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Kalantiaw
Datu Kalantiaw is a figure from an early 1900s hoax by José Marco. He was credited with the first Philippine law code. Historian William Henry Scott showed in 1965 that the sources were false.
Folklore is retold; versions differ.
Sources: Wikipedia: Kalantiaw (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikidata (CC0)
The story
Kalantiaw is not a real ruler. He comes from a hoax of the early 1900s that is linked to Jose E. Marco. The hoax claimed that Kalantiaw issued the first Philippine law code in 1433, the Code of Kalantiaw.
The code first appeared in print in 1913, in an article by Manuel Artigas that listed 16 laws. In 1914, Marco gave several manuscripts to James A. Robertson. One was a text said to be by a friar, Las Antiguas leyendas de la Isla de Negros, supposedly from 1838 and 1839. Robertson published an English translation in 1917. Later writers placed Kalantiaw in Batan, Aklan, and a national shrine opened there in 1957.
Historian William Henry Scott studied the sources in the 1960s. His 1968 thesis found no sign that Kalantiaw lived, and no sign that the code existed before 1914. In 2004 the National Historical Institute ruled that the code has no valid historical basis. The government approved this in 2005 and ended the shrine's national status. Even so, his name still appears on sculptures, stamps and place names, and some people still believe the story.