
192 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
because their minds worked identically, and auto- 
matically produced the same reaction, but because both 
were subjected to common historical influences—both 
of them subjected, although at far-removed times and 
places, to the same movement of civilization. With 
two or three instances of such common origin estab- 
lished, it is certain that there must have been a strong 
tendency for many other elements of culture to be 
transmitted, and little doubt that time and again the © 
tendency became realized. 
From this broader point of view, then, Filipino eivili- 
zation, in fact all East Indian civilization, is far from 
being an entity in itself. It constitutes only one phase 
of the infinitely more ancient and complex civilization 
that has for ages prevailed from Europe to the middle 
of the Pacific Ocean, and which can be fully understood 
only as an interrelated composite. The underlying 
problem of Philippine culture is not what is distinctly 
native about it or how it came to be so, but what is 
Chinese and Indian, Polynesian and Arab and Greek 
and Roman in it; just as the cultures of all these groups 
cannot be fully comprehended as detached units, but if 
insight is desired, must be looked upon as mere frag- 
ments of a vast whole that immeasurably transcends 
any one of them. 
Mythology. Filipino myths and tales are a strange 
composite of Indian and primitive Malaysian constitu- 
ents. The Javanese and peninsular Malay have taken 
over Hindu epics and romances. The Filipino has not; 
but the ultimate Indian origin of much of the content of 
his traditions is undeniable. The permeating influence 
of the greater civilization long ago reached him, but not 
with its full brunt. It evidently filtered through in bits 
and at second or third hand. Before the more luxuriant 
products of Hindu imagination, native invention gave 
