[4]
in 1539 was a Doctrina in Mexican and Spanish. Recent research has
shown that the second book printed by the pioneer Jesuit press at Goa,
in India, in 1557 was St. Francis Xavier's _Doutrina Christao_ [5]
in the Malay language, of which also no copy has yet been located. But
there are copies of the first book to come from a South American press,
another Doctrina [6] printed in the native and Spanish languages at
Lima in 1584. So the choice of this book as the first to be printed
at Manila follows a widespread precedent.

We have then a book, the Doctrina Christiana, in Spanish and Tagalog,
corrected by priests of more than one order--and this is important
in tracing the authorship of the work--and printed by the xylographic
method with license at Manila at the Dominican Church of San Gabriel
in 1593. So much we get from the title, and in itself it is a fairly
complete story, but from the date of its issue until the present time
that very fundamental information has not been completely recorded.

THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY

In tracing our clues down through the years, we find at the very
beginning the most valuable evidence which has been uncovered, short
of the book itself. From Manila on June 20, 1593, the Governor of the
Philippines, Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, wrote a letter to Philip II of
Spain in which he said:

"Sire, in the name of Your Majesty, I have for this once,
because of the existing great need, granted a license for the
printing of the Doctrinas Christianas, herewith enclosed--one
in the Tagalog language, which is the native and best of these
islands, and the other in Chinese--from which I hope great
benefits will result in the conversion and instruction of the
peoples of both nations; and because the lands of the Indies
are on a larger scale in everything and things more expensive,
I have set the price of them at four reales a piece, until Your
Majesty is pleased to decree in full what is to be done." [7]

This states unequivocally that two books were printed at Manila some
time before June 20, 1593, one of which was the Doctrina in Tagalog,
and the other the same work in Chinese. Although we are chiefly
concerned here with the former, the fact that they were produced at
about the same time and probably at the same place makes it necessary
to trace the history of both in order to reconstruct the circumstances
surrounding the production of the on