The queen lies buried in Rockhill estate
Now that the city of Kegalle in Sathara Korale has come into the
spotlight as the most recent venue of Lanka’s independence celebrations,
it may be not irrelevant to write on one of its most famous citizens who
lived some 500-600 years ago. Of course, she did not spend her whole
life there. Perhaps it may be correct to say that she came there “to
die”. In fact in her 33 or 35 years of Life, she, the famous Dona
Catherina owned many addresses in the island.
First Kandy, then Mannar (some ascribe to her even a short stint in
Jaffna Court) and again back to Kandy and then last, Kegalle. Converted
and subject to a spell of westernisation under Portuguese tutelage,
strangely she came to Kegalle to consult a Veda Mahaththaya who resided
in Hettimulla,a village that still thrives under the same name. defying
a time passage of 500-600 years.
Ill health plagued her often. Of course she withstood a sickness that
killed most of the ship in crew. Her parents succumbed to it leaving her
orphaned. They were fleeing the wrath of a rival in that maze of
turbulent Kandyan politics, the Portuguese throwing in their share. It
was the age of land grabbing by Western imperialists, pioneered at this
time by an Iberian race entrusted by the Pope to catch as many into
Christ’s fold. They had succeeded in the conversion of the heir to the
kingdom of Kotte, now eyeing next the Kandyan kingdom and its ruler and
family. The bait was the religion and many were in the fray. Tikiri
Kumaru Rajasinghe, himself turned a Sailvite was all ready to grab the
Kandyan kingdom whose ruler was planning and plotting to get Portuguese
aid to ward him off. Plans miscarried and the reigning king fled with
his family in a ship offered by the “Wild West” to take refuge in
Mannar, already fallen to them. But only the little princess could land
there for on the way an attack of small pox killed the rest of the
family. That is how the tiny princess became a ward of the invader.
Convent
Earlier named Kusumasana Devi, she was baptised under a new name Dona
Catherina and began to study in a convent in Mannar already dotted with
churches and chapels. She was a priceless treasure to her guardians as
the heiress to the Kandyan throne. Now she comes of age and her
guardians carry her back to Kandy to be enthroned. But again things go
awry and she is left in the hands of king Vimala Dharmasuriya who
himself owns to a very colourful history. At the battle of Danthure, he
kidnaps her.

Dona Catherina entering Kandy, being welcomed by the General
Conquistador Pedro Lopez de Souza |
She becomes his wife at the mere age of 11 or 12 and child bearing
begins almost soon after making her a mother of many by her thirties.
The constant child bearing plus the change of climate from that of
Mannar to the cold climes of the highlands has a say on her health.
Climate
While on a royal trip she finds the climate of Kegalle drier than
that of Kandy and also a discovery is made that her physician lives
close by at Hettimulla. A whim obsesses her and her husband, Senerat
(who marries her after the untimely death of king Vimala Dharma Surya)
gives into this whim and she moves to the palace at Welimannathota built
exclusively for her in the proximity of Kegalle. Years pass by.
Charmed by this tale of the princess, a group of us proceed years
back, to Rockhill Estate where this place had been. But no palace is
visible. Traffic rolls on the road below while a river too rumbles
along.
A villager becomes talkative. “It is that river that gives the
village its name. Sand is measured at the ferry. And hence Welimanna”.
“And the queen’s palace? What happens to it?”
“It lies buried there. Go up and see. A housing scheme has been built
over it now. No trace of the royal family. Even the Bhikkhu in the
Buddhist temple is barred from the place though the queen was
non–Buddhist. In the hollow of a nearby tree a lamp was lit till recent
times to honour her god. No one knows who lit it ”
We trek up, just masses of curiosity.
Silence
“Don’t take photos” A command breaks the silence of the afternoon.
There was an unmistakable air of defiance, even aggression on the faces
of those who had hastily come out of their houses. Then a bulky male
almost bulldozed into our group.
Well. Who wants to be murdered on a desolate hill where has sprouted
a housing scheme and may be, just for a lost or losing cause? We put the
cameras discreetly into our handbags and withdraw.
Writers do have a tendency to exaggerate. But not in the case of this
queen. In her short life of 33 or 35 years, her life owned all the
components to qualify her for the title, Lanka’s queen of tragedy.
Orphaned in early childhood by a political episode that rid her father
of the throne of "Kandea", adopted by a race then in vicious grips with
her race making her whole life a cultural and religious misadventure,
led to head a campaign against the city of her birth, getting kidnapped
by an adventurer who marries her at the young age of 12 or so, his
sudden death leaving her a widow in her early 20s, getting forcibly
wedded to an ex-Bhikkhu, her eldest son by the former king dying through
his wiles to make the son by him heir to Kandy. That is the last straw
to break the camel’s back. She turns hysterical, tears her hair, reverts
to the language of her adopted race and curses in it her second husband
as she dies. What more does any woman or any queen of any race in the
world need for that undesirable title?
Threats
Back from the late 16th Century and early 17th C when all these
events were orchestrated to our own times when we had timidly succumbed
to the threats of those who were now living on top of the palace ruins.
They were not new to them, their stares and threats seemed practised.
Yes. They were probably used to it for the settlement has been made on
land once about to be named crown land and as an archaeological
preserve. But private interests had prevailed.
The palace built on it had been called the Welimannathota Palace.
Welimannathota (name still in usage), where river sand was measured had
beeen a popular place in the area 400-600 years back and forded a
tributary of the Ma Oya that runs through Hatara Korale. Spilbergen’s
Diary translated by Dr.K.D. Paranavithana gives an account of the life
in the Kandy palace where the royal family is portrayed as very loving,
the pair itself endearing despite the kidnapping. But this phase of the
queen’s life is cut short by the king’s sudden death. The col d climes
of the highlands had not been favourable to the queen brought up by the
Portuguese in a mini palace in the hot climate of coastal Mannar making
her fall ill often. Aware of her heirship to the Kandyan throne they
bided their time. But things turned awry.
Sickness
And the loving king had built this palace at Welimannathota for her
to retire in times of sickness especially as her physician lived close
by at Hettimulla. So when her eldest son drowned or said to be drowned
by king Senarat her second husband she developed temper tantrums and
began to curse and swear at her husband in a strange language that
nobody could understand it was nothing but natural that she retreat to
this Welimannathota Palace, the additional motive to be aware from king
Senarat egging her. The queen had died there in her early thirties after
giving birth to seven children within 12 years (four by Vimaladharma and
three by Senarat) and Baldeus observes Senerat had been genuine in his
sorrow at her demise. This despite her curse on him before death, "You
are the cause of my death."
Since after her death the Portuguese padres who had attended on her
religious-wise as she had never changed her adopted religion (making a
chapel a compulsory part of the palace) and a small contingent of their
soldiers had remained there making the Palace known in the area as
Parangi Maligawa.
That this was the only palace that Hatara Korale can boast of even
the Bhikkhus in temples around as Asokaramaya had been keen to preserve
it.
That is what the Bhikkhus there told us. Even the Bauddha
Balamandalya had tried to help in. That the queen was Christian was no
matter to them, it was the heritage they cared for.
But nobody else seemed to much care. Cash crop craze spread all over
the island and this area of Kegalle too turned to an extensive rubber
plantation. It was soon named Rockhill Estate while the jungle and the
wild beasts took over the precincts of the Palace. Soon becoming private
property it changed hands several times, the famous Ondatjee family too
becoming owners before migrating to America.
One who bought it from them after coming to know that the palace lay
embedded in the forest coverage had soon got rid of it to an innocent
party for fear of it being confiscated. Now only a few tiles done in the
style of Kandyan tiles lay strewn together with foundation walls of four
feet thickness reminiscent of heyday times. The palace itself is no
more, ramsacked and perhaps razed to the ground or succumbed to nature’s
spread.
Curiosity
The new housing scheme spreads over it all. "Photographs, foul" bawls
out the dwellers scared that somebody’s busy body curiosity might lead
to their own eviction from a land of much historical watered not only by
a tributary of the Ma Oya but by the tears of a woman who was not only
entitled to a peculiar title by aesthetes but was politically powerful
as the mother of one of Lanka’s greatest monarchs, Rajasinghe 11 who
ruled for a good part of the 17th C and had his reign advertised
globally via Robert Knox’s book. The queen had been having temper
tantrums even when child with this prince and some attribute the king’s
own eccentricities not withstanding his prowess in battle, to the
mother’s mental state.
The book From flower to pawn by the writer is woven around this
queen. |