Abstract
THE American ethnological work in the Philippines is making steady progress. The first part of vol. iv. of the publications has just appeared. It deals with Moro history, law, and religion. Mindanao and Sulu were conquered in the Middle Ages by Mohammedans, who established a new form of government and introduced a written code of laws. Previous to this there was no written history, but thenceforth the datus or chiefs kept their genealogies, and these, brief though they be, are the only sources for Moro history. Prior to the American acquisition of the islands the tarsila or genealogies were rigidly kept out of sight of all foreigners and non-Mohammedans, but the Ethnological Survey has been successful in getting copies of many of them; these have now been translated, and are published in the volume before us. The Moros comprise various tribes, which differ as considerably as the Ilocano and the Igorot; the language is Malayan, but the characters employed are Arabic, which makes the work of transliteration no easy one. Some pages of the codes are published here in facsimile; the genealogies are re-produced in the ordinary form, and an exact translation of the genealogy and commentary is also given. There are introductory sections, but perhaps it would have beem well to add explanatory notes to the translations in addition.
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Studies of Native Tribes . Nature 73, 549 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/073549a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/073549a0