When dead history comes alive...

About 10 years ago when I was assigned to contribute an article to the Observer Pictorial , fired by a sudden whim and brushing off religious prejudices I opted to write on the Passion Play of Duwa.

This involved some team work and I was waiting for the vehicle bringing in the cassocked Roman Catholic nun from a convent in Kotahena that had offered voluntary help. It was in a house by the fabulous St. Sebastian Church looming over Main Street, Negombo that I waited. From where I sat I got a direct view of the front house and its peculiar name-board, Siri Vikum Nivasa .

From the woman of the house who sympathetically brought me some tea as I languished there waiting for the nun, I inquired about this strange name. She informed me minus a sarcastic smile that the king of Lanka had once stayed in that opposite abode. Sri Wickrema, I think he is, she added and said that the old house of Vella Mudali (Mudaliyar of the beach) where the royalty stayed has now given way to this modern American style house. Naturally, you cannot expect a house that existed in the beginning of the 19th century to go on up to the present despite it providing lodgings to a royal family.

Cruelty

Before returning from Negombo after my assignment I visited Siri Vikum nivasa and the chief occupant generously dished out facts regarding the royal stay. He seemed very proud of that episode.

The present house owner Fernando’s ancestor, then called Vella Mudali, who had been a sort of Mayor of the city, had been the master of the house, then the grandest in the town, and he even showed me the waterfront from where the royal party had embarked to go on to Colombo. The party was avoiding the direct Kandy - Colombo road.

“For fear of boos?” I wished to ask but did not for fear of straying and getting bogged in a long conversation on the cruelty of our last king that disenchanted the whole Kandyan population. Anyway, over the years the family had retained its name Fernando and even their religion Roman Catholicism.

Remember, some 40,000 Lankans living along the coast had converted by this time under the Portuguese regime. No Bauddha Balvegaya nor Ravana Balavegaya existed then to give battle and the Portuguese had a field day by robbing a good part of Sinhala Buddhists attracted also by the fact that the new faith was no impediment to their occupation of fishing. No inhibitions about taking of life.

I did a piece on this find of mine to the Sunday Observer , that is on the Siri Vikum Nivasa but there was negative response till one fine evening at a wedding function in Colombo, a distant cousin of mine approached me. He was a resident of Banduragoda, a village between Veyangoda and Mirigama. Now of course he has migrated to Colombo suburbs after obtaining a high post.

“I read your article,” he told me. “Do you know that my great grandfather who lived to a very ripe old age had seen this royal procession wending its way towards Negombo through Banduragoda? He has watched it as a tiny boy and would boast of it often in family gatherings.

Perhaps in the context of the long period lapsed involving about six generations (1815 - 1990), the boy was repeating something his father or grandfather has seen but that is what was told to me.

The royal flight had taken place in 1815. Like the protesters in the present world against despotic rulers, 200 years ago, the Sinhala Buddhist crowd was flaring up in murderous anger over the massacre of the Ehelapola family, today the tale flashing on the silver screen in the aesthetic euphoria following the overthrow of the LTTE.

Hidden route

That is by the way. The king and his retinue had to arrive in Colombo via a hidden route avoiding the revengeful crowds making mayhem not in the Arab spring nor in other springs but in the Kandyan spring.

Further, the direct route from Kandy to Colombo was yet to be built and Barnes, its architect was yet to land here but yet there was something unresponsive to my piece. Of course you cannot expect confirmation on the myriad of stray pieces you or I write.

Rarely is it done. But I received an indirect confirmation today while leafing through a journal, to combat the agony of a waterless day in the environs of out of all places, of Diyawanna (Water, water everywhere!)

Portrait

Though the North Western direction from the central highlands that the royal coach fled in 1815, an utterly unfamiliar direction, remained a hushed historical secret, here is a piece from that content, extracted from the Vittipotha that traces the long history of Miveva or Madhuvapi , a hamlet in Sath Korale (the Seven Korales).

According to the writer, this text gives an eye witness account of how Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe was taken as prisoner via the Mivava gravat of the old Kandy - Negombo road.

Elsewhere under the heading, “Taking king Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe to Colombo as prisoner”, an eye witness account of the royal procession as it wended its way along the Kandy - Negombo road is given. The witnesses of the spectacle had been headed by Ven. Sonuttara of Mivava Vihara.

The report said, “There were the king, his mother, two elderly queens, two young queens” Doyly too refers to two younger girls named Muddu Kunammal and Venkata Jammal who not having even attained puberty were married to the king at a late stage of his reign. Venkata Rangammal whose beautiful portrait today hangs in the Museum is reckoned as one of the elderly queens.

On seeing the prelates, the king had got the chariot stopped to talk to them. The main topic had been the classification of the chiefs of Hath Korale into those who were loyal and disloyal to him in the recent debacle that led to his flight.

The king himself mentions them by name transpiring a very good memory. Except for three Mohottalas, Menikrala, Ganangamuwe and Moragane all other Mohottalas had gone against him at though “he had once treated them like relations”.

The writer mentions that ruins of the old Kandy - Negombo road are still visible in Patirajamulla in Miveva of Sath Korale. It was a narrow road constructed with stone slabs. Roads had purposely been constructed rough and narrow to prevent easy conquest.

Another village focused on at this period is Dahanakgama from which the Dasanayake lineage has emerged.

The writer and researcher, Sumudu Seneviratne in her contribution to the prestigious RAS Journal (the latest edited by Dr. Hema Goonetileka) very laudably mentions that the object of her research is to highlight the importance of Sinhala intermediate texts for a deeper understanding of Sri Lankan history.

I am of course additionally grateful for the substantiation of matter on the Old Kandy - Negombo road along which the fugitive royal family travelled and which, I came upon almost accidentally while going off the track to eulogise a passion play.