The cultural treasure found in the early 1960’s in Manunggul Cave, Lipuun Point, Palawan is a secondary burial jar. The upper portion of the jar, as well as the cover is incised with curvilinear scroll designs and painted with natural iron or hematite. On top of the jar cover or lid is a boat with two human figures representing two souls on a voyage to the afterlife. The boatman is seated behind a figure whose hands are crossed on the chest. The position of the hands is a traditional Filipino practice observed when arranging the corpse.
The burial jar which is unrivaled in Southeast Asia and considered as the work of a master potter, signifies the belief of early Filipinos in life after death. It is dated to the late Neolithic Period, about 890-710 B.
Many epics around the Philippines would tell us of how souls go to the next life aboard boats, passing through the rivers and seas. The belief was very much connected with the Austronesia belief in the anito. Our ancestors believed that man is composed of the body, the life force called the ginhawa, and the kaluluwa (soul). The kaluluwa, after death, can return to earth to exist in nature and guide their descendants. This explained why the cover of the Manunggul jar featured three faces: the soul, the boat driver, and of the boat itself. For them, even things from nature have souls and lives of their own. That’s why our ancestors respected nature more than those who thought that it can be used for the ends of man.
Seeing the Manunggul jar once more, I was also reminded of the inventiveness of the early Filipinos as well as the concepts and values they hold most-- their concept of the soul, for example, are believed to exist only on good-natured and merciful people. The belief was that the soul gave life, mind, and will to a person and if this was what our ancestors valued and exemplified, then our nation was not only great, but lived by compassionate people.
However, the colonial masters in the past labeled our ancestors no good and even tried to erase our legacies and values, and despite the media today showing how shameful, miserable and poor our country is, from time to time there would be people who echo the same values that our ancestors lived by.
In the 1890s, the Katipunan movement of Andres Bonifacio, which spearheaded the Philippine Revolution, tried to revive the values of magandang kalooban. During the People Power Uprising in1986, we showed the world the values of pananampalataya, pakikipagkapwa, pakikiramay, pagiging masiyahin, bayanihan, pagiging mapayapa, and pagiging malikhain --values that were deeply rooted in the Filipino culture. It was the country's national hero, José Rizal, who once wrote, in his essay, Filipinas Dentro de Cien Años, (The Philippines Within a Century) that:
With the new men that will spring from her bosom and the remembrance of the past, she will perhaps enter openly the wide road of progress and all will work jointly to strengthen the mother country at home as well as abroad with the same enthusiasm with which a young man returns to cultivate his father’s farmland so long devastated and abandons due to the negligence of those who had alienated it. And free once more, like the bird that leaves his cage, like the flower that returns to the open air, they will discover their good old qualities which they are losing little by little and again become lovers of peace, gay, lively, smiling, hospitable, and fearless.
sources: http://www.artesdelasfilipinas.com/archives/50/the-manunggul-jar-as-a-vessel-of-history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manunggul_Jar
http://www.nationalmuseum.gov.ph/nationalmuseumbeta/Collections/Archaeo/Manunggul.html
http://www.bozar.be/dbfiles/pfile/201103/pfile128268_activity9135.jpg
