1 Ileto, Reynaldo, ‘Religion and anti-colonial movements’, in The Cambridge history of Southeast Asia, vol. 2, part 1, ed. Tarling, Nicholas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 193Google Scholar.

2 Ileto, Reynaldo, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular movements in the Philippines 1840–1910 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, hereafter PAR. Page citations throughout the article are from PAR.

3 A sampling of works to draw inspiration from Ileto's work could include Anderson, Benedict O'G., ‘Cacique democracy in the Philippines’, in The spectre of comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the world (New York: Verso, 1998), pp. 192–264Google Scholar; Aung-Thwin, Maitrii, The return of the Galon King: History, law, and rebellion in colonial Burma (Singapore: NUS Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Cannell, Fenella, Power and intimacy in the colonial Philippines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Comaroff, Jean, Body of power, spirit of resistance: The culture and history of a South African people (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Day, Tony, Fluid iron: State formation in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Rafael, Vicente, Contracting colonialism: Translation and Christian conversion in Tagalog society under early Spanish rule (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Salman, Michael, The embarrassment of slavery: Controversies over bondage and nationalism in the American colonial Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 Scalice, Joseph, ‘Reynaldo Ileto's Pasyon and Revolution revisited, a critique’, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 33, 1 (2018): 29–58Google Scholar.

5 Anthology of ASEAN literatures: Philippine metrical romances, ed. Castro, Jovito Ventura (Manila: Nalandangan, 1985), p. 9Google Scholar.

6 For an examination of this urban print-shop production of awit, see Mojares, Resil B., Origins and rise of the Filipino novel: A generic study of the novel until 1940 (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1983), p. 68Google Scholar.

7 Eugenio, Damiana L., Awit and corrido: Philippine metrical romances (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1987)Google Scholar. This work was originally Eugenio's dissertation at UCLA in 1965.

8 Ileto, Reynaldo C., ‘Bernardo Carpio: Awit and revolution’, in Filipinos and their revolution: Event, discourse and historiography (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1998), p. 9Google Scholar.

9 On the idea of hidden transcripts, see Scott, James C., Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

10 Lindsay, H. Hamilton, ‘Testimony of H. Hamilton Lindsay, Esq.’, Appendix II in Paul Proust de la Gironière, Twenty years in the Philippines (New York: Harper & Bros, 1854), pp. 353–4Google Scholar.

11 Rizal, José, El Filibusterismo, trans. Lacson-Locsin, Soledad (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), p. 36Google Scholar.

12 Miranda, Claudio R., Costumbres populares (Manila: Cultura Filipina, 1911), pp. 62–3Google Scholar; unless otherwise indicated all translations are mine.

13 Ileto, Reynaldo C., ‘Rizal and the underside of Philippine history’, in Moral order and the question of change: Essays on Southeast Asian thought, ed. K. Wyatt, David and Woodside, Alexander (New Haven: Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies, 1982), p. 41Google Scholar.

14 The Katipunan was the revolutionary organisation organised by Bonifacio to fight for national independence.

15 A British businessman, living in Manila at the time, wrote: ‘To-day is the beginning of Easter Week, nearly all of whose days are holidays or holy days. This is one of the closest-observed seasons of the year, and on next Thursday and Friday, if you will believe it, no carriages are allowed to appear in the streets either of Manila or the other cities … It seems the proper thing to do to make arrangements with some of the English colony to take a trip off into the mountains.’ Stevens, Joseph Earle, Yesterdays in the Philippines (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1898), pp. 58–9Google Scholar.

16 Ileto, ‘Rizal and the underside of Philippine history’, p. 63.

17 Tangherlini, Timothy R., ‘“It happened not too far from here …”: A survey of legend theory and characterization’, Western Folklore 49, 4 (1990): 385Google Scholar.

18 de los Angeles, Sixto, ‘Exhibit C: Sources of Manila's water supply’, in Fourth annual report of the Philippine Commission, 1903, vol. 3 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), p. 221Google Scholar, emphasis added.

19 On Pamitinan, Sasocsungan and the cave, see Buzeta, Manuel, Diccionario geografico-estadistico-historico de las Islas Filipinas (Madrid: Imprenta de D. Jose C. de la Pena, 1850)Google Scholar, s.vv., ‘Pamitinan’, ‘Mateo’ (San).

20 de Bevoise, Ken, Agents of apocalypse: Epidemic disease in the colonial Philippines (Quezon City: New Day, 1995), p. 29Google Scholar.

21 This story was subsequently published separately from Les milles et un fantômes and all succeeding editions of Les milles lacked the story of M. Olifus. Thus Andrew Brown's delightful recent translation, Dumas, Alexandre, One thousand and one ghosts (London: Hesperus, 2004)Google Scholar, with its ghastly ruminations on the persistence of consciousness in guillotined heads, does not contain Olifus's narrative or the encounter with Gironière. Les marriages was translated into English and published as Alexandre Dumas, The man with five wives (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson and Bros, n.d.).

22 On this point see Hobsbawm, Eric, Bandits, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

23 In which journal it was serialised in 1855.

24 Sullivan, Rodney J., Exemplar of Americanism: The Philippine career of Dean C. Worcester (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, CSEAS, 1991), p. 56Google Scholar.

25 Examples include Bowring, John, A visit to the Philippine Islands (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1859), pp. 101–2Google Scholar; Ellis, Henry T., Hong Kong to Manilla and the lakes of Luzon, in the Philippine Isles, in the year 1856 (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1859), p. 103Google Scholar; Oliphant, Laurence, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan in the years 1857, ’58, ’59, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1860), pp. 88–9Google Scholar; Jagor, Fedor, Travels in the Philippines (London: Chapman & Hall, 1875), p. 29Google Scholar.

26 Gironière is not only an important source of historical information; he was an important literary influence. He wrote a small privately published work late in his life, Mœurs Indiennes et quelques pensées philosophiques pendant un voyage a Majaijai (Iles Philippines) (Nantes: Vincent Forest et Émile Grimaud, 1862)Google Scholar. It received no notice in the nineteenth century, but wound up as item 1184 in T.H. Pardo de Tavera's Biblioteca Filipina. The ilustrado community in Madrid would thus have had access to this text. It tells of a journey to Majayjay, the site of the Cofradía de San Jose uprising, and of Gironière's encounter with a bandit, with whom he has a lengthy discussion about legal and illegal means of changing society. The dialogue parallels the Ibarra–Elias dialogue of Rizal's Noli me tangere (1887) very closely. The work was translated into English as de la Gironière, Paul, Journey to Majayjay, trans. Aguilar, E. Cruz (Manila: National Historical Institute, 1983)Google Scholar; see the dialogue with the bandit, pp. 19–31.

27 de la Gironière, Paul, Twenty years in the Philippines (Manila: National Historical Institute, 1962), p. 113Google Scholar; all of the following is taken from this account, pp. 113–17.

28 Owen, Norman G., Prosperity without progress: Manila hemp and material life in the colonial Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 de la Gironière, Paul, Vingt années aux Philippines: Souvenirs de Jala-Jala (Paris: Comptoir des Imprimeurs Unis, 1853)Google Scholar.

30 de Huerta, Félix, Estado geográfico, topográfico, estadıstico, histórico-religioso de la santa y apostólica provincia de S. Gregorio Magno (Binondo: Imprenta de M Sánchez y Co., 1863), p. 573Google Scholar.

31 Gironière, Twenty years in the Philippines, p. 128.

32 Among the 19th century European accounts of journeys to the cave are MacMicking, Robert, Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines during 1848, 1849, and 1850 (London: Richard Bentley, 1851), pp. 107–8Google Scholar; Stevens, Yesterdays in the Philippines, pp. 89–90; Burritt, Charles H., Abstract of the mining laws in force in the Philippine archipelago (Manila: Bureau of Public Printing, 1902), p. 113Google Scholar; von Drasche, Richard, Fragmente zu einer Geologie der Insel Luzon (Philippinen) (Vienna: Karl Gerold's Sohn, 1878)Google Scholar.

33 This manuscript was translated and edited as Julio Nakpil and the Philippine Revolution, ed. Alzona, Encarnacion (Makati: Carmelo & Bauermann, 1964)Google Scholar. Images of Nakpil's handwritten manuscript and score are included. Relevant material can be found on pp. 12, 45–9, 66 and the score of Pamitinan on p. 109.

34 Rizal, José, El Filibusterismo (Manila: National Historical Institute, 1996), p. 217Google Scholar.

35 Census of the Philippine Islands taken under the direction of the Philippine Commission in the year 1903, in four volumes, vol. 1: Geography, history, and population (Washington: United States Bureau of the Census, 1905), p. 474Google Scholar.

36 Ethnologue: Languages of the world, 15th ed., ed. Gordon, Raymond G. Jr. (Dallas: SIL International, 2005)Google Scholar, s.v. ‘agta, remontado’.

37 ‘In fact, we did a lexicostatistical analysis of it, Tagalog, and Bicol and found that this was the language that was the missing link in the glottochronological and lexicostatistical numbers from Bisaya to Bicol to Tagalog. In other words, linguists had always noted the consistent degree of difference between Ilonggo and Cebuano and Cebuano and Waray and Waray and Bicol. But the gap from Bicol to Tagalog was so much bigger. Tagarug fit right in between Bicol and Tagalog.’ Rodrigo Dar, 23 Jun. 1996, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture.filipino/E8nGJSjTPAY (last accessed 17 May 2009).

38 Conant, Carlos Everett, ‘The pepet law in Philippine languages’, Anthropos: Ephemeris internationalis ethnologica et linguistica 7 (1912): 920–47Google Scholar.

39 Llamzon, Teodoro A., ‘The importance of dialects in historical linguistics: Conant's Pepet Law in Philippine languages as a case in point’, in Actes de XXIX e Congrès international des Orientalistes: Indonésie, ed. Lombard, Denys, vol. 3 (Paris: L'Asiathèque, 1976): 134–9Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., p. 136.

41 Ugaldezubiaur, D. Santiago, Comision de la flora y estadistica florestal, memoria descriptiva de la provincia de Manila (Madrid: Imprenta de Ramon Moreno y Ricardo Rojas, 1880), p. 28Google Scholar.

42 Himes, Ronald S., ‘The relationship of Umiray Dumaget to other Philippine languages’, Oceanic Linguistics 41, 2 (2002): 275–94Google Scholar.

43 Report of the Philippine Commission to the Secretary of War, 1908, in two parts, vol. 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), p. 415Google Scholar; Note that garay is Sinauna for ‘waterfall’. Reid, Lawrence A., ‘Possible non-Austronesian lexical elements in Philippine Negrito languages’, Oceanic Linguistics 33, 1 (1994): 42Google Scholar.

44 The tobacco monopoly in the Philippines: Bureaucratic enterprise and social change, 1766–1880, ed. de Jesus, C. (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1980), pp. 116–17Google Scholar, emphasis added.

45 Headland, Thomas N. et al. , ‘Hunter-gatherers and their neighbors from prehistory to the present’, Current Anthropology 30, 1 (1989): 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Reid, ‘Possible non-Austronesian lexical elements in Philippine Negrito languages’; this substrate consists largely of the specialised vocabulary for local biota and ‘secret’ words such as penis, vagina, etc.

47 For notions of upstream and downstream communities, see Bronson, Bennet, ‘Exchange at the upstream and downstream ends: Notes toward a functional model of the coastal state in Southeast Asia’, in Economic exchange and social interaction in Southeast Asia: Perspectives from prehistory, history, and ethnography, ed. Hutterer, Karl L. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, CSEAS, 1977), pp. 39–52Google Scholar.

48 Canseco, Telesforo, Kasaysayan ng Paghihimagsik ng Mga Pilipino sa Cavite, trans. Rhommel, Jose B. Hernandez (Quezon City: Philippine Dominican Center of Institutional Studies, 1999), p. 64Google Scholar. The published version is a Spanish–Tagalog diglot of the Spanish original. I have translated the passage into English.

49 de Noceda, Juan and de Sanlucar, Pedro, Vocabulario de la lengua Tagala (Manila: Imprenta de Ramirez y Giraudier, 1860), p. 416Google Scholar, s.v. ‘tulisan’.

50 Medina, Isagani, Cavite before the Revolution, 1571–1896 (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2002), pp. 62Google Scholar, 224; Soledad Masangkay Borromeo, ‘El Cadiz Filipino: Colonial Cavite, 1571–1896’ (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1973), p. 197; Quinn, George, The learner's dictionary of today's Indonesian (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001), p. 1139Google Scholar, s.v. ‘tulis’. The Proto-Austronesian (PAN) root for sharp is *Cazém, which reflects to the Tagalog talim as well as tulis, and to the Malay tajam. Talim is sharp-edged, while tulis is sharp-pointed. This is a much more plausible reconstruction than Laurent Sagart's proposed Proto-Sino-Austronesian (PSAN) root, from which Old Chinese (OC) supposedly derived *ləih, ‘to pencil the eyebrows’. Ross, Malcom, ‘Some current issues in Austronesian linguistics’, in Comparative Austronesian dictionary: An introduction to Austronesian studies, part 1, fascicle 1, ed. Tyron, Darrel T. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), pp. 96–8Google Scholar.

51 This was not an unusual origin for the word for writing. Both the Latin scribo and the Greek grapho had an etymological significance of ‘to incise with a sharp point’, while the Sanskrit likh, literally meant to scratch.

52 The word tulisan, as banditry, was appropriated by the Spanish. Felix Ramos y Duarte in his 1898 dictionary defined ‘tulis’ as ‘ladron, ratero’ (bandit, pickpocket). See Duarte, Diccionario de mejicanismos (Mejico, 1898), s.v. ‘tulis’. Tulis, rather than tulisan, had entered Mexican Spanish by the late nineteenth century as a word meaning bandit. The Diccionario Porrúa attributes the origin of the word ‘tulises’ to a ‘grupo de bandoleros del Edo. De Durango’ (most notably, the bandolero El Cucaracho) who escaped from the jail of the town of San Andres de Teúl, in approximately 1859. See Diccionario Porrúa de historia, biografıa y geografıa de México quinta edición (México, D.F.: Editorial Porrúa), p. 3013, s.v. ‘tulises’. From Teúl the dictionary derives the word ‘tulis’ as bandit. Gironière, among others, was already using ‘tulisan’ as a Tagalog word for bandit long before these events in Teúl, thus ruling out this etymological reconstruction. Paloma Albalá Hernández suggests instead a Náhuatl origin for the word, deriving ‘tulisán’ from ‘tule, plant from which is made bedrolls, which etymologically proceeds from the Náhuatl tullin or tolin, according to Molina (1571), sedge or bulrush, and according to Siméon (1885) tollin or tullin, rush, sedge, reed-grass’. See Hernández, , Americanismos en las Indias del Poniente: Voces de origen indıgena americano en las lenguas del Pacıfico (Vervuert: Iberoamericana, 2000), pp. 106Google Scholar, 173. No further explanation is given for this proposed etymology, but it would seem that petate, bedrolls, were considered a standard item of the bandolero, and since these bedrolls were made from tule, the bandoleros became known as tulis. Teresita A. Alcantara, ‘The Spanish American Lexicons in Filipino’ (paper presented at Philippine Latin American Studies Conference, Pamantasan Lungsod ng Maynila, December 2008, p. 6), follows the same path for the entrance of ‘tulis’ into Tagalog. This etymology seems far-fetched. It would seem likely that the word ‘tulisan’ travelled from Manila to Acapulco in the final years of the galleon trade. Teul, in the Estado de Durango, was on the west coast of the Mexican isthmus, north of Acapulco. En route, the word also entered Chamorro, as ‘tulisan’ rather than ‘tulis’. Chamorro is an Austronesian language and its speakers would have found the desinence -an familiar. Regardless of the path taken by the word tulisan in its trans-Pacific peregrination, what is important is that there was a specific historical phenomenon in the nineteenth century in both Mexico and the Philippines with which the word was associated: social banditry.

53 Hobsbawm, Bandits, p. 20.

54 Ellis, Hong Kong to Manilla, pp. 170–73, emphasis added.

55 Alvarez, Santiago V., The Katipunan and the Revolution: Memoirs of a general, with the original Tagalog text, trans. Carolina, Paula S. Malay (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992), p. 156Google Scholar.

56 Ibid., p. 98.

57 Paterno, Pedro A., El Pacto de Biyak-na-Bato (Manila: Imprenta ‘La República’, 1910), p. 72Google Scholar.

58 On Paterno, see the excellent Mojares, Resil B., Brains of the nation: Pedro Paterno, T.H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes and the production of modern knowledge (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Reyes, Portia L., ‘A “treasonous” history of Filipino historiography: The life and times of Pedro Paterno, 1858–1911’, South East Asia Research 14, 1 (2006): 87–122Google Scholar.

59 Ileto, ‘Rizal and the underside of Philippine history’, p. 39.

60 This makes even more embarrassing the strange New Age academic attempt to ‘revive’ this tradition. Consolacion Rustia Alaras, a professor of literature at the University of the Philippines, in her work Pamathalaan: Ang pagbubukas sa tipan ng Mahal na Ina (Quezon City: Bahay-Saliksikan ng Kasaysayan, 1988)Google Scholar based on Pasyon and Revolution, has advocated the revitalisation of the nation through sacred sojourns to ‘Tapusi’, in the steps of Bonifacio, who was a great spiritual leader. She leads these treks every year. These sojourns seem more reminiscent of the wide-eyed jaunts into the wild made by European tourists in the late nineteenth century than anything to do with Bonifacio.

61 Reynaldo C. Ileto, ‘History and criticism: The invention of heroes’, in Filipinos and their Revolution, p. 217; Ileto, Reynaldo C., ‘“Methodological” implications of a dispute on Andres Bonifacio’, Anuaryo/Annales 1, 3 (1982): 12Google Scholar; Ileto, Reynaldo C., ‘Bonifacio, the text, and the social scientist’, Philippine Sociological Review 32, 1–4 (1984): 27–8Google Scholar.

62 Ileto, ‘“Methodological” implications of a dispute on Andres Bonifacio’: 12.

63 Ronquillo, Carlos, Ilang talata tungkol sa Paghihimagsik nang 1896–97, ed. Medina, Isagani (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

64 ‘Palibhasa'y salitaan, ay nagagsihinto at inantabayanan ang pulutong ni Bonifacio na manggagaling sa bundok ng Tapusi na pawing barilan na siyang mangunguna sa buong pulutong; subalit nang dumating na ang taning na oras hanggang sa magliliwanag na ang araw ay di dumarating’ (ibid., p. 216).

65 ‘Ang sinasabing ito ni Bonifacio ay isang malaking kasinungalingan pagkat ni tao ni baril ay wala sa Tapusi at ni siya naman ay di nakarating doon. Ito'y isang kalupitang pandaya lamang sa tao! Ronquillo’ (ibid., p. 684); the footnote is Ronquillo's, as indicated by the initials CVR.

66 Salazar, Zeus A., Agosto 29–30, 1896: Ang pagsalakay ni Bonifacio sa Maynila (Quezon City: Miranda Bookstore, 1994), p. 96Google Scholar.

67 For all of these justifications, see ibid., pp. 108–11.

68 Ponce, Mariano, Cartas sobre La Revolución 1897 –1900 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1932), pp. 1–3Google Scholar.