the kinnari …
a half-woman, half-bird hindu goddess…
but what makes this specific figurine special is that…

it is 3D (a one of its kind among the other kinnaris)…
it is made of gold…
it is made by Filipinos..
over a thousand years ago…

It is quite embedded in our consciousness, though some of us may deny feeling so, that the Philippines did not exist in importance before the Spaniards trampled our shores. The stretch of our history from then on made us seem more Hispanic-American than Asian as are our neighbors. We may have ethnic and tribal origins but even these do not collectively identify us as reminiscent of a civilization. it appears that we did not have one a long time ago. What is left for us as a consolation is that we are doing our best to build a contemporary identity however extraordinarily varied cultures might be at every island in our archepelago.

But we may be wrong. We may actually have had a civilization before the Spaniards came.

And realize that

if china is to jade
as india is to ivory
europe is to silver
what the philippines is to gold

click on:

going for the gold by jessica zafra
gold of ancestors: precolonial treasures in the philippines, ayala museum
gintong pamana, abs-cbn documentary

On a personal note, last night when I watched abs-cbn’s gintong pamana I was having goosebumps all the time. The magnitude of this archaeological discovery and its impact on our identity as Filipinos is so overwhelming my heart was pounding on my chest i was near to tears.

The first thing that came to my mind then was, “God, I want to go to the Ayala Museum!” I do hope that as this sure will invite scholars to pore once again into the precolonial history of Southeast Asia, may we be able to finally piece together and discover for ourselves that we do have a civilization, though not as brilliant as those of China and India, but certainly no less important in its contribution to the world.