Lanka shifted to the Himalayan base

While respecting Lanka's sovereignty and wishing it to last forever a writer's fancy leads to speculations which may be sensational too for only geological catalysts are responsible for such shifts. Anyway cultural-wise, and in certain spheres the shift does happen. This truth had dawned on me, in several instances and mostly during conversations, with regard to my own island.

There was recently a visitor, a female, who had dropped in for a chat with a parcel of Kavun - kokis since it is the season of good cheer and fried eatables that doctors frown on and label as fertile fields of cholesterol and what not. Talking of this and that, she admitted to me that her newly married daughter was very unhappy. Though distasteful of gossip, I had to ask her why, now that she had ventilated a confidential family matter.

Mental faculties

"Her husband is a Pinguttaraya she said, I explored my mental faculties that finally stopped in the Jathaka story terrain cultivated in India. The character of Pinguttaraya, if I remember correct, occurs in a sub-story of a larger Jathaka.

He is an intricate young man who loaded with the attractive daughter of the Disa Pamok Acharya (a being very popular in the Himalayan base) just hates her as he is generally a morose man who spurns the joyful side of life. He just does not know what to do with this bubbling and frolicking partner thrust on him finally frustrating the new bride.

Sexy figure

Actually this chit chat took place a few days ago but years have passed and much water has flowed under Lanka's bridges since I accompanied Asilin, the family domestic aid to the village temple on some errand. A comely young woman passed us, her sexy figure just gyrating.

Asilin clicked her tongue and spat out before saying that there goes, "Chinchimanawikava to embroil the Bhikkhus in the temple in her wiles.'

Almost all Buddhists are acquainted with this terrible Indian character instigated by religious rivals who attempted to slander the Buddha himself. Tying a load of firewood to her tummy she accused the Buddha of raping her and fathering her baby. Of course vengeance by the gods immediately was inflicted on her, by way of the earth splitting and exposing a large hole that swallowed her and took her direct to hell.

Though Chinchi vanished so swiftly, her name stayed on, no, not in India as far as I know, but in our villages. Any evil-charactered woman earns this name. By the way, the pit into which Chinchi was drawn into hell's fires still exists nestled in the grain fields of Dambadiva. And what is more, our Upasakammas make it a point to emit Saadhu cries as they pass the place.

Very irrelevant and irreverent. Anyway that is neither here nor there. A more relevant exercise could be listing the names of those, who while strutting Lanka's earth are yet personified by Indian names drawing the island very close to the Himalayan base made world famous by the great savant. Any generous man is known in Lanka as Vessanthara but it was the name of an Indian king who retired to the Himalayas to fulfil his Dana Paramitha or the Perfection of generosity. And any gormandiser, usually seen at almsgivings and temple festivals earns the name Joojakaya, but his address is by-gone India.

He is however, equally famous for grabbing the kids of king Vessantara to help in the chores of his pretty wife, Amittatapa, a story that almost every native of Lanka is conversant with. Just touch on the story of the two royal kids he wangled for household chores and the elderly women in the villagers will begin to release torrents of tears.

And how come the word, Moosala? It could be derived from Moosila who tried to out beat his own master. Moosila himself together with Master Guttila lived at Udeni, an Indian city but both names are household words here.

A Sinhalese tormented by years and years of bitter strife with an adversary will say, "He is my Devadattaya". But the latter lived in North India, toppling rocks onto the road that Buddha would saunter along and preparing pachyderms for unsuccessful combats with the Thathagatha.

Indian epic

Kumbakarna seeping from the Indian epic Ramayana is easily applied by our folk to a very lazy man who wakes up only to fill his belly and Pattini Amma who sailed here from the subcontinent, to a female keen on preserving her chastity.

A lustful man using public transport would physically harass a female passenger and subject to adverse remarks and action, himself would retort,"So you are trying to be a Pattini Amma'. He is utterly unaware that years ago Pattini Devi sailed here from India.

A vile man with no regard to ethics is called Porishadaya in our society. But this word too has Indian antecedents. A generous devotee again earns the name of Ane Pidu Sitano in the same way that a genteel female with much religious fervour is ennobled by the simile, comparing her to Vishaka. Both Ane Pidu and Vishaka hail again from Jambudeepa hallowed by the Buddha's time.

And where did Illeesa Sitano sit and admonish his wife to fry only one Konda Kavun and not go on to feed the whole town? It was only in an Indian kitchen. He came to be called Masuru sitano after this despite his mending ways and today in our rurals any close-fisted man earns this name.

Bickering politics recently led to an ugly declaration that India certainly is not ready to play the Big Brother role to Sri Lanka. This declaration by who-ever made it, reflects a gross insensitivity to this silky strand that connects the island to the sub continent.

Her main race, religion, language, literature, arts and crafts (18 kulas that embedded different industries) the system of Ayurveda medicine, main historical legends, much of her customs, beliefs, legends and mores and ethics, even some of her dress patterns she has derived from her Big Brother.

The Rama Ravana legend is itself a big "Binder". So whatever degradations she is subject to she moulded by Buddhist ethics of respect to elders, does not mind calling India, her Big Brother.

The vast space of land that separates the island from the base of the Himalayas where Buddha preached rounding the Ganges with his Sangha Parivara, just vanishes and we are right there with mostly our rural folk for whom the land of the Buddha is paradise and nothing else.