The clouds slowly move from one place to another up in the heaven of Baybay boulevard*. And while my friend and I view the warm scenery of the sea and the sky in a cloudy afternoon, my mind wonders on how or what could the pre-colonial Waray-speaking people imagined the universe.
“The clouds move by themselves,” she contends as I ask her on why it travels from place to place. Perhaps she meant by this that there is an invisible force innate to a cloud. And perhaps this force is the making of a Great Mechanic.
“My hypothesis is that clouds move due to the earth’s rotation,” this I argued.
It seems clear to me, though, that our insight of motions like that of the cloud’s is rather influence by the Scientific Revolution in Europe. Herbert Butterfield is correct when he said, “The greatest obstacle to the understanding of the history of science is our inability to unload our minds of modern views about the nature of the universe”.
The knowledge of the pre-colonial Waray concerning the cosmos, I suspect, is far from similar to our knowledge like the vast difference of the Ptolemaic universe with, say, the Newtonian universe. The concept of gravity, for instance, was nonexistent in the minds of these people. Or if this idea was present, if present at all, it would be different compared with Newton’s description of gravity.
I think the pre-colonial Waray also pondered about the workings of the sky. Like a child, perhaps they had observed or studied on what was happening up there. According to a 17th century manuscript, in fact, these people made a name of a star they called Marrokporok. This Marrokporok star means boiling lights and it assumed a different name when found at certain points of the sky during the year.
There was also a story in an epic form that shows an image about the skies and the world as understood by the pre-colonial Waray. In this tale, the protagonist named Datong Somangga attempted to invade the eight heavens – a task given by Huamianon before she give her approval for their marriage. Datong Somangga sets sail toward the end of the world called ginduutan sa langit – where the earth connects to the skies – to take a piece of thunder as a gift to his beloved. Unfortunately, he failed.
From this epic and the Marrokporok star, perchance, we could infer or reconstruct the understanding of the cosmos as pictured by the ancient Waray. I list them in my head:
1.There are eight skies or heavens above the earth.
2.One of these skies is compose of clouds or thunders.
3.The skies are semi-spherical in shape.
4.Thunders are touchable.
5.The earth’s surface is a flat circular disk.
6.The earth and the heavens are connected at the horizon.
7.Stars and other heavenly bodies move from place to place.
It remains ambiguous to me, though, on how the ancient Waray imagined the position of the stars and other heavenly bodies in space or sky. Were they attached to a transparent and impregnable crystalline semi-sphere? Was the earth the center of their cosmos? And how vast was their universe?
I wonder.
“As the earth rotates in its axis,” I explained to her my viewpoint, “the clouds are somehow affected, though minimally, by its rotation”.
Silence was her reply to my imagining concerning the motion of the clouds. She just turned her eyes toward the beautiful scenery of the sea and sky while the wandering clouds seem to disappear in sight.
* A place besides the seashore of Borongan poblacion.
Fhen Macabasag is [a] Waray.
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