Doctrina is concerned, also lists the price of the Tagalog Doctrina
as two reales. It is impossible to say what caused the discrepancy;
perhaps it was a decision on Dasmariñas' part to lower the cost,
notwithstanding inflationary values, in order to make the book more
readily available for the natives who were not economically as well
off as the Chinese, or it could be that after the letter had been
written it was noticed that the Chinese volume was larger than the
Tagalog one, and some adjustment made. In any event, the price of this
Doctrina was finally set at two reales, making it less than half the
price allowed in Mexico fifty years before.

The evidence of the two 1593 documents would seem conclusive with
regard to printing in 1593, but witnesses were not long in appearing
who stated something quite different. The earliest of these was
Pedro Chirino, [14] a Jesuit priest, who came to the Philippines with
Dasmariñas in 1590. He went back to Europe in 1602, and while there
had a history of the Philippines printed at Rome in 1604. In 1606 he
returned to the islands, where he died in 1635. He left unpublished
the manuscript of another and more detailed history, dated 1610,
which contains a most significant passage, where, after speaking of
various early writers in native languages, he continues:


"Those who printed first were; P. Fr. Juan de Villanueva of
the Order of St. Augustine [who printed] certain little tracts,
and P. Fr. Francisco de San Joseph of the Order of St. Dominic
[who printed] larger things of more bulk." [15]


Concerning this Juan de Villanueva [16] very little indeed is