were transmitted from Indian culture to Philippines via Malays and Srivijaya empire. The origins of various pre-colonial native Filipino scripts such as the Baybayin, the Visayan as badlit, the Ilocano kur-itan/kurditan, and the Kapampangan kudlitan, can be traced to the Brahmic scripts of India and first recorded in the 16th century. Folk literature The most prominent example of Indian cultural influence on early Philippine folk literature is the case of the Maharadia Lawana, a Maranao epic which tells a local version of the Indian epic Ramayana, first documented by Filipino anthropologist Juan R. Francisco in the late 1960s. Francisco believed that the Ramayana narrative arrived in the Philippines some time between the 17th to 19th centuries, via interactions with Javanese and Malaysian cultures which traded extensively with India. Some Philippine High School textbooks have also suggest that the Ilocano epic Biag ni Lam-ang may have been influenced by Hindu epics the Mahabharata and Ramayana, although the textbooks do not substantiate this claim. Most of the scholarship around the poem focus instead on the incorporation of syncretistic elements from Roman Catholicism, with no mention of supposed Indian influence. Philippine anthropologists and historiographers such as F. Landa Jocano suggest that such Hindu influences probably arrived in the Philippines through the extensive trade local cultures had with the Majapahit empire during the 14th through 16th centuries, although earlier scholars such as Juan R. Francisco and Josephine Acosta Pasricha had suggested earlier dates for this influence, during the 9th to 10th century AD. "Indirect Indianization" through Maritime Southeast Asia "Indianization" in Maritime Southeast Asia Historically Southeast Asia was under the influence of Ancient India, where numerous Indianized principalities and empires flourished for several centuries in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the southern part of Vietnam, with cultural influence also spreading indirectly to the mostly Austronesian cultures of the Philippine archipelago and the highly sinified culture of Northern Vietnam. The influence of Indian culture in these areas was given the term indianization. French archaeologist, George Cœdès, defined it as the expansion of an organized culture that was framed upon Indian originations of royalty, Hinduism and Buddhism and the Sanskrit language. This can be seen in the Indianization of Southeast Asia, spread of Hinduism and Buddhism. "Indirect Indianization" in the Philippines Historiographers — both from Southeast Asia in general, and the Philippines specifically — agree that the impact of "indianization" in Philippines was