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Barang king banga: A Visayan language reading of the Calatagan pot inscription (CPI)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2011

Ramon G. Guillermo  and
Myfel Joseph D. Paluga
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Abstract

The Calatagan pot, with an inscription around its rim, is one of the very few existing archeological evidences of ancient writing in the Philippines. It was discovered in Calatagan, Batangas and bought by the Philippine National Museum in 1961. Having since eluded decipherment, the present paper proposes a strategy which combines traditional palaeographic techniques and cryptographic methods. By means of this procedure, a tentative decipherment of the inscription is proposed here. The preliminary results show that the inscription is some kind of ancient spell or charm written in a central Philippine language with a Javanese admixture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 121 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2011

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References

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