Researchers unravel aborigine manuscripts

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on February 15, 2006. It reports that historians and linguists from the Academia Sinica have rescued from extinction the language of one of Taiwan's aboriginal peoples, and recently restored it to its rightful place in history. The aboriginal people in focus are the Siraya, who were the original inhabitants of Taiwan's southwest plains that are today's Tainan and Kaohsiung Counties.

Taiwan was occupied by the Dutch from 1624 to 1662. They built the Fort Zeelandia in today's Tainan City, as an administrative post and a "commercial operations center" that extended trading activities beyond Taiwan and throughout Southeast Asia. The Siraya people traded with the Dutch for goods from Europe and other parts of Asia. However, according to historians from the Academia Sinica, one of the most important gifts the Dutch gave to the Siraya people was a written language.

The Dutch officials learned the Siraya people's spoken language in order to facilitate trading. They also taught Latin script to the local aboriginals in order to promote Christianity. In an attempt to record commercial activities and land transactions, the Dutch recorded the oral Siraya language using Latin script. This script later became known as the "Xinkang text" and was "Taiwan's first written language, and our most valuable historic documentation of the extinct spoken words of the Siraya people". "Xinkang" is the name of the largest Siraya settlement community near the Fort Zeelandia.

The Siraya people continued to use the Latin "Xinkang text" to record business and land transactions after the Dutch were driven out by Zheng Cheng-gung (or Koxinga) in 1662. The compilation of these documents is known as the "Xinkang Manuscripts". So far, historians and linguists from the Academia Sinica have deciphered about 80 percent of the manuscripts. The results of their study reveal much of the dynamic interaction between the Taiwanese aboriginal people and the Dutch. They also help today's researchers understand the changing social and cultural evolution of the Siraya people.

The Siraya people are one of the ten Ping Pu aboriginal groups of Taiwan. The name "Ping Pu" indicates that these groups lived in Taiwan's southwest plains. The Ping Pu aboriginal groups belong to the ancient Austronesian linguistic-cultural family and are related to tribal peoples of Southeast Asia, Indo-Malay islands, the Maoris of New Zealand, and the Polynesians of the Pacific islands.

Today, the Siraya people can still be found in many communities in the countryside and hill areas of Tainan and Kaohsiung Counties. The other nine Ping Pu aboriginal groups of Taiwan are Ketagalan, Taokas, Pazeh, Kahabu, Papora, Babuza, Hoanya, Makatao, and Kavalan.