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Mait (also spelled Maidh, Ma'I, Mai, Ma-yi, or Mayi; Baybayin: ; Hanunoo script: ; Hokkien ; Mandarin Chinese ), was a medieval sovereign state located in what is now the Philippines.
Its existence was first documented in 971 in the Song dynasty documents known as the History of Song, and it was also mentioned in the 10th-century records of the Bruneian Empire. Based on these and other mentions until the early 14th century, contemporary scholars believe Ma-i was located either in Bay, Laguna, or on the island of Mindoro.
Research by Fay Cooper Cole for the Field Museum in Chicago in 1912 showed that the ancient name of Mindoro was Mait. Mindoro's indigenous groups are called , and to this day, the Mangyans call the lowlands of Bulalacao in Oriental Mindoro Mait. For most of the 20th century, historians generally accepted the idea that Mindoro was the political center of the ancient Philippine polity. However, a 2005 study by Chinese Filipino historian Go Bon Juan suggested that the historical descriptions better match Bay, Laguna (pronounced Ba-i), which is written similarly to Ma-i in "Chinese orthography" according to Go Bon Juan's understanding. Although in Hokkien Chinese, the literary reading for the first character, , is "mâ", while the vernacular reading could also be pronounced and read as "bâ" or "môa" but the second character, , has the literary reading of "i̍t", while a vernacular reading of "ia̍k" (Quanzhou) or "e̍k" (Amoy dialect & Zhangzhou) or "ia̍t" (Amoy).
In the 1349 document Daoyi Zhilüe, it is noted that the settlement of Ma-i consisted of houses arranged on the two banks of a stream. It also noted that "its mountain range is flat and broad", "the fields are fertile," and "the climate is rather hot".
For many years, scholars believed that Ma-i was likely to have been on the island of Mindoro within the municipality of Bulalacao, as there is an old settlement there named Mait. However, this has been questioned on the basis of physical evidence and an analysis of Chinese orthography. Recent scholarship casts doubt on this theory, arguing that historical descriptions better match Bay, Laguna (whose name is pronounced either Ba-eh or Ba-i), which once occupied a large territory on the eastern coasts of Laguna de Bay.
Both sites have names that sound similar to Ma-i. The pre-colonial name of Mindoro was "Ma-it", whereas historical variants of the name of Bay, Laguna include "Bae", "Bai", and "Vahi".
From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, scholars such as Ferdinand Blumentritt and Dr. Fletcher Gardener found out that the Hampangan, otherwise known as the Mangyan of southern Mindoro, called the island as Mait or Mayit. This was corroborated by another research by Fay Cooper Cole for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1912, when he too discovered that Mindoro was once called Mait.
To add further, while the Hanunoo Mangyans were considered by the Spaniards and other European writers as "half savages" with low levels of culture, yet Hanunoo were revealed to have had a script of their own. Blumentritt himself, who commented on Dr. Adolf Bernhard Meyer and Dr. A. Schadenberg's work, expressed:
"From the materials given . . . . we can only see that the Mangyans are on a very low level of culture and civilization. One was therefore very little prepared to discover a script in such a people."Historian William Henry Scott in 1984 wrote that "there was no reason to doubt that Ma-i or "Ma-yit" is Mindoro, for Mait was the old name of the island when the Spaniards arrived, and that name is still known to its hill tribes and fishermen", referring mainly to fishermen from Aklan. Scott places the location of Ma-i specifically around the Mauhaw River in Bulalacao.
While contested in contemporary scholarship by historians such as Go Bon Juan and Zeus Salazar, textbooks containing this assumption are still widely in use.
In 2004, Chinese Filipino scholar Go Bon Juan questioned this common belief, citing the lack of physical evidence for a large, prosperous settlement on the island of Mindoro. He suggested that Chinese orthography equally allows for the possibility that Ma-i became Bay, Laguna, whose name is pronounced "" (IPA: /bɐʔˈɛ/) by locals. He notes that Bay is also a match for the physical characteristics of Ma-i, and that numerous artifacts found in the area (including the nearby towns of Victoria, Pila and Lumban, Laguna) suggest the presence of a prosperous pre-colonial settlement. Grace P. Odal-Devora notes that this region was the place of the taga-ilaya, whereas the taga-laud who settled downstream on the banks of the Pasig River.
Go suggests that Ma-i, as Ba-e, became less important as the riverine settlements of Namayan, Tondo, and Maynila rose to power, but also noted that it still nonetheless served as the capital for the province of Laguna de Bay, which would later be split into the provinces of Laguna Province and Morong (modern Rizal Province, which included coastal towns now part of the Metro Manila).
The possible readings of in Hokkien and Mandarin Chinese:
Ma-i is first mentioned in Volume 186 of the official history of the Song dynasty, which lists Ma-i among the southern sea nations with whom Chinese merchants traded in the year 971 AD (the fourth year of Kai Bao of Song). The document describes the government's efforts to regulate and tax this "luxurious" trade. Historian William Henry Scott describes this entry as "the first positive reference to political states in or near the Philippines."
Ma-i could be possibly mentioned earlier since the Arabic author Al Ya'akubi, writing in 800, recorded that the kingdom of Musa (Muja, which is old Brunei) was in alliance with the kingdom of Mayd (Ma-i), against the Chinese Empire, which they waged war against. Brunei Rediscovered: A Survey of Early Times By Robert Nicholl p. 38 citing Ferrand. Relations. Page 344.
In 1980, historian Robert Nicholl argued that the nation of "Maidh", referred to in the 10th-century records of the Sultanate of Brunei, refers to Ma-i, although Scott does not recognize this as a positive identification.
Later references to Ma-i, all describing trade, include:
Because all of these are Chinese imperial documents, historiography have to consider the Sinocentrism nature of the sources whenever conducting their analysis.
As noted by Zandro Vasquez Villanueva in 2009:
The Zhu Fan Zhi further describes the process of the transactions as follows:
Similarly, the Daoyi Zhilüe says that:
Contemporary historiographers do not draw conclusions about the religion of Ma-i's residents based on this text. In his book Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History, Scott notes that a literal translation of the Zhu Fan Zhi text describes "metal buddhas." However, he and Chinese Scholar I-hsiung Ju translated this in 1968 as "metal images" to correct for the linguistic bias of the text.
In his seminal 1984 book Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History, Scott particularly questioned whether the presence of these images reflected actual beliefs by the people of Ma-i:
Earlier writers, including José Rizal and Ferdinand Blumentritt, accepted the "buddhist connection" more readily. For example, in supporting Blumentritt's proposition that Ma-i was somewhere on Luzon Island, Rizal cites the use of the word "Buddhas" by the Zhu Fan Zhi as evidence:
Precluded from finding any Buddhist artifacts in Ma-i, Henry Otley Beyer, an American archaeologist, was able to excavate from Palawan (an island southwest of Mindoro that is presumably Ma-i) a clay medallion of a Buddhist Bodhisattva. The presence of this Buddhist religious item, along with the incorporation of Tantric philosophical and religious ideals in Tagalog vocabulary, may be proofs that indeed Ma-i was practicing Buddhism before the advent of Islam.
notes that Ma-i's relationship with Song and Yuan Dynasty was defined by trade, not by diplomacy:
The nature of Ma-i's relationship with Brunei is less clear because of scant documentation, but there is no indication of any relationship other than possible trade. However, in the 1300s the Chinese annals, Nanhai zhi, reported that Brunei had invaded or administered the Philippine kingdoms of Butuan, Sulu and Ma-i as well, which would regain their independence at a later date. Quanzhou to the Sulu Zone and beyond: Questions Related to the Early Fourteenth Century By: Roderich Ptak. Page 280
Contemporary scholars believe that these are the Baipuyan (Babuyan Islands), Bajinong (Busuanga), Liyin (Lingayen) and Lihan (present day Malolos City). Malolos is a coastal town and one of the ancient settlement around Manila Bay near Tondo.
While the phrase "subordinates" has sometimes been interpreted to mean that these places are territories of Ma-I, Scott clarifies that:
Whatever happened to Ma-i between the last time it was mentioned by documents at the end of the Yuan Dynasty in the 14th century and the beginning of Spanish conquest in the 1570s, both Mindoro and Bay were eventually absorbed into the Philippine Islands under the Spanish Empire.
| implied by the text's description as a "country", which in the Chinese worldview of the time should be ruled by a king |
| presumably a different ruler from the one described in the Zhu Fan Zhi |
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