Code of Kalantiaw

Who is Code of Kalantiaw?

The Code of Kalantiaw was a hoax in which a 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 the Philippines. 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, which he attributed to a priest named Jose Maria Pavon.

In 1917, the historian Josué Soncuya wrote about the Code of Kalantiaw in his book Historia Prehispana de Filipinas where he moved the location of the Code's origin from Negros to the Panay province of Aklan because he suspected that it may be related to the Ati-atihan festival. Other authors throughout the 20th century gave credence to the story and the code.

In 1965, then University of Santo Tomas doctoral candidate William Henry Scott began an examination of prehispanic sources for the study of Philippine history. Scott eventually demonstrated that the code was a forgery committed by Marco. When Scott presented these conclusions in his doctoral dissertation, defended on 16 June 1968 before a panel of eminent Filipino historians which included Teodoro Agoncillo, Horacio de la Costa, Marcelino Foronda, Mercedes Grau Santamaria, Nicolas Zafra and Gregorio Zaide, not a single question was raised about the chapter which he had called The Contributions of Jose E. Marco to Philippine historiography. Scott later published his findings debunking the code in his book Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History. Filipino historians later removed the code from future literature regarding Philippine history. When Antonio W. Molina published a Spanish version of his The Philippines Through the Centuries as Centuries as historia de Filipinas, he replaced the Code with one sentence: "La tésis doctoral del historador Scott desbarate la existencia misma de dicho Código".