Negros

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The following account comes from the Pavon manuscript, attributed to José María Pavón y Araguro, but which was later exposed as a forgery perpetrated by José E. Marco. Most likely this story is a complete fabrication.

In very remote times, whatever was asked for appeared, and whatever was sought was found. God thought it good to send a great punishment on men, in the form of a great internal war in which many men were killed. After the war a river overflowed its banks, covering thousands more men.

A short fat man named Aropayang judged the dead. His house, on a high mountain, was a tree with twelve branches. Each branch had four smaller branches, and each small branch had 30 leaves. Below was a large field of bamboos with many joints. Each joint represented one day in the life of men, and a red monkey took away one joint every day.

Alarmed over the misfortune, Aropayang sent out two of his vassals, a dove and a crow, to examine and count the dead. The dove returned after several days and gave a full account of the disaster, showing the stains of blood on his feet as evidence of his diligence. Aropayang said, "As a reward for your faithfulness, you shall always preserve that sign of humility and obedience on your feet."

The crow returned much later. When it could give neither account nor proof of what it said, Aropayang said to it, "You have been eating the eyes of the dead. You shall pass your life pecking at dead flesh." He hurled his inkwell at the crow, so that the crow was made black and was lamed in one foot. And crows, formerly white, have been black and lame since then.

[Regarding the manuscript] William Henry Scott, Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1984), 117-123, 134; Paul Morrow, "Kalantiaw, the Hoax," http://www.mts.net/~pmorrow/kalant_e.htm, accessed 1/10/2008.

[The manuscript itself] Pavón, José María, The Robertson Translations of the Pavon Manuscripts of 1838-1839, part 3: "The ancient legends of the island of Negros" ([Chicago] Philippine Studies Program, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Chicago, [1957]), 27-28.