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Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake

Nostalgia is the dominant emotion which accompanies a return to Kandy. As one leaves Colombo's bustling capital city behind and progresses steadily into the hinterland one is made a happy hostage to history. It is not merely the heroic history of a great kingdom that one is reminded of because if one has grown up in Kandy like the present writer we are also called upon to recall our personal history for this was the landscape of our memory and the geography of our dreams. Each familiar landmark one passes on the high road to Kandy therefore comes with its own weight of emotion and memory, its own private history.

The impregnable citadel which no foe could violate, no enemy over-run until the Kandyans contrived their own doom.

Ambepussa rest house is where we were taken as children to ease the sense of nausea and fatigue of a tiring car journey. Here is the great rock which separates the Low Country from the Up Country, the maritime provinces from the Kandyan highland. Kegalle, Galigamuwa and Mawanella rush by until the Dawson Tower looms at Kadugannawa with its associations with the legendary Saradiel of Uthuwankanda, the Robin Hood of colonial Ceylon and the scourge of the Ceylonese Police.

Then you are in Peradeniya with its idyllic University and the Mahaweli Ganga and in no time in the town itself which has sprouted new buildings but the narrow streets of which are the same as in the time of the Kandyan kings.

This was historic Sri Lanka's last great city, the impregnable citadel which no foe could violate, no enemy over-run, until in the words of Dr. Colvin R. de Silva in 'Ceylon Under the British Occupation' the 'Kandyans contrived their own doom' by delivering their King into the hands of the British.

But then King Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe in his last days was a paradoxical figure benevolent and tyrannical in turn, a great architect and engineer who made Kandy what it is but also an autocrat who in his alcoholic bouts was given to riding rough-shod over the chiefs and the people. Kandy is also the seat of the Tooth Relic which from time immemorial has been considered to lend legitimacy to the State and this confluence of history and state craft is what gives the city its unique identity.

Kandy is, of course, organised round its centre piece, the Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the Tooth Relic, which is awash these days with the bustle attending on the annual Esala Perahera. It was as Diyawadana Nilame Neranjan Wijeyeratne reminds us really the King's private shrine situated as it is next to his palace. The Diyawadana Nilame as the chief lay custodian of the Tooth Relic was therefore placed in a special relationship to the King and indeed until the British restricted his office to 10 years held the office for life. Once a Diyawadana Nilame had even debarred the King from entering the Maligawa since the Buddha Poojawa was over and it is from this episode says Mr. Wijeyeratne that the practice of having two buddha Poojawas in the evening stems.

Mr. Wijeyaratne who has connections to the office through a maternal ancestor Dullewe Diyawadana Nilame, assumed office at a time when other young men of his age were engaged in more secular occupations. Since then he has devoted himself to the Maligawa and the Kandy Perahera with religious zeal. He comments in tones of wonderment about never having been able to properly see the pageant (except perhaps on video) being occupied as he is in organising it and walking in it. He is placed in the peculiar position of perpetuating a practice which has roots in another social system under vastly different social and economic conditions.

Rajakariya was, of course, the service which the people had to render to the King in exchange for occupying and cultivating the lands which they had been given by the monarch. As the Diyawadana Nilame points out those who perform Rajakariya to the Maligawa still occupy these lands but it is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain the Perahera on their services alone. The cost of conducting an 11-day pageant is huge.

There were times, he says, in the past that the artistes were too exhausted to perform but now he has ensured that the artistes should be fed and looked after at the expense of the Maligawa. With the decay of the feudal system, the advent of the commercial economy and the drift from the villages to the towns it is also becoming increasingly difficult to obtain dancers and the drummers of traditional quality. Another problem is that of obtaining elephants. The number of tame elephants who can be obtained is drastically dwindling.

To maintain the quality of the dance Mr. Wijeyeratne proposes the establishment of three centres for the three main traditional dance forms in Sri Lanka, the Kandyan? Low Country and Sabaragamuwa dance forms. These centres can then ensure that new dancers of quality are produced and thus perpetuate the traditional form. As for the elephants he is of the view that elephants from the Pinnawala orphanage should be released to known individual owners who can train them and make them available for the Perahera.

Organising the Perahera is a big campaign and the Diyawadana Nilame's office where he is surrounded by grave portraits of his bewhiskered predecessors looks like an Operations Room. Minions come and go. There are visitors from Colombo to pay their respects to the chieftain. Senior Superintendent of Police Asoka Ratnaweera drops in to offer on arrangements for the first night which is only hours away. Outside in the temple square the elephants gather and the unending pilgrimage passes through the portals of the Maligawa. There are even some spectators who have already taken up their stations on the lake bund.

So much to do and so little time. So many elephants. So much copra for so many torches. So many dancers of all types. So many costumes of all kinds. So many yards of cloth. And then finally the night falls gently over the Maligawa, the lake ripples softly, the full moon ascends the sky in all its magnificence and by the light of the torches the majestic ritual is enacted in the name of the gods.

So Kandy is inextricably bound up with July-August, the Perahera months, and the Perahera with remembrances of things past. Such as my late grandfather's house in Trincomalee Street which the last night's Randoli Perahera would pass and where he would lay out a grand dinner table for all the visitors who would crowd the house to watch the pageant. The next afternoon we would be all agog, for the day perahera would start directly opposite the house and at the Adahana Maluwa from which would originate the cream of the dancers who would serenade the Diyawadana Nilame in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. Leading them would be Nittawela Ukkuwa Gurunnanse who would occupy the place of honour next to the chieftain. He used to teach us Kandyan dancing at Trinity College.

So let us undertake the pilgrimage to Kandy in the month of Esala. The geography of the city may have changed but the magic of the pageant lingers. Whether as pageant, ritual or spectacle the Kandy Perahera continues to cast its spell when the drums begin to roll, the elephants take to the streets and the night sky is lit with a hundred flaring torches.

Tailpiece: For the title of this piece I could do no better than borrow from Vesak Nanayakkara, the writer of a masterly book by the same name on the same city.

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