the ground and consumed the whole of Binondo just
outside the walls, must have played untold havoc upon the records of
the early missionaries. Perhaps the only copies of early Philippine
books which exist today, unchronided and forgotten, are those which
were sent to Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and may
now be lying uncatalogued in some library there.

One copy of this Doctrina was sent to Philip II by the Governor of
the Philippines in 1593; and in 1785 a Jesuit philologist, Hervas y
Panduro, printed Tagalog texts from a then extant copy. Yet, since
that time no example is recorded as having been seen by bibliographer
or historian. The provenance of the present one is but imperfectly
known. In the spring of 1946 William H. Schab, a New York dealer,
was in Paris, and heard through a friend of the existence of a 1593
Manila book. He expressed such incredulity at this information that his
friend, feeling his integrity impugned, telephoned the owner then and
there, and confirmed the unbelievable "1593." Delighted and enthused,
Schab arranged to meet him, found that he was a Paris bookseller and
collector who specialized in Pacific imprints and was fully aware of
the importance of the volume, and induced him to sell the precious
Doctrina. He brought it back with him to the United States and offered
it to Lessing J. Rosenwald, who promptly purchased it and presented it
to the Library of Congress. Where the book had been before it reached
Paris we do not know. Perhaps it is the very copy sent to Philip II,
perhaps the copy from which Hervas got his text. Indeed, it may
have been churned to the surface by the late Civil War in Spain,
and sent from there to France. In the course of years from similar
sources may come other books to throw more light upon the only too
poorly documented history of the establishment of printing in the
Philippine Islands.

THE PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Let us first examine the book as it appears before us. The title-page
reads:

Doctrina Christiana, en
lengua espanola ytagala, cor
regida por los Religiosos de las
ordenes Impressa con licencia, en
S. gabriel. de la orden de. S. Domigo
En Manila. 1593

The book, printed in Gothic letters and Tagalog [1] characters on
paper made from the paper mulberry, now browned and brittle with age,
consists of thirty-eight leaves, comprising a title-page as above