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| Sunday, 14 December 2003 |
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Of cabbages, kings & things : The three Silvas by Padma Edirisinghe We need no sociologist to inform us that the South West sea board is much more infested with Silvas and Pereras than any other board, sorry, area in our island. In Prof. Ariya Rajakaruna's "Sinhala navakathave arambaya" (The beginning of the Sinhala novel) too the name Silva occurs and recurs. In fact if this meticulously researched book was to be misconstrued as a novel, its three main characters are three Silvas who all apparently lived in the South West sea board. Namely they are Issac De Silva, Bentota Albert de Silva and Simon Silva. But estrangely none of their literary babies were baptized as novels despite the fact that the first producer of the "stories" Isaac De Silva of Moratumulla, Moratuwa was a Christian who ran the propagandist newspaper "Ruwana Mal Dama" in which he serialized the first two seeds of the Sinhala novel," titled "The lucky family" (Fortunate family) and "The unlucky family" (Unfortunate family). The time of publication commenced in 1866 and the readers had shown such a favourable response to these two "Amuthu katha" (New stories) as they were known then, that the latter had got them published in book form. Then trailed the "Abhinava katha" of Bentota Albert De Silva, ie. "Wimala", "Love letter" "Siribaree" and Vesak messenger. Thirdly follow three stories of Simon De Silva, handsome man as his photograph shows him to be and an employee of the PWD as a scholar in Rajakaruna's book informs us. The author had taken pains to circulate copies of his "Rasavath kathava" to contemporary scholars. His books are titled "Meena", "Theresa" and "Our religion". The last is not an academic treatise on religion but a complicated the tale woven around a beer drinking, ball room dancing and highly flirtatious woman named Ceciliya around whom many a youth lost his life. Her repentance comes at the end. In "Press references and comments on Sinhala novels by A. Simon De Silva is this piece, the third novel by the author showing that indulgence in sensual pleasures does not lead to setiation and happiness. "Meena" is the first work that uses the name "Novel" among our literary works. It is flaunted so on the cover page in English, "Meena - a novel" but in Sinhala it is still described as an appealing story. The name "Nava katha" was still not in vogue. But English novels were seeping into Ceylon's book market satiating the appetite of those conversant with the English language, who more or less belonged to the elite class. In fact in the travellers tales of Holmaan, an English writer he mentions that a Sinhala by the name of Bastian Jayawardena was reading the Vicar of Wakefield on the ship, a fact that had much surprised him. Bastian Jayawardena was returning from Mauritius after serving as the custodian of Ehelapola Adikaram and the time was the dawn of the 19th century when the PWD officer was weaving his own "Nava katha" without actually naming them so. Though many wail in this dawn of the 21st century that there is no high literary criticism in our island as early as the 19th century there seems to have been discriminating literary criticism in that none of the newspapers were ready to accept these as Novels. "The Ceylon Standard" a, contemporary English newspaper (apparently there were no Sinhala newspapers at this time) in its August 5, 1905 issue states, "The foreigner will be surprised to hear that there are no novels in Sinhala, or to be more accurate their number is very limited". The only one that comes to our mind at present is "Sinhala marriages or what is true love". This novel had been so popular according to The New Standard that it was about to go into its second print. But strangely the book has gone into limbo. No one knows who wrote it. The stranger fact is that no one even knew its Sinhala name. So according to The New Standard, It could be called the first Sinhala novel that had acquired a wide readership but its name was known only in English. In my childhood the little Bug Fiat my father drove loaded with a large family used to often park before a hotel in Veyangoda that had its nameboard "Arya Sinhala Hotel" written only in English. I was much amused by this. My childhood belonged to the colonial era and "Sinhalese marriages or what is true love", the first very successful Sinhala novel that had only an English name too belonged to the colonial era. It would be wonderful if somebody can retrieve it from the cobwebs of time. |
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