Around 300–700 C.E. the seafaring peoples of the islands traveling in balangays began trading with the Indianized kingdoms of Maritime Southeast Asia and nearby East Asian principalities, adopting influences from Buddhism and Hinduism.
The links between seafaring and outrigger canoes in the Philippines extend through to political life, in which the smallest political unit in the country still called Barangay after the historical Balangay outrigger proas used in the original migrations of the first Austronesian peoples across the archipelago and beyond.