Arte de la lengua Pampanga

[Manila] : En la imprenta de la Compañia de Jesus, por S. Lopez Sabino, 1729. First edition. Small quarto, contemporary vellum (marked, lacking ties), new endpapers; printed on rice paper, pp [xxi], [1 blank] 364, [1 blank], [12], [1 blank]; woodcut head- and tailpieces; several leaves with expert repairs (mostly marginal), occasional browning, but a very good copy; housed in a clam shell box of crushed red morocco, richly gilt.

Rare and important grammar of Pampanga (Kapampangan), a language related to Tagalog which is spoken in the province of Pampanga, the southern half of the province of Tarlac and the northern portion of the province of Bataan. Its compiler, Diego Bergaño (1690-1747), was the Augustinian Provincial for the Philippines and Prior of the Convent at Bacolor. The book was printed at the Jesuit Press in Manila. Bergaño’s Vocabulario en la Lengua Pampanga en Romance would be published in 1732. After Francisco Coronel’s Arte y Reglas de la Lengua Pampanga (1621) and Alvaro de Benavente’s Arte de Lengua Pampanga (1699), Bergaño’s grammar was the third major work on Pampanga.

Jose, Impreso, 393; Pardo de Tavera, Biblioteca Filipina, 273; Medina, Manila, 171.