During the period of the south Indian Pallava dynasty and
the north Indian Gupta Empire Indian culture spread to Southeast Asia and the
Philippines which led to the establishment of Indianized kingdoms. The end of Philippine
prehistory is 900. The date inscribed in the oldest Philippine document found
so far, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription. From the details of the document,
written in Kawi script, the bearer of a debt, Namwaran, along with his children
Lady Angkatan and Bukah, are cleared of a debt by the ruler of Tondo. From the
various Sanskrit terms and titles seen in the document, the culture and society
of Manila Bay was that of a Hindu–Old Malay amalgamation, similar to the
cultures of Java, Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra at the time. There are no
other significant documents from this period of pre-Hispanic Philippine society
and culture until the Doctrina Christiana of the late 16th century, written at
the start of the Spanish period in both native Baybayin script and Spanish.
Other artifacts with Kawi script and baybayin were found, such as an Ivory seal
from Butuan dated to the early 11th century and the Calatagan pot with baybayin
inscription, dated to the 13th century.
In the years leading up to 1000, there were already several
maritime societies existing in the islands but there was no unifying political
state encompassing the entire Philippine archipelago. Instead, the region was
dotted by numerous semi-autonomous barangays (settlements ranging in size from
villages to city-states) under the sovereignty of competing thalassocracies
ruled by datus, rajahs or sultans or by upland agricultural societies ruled by
"petty plutocrats". States such as the Kingdom of Maynila, the Kingdom
of Taytay in Palawan (mentioned by Pigafetta to be where they resupplied when
the remaining ships escaped Cebu after Magellan was slain), the Chieftaincy of
Coron Island ruled by fierce warriors called Tagbanua as reported by Spanish
missionaries mentioned by Nilo S. Ocampo, Namayan, the Dynasty of Tondo, the
Confederation of Madyaas, the rajahnates of Butuan and Cebu and the sultanates
of Maguindanao and Sulu existed alongside the highland societies of the Ifugao
and Mangyan. Some of these regions were part of the Malayan empires of
Srivijaya, Majapahit and Brunei.
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