Amanikable

Also Known As: Spanish-era spelling Amanicable; written Aman Ikabli by the historian William Henry Scott; the first element is Tagalog ama, “father”
Region/Culture: Southeast Asia
Mythos: Philippine Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: In the oldest record he is the advocate of Tagalog hunters, the power whose goodwill a hunt needed before it began.
Role in Mythos: He was one of the working anito beneath Bathala, each tied to one trade or domain and petitioned directly by the people who worked in it.
Relation to Humans: Hunters called on him when they went out after game, and he was appeased both for a good catch and for protection from harm. The ill-tempered sea lord who drowns sailors out of spite belongs to a twentieth-century retelling, not to the Spanish-era record.

The hunters are leaving before light. The spears are cold in the hand, the grass is wet to the knee, and somewhere ahead in the dark grass is the game they have not yet seen. Before they go, someone calls on Amanikable.

That is what the oldest record says, and nearly all it says. In 1613 the Franciscan Pedro de San Buenaventura printed his Vocabulario de la lengua tagala, the first great dictionary of the language, and under the entry for idols he listed Amanicable as the abogado de los caçadores, the advocate of the hunters, the one they called on when they went out to hunt. A century and a half later the Jesuits Juan de Noceda and Pedro de Sanlúcar kept him in their own Vocabulario of 1754, in four words: Amanicable, idolo de los cazadores. The idol of the hunters. The 1860 edition of that dictionary repeats the line unchanged.

The historian William Henry Scott, working from those dictionaries for Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society (1994), wrote the name as Aman Ikabli and gave him the same job. He was the patron of hunters, one of the proprietary deities the Tagalogs appeased both for fruitful produce and for protection from harm in their own special domains. In the dictionary he sits one line above Amansinaya, the idol of the fishermen, and the two read like neighbours on a street of trades.

The street was a long one. Scott describes a whole tier of Tagalog gods below Bathala, the maker of everything, with no single word for them beyond anito. The Spanish lexicographers called them abogados, advocates, and defined each by its realm. Lakanbakod kept animals out of the swiddens. Mankukutod guarded coconut palms, and a man who climbed one without an offering could expect the trunk to throw him. Nobody entered grassland or forest without acknowledging the overlordship of Uwinan Sana, or they would be taken for trespassers. A hunter walking into the trees was, in effect, walking onto somebody’s land and asking somebody else’s blessing.

Amanikable’s first syllables are the word for father, ama, the same word that opens Aman Sinaya. What the rest of the name means, nobody has settled. The dictionaries do not explain it, and no telling from the Spanish period gives him parents, a wife, a quarrel or a death.

Then, in 1969, he acquired all of that at once. The anthropologist F. Landa Jocano’s Outline of Philippine Mythology made Amanikable the husky, ill-tempered ruler of the sea. In Jocano’s account he loved a beautiful mortal woman named Maganda, she spurned him, and he swore vengeance on humankind, sending tempests to wreck boats and drown the people in them. Jocano’s collection also has him grant the little horned trunkfish its scales and horns for protection against bigger fish, and turn two of his own horses, chased by hunters onto a beach, into seahorses. None of this appears in the Spanish dictionaries or chronicles, and Jocano does not say where he found it.

That version is the one most readers now meet, on websites and in school material, often with the hunters bolted on beside the sea as a second portfolio: god of hunters and turbulent waters. The older record has no sea in it at all. The sea, in Scott’s reading of the Tagalog sources, belonged to Haik, to whom seamen sponsored a major ceremony before setting sail. A god of the chase became a god of the storm somewhere in the twentieth century, and the join still shows.

What Amanikable could do, in the record that predates Jocano, followed from his one job. He could make a hunt good or bad, and he could keep the men who went into the grass from coming to harm there. His power ran as far as the hunt and no further. He had to be called before the hunters went out, and an advocate who was never asked could not be expected to plead. Beyond that the record is quiet. There is no shrine to him, no image, no festival, and no word of what he said to a hunter who remembered him, or did to one who forgot.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Amanikable in Tagalog mythology?

Amanikable is a Tagalog deity recorded by Spanish missionaries as the patron or advocate of hunters. Pedro de San Buenaventura’s 1613 Tagalog dictionary says hunters called on him when they went out to hunt, and the 1754 dictionary of Noceda and Sanlúcar lists him as the idol of the hunters.

Is Amanikable a god of the sea or of hunters?

In the Spanish-era record Amanikable is only a god of hunters. The sea god version, an ill-tempered ruler of the sea who sends storms against people, comes from F. Landa Jocano’s Outline of Philippine Mythology (1969), and no earlier source supports it.

What is the story of Amanikable and Maganda?

In F. Landa Jocano’s 1969 account, Amanikable loved a beautiful mortal woman named Maganda, who spurned him, and he swore vengeance on humankind by sending tempests to wreck boats and drown their crews. The story does not appear in the Spanish dictionaries or chronicles that first record Amanikable’s name.

Is Aman Ikabli the same as Amanikable?

Yes. Aman Ikabli is the spelling the historian William Henry Scott used in Barangay (1994) for the same patron of hunters that the Spanish dictionaries wrote as Amanicable. Both names begin with ama, the Tagalog word for father.

Who ruled the sea in early Tagalog religion?

In William Henry Scott’s reading of the Tagalog sources, the sea god was Haik, to whom seamen sponsored a major ceremony for fair weather and favourable winds before sailing. Amanikable’s link to the sea comes only from twentieth-century retellings.