Download or read book Ancient Beliefs and Customs of the Tagalogs written by Jean-Paul G. POTET and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-11-18 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a provisional essay, followed by a vocabulary and an index, on the Tagalogs' world view in the Sixteenth Century. It is mainly based on the entries of the earliest dictionaries of the Tagalog language. These were written by Spanish lexicographers about half-a-century after the conquest of the Philippines (Cebu 1565, Manila 1571). Additional data are drawn from Spanish chronicles. Many of the recorded beliefs and customs were already obsolete at the turn of the Seventeenth Century. Some are extremely surprising, starting from the primeval myth according to which the world had no solid land at its beginning, but only two fluids, water and air.