Valiant effort to salvage Sinhala scholar’s reputation

Reviewed by R. S. Karunaratne

Munidasa Cumaranatunga is a prominent literary figure in Sri Lanka. Some scholars have hailed him as the foremost Sinhala literary critic while others have condemned him as someone not worthy of emulation. I note that even his name has been written in three different ways: Munidasa Kumaranatunga, Munidasa Cumaranatunge and Munidasa Cumaratunga. Even the author of the book has not been consistent with the spelling of Munidasa Cumaranatunga. So, I leave it at that.

Prof. Amarasinghe is of opinion that Munidasa Cumaranatunga’s “Virith Vekiya” is the complete survey, analysis and criticism of Sinhala poetry available towards the understanding of poetry and the instructions on the practice of the art and techniques of poetry. He does not agree with Dr. Ariya Rajakaruna who “seems to be satisfied by examining only one chapter of this monumental work to assess and pass judgement on Munidasa Cumaranatunga”.

The author says that eminent scholars hold Munidasa Cumaranatunga in high esteem. According to them Cumaranatunga knew how to distinguish between good and bad poetry. He is of opinion that Cumaranatunga, more than any other Sinhala poet, was aware of a blend of “rasas” (tastes).

According to the author, neither Cumaranatunga nor his followers have written poetry in a stilted language. While disagreeing with Dr. Rajakaruna he says that writing poetry in an ornate diction will in no way make it natural. He is of opinion that Cumaranatunga always upheld the use of sound or music of words to enhance the meaning of poetry.

Another controversial point raised in the book is whether satire forms part of Sinhala poetry. Cumaranatunga’s view is refuted by Martin Wickremasinghe who said that there was satire in ancient classics such as Amavathura, Ummagga Jathaka and Buduguna Alankaraya.

However Martin Wickramasinghe’s definition of satire conveys a verbal attack or an insult. The author refers to Jayantha Weerasekara’s opinion that Cumaranatunga’s satire is quite different from that of Martin Wickramasinghe.

Another area of disagreement is whether rasa can be equated with “taste”. The author defends Cumaranatunga’s saying that human beings feel and experience numerous “tastes”. He also upholds the view that the nine fold “rasas” or “tastes” are useful in writing compositions. The purpose is not always to think of “rasas” or “tastes” when writing, but for writers to use them naturally.

Prof. Amarasinghe takes great pains to show that Cumaranatunga objected to the use of “alankara” (embellishment) and had instructed his students not to indulge in it.

However, Cumaranatunga had never rejected alankara as a poetic device. In fact, he himself had used alankara in his short poems such as Vesak Udana and Dorata Veduma. Should Sinhala poets maintain the “eliveta” or rhyme scheme?

Cumaranatunga objected to it on the ground that “eliveta” destroyed the harmony of the literary creation. However, this did not mean that competent poets should not use “eliveta”. Cumaranatunga himself had written beautiful rhyming poetry.

The use of “Na, Na, La, La” in poetry has given rise to many debates among Sinhala scholars. While some scholars had opined to say that by sticking to grammatical rules, poetry could suffer in quality, Cumaranatunga had a different opinion on the subject. He said that no poet should overstep the grammatical boundaries. The author too approves of that view.

Chapter 2 is devoted to “Understanding poetry”. Prof. Amarasinghe recommends Cumaranatunga’s Kavi shikshava and Virith Vekiya as useful books for the beginner. In fact, there is a separate chapter on Virith Vekiya which hails it as the best single work on the understanding of Sinhala poetry. The book comes to an end with a chapter on “Munidasa Cumaranatunga’s position as a literary figure”.

Taken as a whole, “Munidasa Kumaranatunga and Criticism of Poetry” revives our interest in the age-old debate whether we should follow western methods of literary criticism or stick to methods pronounced by our own scholars. It is a healthy sign that even at university level there is a fresh look at Munidasa Cumaranatunga as a literary giant who has carved out a niche for himself.

Journey begins

by Carl Muller

Journey to the source of the Nile
Christopher Ondaatje

Part two:

To the Victorian explorers, the search for the source of the Nile, as Christopher says, was regarded as “the opening of Africa to religion, to exploration, to economic activity - and to civilisation.”

Quoting David Livingstone, from a paper on the sources of the Nile (December 1868), he records:

“Old Nile played the theorists a pretty prank. (Livingstone was particularly referring to Speke and Grant) by having his springs 500 miles south of them all.”

Christopher fills us in with not only the Victorians but also the Arabs, and as he says:

“Some of them began leading expeditions into the interior..... They reached Tanganyika in the late 1830s and Lake Victoria in the early 1840s... An 1820-22 expedition reached the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (where they founded Khartoum)...

“...It was source of the White Nile that was regarded as the greater mystery, and the story of its exploration has always fascinated me.”

Christopher refers to Alan Moorehead’s “The White Nile” (My book is a 1964 Penguin reprint), and having filled us in on the Victorian explorers, says how he considered his own a double journey -

“...a journey to experience what I had only read about, and a journey to seek answers to questions I could not yet frame...Even as I set out....I felt instinctively that more than a river had been born in the geological cradle of the Nile....I felt that understanding the difficult puzzle of the Nile’s source might also give me some insight into a far more challenging riddle: the turbulent, complex, paradoxicalenigma of Africa itself.”

In potting through (or is it pottering?) - the flight from London, through Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro - to Arusha and to meet with Thad Petersen at his compound, and the rest of the team, Joshua Mbewe and Pollangyo...

The 600-km drive through Tanzania, first through Moshi, Morogwe and north of Dar es Salaam to the coast, having crossed the Ruvu River by ferry. The picture, right, of this crossing is taken from the book. Arrival at Bagamoya, from where, as Christopher says, “Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Stanley and Grant all started their journeys into the interior of Tanganyika...” Then to Zanzibar in a fragile dhow. To fill readers in, Mount Meru, an extinct volcano, towers over Arusha. The Pangani or Ruvu River rises in the snows of Kilimanjaro and Moshi lies under its shadow. The mountain was discovered by Johannes Rabmann in 1848. Also, it was from Bagamoya that Stanley started his 1871 quest for Dr. Livingstone.

To get on, Christopher tells us of the Bantu, the original inhabitants of Zanzibar. I remember with a pang, my own naval cruise to East Africa and the scent of cloves that filled my nostrils as we skirted Zanzibar. It was the world’s largest producer of cloves and, as Christopher points out:

“(The) most important slave-trading centre on the east coast of Africa...(with) no fewer than 50,000 slaves (changing) hands in the Zanzibar markets every year.”

Naturally, Zanzibar had to be toured and there was a well-known local artist, Jean Baptiste da Silva to show Christopher around. We are told of the first Anglican Cathedral in East Africa and for the building of which Livingstone raised funds in the 1850s. Livingstone House is now the Department of Tourism, overlooking the dhow harbour.

Christopher also learnt from Dr. Abdul Sheriff , head of the Department of Archives, that Zanzibar comes from zenj (black) and bar (coast) but notes that: “Burton, however, maintained that the origin was the Arab phrase zaynza’ibarr, loosely meaning Fair is This Isle.” He adds that Burton and Speke also set sail from Zanzibar to begin their 21-month exploration. They carried enough firearms ammunition for two years, for one of the Baluchi told them that they would need a hundred guards to fight their way into the interior. Burton had twenty.

He also describes his meeting in Kaole with Professor Samahani M. Kajeri . According to Burton, there may have been upto 700 tribes and 700 tribal languages. The Wamrima were the coastal people who came from the hills or interior. Professor Kajeri was a Ndoe - the tribe that came out of the Tabora region.

Touring Bagamoya, he also visited the small church where Dr. Livingstone’s body rested after having been brought from the interior, en route to England in 1874. There was a simple sign at the church door that said, Dr. Livingstone entered here as well as a plaque commemorating Burton and Speke’s departure to the interior.

It must be noted that Christopher made the most precise research on Burton’s journey, drawing much from Burton’s own account, The Lake Regions of Central Africa. In Land Rovers, he, together with his team, began the first phase of their journey.

They passed the villages of Sanase, Kigongoni, Matimbwa, Kitgongoni, Yombo, Miswe and the district of Kibaha, then left the Ruvu River valley for the new Dar es Salaam-Moragoro road. They then cut south to Kisaki through Kizuka and a military zone and reached Ngerengere, 133 km from Bagamoya - and suddenly, a dead end. The road was impassable. They had to turn back to the main road, turn off at Mikese, take a dirt road to Kikundi, Bagalala with its extraordinary rock caves, through equatorial rain forest, teak plantations to Matombo, hills of yellow limestone, Mvuja where they crossed a tributary of the Ruvu and on to Kisaki, Dutumi, the settlements of the Parakuyu Masai and spent the night at Dutumi. They were on the second-last stage of Burton’s trip.

They were also on a bluff - the edge of an offshoot of the Great Rift Valley. The next day to Vwkira, Dakawa, Sesenga, in search of Burton’s Zungemero. They were told that in the old days, Nyaratanga was called Zungemero Mahinda (Mahinda meaning ancestral spirits).

Readers will find the book spellbinding. I have not given all that Christopher told of the manner of the many Victorian expeditions, but it is all recorded - the trials and tribulations, hopes risen and hopes dashed, the agonies and ecstasies of each journey, the full barrage of the “Dark Continent.” He has packed in so much that the book is a veritable rosary with each bead telling of the best and the worst, of the appalling mistakes, the huge caravans of goods they carried, the porters who abandoned them and the threats of disease.

Altogether this makes an astounding story. To chase a dream, as it were, Christopher was determined to follow in the tracks of Burton, wrap around him the centuries-old aspirations of the man he had come so much to admire. He records what Edward Rice had to say in his book, Captain Sir Richard Burton:

“Struggling under appalling conditions, two sick men, handicapped by insufficient resources, a shortage of porters and animal transport, lack of equipment and a rebellious caravan, pushed ahead into an Africa that no European had ever seen and which even the long-experienced Arab slavers and traders approached with caution and fear.”

Drawn from this book, I give below a picture telling of the hunt for Zungomero, the place marked on Burton’s own map. At the wheel of the Land Rover is Christopher, while inquiries are being made from a tribal elder to check and if he can, match the place names that Burton had noted when on his journey.

The old place names had been changed. Tribes had moved away, things couldn’t possibly remain as they were in Burton’s time. This was a challenge Christopher had to face. But there was no doubt that Nyaratanga was Burton’s Zungomero, remembered by village elders as Zungomero Mahinda!

From Zungomero to the Selous Game Reserve, a game-scout outpost, Bwaga inside the Mikumi National Park where they rested at the Mikumi wildlife lodge. They had entered the Second Region of Burton’s trip. There were four more to go.

I have scanned in an old map of the Tanganyika Territory dated 1930 if only to help readers follow Christopher’s Nile Journey. All pictures are from his book except that which shows the ruins of the old Arab house in which Livingstone and Stanley lived for a short while.

This is a fascinating story and somehow it is intriguing to know that “Mahinda” is also an African ancestral spirit. In fact, there are so many fantastic aspects of this expedition that we have everything in one wonderful book - travel, discovery, exploration, a total recall of the past that is made to beat like a strong heart within the Africa of today. It is this that makes the book such an exciting read, and it is this that demands that this be not a mere review but a step-by-step commentary of Christopher’s love for those “faraway places with their strange-sounding names.”

Part 1 appeared on July 27, 2008

Bringing out social reality

“Martin Wickramasinghe Selected Short stories” contains ten short stories of the eminent author Martin Wickramasinghe, translated by Ranga Wickramasinghe. Diversion, Cemetery, Love, Bondage, Money, Mother, Eve of the New Year, The Torn Coat, Woman, Exploits of Andoaiya are the selected short stories.

In a special note at the beginning, Ranga Wickramasinghe states that the people and the social and physical environment, both in village and town, that inspired Martin Wickramasinghe were familiar to him in his childhood. “It was the déjà vu I experienced when I read his novels and short stories later in life that prompted me to try my hand at translating a selection into English language.”

Martin Wickramasinghe had written one hundred and four short stories in addition to his masterpieces Gamperaliya, Kaliyugaya, Yuganthaya, Viragaya and many others.

Back cover quoting from David Jackson, Professor of Languages, University of Texas at Austin states ; “Wickramasinghe can be compared to a generation of self-educated writers from village, rural, or regional origins who have brought about the modernisation of their national literature: Faulkner in the USA, Ramos in Brazil, di Lampedusa in Italy. Through a direct approach to colloquial language and the reintroduction of popular themes, such writers have tried to bring their national literatures into line, in an imagined way, with social reality...”

Book News

Nuwan Nayanajith Kumara’s latest book Gaddarika Pravahaya Hevath Sukiri Batillange Lokaya (Undiscerning) will be launched at the BMICH (Hall A) on September 4 at 4 p.m. The event is organised by Pansilu Arts Circle and Sunil Aruna Weerasiri.

1977 witnessed the emergence of the open economy with new trends in mass communication. Nayanajith’s work discusses how the intellectual capacity of the younger generation is affected by the new trends. It emphasises the need of creating a Sri Lankan identity in the globalisation process, overcoming the artificial waves of open economy. The book analyses how the Sri Lankan society abandoned the Theravada Buddhist tradition by embracing the Western way in an inappropriate manner. This work, in fact, is an indepth study of the contemporary social set up. The book, containing 523 pages with 300 rare photographs, is a Sarasaviya bookshop publication. Dr. Paneetha Abayasundara, a senior lecturer of the University of Sri Jayawardenapura, will chair the event while vetern filmmaker Jayantha Chandrasiri and popuplar media peronsality Jackson Anthony will deliver speeches. Nayanajith a Lake House jounalist and visiting lecturer at University of Visual and Performing Arts, has authored a number of publications: He will be launching his official website www.nuwannayanajith.com designed by Prabath Withanage, a University of Kelaniya undergraduate.

Sathun Athara Bosathvaru

Somaweera Senanayake’s latest work on Buddhism entitled Sathun athara Bosathvaru will be launched at Dayawansa Jayakody Book Exhibition Hall. Ven. S. Mahinda Mawatha, Colombo 10 at 10 a.m. on August 26.

Triple launch

Mari Makendiren’s Pudiya Kadawugal, Kalai Chelwan’s Oru Kalanganin Kadai, and Marudur Jamaldeen’s Thadayangal will be launched today August 24 at 4.30 p.m. at the Brighton Rest, Messenger Street, Colombo 12. The event will be held under the patronage of the founder of Purawalar Puththaka Poonga, Hashim Omar. Dr. Y. Maheswaran will preside.

-Ruzaik Farook