EARLY this month, Naga City played host to Minister Abdulah H. Kasumaningprang, chief of mission of the Indonesian embassy in Manila, and Suwono Atmosuhardjo, protocol officer of the same office. Their visit was endorsed by Bicol Tourism Regional Director Nini Ravanilla.
During the courtesy call on Mayor Jesse Robredo, Abdulah said their visit was meant to strengthen the existing close bilateral relations between the Philippines and Indonesia. Specifically, he said, by visiting different provinces and cities in the country, they were trying to see for themselves possible areas of cooperation that would mutually benefit their respective countries where Naga, along with Legazpi, was counted as among the preferred cities in their itinerary.
Directed to accompany the guests on their tour of the city after their brief interaction with the city mayor, I was too eager to learn from them in the same length that they came to learn more about Naga and its people, its trade and commerce, and history and culture. I told them that Naga was already an established riverine village long before the Spanish conquistadores came. You see, I was telling them about the ten Bornean datus who, while escaping from the tyrannical rule of Sultan Makatunaw in the 13th century, found themselves heading to the Visayan island of Panay. For the cost of a golden salakot and a long gold necklace, the Indonesian datus bought the island from Marikudo, the Negrito chieftain.
History tells us that it did not take long for the more adventurous of the datus, namely Datu Puti, Balensusa and Dumangsil, to sail northward and disembark by the lake in Taal, Batangas. Dumangsil and Balensusa settled in that fertile region while Datu Puti later on decided to sail back to Borneo. Meanwhile, the families of the remaining two datus in Taal spread out to Laguna and further to the Bicol peninsula. Historians believe that Panga, the chieftain of Bua, an ancient settlement of Nabua, could have descended from either of the two datus, based on the account by a Spanish chronicler that Panga himself had claimed to have descended from the Bornean datus.
The island of Borneo today is better known as the Indonesian territory of Kalimantan where almost one-fourth of the island on its northern coast (which consists of Sarawak and Sabah) belongs to Malaysia.
When lunch time came, Abdulah confided that they were actually from Java, the third largest but the most populous island of Indonesia. It is also where the country’s capital, Jakarta, is located. As I was making orders for a porkless menu for my Muslim guests, Abdulah revealed that he was curious about some of the Bicol words I used while talking to the waiter. He said I was probably making two orders of chopseuy when I repeated “duwang chopseuy.” And he began to count in Javanese: “sato, dua, tilu, ampat, lima, nam, pitu, waru, songo, sampulo” for Bicol’s saro, duwa, tolo, apat, lima, anom, pito, walo, siyam, sampulo.
According to Wikipedia, Javanese belongs to the Sundic sub-branch of the Western Malayo Polynesian (also called Hesperonesian) branch of the Malayo Polynesian subfamily of the Austronesian super family. It is a close linguistic relative of Malay, Sundanese, Madurese, Balinese, and to a lesser extent, of various Sumatran and Borneo languages, including Malagasy and Filipino.
Once the center of powerful Hindu kingdoms and the core of the colonial Dutch East Indies, Java now plays a dominant role in the economic and political life of Indonesia. Its population in 2006 was placed at 130 million. Local historian Danilo Gerona has written that Kabikolan’s civilization was greatly affected by the impact of some neighboring civilizations --- India, China, and the Indo-Malayan, among them. Indian influence, in fact, came at the height of flourishing commerce between the Indians and the Malays which made use of Java as an important trading post in that part of Southeast Asia. It was believed that from Java, traders brought their goods to the Philippines where they are distributed to various trading centers in the archipelago, Bicol, and most likely the riverine village of Naga, included. In fact, these influences are evident in our language until today despite the 300 years of Spanish colonial rule. Where the Hindu or Sanskrit word is “dhara”, the Bicol equivalent is “dara” which both mean “that which is carried”. Where the Hindus refer to an unmarried woman as “daraka”, the Bicolano says “daraga” (not solterita, as one local TV reporter, trying to sound cute, betrayed his inferior mind by inventing the strange word). Where the Hindu word for the narra tree is “naga”, it is the same wood from which the original riverine settlement got its name.
By the way, Indonesia’s official language is Bahasa Indonesia, with Javanese as one of its three major regional languages. Bahasa Indonesia literally means “the language of Indonesia”. With fluency approaching 100% among the quarter billion inhabitants of the world’s fourth-most-populous nation, Bahasa Indonesia has become one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
Bahasa Indonesia, according to Abdulah, actually has strong similarities with Javanese, just like the Bisayan language sounding not so strange with its Bicol equivalent. To prove his point, he again counted the numbers One to Ten, this time in Bahasa Indonesia: “sato, dua, tiga, ampat, lima, anam, tutu, telapan, sambilan, sampulo.”
