- "Long Live! Year of Siyaka 822, month of Waisaka, according to astronomy. The fourth day of the waning moon, Monday. On this occasion, Lady Angkatan, and her brother whose name is Buka, the children of the Honourable Namwaran, were awarded a document of complete pardon from the Commander in Chief of Tundun, represented by the Lord Minister of Pailah, Jayadewa.
"By this order, through the scribe, the Honourable Namwaran has been forgiven of all and is released from his debts and arrears of 1 katî and 8 suwarna before the Honourable Lord Minister of Puliran, Ka Sumuran by the authority of the Lord Minister of Pailah.
"Because of his faithful service as a subject of the Chief, the Honourable and widely renowned Lord Minister of Binwangan recognized all the living relatives of Namwaran who were claimed by the Chief of Dewata, represented by the Chief of Medang.
"Yes, therefore the living descendants of the Honourable Namwaran are forgiven, indeed, of any and all debts of the Honourable Namwaran to the Chief of Dewata.
"This, in any case, shall declare to whomever henceforth that on some future day should there be a man who claims that no release from the debt of the Honourable …"—1994 translation by Paul Morrow
The earliest known evidence for written literature in the history of the Philippines, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription is a sheet of copper metal with ancient writing discovered in the province of Laguna in 1989. It was found by a dredger working near the mouth of the Lumbang River emptying out into Laguna de Bay.
From there the plate made its way to the National Museum of the Philippines, where the Dutch anthropologist Antoon Postma recognised the writing on the plate as being akin to Kawi, an ancient Javanese script. This allowed him to translate the text on the plate, the findings of which he published in 1992. One of the findings was that—luckily—it was very explicitly dated to the 21st of April, 900 C.E.. The text was hammered out onto the copper sheet in Old Kawi script, but the language appears to be in Old Malay, with substantial elements of Sanskrit, Old Javanese and Old Tagalog mixed in, making the entirety sound like an early case of code-switching.
The document is essentially a royal debt pardon, issued by the Kingdom of Tondo ("Tundun"), officially releasing the heirs of the late Namwaran from a debt in gold amounting to a rough equivalent of 926 grams.
To this day, the copperplate remains as part of the permanent exhibit of the National Museum of Anthropology
, a subdivision of the National Museum Complex in the City of Manila.
Relevant Tropes:
- Even Evil Has Standards / Everyone Has Standards: There is no context in the plate to suggest that the ruler of Tondo could be considered anything like "evil", but at least he doesn't force Namwaran's children to pay their now dead father's debts.
- Evil Debt Collector: Averted with the chief of Tondo, who magnanimously forgives the late Namwaran's debts by not passing them on to his family, although the plate doesn't specify how Namwaran got into debt in the first place (and whether his creditors didn't try to pursue him in life).
- The Good Kingdom: Tondo, based on the north bank of the Pasig River delta, where it empties into Manila Bay. Today it survives as a mere electoral district of the city of Manilanote —and in recent history has been oft-stereotyped as both a poverty-stricken Wretched Hive and a notorious Gangster Land to boot. How the Mighty Have Fallen, indeed.
- Still, Tondo was by no means the most powerful entity mentioned by name, as its leader invokes the authority of successively higher rulers across the region, suspected either to be elsewhere in Luzon, the Visayas to the south, or as far south as Java and Medang.
- The Low Middle Ages: Quite fortunately, the copperplate was inscribed with a very specific date, as though it were time-stamped. The date reads: "Year 822 of the Shaka Era, month of Waisakha, the fourth day of the waning moon, Monday." In the modern Gregorian calendar this corresponds to the 21st of April, 900 C.E., making this trope the equivalent time period (in Europe and the Arab/Islamic world).
- Mundane Made Awesome: Ancient documents like this are often expected to contain things like epic poetry or references to mythology, religion or high culture, but the LCI is basically just a government debt-cancellation notice.
- No Ending: The plate is cut off where it decrees some sort of warning against anyone who would try to contest the pardon, and the implied penalty (whether a legal penalty or threat of supernatural judgement) is unknown. This implies that other copperplates were used to write the whole document, but these have never been found.
- Older Than Print: Created at the start of the 10th century, the plate is older than either Gutenberg's printing press (1400s) or its moveable-type antecedents in China (1100s) or Korea (1300s).
- Pet the Dog: The Tondo chieftain's act of cancelling Namwaran's unpaid debts so his heirs need not pay them.
- Posthumous Character: Namwaran. The plate releases his children from the debt he incurred in his lifetime.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The chief of Tondo comes off as this with his act of debt forgiveness, especially if Namwaran's family would have likely found it difficult to pay off his debts otherwise.
