Rajah Bendahara Kalantiaw popularly known as Datu Kalantiaw is a mythical Filipino character purported to have ruled the island Panay and gave its first written law known as the Kalantiaw Code on 1433. It is irrelevant at this moment to discuss whether the Code was a hoax or not. But prior to the emergence of such law, during the Ylaya’s time, in the land of Ophir, there was a much older version of oral laws prevailing drawn from the Muian civilization. The alleged Kalantiaw Code is most probably an attempt to codify such oral traditions for penalization and recording purposes.
It has to be emphasized here that those oral laws originally
observed were meant only as sets of principles and guidelines for the
perpetuation of moral standards and social orders. They have no central government who enforced those rules but governed by a group of elders who set up those principles and guidelines. Like in the time of Moses in
Mt. Sinai, the Ten Commandments were given to his people to follow and for them
not to deviate away from the norms, practices, values and traditions the Jewish
way in accordance to the will of their God Elohim. Notice that there was no
mention of “penalty” in the Ten Commandments but purely instructions.
The codification of such laws, meaning their inscriptions or
the act of putting them into writings is a mode or an attempt to interpret them
and to systematize their implementations, to put them as set of legal standards
with their prescribed penalty or punishment imposed if not
observed accordingly. This is true to the Kalantiaw Code where each specific article or provision of the law has its appropriate penalty strictly imposed. The same is true to the Ten Commandments which later on were interpreted and expounded to become the Torah or commonly known as the Law of Moses.
