The Code of Kalantiaw was a mythical legal code in the

epic story Maragtas. It is said to have been written in

1433 by Datu Kalantiaw, a chief on the island of Negros in
thePhilippines. It was actually written in 1913 by Jose E.
Marco as a part of his historical fiction Las antiguas
leyendas de la Isla de Negros (Spanish, "The Ancient
Legends of the Island of Negros"), which he attributed to
a priest named Jose Maria Pavon.
18 Penal Codes
Article I
You shall not kill, neither shall you steal,
neither shall you do harm to the aged, lest
you incur the danger of death. All those
who infringe this order shall be
condemned to death by being drowned in
the river, or in boiling water.
Article II
You shall obey. Let all your debts with the
headman be met punctually. He who does
not obey shall receive for the first time
one hundred lashes. If the debt is large, he
shall be condemned to thrust his hand in
boiling water thrice. For the second time,
he shall be beaten to death.
Article 3
Obey you: let no one have women that are
very young nor more than he can
support; nor be given to excessive lust.
He who does not comply with, obey, and
observe this order shall be condemned to
swim for three hours for the first time
and for the second time, to be beaten to
death with sharp thorns.
Article IV
Observe and obey; let no one disturb the
quiet of the graves. When passing by the
caves and trees where they are, give
respect to them. He who does not
observe this shall be killed by ants, or
beaten to death with thorns.
Article V
You shall obey; he who exchanges for food,
let it be always done in accordance with
his word. He who does not comply, shall
be beaten for one hour, he who repeats
the offense shall be exposed for one day
among ants.
Article VI
You shall be obliged to revere sights that
are held in respect, such as those of trees
of recognized worth and other sights. He
who fails to comply shall pay with one
month's work in gold or in honey.
Article VII
These shall be put to death; he who kills
trees of venerable appearance; who shoot
arrows at night at old men and women;
he who enters the houses of the
headmen without permission; he who kills
a shark or a streaked cayman.
Article VIII
Slavery for a doam (a certain period of
time) shall be suffered by those who steal
away the women of the headmen; by him
who keep ill-tempered dogs that bite the
headmen; by him who burns the fields of
another.
Article IX
All these shall be beaten for two days: who
sing while traveling by night; kill the
Manaul; tear the documents belonging to
the headmen; are malicious liars; or who
mock the dead.
Article X
It is decreed an obligation; that every
mother teach secretly to her daughters
matters pertaining to lust and prepare
them for womanhood; let not men be
cruel nor punish their women when they
catch them in the act of adultery.
Whoever shall disobey shall be killed by
being cut to pieces and thrown to the
caymans.
Article XI
These shall be burned: who by their
strength or cunning have mocked at and
escaped punishment or who have killed
young boys; or try to steal away the
women of the elders.
Article XII
These shall be drowned: all who interfere
with their superiors, or their owners or
masters; all those who abuse themselves
through their lust; those who destroy
their anitos (religious icons) by breaking
them or throwing them down.
Article XIII
All these shall be exposed to ants for half a
day: who kill black cats during a new
moon; or steal anything from the chiefs
or agorangs, however small the object may
be.
Article XIV
These shall be made slave for life: who have
beautiful daughters and deny them to the
sons of chiefs, and with bad faith hide
them away.
Article XV
Concerning beliefs and traditions; these
shall be beaten: who eat the diseased flesh
of beasts which they hold in respect, or
the herb which they consider good, who
wound or kill the young of the Manaul, or
the white monkey.
Article XVI
The fingers shall be cut-off: of all those who
break anitos of wood and clay in
their alangans and temples; of those who
destroy the daggers of
the catalonans(priest/priestess), or break
the drinking jars of the latter.
Article XVII
These shall be killed: who profane sites
where anitos are kept, and sites where are
buried the sacred things of their diwatas
and headmen. He who performs his
necessities in those places shall be
burned.
Article XVIII
Those who do not cause these rules to be
obeyed: if they are headmen, they shall be
put to death by being stoned and crushed;
and if they are agorangs they shall be
placed in rivers to be eaten by sharks and
caymans.
This is the fraudulent Code of Kalantiaw
which first appeared in Ancient Legends of the
Island of Negros (volume 1, chapter 9), a book
ascribed to a ficticious friar named José
María Pavon but was actually a forgery by
José E. Marco (1877?-1963) who claimed to
have discovered it in 1913. Almost nobody
questioned the authenticity of the Code for
over 50 years until historian William Henry
Scott exposed it and many other historical
frauds in 1968. Unfortunately, it is still
thought to be true in many circles today.
The story of Datu Kalantiaw is often mistaken to be
part of the epic of ten intrepid chiefs who
founded Visayan civilization as much as 800 years
ago, as told in an ancient and mysterious
document called the Maragtas. This document,
however, was an ordinary book written in 1907
by Pedro Monteclaro in which he compiled the
local legends of the Visayas from mainly oral
traditions and a few written documents that were
fairly modern in their origins. Monteclaro never
mentioned a chief by the name of Kalantiaw in his
Maragtas.
But while Monteclaro's misguided
nationalism, combined with the blatant
dishonesty of other writers who
embellished his work, blurred the line
between legends and hard historical facts,
the story of Kalantiaw is more alarming
because he was never a part of the
Philippines' history or even its oral
traditions. Kalantiaw was an utter hoax
from the beginning.
THE INCREDIBLE CODE
OF KALANTIAW
Throughout the latter half of the 20th century Filipino
students were taught about the vicious and bizarre laws
that were said to have been enacted by one Datu
Kalantiaw in the year 1433 on the island of Panay. Many
of his commandments contradicted each other and his
punishments were extremely brutal, usually having no
relation to the severity of the crime committed.
Offences to the law ranged from as light as singing at
night to as grave as murder. Those convicted supposedly
were made slaves, beaten, lashed, stoned, had fingers cut
off, were exposed to ants, drowned, burned, boiled,
chopped to pieces or fed to crocodiles.
So, why should we not believe this story that has been
taught as history for so many years in Filipino
schools?
There are three (3) good
reasons.
There are simply no written or pictorial
documents from that time in Philippine history.
There are no documents from other countries
that mention the great Kalantiaw either. There is
also no evidence that Philippine culture ever
spawned such a barbaric set of laws. The early
Spanish accounts tell us that Filipino custom at
that time allowed even the most serious
lawbreakers to pay a fine or to be placed into
servitude for a time in cases of debt.
As the missionary Francisco Colín
wrote in 1663:
In the punishment of crimes of violence the social rank of the
slayer and slain made a great deal of difference. If the slain was
a chief, all his kinsfolk took the warpath against the slayer
and his kinfolk, and this state of war continued until arbiters were
able to determine the amount of gold which had to be paid for
the killing… The death penalty was not imposed by public
authority save in cases where both the slayer and slain were
commoners, and the slayer could not pay the blood price. K1

Arbitration is still the custom of those

Philippine cultures that were never
conquered by the Spaniards.
Many ardent admirers of the Datu, who disdain all
historical evidence to the contrary, claim that he
has long been a part of Visayan culture and
heritage. This is simply not true. In almost 400
years of documented Philippine history – from
Magellan's arrival in 1521 until the second decade
of the 20th century – no such legend was ever
recorded. Kalantiaw even escaped the attention of
Pedro Monteclaro when he published
the Maragtas legends in 1907. This is very
suspicious considering that there are more
stories today about Kalantiaw than there are
about any of the ten datus of the Maragtas.
Did the Spaniards suppress the legend of Kalantiaw?
This accusation is usually the first thing that history
buffs reach for when they need to explain a gap in
Philippine history. If the Spaniards were aware of
such a legend they had no reason to suppress it
because those Spaniards who were sympathetic
to the Filipinos could have presented the mere
existence of the Code as proof that their
ancestors were civilized – just as many Filipinos
do today – while detractors could have pointed
to the maniacal Datu himself as proof of their
savagery – even though his methods of torture
were no more sadistic than those of the Spanish
Inquisition.
It is certain that there were no legends of
Kalantiaw before the 20th century. The
Aklanon historian Digno Alba was a young
man at the start of that century. He looked
for Kalantiaw in local folklore in the 1950s
but did not find him. On May 5, 1967 the
historian William H. Scott wrote to Alba and
asked him:
When you were a child, Don Digno, did not the old folks of Aklan
have stories about Kalantiaw even before the discovery of the
Pavón documents in 1913? Were there no popular legends or
folklore that the elders told their grandchildren?
To which Alba replied in a letter from Kalibo,
Aklan dated May 15, 1967:
I had tried to get stories or legends from the present generations of
Aklanons living in Batan… but not one old man can tell me now. K2
If Kalantiaw was not a historical figure or a legendary
character, where did he come from? Many writers on
this subject didn't bother to mention where they
obtained their information. Some, like Digno Alba,
simply created "facts" from thin air. Scott eventually
traced the ultimate origin of Kalantiaw back to a
single person, José E. Marco of Pontevedra, Negros
Occidental, who definitely did not live in the 1400s. In
1913, Marco claimed to have discovered the Pavón
documents that were mentioned in Scott's letter to
Digno Alba. These documents, which contain the
Code of Kalantiaw, were in fact Marco's own creation.
Kalantiaw eventually became the most successful of
many hoaxes in Marco's career of almost 50 years as
a forger and fraud.
EXPOSÉ
William H. Scott's exposé did not have an
immediate effect on Filipino society. On March
1, 1971, President Ferdinand Marcos instituted
the "Order of Kalantiaw", an award "for services
to the country in the areas of law and justice"
(Executive Order No. 294). That same year a
beauty pageant winner was crowned "Lakambini
ni Kalantiaw" on the supposed anniversary of
the Code (December 8), and the artist Carlos
Valino Jr. depicted Kalantiaw issuing his
commandments.
It is only now, since most of the old guard has
passed on, that the new generation of historians
have been able to set the records straight. The
NHI finally admitted that Kalantiaw was a hoax
in 1998 when Chief Justice Andres Narvasa,
who was about to receive the Kalantiaw Award,
asked Malacañang to look into the matter.
President Joseph Estrada gave him the award,
anyway.
In 2004, the NHI, under the leadership of
Ambeth Ocampo, made their opinion
official when they submitted a resolution
to President Arroyo to revoke the
national shrine status of the Kalantiaw
Shrine in Aklan, which, of course, enraged
some Aklanons.
Today some people still cite the courage
and wisdom of Kalantiaw as they continue
to heap accolades upon him and the
oblivious recipients of those Kalantiaw
awards. However, a sober look at
Kalantiaw's Code reveals that his
magnificent courage was merely brutality
and his exalted wisdom was in fact
incredible insanity.
Kalantiaw's defenders insist that his
legend must be true simply because he
has always inspired them as a part of their
heritage. But while they portray such a maniac
as a Filipino hero, they disregard what gross
slander they lay on the character of all Filipinos.
Fortunately, the people of the Philippines need
never bear this shame because Kalantiaw never
really existed.