https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5758-0307
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ABSTRACT
No image of precolonial Visayans is as emblematic as the tattooed Pintados. But this imagery is almost always coupled with notions of warriorship and male valour in scholarly and popular discourses about the early Visayas. Comparing what we know about Visayan tattooing with customary tattooing in southern Mindanao and other tattooing traditions in the Austronesian-speaking world has opened methodological queries on how to re-read the historical materials used as basis for portraying tattooing as the domain of warriorship and masculinity. Such associations should not be treated as historical or ethnographic givens, as they greatly narrow our understanding of tattooing as a social practice. A more cautious re-evaluation of Visayan tattooing shows that it was a more broadly accessible custom used to various degrees with many significations. Specifically, we revisit the dimensions of tattooing as rite of passage, as protection, and for beauty, proposing anthropologically grounded and elaborated readings for each as starting points for more socially and culturally embedded interpretations of early Visayan tattooing.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Dr. Cristina Martinez-Juan of Philippine Studies at SOAS for helping shepherd this article from conference presentation to publication, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This article uses the term ‘early Visayan tattooing’ to pertain to tattooing practices observed in the Central Philippine islands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, only retaining ‘Pintados’ when discussing or quoting a source that used this term. We chose to foreground the ‘Visayas area’ without going into sub-area distinctions (Warays, Cebuanos, Hiligaynons, etc.) because our objective is to express a particular heuristic reading with a level of genericness that future studies can utilize, refute or qualify at sub-Visayan, finer-grained levels.
2 Originally in Filipino: ‘Bilang mga lingkod-bayan sa kanilang mga kinaroroonang pulong tahanan at lipunan … katungkulan nila bilang mga nabatukang hangaway … na panatilihin ang buhay, ginhawa, at dangal ng kanilang bayan sa pamamagitan ng gawaing pangangayaw at pangungubat (pakikidigma)’.
3 For example, between comparing ‘to draw a list of distinct features so as to typify a demarcated field’ and comparing ‘to bring to light recurrent features indicative of a family likeness’ (De Josselin de Jong Citation1985, 199).
4 The texts that we interrogate and re-read here are those that have usually been cited by scholars who have focused on early Visayan tattooing. We believe that these texts are ample samplers to highlight our major interpretive directions; further expansion of the historical database can be left to future scholars who may wish to engage the heuristics offered in this paper.
5 These, except Sanchez’s dictionary, all have standard English translations. Sanchez’s lexicographic entry on the Visayan category ngilab (as mangilab-ngilab) is used for its short descriptive phrase mentioning tattooing.
6 The 2007, two-volume French translation of Pigafetta’s work renders the crucial phrase to suggest that the reference is more possibly to ‘various kinds/sorts’ of ‘fire’ figures: ‘(he) had his face painted with fire in various kinds’ (avait le visage peint avec le feu en diverses sortes) (De Castro Citation2007, 149).
7 Marco (Citation2001, 59), citing Arens (Citation1957), mentions traditional healers called tambalan curing illnesses by using anting-anting, which could also take the form of tattoos. But Marco provides no further information, and Arens’s article itself says nothing about tattooing.
8 In the original Filipino and English: ‘Ang problema, paano ka lalaban kung sobrang dami mong anting-anting? So ang dating, nakikipaglaban ka, siniswish mo yung kampilan mo, sumasama lahat ng abubot mo’.
9 Ragragio (Citation2021a) provides a fuller description of the Ologasi and a preliminary discussion about how what we call ‘cosmology’ and ‘spirituality’ can be categorized as embodied expressions of a common philosophical horizon of marking what is potentially dangerous or ‘the unknown’.
10 We closely re-read the entire Section XIX of this epic (where the quoted lines were taken), and, with the assistance of our language consultant Jenelyn Baguio, re-translated this section to better capture the sense of each of the Manobo terms.
11 In many Philippine languages, the term for masculine physical attractiveness is guapo, borrowed from Spanish. Could traditional terms for physical attractiveness (such as maroyow and maganda) actually be gender-neutral, and might gendered distinctions only have begun to be considered important after the beginning of colonialism? This could be a fruitful topic for further study.
12 For example, the concept of ambaru in Kalinga (Salvador-Amores Citation2002, 125).