The Laguna Copperplate Inscription PDF

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Analysis of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription...

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What does the document/artifact say? What was the provenance or source of the document/artifact? Who authored it (if applicable)? What was the context of the primary source’s production? What is its importance in our country’s history? The Laguna Copperplate Inscription (LCI)

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. We know very little about the Philippines prior to the Spanish conquest outside of written history. Aside from a few records in China that mention the islands, there have only been a few artifacts discovered in the Philippines with writing on them. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the name of an inscription written on an artifact that has great significance for the understanding of the history of the Philippines during the 10th century AD. Many scholars believed that the area was isolated from the rest of Southeast Asia. This artifact was discovered during dredging operations with a mechanical conveyor in the Lumbang River, which is located in the Province of Laguna. Antoon Postma, a Dutch specialist in ancient Philippine scripts and Mangyan writing who had lived in the Philippines for a long time, translated the text that became known as the Laguna Copperplate Inscription in 1990. (LCI). The inscription was written in Old Malay using the Kawi script, with influences from Sanskrit and Old Javanese as confirmed by Dr. Johann de Casparis, whose area of expertise was ancient Indonesia.Despite its resemblance to Javanese records, the copper plate had certain distinguishing characteristics that led scholars to conclude it was not from the island of Java. First, the LCI makes no mention of King Balitung, the king of Java at the moment. It was customary at the time to include the king's name in all official records. Second, the text was written in a language other than Sanskrit. Sanskrit, Old Javanese, Old Malay, and Old Tagalog were all included. Finally, the prose style was distinct. Characters were impressed into hot copper in Java at the time, but the characters on the Laguna plate seemed to have been hammered into cold copper. In the examination conducted by Postma, he learned that the inscription was about the debt of a man called Namwaran whose debts were dismissed due to a pardon from the Chief of Tondo. One kati and eight suwarna, or about 926.4 grams of gold, was his debt...