FORGING PANDAY PIRA

By Joel P. Mallari

Pande Pira acknowledged as the first Filipino metallurgist, was said to have lived between 1483 and 1576. He had devised the cannons using a mold of clay and wax which Muslim leader Rajah Suliman used to protect Manila against the invading Spanish troops. This legendary metalsmith was later recruited to equip the walled city of Intramuros. He set up a foundry for cannons and other artillery for the defense of Manila, founded at the same time as Pampanga. He invented the lantaka, small cannon that could be rotated or maneuvered at any desired angle and direction during battle. He was also asked by the Adelantado Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to manufacture lantakas for galleons and warships as the Spaniards prepared to conquer more lands in the archipelago and throughout Southeast Asia. Prior to this, Pande Pira surprised Rajah Suliman when he made cannons using a mold of clay and wax.

Finding Panday Pira’s Place
Pande Pira was said to hail from the Barrio of Capalangan, Apalit. In some oral documentation he was said to be an immigrant from Borney (Borneo) to Apalit where he had relatives and later decided to settle for good. Other sources say the metalsmith came from Tarlac, while some old folks of Sta. Ana, Pampanga claim his residency to be their place. He was also said to be born in one of the islands in southern Philippines in 1483. Still another account puts the famed expert to have come from Barrio Bangcal of Guagua, Pampanga, and eventually migrated to Apalit after the pacification of the province by the Spanish authorities. Oral accounts among the old Pabustan clans of Pampanga and Tarlac traced their ancestry line with Pande Pira.
He trained the early Kapampangans to make the first iron farm implements and weapons which the Filipinos used to fight for their freedom from the Spaniards from the time Bambalito (a.k.a. Tarik Suliman) led a 4,000 strong warriors from Macabebe in the famous Battle of Bankusay of 1571, and the 1896-1898 revolution, like the “sanbartolome”, the favorite tulipas of Andres Bonifacio. His products, such as kampit (knife), palang (bolo for clearing thicket), panabud (bolo for chopping wood), sudsud (plowshare), talibung (scabbarb), sundang (dagger), lepia (moldboard), lantaka and kabungul (small cannons and culverins) were said to be of such superior quality. When he died in 1576, Spanish officials wrote their king that “no one among us can take his place.” But his craft spread to places like Taal and Balisong in Batangas; Meycuayan, Bulacan; Orion, Bataan; Calasiao, Pangasinan; Santa, Ilocos Sur; Cabagan, Isabela—places where the craft has survived even to this day.
















De Morga’s accounts
Accounts of how Pandapira or Pande [panday] Pira became a "cannon-maker" can be traced and credited to Rizal who published an annotated edition of Morga in 1890. Pandapira or Pande [panday] Pira is found in the 5th chapter of Antonio de Morga's "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas". This chapter relates the events during the term of Spanish Governor-General Santiago de Vera and makes reference to a foundry run by Pandapira:

"[Perez Dasmariñas] established a foundry for artillery in Manila where, owing to the lack of expert or master founders, few large pieces were made."

Thus it can be said that his products were of superior quality that he was recruited as official cannon-maker of Spain for the colony. Ambeth Ocampo notes that Jose Rizal took the opportunity to point out, in a footnote, that the indigenous foundry run by Panday Pira disappeared after the Spaniards settled in Manila. In another edition of De Morga’s work, by W.E. Retana in 1909, A.Ocampo noticed longer footnotes about Panday Pira that include transcriptions of 16th century archival documents from Seville that refute Rizal's nationalistic assertions that cannon-making was a flourishing indigenous industry. The documents from the colonial government in Manila requesting higher authorities in Mexico to send cannon-makers show that the Filipinos were unable to forge the thick European-style cannons. A letter from Governor Vera on June 26, 1587 to the viceroy in Mexico gives an account of his artillery and requests more founders and officers to manufacture cannons. According to Retana, the 26 large pieces alluded to by De Vera could have come from the Spanish ships or from those made by Robles, the Spanish master founder. This made Retana question the skills of Panday Pira and his sons as seen from De Vera's request. Moreover, Retana notes that Robles died before 1587, suggesting that his arrival in the Philippines would have been before that year which was to the time of Pande Pira. However, at that time the natives were already using lantaka and cabungul the much leaner type of cannons, which required different metal technology entirely different from that of the bigger European cannons.













Panday, palang and lantaka
The term "panday" in Java, Borneo, and the Philippines means "metal worker" or "ironsmith." In the Bocabulario of Fray Diego Bergaño, panday means “smithy, a worker on metals, like a silversmith”. Old tradition maintains that Panday Pira even went as far as Ilocos and Isabela in the north and Batangas in the south of Luzon in training the early villagers in the metal smith industry. His name “Pira” may have come from at least two possible origins: pilak, meaning “silver”; or pirah, a two-handed chopping and cutting tool, broad backed with deeply concave blade parang (like the Philippine-Indonesian barong and wedung). The parang is the Malay equivalent of the machete, or the Kapampangan palang, the big knife or bolo.

On the other hand, the swivel cannon known as the lantaka is not exclusive to the Philippines, but throughout Southeast Asia. In Indonesia and Malaysia, the majority of the cannons are Dutch & Portuguese, cast in Europe as well as in their colonies. Usually no longer than 2 meters, it may be as small as 2cm in length, although the average length is 120cm-160cm. It was used in obligatory salutes, ceremonial firings as well as a form of currency. A man’s wealth was determined by the number of cannons he owned. In general, the finer lantakas were cast by the Dutch colonials after 1650 in Malaysia and Indonesia. In fact, the finer detail, design and quality control prevailed as many were founded in Holland for export. A number of foundries were also located in Java and Sumatra, in particular, Batavia - the capital of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia. These guns were primarily cast as currency for trading spices. The Portuguese lantaka were usually cast in Malaysia and Borneo up to the early 1600's. They were not as refined as the Dutch but rather set the standard design which the Dutch would later replicate, embellishing with various designs.

The word lantaka may have been derived from the Malaysian dialect; it is generally applied to guns of this unique lantaka design. However in Kapampangan, there is a plant called balantakan which bears seed-fruits which are like white beads. In Lubao, these beads when dried were used as pellets for sulbatana (blow-pipe guns) even during the postwar period.

Southeast Asian Panday
Panday experts like Pande Pira most likely had a common ancestry, the Southeast Asians. The Southeast Asian metalsmithing was probably blended with the introduction of Portuguese and Dutch technologies. Pande Pira could have learned the merged culture of metal smithing which had made him the first recognized expert by the Spanish authorities who arrived in Manila, as early as 1511. The Portuguese already made Malacca a trading port - 60 years earlier before the foundation of Intramuros in Manila where he was called to manage a foundry of cannons for the Spanish authorities.

A long period of alliance between the Kapampangans and the Spaniards made the latter’s power stay on foot. The Spanish armada was always reinforced with Kapampangan soldiers and supplied with locally made artilleries of lantaka cannos fashioned after Panday Pira’s influences. Thus to date, one of the finest examples of these weaponry technology are those recently recovered from the wreck of San Diego, a Spanish flagship sank during a naval battle between the Kapampangan reinforced Spanish armada and the Dutch forces led by Olivier van Noort in the Manila Bay area. Archaeologically, most of the artillery finds exhibits Portuguese technology. Thus it is noteworthy to surmise that Panday Pira’s famous indigenous knowledge that time was already influenced heavily by European standard of metal working.