THE KINGDOM OF NAMAYAN

The ancient Kingdom of Namayan, alternately referred to as the Kingdom of Sapa, Maysapan or Nasapan after its capital which goes by those names, was one of three major Kingdoms that dominated the area around the upper portion of the Pasig River and the coast of Laguna Lake in the Philippines before the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the 1500s. Namayan is said to be the oldest of the three kingdoms, pre-dating the Kingdom of Tondo and Kingdom of Maynila. Formed by a confederation of barangays, it is said to have achieved its peak in 1175 A.D. Namayan's territory has been described bordering Manila Bay, the Pasig river, and Laguna Lake. The capital, Sapa, would later be called Maysapan, and then Santa Ana de Sapa, and is known today simply as Santa Ana, a district of the City of Manila. The natives brought their products to the capital of Namayan. Trading flourished during the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Merchants from the China, Moluccas, Java, Borneo, Sumatra, Bharat, Siam, and Cambodia came to trade with the natives. Merchants from these distant places traded colored blankets, dishes, wine jars, copper and tin, lances, knives, glass beads, cooking utensils, needles, porcelain, and cascades of silk satin which to the nobles was luxury itself. In exchange for these they sailed away with honey, coconut, livestock, cotton, palm wine, beetlenut, yellow wax, slaves, gold, pearls, and a kind of small sea shell known as sijueyes , which in Siam and elsewhere passed for money. In time the natives of Namayan held in highest esteem the eye-pleasing blue-and-white wares and the red-glazed porcelain and saw in them more fitting send-off gifts for the dear departed. Celadon jars of the Yuan or early Ming Dynasty, pendants from the Madjapahit Empire, and coins and other precious items were lowered into the graves as a reflection of the deep affection the living felt for the dead. According to Huertas, this kingdom was ruled by Lakan Tagkan or Takhan, and Lady Buan, whose primary residence was in Namayan or Sapa, the heart of the wide kingdom. The two had five children, the principal son Palaba, who sired Laboy, who in turn sired Calamayin, who then later sired a son later converted to the Catholic faith and named Martin. It was also said that Lakan Tagkan had another son, Pasay, by his Bornean slave-wife, to whom bequeathed the territory now known as Pasay. When the parish of Sta. Ana de Sapa was founded in 1578, the site was already ancient as a settlement, being the capital of a kingdom that claimed all the territories enclosed between Manila Bay and the Pasig, from Pasay to Makati. The First Franciscan missionaries to evangelize the region chose to build another settlement some distance away from the ancient town, which was called Namayan. The present church is thus on the site of that new settlement which is why there is some doubt that the graves that have been excavated there are pre-Hispanic.