How Robert Knox viewed King Rajasingha of Kandy

by Amal HEWAVISSENTI

Robert Knox

King Rajasingha

"His name is Rajasingha. Though the literal meaning is 'The King of Lions' the King is not descended from the genuine royalty. This King's queen is said to have a Malabar origin and strangely enough, within the twenty years that I spent in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) I have not had the least visual proof which made me believe that the king lived with her... The king is short in stature, fat, rather dark with fully round belly but his eyes are still penetrative, lively and are implicated in valiant, uncompromising mood. The copper of his hair and his face, highly embellished by the thinking grown beard, bear all the marks of life time valour. But his idiosyncratic nature has clear manifestation that he is ever young, both by action and by thinking pattern though he is around eighty years of age".

The above is a fragment of profile given of King Rajasingha of Kandy by Robert Knox who had a 20-year ordeal in captivity under Rajasingha and launched, in 1681, his rather autobiographic, epic record of thoughts, beliefs, customs of Sinhala people and the mechanism of Sinhala Kingship. His total attitude towards the King and Sinhala people was an absolute blend of imperial bias, cynical criticism, logic and truth simply because he had to live in captivity under the King. His classic masterpiece "Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon" is a graphic representation of a people and the King though there are problems of exaggerated reportings due to its confusion on the ship where he composed it.

However, his account of the King and the royal factors around him mirrors harsh cynicism with logical truth tempered by 20-year first hand observations.

Royal food

"The King is used to take his meals quite formally with royal orderliness. The whole dining table is covered with a white cloth. The King sits on a short stool and eats food from an elaborate golden bowl placed on a bluish green plantation leaf, spread on the table. Throughout the table are plates and bowls filled with around 40 types of curries and dishes.

The "Bath Wadana Nilame" (rice-serving officer) who has covered his mouth round with a cloth, is always at work serving what the King likes from the plates in to the Kings golden bowl.

The fresh greens and fruits growing lushly in the royal gardens are his favourite and he eats them once a day with extra special relish. Whatever type of food that is for the King, must be brought respectfully covered with a white cloth.

Even the royal kitchen is very special and it maintains an awe inspiring formality. Preparation of the Kings food was assigned to most beautiful ladies brought to the palace from all corners of the country. I remember once there were pretty, Portuguese ladies serving in the kitchen and even now there are some of them. Whether they are married or not, they have to perform their duties in the kitchen as long as they live, with no hope whatsoever of redemption. Some ladies fled from the royal kitchen and a poignant tragedy touched some other ladies who were subject to the King's extreme anger and were sunk into deep water on the King's orders.

The palace

The Kings Palace which is surrounded by a strong lime - plastered rampart, is a complex of edifices with a number of elegantly carved doors and a balcony with carved and painted wood fences. However, the palace has been designed not only for the Kings enjoyment but likewise for his protection against any hostile attack. It is really a mansion of wood and attractive carvings.

A sentry is posted at every door of the palace and nobody is allowed without the Kings permission to walk from one part of the palace to another part. Apart from these there are some brawny and influential sentinels with special privileges who have to be on strong guard of the King particularly at night. They have been exclusively appointed by the King but they are under no circumstances, allowed to talk together and are not supposed to loosen the tight security for the King.

"To keep watch over the palace at night, even elephants are employed. Should there be any rebellion, strife, or any type of conflict, those responsible for it are rounded up and are made to be trampled by the elephants. The bodyguards for the King are Negroes who are given a special allowance. Sometimes the King employs specially trained spies to collect and report secret information on the sentries who fail to do their duty or sleep during the allocated time. In addition, these spies eavesdrop what the sentries talk at night and report it to the King. Sometimes, the King himself disguises himself and walks at night simply to know the public opinion, ideas, and thoughts. The king's personal guard involves children, youth and strong men from higher castes".

Attitude to miscreants

"When some royal guards happened to have some type of misconduct with women the King took special care to punish them. Women who have been involved is sexual misconduct with royal guards or any official in the palace are outright dispelled from the city. Therefore women take immense care to behave themselves as they know the brutal nature of punishment that would come on them. Some prostitutes who accidentally get caught to the royal guards will pay a fair price for what they have done, at the hands of the King. Though the women aspire to leave house disguised as men and behave as they wish at night, they are highly alarmed by the possibility of being caught by guards and punished with the most unspeakable tortures.

Knox sees envoys

Knox has excelled in the art of explorations not only by closely scrutinising the lifestyle and cultural back drop of Sinhala people, but also by mastering the Sinhala language in a way that he could have written his book even in Sinhala language itself. It is generally believed that Daniel Defoe too adopted Knox's work as an ideal archetype and a prototype to create his novel "Robinson Crusoe" a century later.

Yet Defoe's work involves the elements of fantasy and imagination when dealing with the experiences of a sailor marooned on an island while Knox's work on the contrary deals with practical and realistic experiences of prisoner in a new land (Ceylon). Knox's original work translated itself simultaneously into French and Dutch - a clear proof to show its unconditionally superlative position in English literature.

However, Robert Knox adopts a comparatively optimistic view point over King Rajasingha when he reports how the King maintained the diplomatic relations with other countries. Says Robert Knox, "The King displays a penchant to welcome foreign diplomats. When they come, specially arranged troop s march along a decorated royal street to escort them to the palace.

As long as the diplomats are in the palace, they are treated as exclusive royal guests and are granted every possible privilege, facility and any other thing they wished on the King's order. The King instructs the guards to provide tight security for the envoys and show them the most captivating places in the country. In his way, a highly amiable atmosphere between the King and the envoys are ensured during their stay in the country.

Punishment

The King has evinced his brutality and dictatorship by imposing punishment on the whole family of an offender. His approach to severe punishment is killing the culprit bit by bit by subjecting him to different stages of torture. Sometimes the culprit is made to confess his guilt by burning his body with a hot iron or by cutting pieces of flesh off his body. When this happens, even a guiltless man may confess that he had committed the crime. The king sometimes orders the criminal to eat his own flesh out of his limbs and once he ordered a guilty mother to eat flesh out of her child. After hearing the cases, the king orders the executioner to take the condemned criminals to the place of torture and plant them on sharp stakes until the stakes pierce through the criminals body. The hounds who cannot wait till the staked criminals die, jump up and tearaway flesh from the criminals. Some criminals are tied to trees and their limbs are cut off. This place of fortune is situated on a higher elevation because everyone can witness how criminals are punished and be careful not to commit any crime."

The moat around the "Magul Maduwa", somewhat away from the palace, serves as a beautiful pond abundant in fish. Here there are some mansions which contain varied exquisite carvings. The King is used to feed the fish in the pond by offering them boiled rice on his palms. The fish are so familiar with the King that they come to his palms in water looking for food. The royal elephants bathe here. He has many rare horses some of whom, he captured at war and some of whom he received from the Dutch as gifts. Apart from horses, he is in possession of deer, tigers, dogs and other animals. Marksmanship is one of the king's favourite pastime. He has golden, carved guns, and some guns appropriated from the Dutch stored on display in an armoury. He has given a marked place for Dutch guns as a reminiscence of his military victories against the foreign forces.

Swimmer

The king usually derives much pleasure by reviewing the curios and other precious things in his personal collection. He is highly attracted to swimming. When he goes to bathe, he swims with his guards and other people for sport. He justly tolerated Christianity and respected it as a religion."

In any case, Robert Knox's portrayal of the King and his nature was amply influenced by negativity which resulted from his being in captivity for as long as 20 years in Ceylon. But wherever necessary, the writer graphically represented the King with a balanced outlook and logical criticism that is truth oriented.

He admits that the Sinhala King is diplomatic, factful, and efficient in administration and fastidious about everything that affected the state and his subject. Knox gives mutually contrasting details of the King as he labelled the king to be a person who was not prepared to listen to sober counselling by any person and was bent on using power without restraint. The careful critic or the reader is to have sound judgement on what the writer says about the King and the country and why he has developed the probably negative attitudes or concepts.

Finally, as a nation, we must be thankful to him for recording true aspects of state and people of the Kandyan period because his work has not been replaced by historical chronicles on the period.