19/06/2020
Continuing the 's celebration of Dr. Jose Rizal's 159th birth anniversary, we would like to present another facet of our National Hero's interest: ethnography and anthropology.
Aside from being an artist, Dr. Rizal was also a keen anthropologist. In 1886, he went to Germany after his training in Paris under the ophthalmologist Louis de Wecker. In the course of his travel, he immersed himself in German scholarship where he met Adolf Meyer of the Royal Zoological and Anthropological-Ethnographic Museum in Dresden, the naturalist Fedor Jagor, the ethnologist Wilhelm Joest, and the scientist Rudolf Virchow. His encounters introduced him to German Anthropology and became the first Asian member of the Berlin Society of Anthropology in January 1887. He was nominated as a fellow of the Berlin Geographical Society where he presented a paper on the Tagalog Art of Poetry, to which he noted the uniqueness of the Tagalog rhyme bearing no likeness in form with the Spanish or European poetry construct.
When he was exiled in Dapitan from 1892 to 1896, he managed to finish the work on the Tagalog grammar that he intended to publish. He also planned to make a dictionary of the different languages and dialects in the Philippines with texts in English, Spanish, and French but in order to do so he needed his library which he left in Hong Kong. Among the exchange of letters between him and Czech scholar Ferdinand Blumentritt, one contained the information about Dr. Rizal’s research on Philippine witchcraft which he wanted to expand in topics relating to mysteries and superstitious beliefs of the Filipinos.
Dr. Rizal also busied himself in collecting different artifacts like the two pointed objects used by the Subanon for fishing, which were sent to Meyer in exchange for books. He also informed Meyer through a letter his desire to spend weeks with the Subanon and Moro people because he believed that there were a lot about them to be studied.
During his stay in Germany, Dr. Rizal donated textiles and other ethnographic materials to the Berlin Ethnological Museum in 1887, which were collected from different regions of the Philippines, most of which were from Mindanao. Some of the textiles include a piña barong, baro and shawl, a Bagobo attire, a Mandaya baby carrier, and a T’boli abaca tubeskirt. Other items he collected for Berlin and other institutions include a kalikut (bamboo tube used for mincing and mixing betel chewing concoction), pang-ani (harvesting knife), cuerda para atar el gallo (rope to tie roosters), cepillos de diente hechos de corteja (native toothbrush), salakot de plata y aeta (silver-lined head gear, which he noted to be his), and sulpakan (a traditional lighter, which he gave to Ferdinand Blumentritt). Some of the ethnographic materials are with the Royal Zoological Museum in Dresden.
This desire to assemble and donate collections may have been influenced by Dr. Rizal's visit in the Museum of Artillery in Paris in 1883, he noted how the costumes and weapons of the people of Borneo were displayed but found none representing the people of the Philippines. Thus, he contributed those ethnographic materials to important European museums not solely for scientific study but to emphasize that the different groups in the Philippines had highly sophisticated practices and were not primitives as generally regarded.
Text by RCA Robes and poster by MYR Frias / NMP Ethnology Division
©The National Museum of the Philippines (2020)
