to set, giving
general high prices [11] as his excuse. Yet, while the appraisal of
four reales for this book was high compared to the prevailing scale
in Spain, it was not high compared to prices allowed in Mexico. On
June 6, 1542 the Emperor had given the Casa de Cromberger, the first
printing-house in Mexico, permission [12] to sell books printed there
at seventeen maravedis a sheet, or exactly one half a real. If we
assume that, although the Doctrina had been printed page by page,
it was quarto in size and so appraised on the basis of eight pages
to a sheet, we find that the price per sheet comes to about fourteen
maravedis, or less than half a real. However, a contradiction occurs
between the letter of Dasmarinas and this copy of the Doctrina,
supported by the other 1593 document. On the verso of the title, Juan
de Cuellar, [13] the Governor's secretary and the logical person to
sign the official valuation, gives the price as two reales, and the
1593 account, while agreeing with the letter as far as the Chinese
Doctrina is concerned, also lists the price of the Tagalog Doctrina
as two reales. It is impossible to say what caused the discrepancy;
perhaps it was a decision on Dasmarinas' part to lower the cost,
notwithstanding inflationary values, in order to make the book more
readily available for the natives who were not economically as well
off as the Chinese, or it could be that after the letter had been
written it was noticed that the Chinese volume was larger than the
Tagalog one, and some adjustment made. In any event, the price of this
Doctrina was finally set at two reales, making it less than half the
price allowed in Mexico fifty years before.

The evidence of the two 1593 documents would seem conclusive with
regard to printing in 1593, but witnesses were not long in appearing
who stated something quite different. The earliest of these was
Pedro Chirino, [14] a Jesuit priest, who came to the Philippines with
Dasmarinas in 1590. He went back to Europe in 1602, and while there
had a history of the Philippines printed at Rome in 1604. In 1606 he
returned to the islands, where he died in 1635. He left unpublished
the manuscript of another and more detailed history, dated 1610,
which contains a most significant passage, where, after speaking of
various early writers in native languages, he continues:

"Those who printed first were; P. Fr. Juan de Villanueva of
the Order of St. Augustine [who printed