History of Pila

In the ancient Tagalog Alphabet (symbol at the left-bottom of this page), stands for Pila, signifying  “stone” or “soil.” Thus, pila-pila or pilapil, for short, is a mixture of soil and stones, which form the bunds of ricefields still gracing many a Philippine landscape. (1) In particular, it is recorded that the town had been named for the soft stone (piedra blanda), which “formed its entire floor” when the Spaniards arrived. They used these materials to build the first edifices in the walled city of Manila. (San Buenaventura 1613: 482, 574, 686; San Antonio c1624: 208 and Chirino in Blair and Robertson 1903-1909, 12: 242-244). Stones and soil are apt symbols of the saga of Pila. Blessed by the bounty of nature with a rich soil, Pileños have trodden through rocky, muddy roads set up by the implacable aspects of nature as well as of man down through the centuries.

As early as the Iron age, at the turn of the first to the second millennium A.D., or a little earlier, clay pottery of handsome design and proportion was being fashioned in local kilns. [  ] These were discovered from 1967 to 1968 by archaeologists (Tenazas n.d.) in Pinagbayanan, the name which means “where the town used to be located.” (2)

The oldest written record in Philippine history, a copper plate bearing the Saka-year 822 (900 A.D.), was recently found in nearby Lumbang, Laguna (Postma 1991). It mentions the town of “Pailah” twice and “puliran”, which possibly refer, respectively, to Pila and Pulilan. The latter was the old Tagalog term for “lake” (“laguna” in Spanish), which was anciently taken to mean the western portion of the lake where Pila lies. The ruler of Pailah was Jayadewa who represented the “Chief and Commander of Tundun (Tondo)” in the transaction involving acquittal of a debt in gold. Jayadewa, in turn, appointed another nobleman, Ganasakti, as his proxy. Lawa ng Bae, which the Spaniards later called Laguna de Bay, is the largest fresh water lake (9,000 hectares) not only in the Philippines but also in Asia. Its eastern portion was called Silangan by the ancient Tagalogs. (Some scholars believe that the copper plate inscription refers instead to barangays in Bulacan Province rather than in Laguna. However, the places referred to in Bulacan are nowhere as significant in Philippine prehistory as those in Laguna.) (3)