THERE has not been, to date, an organized treatment of the religious beliefs specifically of pre-Christian Pampangans. Published materials dealing ex professo with the religion of the ancient inhabitants of the archipelago discuss other ethnics groups.

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About the Pampangans, they are silent. It is in order to break that silence that the following discussion is hereby initiated. [REMEMBER: I WROTE AND PUBLISHED THIS IN DECEMBER 1984. THAT WAS 24 YEARS AGO. – FR. EVS 2009]. A good starting point would be an excerpt from William Marsden where he mentions, among others, our two comparands. He says:

They use, both in Rejang and Passumah, the word dewa to express a superior, invisible class of beings; but each country acknowledges it to be of foreign derivation, and they suppose it Javanese.

Radin, of Madura, an island close to Java, who was well-conversant with the religious opinions of most nations, asserted to me that dewa was an original word of that country for a superior being, which the Javans of the interior believed in, but with regard to whom they used no ceremonies or forms of worship.

It has likewise a connection in sound with the names used to express a deity or some degree of superior being, by many other people of this region of the earth. The Battas, inhabitants of the northern end of Sumatra, whom I shall describe hereafter, use the word daibattah or daivattah; the Chingalese of Ceylon, dewiju; the Telingas of India, dai-wundu: the Biajus of Borneo, dewattah; the Pappuas of New Guinea, ‘wat; and the Pampangos of the Philippines, diuata.54

This last word (also spelled divata, devata, dewata) although used by many ethnic groups in the Visayas and Mindanao, was, according to Ferdinand Blumentritt, never used in Luzon.55 That was equivalent to saying that the word was never used by Pampangans. But Marsden says it was used by Pampangans. Whom should one believe?

Marsden lived during the eighteenth century; Blumentritt (the close friend of Rizal), during the nineteenth. Marsden resided for sometime in Sumatra, while Blumentritt lived in Germany and is not known to have left Europe for Asia.

Marsden was, therefore, closer to the ancient Pampangans than Blumentritt was, in place as well as in time, and thus, presumably, he knew them better.

Furthermore, while Marsden could have mentioned one of the ethnic groups in the Visayas and Mindanao, which were closer to Sumatra than Pampanga was, and where the term diuata was widely used, he preferred to specify the inhabitants of this province as an example of neighboring people using this term.

Finally, there are three Pampangan words which appear to have some affinity with the word dewata. One is dewakan, meaning “evil.” The other is watas, meaning “poet.” The third one, meaning “poem”, is kawatasan, which incidentally, reminds one of the Tagalog mawatasan (to understand).

This whole thing gives us the confidence to accept Marsden’s view that pre-Spanish Pampangans believed in “a deity or some degree of superior being” referred to by them as diuata.

There is now another question to ask: Specifically, how did the Pampangans conceive this superior being? One can start answering this by going over the description of the duata of other ancient Filipinos.

Among the Tirurays, diuata were fishes. Among the Visayans, they were idols. Among the Mandayas, they were idols representing their ancestors. Among the Tagbanuas, they were invisible beings or spirits.

Among the Bagobos and Manobos, they were simply spirits. Among the Tinitians, they were inferior spirits, good or bad. Among the Subanons, they were gods. The Muslims of Maguindanao used the word to mean “pagan gods or idols,” presumably to distinguish them from “Allah.”56

These various concepts offer a hint of what specific questions should be asked concerning what probably the ancient Pampangans believed about the diuata. Was the diuata something visible (like a graven image or a fish)? Was it something invisible (an ancestor or otherwise)? Was the visible being considered superior on its own account, or was it considered such because it was a representation or a residence of the invisible? Were the diuata all good, or all bad, or some good and some bad? If good, what was the meaning of “good”? If bad, what is the meaning of “bad”? In the first place, were there many duwata, or was there only one? If there were many, was there a supreme? How did the people relate themselves to the superior being or beings?

These questions will be answered not in the order they are given here, but in the order that the answers to them will spontaneously appear as the present linguistic meditation goes on.

The Bolaang-Mongondovers of Celebes (Sulawesi) call their highest god Ompu-duata.57 Duata is diuata. Ompu (which sounds like the Tagalog impo, the Ilokano Apo, and the Pampangan Apu) means “grandparent.”

The compound structure of the hyphenated term ompu-duata reminds one of the compound terms Apo Dios and Apung Ginu of present-day Ilokanos and Pampangans respectively. The word impo does not appear in the contemporary Tagalog term for “God”: Panginoong Diyos.58

END NOTES—54-Marsden, op. cit., p. 291.---55. W. E. Retana (ed.), Archivo del Bibliofilo Filipino, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1896), p. 880.—56. Ibid., pp. 378-9.—57. Ibid., p. 380.—58. This writer presumes that Panginoong Diyos is at present more often used than Poong Maykapal

[This column has a concluding portion. We will reserve it for some other time.]