By H.H. Mohrmen
On its journey to discover the universe, when the Voyager reached a point of no return Carl Sagan asked the controller to turn the Voyager’s camera toward Earth and take one last photograph of our home. And that was the beginning of the story of “The Pale Blue Dot” a photograph of Earth taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990, at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. Caught in the center of scattered light rays, Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.
Carl Sagan remarked, “Look again at that dot.” That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives—thousands of confident religions, ideologies—every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant—every mother and father—every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is but a tiny dot within the immense expanse of the cosmos. Consider the countless rivers of bloodshed by generals and emperors, all in pursuit of glory and victory, so they might briefly rule over a mere fragment of a speck. Our pride, our exaggerated sense of importance, and the illusion that we occupy a special place in the universe are all brought into question by this faint point of light. Few things reveal the absurdity of human arrogance more clearly than this distant image of our small and fragile world. (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994)
My interest in cosmology started in 1989 when in Manchester I bought my first hardbound book, *A Brief History of Time* by Stephen Hawking, and since then there was no looking back. From the Hubble Telescope to the James Webb Space Telescope, human understanding of the Universe continues to change and amaze those who follow developments in this vast area of study. This leads us to the question: What is our ancestors’ understanding of the universe?
Pnar’s Understanding of the Cosmos
The Pnar of Raid Jwai also have a distinct understanding of the Earth, the sky, and what lies beyond. While they may not have a detailed understanding of astronomy comparable to Hindu or Western traditions, they do possess a distinct worldview about the Earth, the heavens, and the unseen realm beyond.
In ancient times, they may not have known about other planets or the various constellations, but they had stories connected to the celestial bodies familiar to them: ka Sngi (the Sun), u Bnai (the Moon), ki Khlur (the stars), u Pyrthat (thunder), and ka Leilieh (lightning). In these narratives, celestial bodies are often portrayed as living beings, and animals are interwoven with the cosmos as part of a single interconnected ecosystem (Mohrmen, H.H. The Shillong Times, Dec. 16, 2024).
The people’s understanding of the Universe starts from the genesis of the tribe which begins with the sixteen and the nine remaining above and the seven deciding to descend below. In the Hynñiew Trep belief system the Sun is always depicted as a beautiful woman and one example is the story of the Peacock and the Sun. There is the story of ka Krem lamet krem latang, when human had to convince the Rooster to woo back the Sun from her hideout in the cave. Then there is the story about Thunder and a Civet which are etiological stories that also show the ancestors’ understanding of the universe.
Their astronomical knowledge may have been limited, but they did recognize certain celestial bodies beyond the sun and moon. For instance, there are references to the visible constellation u Rah Bhar, u Khloor Janmiet (the evening star), and u Khloor Step (the morning star). These celestial bodies find mention in their day-to-day conversations and are considered part of their ecosystem.
The Pnar’s traditional calendar
They closely observed the movements of the moon, noting that it takes 14 days to reach its full phase, hence the term u Bnai Khatsoo Synïaw (the 14-night moon) when it is full moon. All major activities, including farming, religious rites, rites of passage, and festivals, were organized according to the lunar calendar (Mohrmen, H.H. TST, Dec. 16, 2024). In the common vocabulary people mention about u bnai bneiñ which means they follow lunar colander. From their simple understanding that it takes 14 days for the moon to reach its full phase and another 14 days to cycle back to the beginning once again, it is safe to assume that the Pnar calendar has 28 days.
Although there is a Pnar calendar which has twelve months, this most probably developed at a later stage. It is certain that people’s activities were influenced by the seasons and also by rice cultivation, which is the major crop of the area. Unlike their neighbours, the Khasi, who have names for all four seasons—ka Tlang, ka Pyrem, ka Liyur, and ka Synrai—the Pnar have only two seasons in their vocabulary: i Tlang and i Liyur. Within these two seasons, people are influenced by the farming activities connected with the major crop of the area. In the plateau, where the main crop is rice, there is ka por symbe (sowing season), ka por wer (weeding season), and ka por ah (harvest season). Not long ago, if we asked an elderly person his or her age, the reply used to be that he or she was born during the sowing, weeding, or harvest time of a particular year.
The Pnar’s Three-Layered Universe
The Pnar understanding of the Universe is distinct and, in some ways, remarkably open and sophisticated. According to D. Lamar, Pnar cosmology divides the Universe into three layers: i Pyrthai, which is the physical world where all living beings dwell; i Bneñ, heaven or the sky, the visible realm above the Earth; and i Soorkep, the invisible realm considered the abode of U Trekirot or the Almighty (Lamar, D. 2015). While i Bneñ, is visible to the eye, i Soorkep is not, because it is the spiritual realm and remains unseen. It is believed that i Soorkep is also the dwelling place of ki Sangia ki Saret, the spirits of the dead ancestors who reside with U Tre Kirot.
Paradise without Hell
A distinct difference between the Pnar of the Hynñiew Trep belief system and the Abrahamic religions lies in the absence of a clearly defined concept of hell. While phrases such as “ka Nurok ka ksew” or “ki khyndai pateng ñamra” exist amongst the Khasis, they appear to be influenced by external cultures. Such ideas find no mention in the Pnar tradition. The term Nurok may even derive from Narak, indicating Sanskrit influence. Notably, the War and Pnar people have no equivalent terms for hell in their languages, which further supports the view that such ideas are non-native (Mohrmen, H.H. The Shillong Times, Oct. 5, 2020).
In the tradition of the Pnar of Raid Jwai, i Soorkep, is not only the dwelling place of U Tre Kirod, along with all the deities, as well as the final abode of ki Sangia ki Saret, but of the other divinities too. I Soorkep is also regarded as the universe where all ki wakhroo watri, or the divinities, such as ka ’Ngi Kyllung, the Sun, and u ’Nai Kyllung, the Moon, dwell together with U Tre Kirod, the other deities, and the celestial bodies. Clearly, i Soorkep represent the vast universe where U Tre Kirod and all His subordinate deities reside according to the Pnar belief system.
There is no concept of salvation in the Pnar belief system as understood in the Abrahamic religions. After a person dies, there is no distinction between the saved and the damned as all souls return to the divine realm. If any notion of salvation exists, it is a form of universal salvation, wherein all souls ultimately find rest at i Soorkep. The belief that, in the end, all souls dwells with U Tre Kirod and ki blai ki syiem at Soorkep, together with the absence of any notion of a place where condemned souls are punished, suggests a worldview that ultimately all souls will be in union with God. There is also no concept of Eschatology as the relationship between the ancestor and those alive continues.
In the three-layered universe, i Soorkep, is not only an invisible realm but also an eternal sphere. Perhaps, the belief that the cosmos has three layers, with the highest being the eternal realm of the spirit, aligns with the modern understanding of a possibly infinite and ever-expanding universe. The Pnar’s understanding of universe is therefore simple, profound and in line with the contemporary scientific understanding of the universe.
