun.
El Amor Patrio
El Amor Patrio was the first article Rizal wrote on Spanish soil. He wrote it
in Barcelona in the summer of 1882 and it was published in Diariong Tagalog
in August 1882 both in Spanish and a Tagalog translation, Pag-ibig Sa
Tinubuang Lupa, by Marcelo H. del Pilar.
If, as Rizal admitted, he did not encounter the word kalayaan until he was
studying in Europe at 21 years old, how can he have used it at 8 years old in
Calamba?
In light of its complicated provenance and the anachronistic use of the word
kalayaan a shadow of doubt has been cast on Sa Aking Mga Kabata.
There are only two poems attributed to Rizal in Tagalog, the other is
Kundiman. Both are questionable. All his documented poems are in
Spanish.
If Rizal did not compose Sa Aking Mga Kabata, who did?
Our two suspects are the poets Herminigildo Cruz or Gabriel Beato
Francisco.
Identifying the true author of Sa Aking Mga Kabata is important because
millions of Filipino children are miseducated each year during Buwan ng Wika
when they are told that Rizal composed a poem on his mother tongue when
he was 8.
Will the real author of Sa Aking Mga Kabata please stand up for he who
does not love his own poem/is worse than a beast and a stinking fish (ang di
magmahal sa sariling tula/mahigit sa hayop at malansang isda).

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