Philippine historians made little use of the Maragtas before the Japanese occupation, with references such as that by José Soncuya in his 1917 "Historia Pre-Hispanica de Filipinas" having been restricted to the Spanish-speaking elite. In a book published in 1984, the historian William Henry Scott wrote in reference to an interesting research related to Maragtas. Scott said that in 1947, a book co-authored by historian H. Otley Beyer, founder of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines, refers to "Margitas" and "the ancient writing in which it was originally inscribed. Scott quoted Beyer stating: "A remarkable document known as 'Margitas', dating probably from about 1225, was preserved in Panay and transliterated into romanized Visayan in early Spanish days."" The myth that the Maragtas was not an original work but rather a transcription of earlier works was later given wider circulation by various academics, as detailed by Scott. Scott concludes that the Maragtas was an original work by Pedro Alcantara Monteclaro.