Pre-colonial Filipino literary forms were spoken, sung, or chanted for the purpose of entertaining, promoting community values, accompanying rituals, or imparting wisdom. These come in the form of riddles, poems, lullabies, courtship songs, lamentations and orgies.
At the same time, epic poems such as "Ifugao Hudud", "Sinila Ward of Panay", and "Darangan of the Maranao" were all passed down orally until the 20th century. Get it in writing.
Surviving written documents from the pre-colonial era are limited to Laguna copper plate inscriptions as legal texts, Butuan ivory seals, and inscriptions on ceremonial jars. Meanwhile, the Hanunomangyan people continued to write poems called "ambahan" on bamboo using indigenous scripts. Arguably, pre-colonial literature can also be extended to the genealogy or taxila of *** nobles. These are written in ***.
Secondary Spanish sources refer to baybayin, an indigenous writing system used by Tagalog-speaking societies until the early 1700s. Baybayin is used for note-taking, person-to-person letters, short poems, and legal documents. Parallel to this was the increasing use of Jawi in trading ports such as Manila. Jawi is a Malay writing system based on the Malay language that may have been used to spread Christian teachings.
Early modern Philippine literature began to take shape in the 16th and 17th centuries in the form of Catholic prayers, novenas, and devotional songs. At the same time, the rise of a wealthy middle class in the 1800s led to the development of secular literature.