The remains of Pinoy royalty and Roman technology in Intramuros
Who would have thought Pandacan was the setting of the famed revolutionary novel of Jose Rizal, the Noli Me Tangere? Along with countless others, I was under the impression it was set in Laguna until I read The Child of the Pandan Reeds by former Pandacan Church parish priest Reverend Father Lazaro B. Abaco E.H.C.
“When Jose P. Rizal wrote Noli Me Tangere, he ingeniously used Pandacan as the stage for the scenes played by his dramatis personae. Our national hero had to create archetypes from people he knew and places he frequented in order to create a magnum opus,” writes Father Lazaro in the first paragraph of his introduction. “His main characters were Crisostomo Ibarra, who was simply a projection of himself; Maria Clara, of his beloved Leonor Rivera; and Padre Damaso, an embodiment of the Franciscan friars, who were then the pastors of the Pandacan Church. While he adopted new names for his characters to soften criticism against Spanish military and church authorities, his description of Ilog Binundok betrays the Pasig River. The boat and boatmen were also the bancas and banqueros of Pandacan...”
My paternal great-great-grandfather Franciscan friar Francisco Lopez was the Pandacan parish priest between 1870 and 1871. It was his last posting before his death in 1871 after being assigned for decades in Samar, Leyte, and Pagsanjan. His daughter, my great-grandmother Trinidad Lopez, typified by Rizal in his character Maria Clara, and her siblings would accompany their father to every parish priest posting. It was in Pandacan where Trinidad met my dad’s lolo Daniel Arcilla Romualdez.
Pandacan has been the seat of the Romualdez family for generations, as evident in Spanish colonial census records stored in the national archives, before Daniel moved his family permanently to Leyte in 1879. But he never lost ties with their hometown Pandacan in Manila. In the 1920s, Daniel’s son Miguel Romualdez was appointed sixth mayor of Manila by the American civilian government. He acquired a house in front of the Pandacan Church at the corner of Teodoro San Luis and Jesus Streets. This is where it still stands today.
Every year, on the third Saturday in January, Pandacan holds the Buling-Buling, the town’s fiesta when its patron saint the Santo Nino is celebrated. I’ve attended the fiesta twice and a few days ago I was able to attend the fiesta for the third time. Buling-Buling is said to come from the root words “Buling-buli” or well put together for an event. This is certainly how the participants can be described as they dance on the streets as part of the procession of the Sto. Ninos.
My paternal great-great-grandfather Franciscan friar Francisco Lopez was the Pandacan parish priest between 1870 and 1871. It was in Pandacan where his daughter, my great-grandmother Trinidad Lopez, met my dad’s lolo Daniel Arcilla Romualdez.
According to Isagani R. Medina and Luningning B. Ira in their book Streets of Manila, during prehistoric times, Pandacan along with what we now call the areas of Paco, Quiapo, San Miguel, Makati, Mandaluyong, Pasig, and San Juan del Monte were all part of the Kingdom of Namayan. Ruled by Lakan Tangkan. The kingdom prospered in the 11th century due to trade with China and other maritime realms.
In the 13th century AD, a Namayan Princess Sasaban married the heir to the throne Prince Soledan (a.k.a. Anka Widyaya) of the Majapahit Empire. In the book The River Dwellers: Pasig the River of Life by Grace Odal-Devora et al, legend tells us that Princess Sasaban and Anka Widyaya had “a son name Balagtas who returned to the Philippines to rule over Balayan and Taal. He married Princess Panginoan of Pasig.”
The Majapahit Empire was a Hindu-Buddhist maritime empire whose seat of power was located on the island of Java or modern-day Indonesia, which existed between the 13th and the 16th centuries AD (c. 1293-1527). It is said that Manila and Sulu were tributaries of the Majapahit.
A few years ago, I took part in an archaeological dig on a parking lot behind the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros. My mentor Dr. Victor Paz led a team to find remnants of the Namayan Kingdom. Among other things, we were hoping to find the wooden walls for Raja Sulayman's fort that could date to the point of contact with Spain in Manila during the time of Sulayman (1558-1575) and Raja Matanda (1480–1572), who co-ruled over Maynila while, in neighboring Tondo, Lakan Dula was sovereign. These were the three rulers, Spain had to contend with when they arrived in Manila in 1570.
What Dr. Paz was hoping to find, if we dug deep enough, was a layer of reeds dating back to the Kingdom of Namayan. Apparently when an emissary of the Majapahit Empire came to visit, the Lakan intercepted a letter headed back to Java containing a complaint regarding the muddy or boggy terrain of the place. The Lakan, who wanted to change the emissary’s perception of his kingdom, ordered his people to dump reeds to stabilize the terrain of the Pasig River delta. To find the layer of reeds was the hope, but what we found instead was rows upon rows of inverted earthenware pots arranged close together. It was determined that the rows of inverted pots were a Roman technology used to stabilize boggy ground. The technology was brought to our shores by the Spanish.
