The Tagalogs, for example had the word "hari" to describe a monarch. As noted by Fray San Buenaventura (1613, as cited by Junker, 1990 and Scott, 1994), however, the Tagalogs only applied hari (king) to foreign monarchs, such as those of the Javanese Madjapahit kingdoms, rather than to their own leaders. "Datu", "rajah", "lakan", etc., were distinct unique words to describe the powers and privilege of indigenous or local rulers and paramount rulers. Reappropriation of "royalty" in popular literature Although early Philippine datus, lakans, rajahs, sultans, etc., were not sovereign in the political or military sense, they later came to be referred to as such due to the introduction of European literature during the Spanish colonial period. Because of the cultural and political discontinuities that came with colonization, playwrights of Spanish-era Philippine literature such as comedias and zarzuelas did not have precise terminologies to describe former Philippine rulership structures, and began appropriating European concepts, such as "king" or "queen" to describe them. Because most Filipinos, even during precolonial times, related with political power structures as outsiders, this new interpretation of "royalty" was accepted in the broadest sense, and the distinction between monarchy as a political structure vis a vis membership in a hereditary noble line or dynasty, was lost. This much-broader popular conception of monarchy, built on Filipino experiences of "great men" being socially separate from ordinary people rather than the hierarchical technicalities of monarchies in the political sense, persists today. Common Filipino experience does not usually draw distinctions between aristocracy and nobility vis a vis sovereignty and monarchy. Datus, lakans, rajahs, sultans, etc., are thus referred to as kings or monarchs in this non-technical sense, particularly in 20th century Philippine textbooks. The technical distinction between these concepts have only recently been highlighted again, by ethnohistorians, historiographers and anthropologists belonging to the critical scholarship tradition, since their concern is to capture indigenous meanings in the most accurate way possible. Still this assessment of the nature of pre-colonial polities has to be viewed in the context of plurality of pre-colonial social structures existing in the archipelago. It is obvious that those which existed in Luzon, vary from those that existed in the Visayas and Mindanao. Also, the views of the various authors have to be assessed taking into consideration the background of social constructs, from which they assess the local pre-colonial polities. The historical, politico-cultural and chronological distance of these authors