202 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
across the China Sea; and that another Sanskrit ele- 
ment penetrated Mindanao and the Bisayan islands by 
way of Borneo. Subsequently the two sections are 
likely to have transmitted to each other part of the 
cultural and linguistic elements which each had re- 
ceived separately. Since words persist so tenaciously, 
if at all, that their original sources can usually be 
determined with certainty, whereas customs and ideas 
are constantly made over until their origin becomes 
much more doubtful, the prosecution of accurate phil- 
ological study in the Philippines promises to throw 
much light on the exact history of Indian and East 
Indian contacts with the archipelago. 
How far linguistic analysis may go in unravelling 
history can be illustrated from a quotation from Pardo 
de Tavera. The words which Tagalog borrowed from 
Sanskrit he says, ‘‘are those which signify intellectual 
acts, moral conceptions, emotions, superstitions, names 
of deities, of planets, of numerals of high number, 
of botany, of war and its results and conclusions, and 
finally of titles and dignities, some animals, instru- 
ments of industry, and the names of money.” From 
this he goes on to argue that Hindus must have 
been present in the Philippines in person, and at 
least among the Tagalog filled the principal positions 
of power and prestige: ‘‘the warfare, religion, liter- 
ature, industry, and agriculture were at one time in 
the hands of the Hindus.’ This is perhaps an exag-— 
gerated inference. East Indians saturated with Hindu 
civilization could just as well have produced the same 
effects in the Philippines. But it is clear that the 
effects occurred; and it will be only a matter of more 
patient and critical study to trace them with consid- 
erable accuracy, and perhaps even determine their period » 
quite closely. 

