Datu Kalantiaw

Kalantiaw
Title	Rajah Kalantiaw the third head of Panay Island
Description	Code of Kalantiaw creator
Gender	Male
Region	Negros and Panay

Datu Kalantiaw (Rajah Bendahara Kalantiaw) (sometimes spelled Kalantiao) was once considered an important part of Philippine history as the one who created the first legal code in the Philippines, known as the Code of Kalantiaw in 1433. He is considered by Filipinos, particularly the Visayans as the third head of Panay (an island in Visayas with four provinces: Aklan, Antique, Capiz and Iloilo). It was a source of fierce Filipino and Visayan pride for decades and until today. Its authenticity however was debunked by Historian William Henry Scott in his PhD thesis, Critical Study of the Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History relegating the once legendary historical figure into a mythical Filipino character or an urban legend.

Kalantiaw's name first appeared in print in July of 1913 in an article entitled Civilización prehispana published in Renacimiento Filipino. The article mentioned 16 laws enacted by King Kalantiaw in 1433 and a fort that he built at Gagalangin, Negros, which was destroyed by an earthquake in the year A.D. 435 (not 1435). The article was written by Manuel Artigas who, only a year before, had provided the footnotes to an essay by José Marco, Reseña historica de la Isla de Negros.

In 1914, José Marco donated five manuscripts to Dr. James A. Robertson for the Philippine Library and Museum. Dr. James Alexander Robertson called Marco “a good friend to the institution” and his earliest contributions, “the greatest literary discovery ever made in the archipelago.”

Among the documents was Las antiguas leyendes de la Isla de Negros, a two volume leather bound work that was supposedly written by a Friar José María Pavón in 1838 and 1839. The Code of Kalantiaw, in chapter 9 of part 1, was one of six translated documents that were dated before the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines. The original Code was purportedly discovered in the possession of a Panay datu in 1614. At the time of Pavón's writing in 1839 it was supposedly owned by a Don Marcelio Orfila of Zaragoza. On July 20, 1915, Robertson submitted a paper about the Kalantiaw Code to the Panama-Pacific Historical Congress in California and then published an English translation of the Code in 1917.

The historian Josue Soncuya published a Spanish translation of the code in 1917, and wrote about it in his book Historia Prehispana de Filipinas (Prehispanic History of the Philippines). Soncuya concluded that the Code had been written for Aklan because of the presence of two Aklanon rather than Hiligaynon words in the text, and the words Aklan, Panay Island were added to later versions of Soncuya's translation (viz. "Echo en al año 1433–Calantiao–3° regulo").

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