bandala

bandala noun: a fabric made in Manila from the older leaf sheaths of the abaca (Musa textilis).

Noun (1)

bandala (countable and uncountable, plural bandalas)

A fabric made in Manila from the older leaf sheaths of the abaca (Musa textilis).
- The fibers of the inner petioles, which are softer but not so strong as the outer, are called tupus, and sold with bandala, or mixed with tapis and used in the native weaving.1916, Austin Craig, The Former Philippines Thru Foreign Eyes, page 301
- Itermediate textile fibers beween lupis and bandala, known as tupus among other names, were also produced and sold, though rarely in great quantities.2023, Norman Owen, Prosperity without Progress, page 77
A system imposed by the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines in the early 17th century which required farmers to sell their products to the government for extremely low prices, and sometimes without ever being paid.
- Another exploitative device was instituted by Governor Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera during the first half of the seventeenth century . This was the bandala.1975, Renato Constantino, Letizia R. Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited, page 51
- Under the bandala, the sale of the crops and other products of the Filipinos was centralized and controlled by the Spanish authorities.1977, Kay Kim Khoo, The History of South-East, South, and East Asia, page 225

Bandala (plural Bandala)

The slaves of the Rizeghat and Habbania Arabs and their descendants.
- The Bandala of the Western Bahr el Ghazal have been described in an interesting article by Captain G. K. C. Hebbert in Volume VIII (1925) of Sudan Notes and Records.1930, J.G.S. Macphail, “The Bandala Method of Hunting Elephant on Foot”, in Sudan Notes and Records, volumes 13-16, page 279
- It was decided that all the Bandala should be settled with their ex-masters in Darfur.1989, Northeast African Studies - Volume 11, page 89

The province of Pampanga, because of its closeness to Manila, suffered most from the polo services and the bandala since its rice produce and timber were in great demand.1999, Manuel A. Caoili, The Origins of Metropolitan Manila, page 28:
Doing so then allows us to understand how new colonial institutions adopted these preexisting forms of power, relying on debt to mobilize labor within the repartimiento, bandala, and tribute systems.2023, Stephanie Joy Mawson, Incomplete Conquests:

plural	bandalas
plural	Bandala

What does bandala mean?: Bandala means a fabric made in Manila from the older leaf sheaths of the abaca (Musa textilis).
How do you use bandala in a sentence?: The province of Pampanga, because of its closeness to Manila, suffered most from the polo services and the bandala since its rice produce and timber were in great demand.
What part of speech is bandala?: Bandala is a noun.
What is the plural of bandala?: The plural of bandala is bandalas.

Adapted from Wiktionary: bandala (page history and authors); Bandala (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “bandala.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bandala. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.