the Ambahan

The ambahan is the traditional poetry of the Hanunuo Mangyans of Oriental Mindoro. Such an oral tradition is commonplace among indigenous cultural groups but the ambahan has remained in existence today chiefly because it is etched on bamboo tubes using ancient Southeast Asian, pre-colonial script called surat Mangyan. The syllabic script and the ambahan poetry have complemented each other, contributing to their continued existence today. The ambahan is composed of seven-syllable metric lines and it can run to more than four lines. It is usually chanted, like many forms of oral literature, and owned by no one but the community. The author of the text is not a single individual but the whole community, in whose womb the words of the poem sprang. The ambahan usually teaches lessons about life and love. It is recited by parents to educate their children, by young people to express their love, by the old to impart their experiences, and by the community in its tribal ceremonies. Using daggers, the ambahan is carved onto pieces of bamboo or barks of trees. The Hanunuo Mangyan script is one of the three forms of baybayin (alphabet) that is still in use today.  The ambahans are very common among the Hanunuo-Mangyans. About thirty percent of the Hanunuo-Mangyans do not read or write the pre-Spanish Hanunuo-Mangyan script, but it would be rare indeed for a Mangyan not to know the art of the ambahan.