Important artefact Laguna Copperplate receives a fictional retelling in the novel ‘Namwaran and the Golden Tara’

Though law school and the demands of life eventually made their museum visits difficult to schedule, the inspiration had already taken root. It was during those early trips that he first encountered the intricate traditions of T'nalak dreamweaving and the ancient burial jars found in pre-Christian caves. He began keeping meticulous notes, his fascination further fueled by his mentor, the late Education Secretary Raul Roco, who frequently spoke of the vast Srivijaya and Majapahit empires.

As he turns 50 this year, Mariano, whose varied career spans psychology, law, science communication, and founding the tech platform Ticket2Me, decided it was time to bring those scribbled notes to life. He initially explored formatting the story as a play, a television series, or even a graphic novel, collaborating with Filipino architecture student Miko Pica for the artwork. Ultimately, he chose to pen a novel. “To write slow and long, to write not because I had to make a point or convince an audience, to write because I just wanted to,” Mariano explained.

Central to the novel’s inspiration are two exceptional pre-colonial artefacts: the Golden Tara of Agusan and the Laguna Copperplate. The Golden Tara is a 21-karat gold statue dating back to the 9th to 10th century, discovered along the banks of the Wawa River in 1917 and now housed at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

The Laguna Copperplate, dated to the Saka year 822 (900 CE), is the earliest known historical document of the Philippines. During a special museum tour that accompanied the book launch, Mariano guided guests to the exhibit housing the unassuming metal sheet. He detailed its precarious discovery in the late 1980s by a worker dredging the Lumbang River. “This is actually the type of scrap that would have destroyed machines and it could have been easily destroyed, discarded, lost forever without us ever having found out,” Mariano explained.

Acquired for a mere 2,000 pesos, its significance remained unknown until Dutch anthropologist Antoon Postma recognised the ancient Kawi script and translated it. The document records the ruler of Tondo, Jayadewa, forgiving the debt of a man named Namwaran and his descendants for under a kilo of gold.

This historical detail forms the narrative backbone of the novel, which follows three siblings named in the inscription—Namwaran, Angkatan, and Bukah. In Mariano’s reimagining, the siblings are given black-stone amulets granting long life, sending them on a centuries-long search across Southeast Asian empires for their missing mother and the stolen Golden Tara. Interestingly, Mariano chose to depict the historical ruler Jayadewa as a female leader in his story. “I think and I still strongly feel that we were always very matriarchal, and that a lot of our misogyny and patriarchy came from colonialism,” he noted during the tour.

Walking through the museum’s galleries reveals exactly the kind of sophisticated society that the Laguna Copperplate suggests. The Kulaman Plateau limestone burial urns, recovered from Sultan Kudarat, showcase a highly developed secondary burial practice. The human-like figures carved into the lids and the careful bone-washing rituals required to use them indicate a people who were deeply aware of the cycle of years and possessed established spiritual beliefs long before foreign influences arrived.

Similarly, the Manunggul Jar from Palawan, an iconic National Cultural Treasure, features a lid depicting a boatman and a passenger with crossed arms sailing towards the afterlife, guided by an ancestral spirit carved into the boat's prow. These pieces prove that early Filipinos had complex traditions and a firm belief in life after death.

Yet, despite this rich history, modern Filipinos often feel disconnected from it. National Museum Director-General Jeremy Barns articulated this challenge perfectly during his opening remarks. “We talk about pre-colonial central Filipinos. We often refer to them as them/they. We're here to talk about ‘us’,” Barns stated. He stressed that if Filipinos do not feel a strong connection to their ancestors, museums and literature must step in to bridge that gap by popularising the past in creative ways.

The novel’s release coincides with a crucial moment for Philippine heritage preservation on the global stage. Ivan Anthony Henares, Secretary General of the UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines (UNACOM), highlighted that the Laguna Copperplate is currently nominated for the 2026 Cycle of the UNESCO Memory of the World Regional Register, alongside the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group audiovisual archives and the Baybayin documents of the University of Santo Tomas. The results will be announced at a general meeting in Indonesia from November 2 to 6.

“The UNESCO Memory of the World Program serves as a reminder that documentary heritage, when protected and preserved, fosters a great understanding of historical and cultural diversity,” Henares remarked during the programme. “Heritage is much more than what we inherited from the past. It is what connects previous generations to our current one”. 

Bringing this interconnected vision to print was a collaborative, regional effort. The final novel features not only Pica’s illustrations but also cover art colouring by Indonesian artist Fauzi Nugraha and a custom Old Kawi-inspired typeface by Singaporean artist John Poh. “The book incorporates actual historical events, actual people, actual artefacts from this era and from this region of the world,” Mariano shared, noting that before modern nation-states, Southeast Asia was deeply interconnected.

When asked how he imagined early Filipino society for the book, Mariano highlighted an enduring cultural trait. “So I think then up to now we were very family-oriented and nothing has changed,” he said. “You can feel it when you read the original inscription of the copperplate that you will see upstairs because it names descendants. That's how we referred to ourselves, by the people who precede us.”

As the afternoon concluded, Mariano left the crowd with a lingering thought about the literal and figurative debts recorded in our history. “But, I guess, right now, like before, it is still really different, right? When there is a debt, you are forgiven for your debt,” Mariano reflected. He then posed a challenging question to the tour group: “What kind of debt do we owe people like Namwaran and his family?” By breathing narrative life into forgotten names and ancient artefacts, this novel suggests that the greatest debt we owe our ancestors is simply to remember them.

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