Musings

Mystery of the dress of Lanka's last queen

by Padma Edirisinghe

It needs no connoisseur in female attire to conclude that the dress worn by the last queen of Lanka ( one of the four queens of the last king ) is more flavoured with a chic Western style than with a homely Oriental touch. The dress referred to here, is the famous one worn by queen Rengammal in the much publicised portrait that hangs in the Colombo Museum .All these queens of Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe were from Malabar state and naturally were expected to wear the famous Indian saree and the jacket. That queen Rengammal too was in such a conventional apparel when the royal group was captured in Medamahanuwara is testified by the jacket torm off her during the capture, which blood stained item ,flaunts by her portrait due to the effort of a Sinhala headmaster in Karandana.

A vengeful Mohottala whose family had been ruthlessly murdered by king Sri Wicrema made use of the debacle at Medamahanuwara where the king was captured by the British to rob this queen of her jacket which he took all the way to Karandana in Sabaragamuwa and hid in a chest. Two hundred years later a remarkable head of a school in the neighbourhood , hearing of hidden clothes of the royal family took it into his possession.

Coming back to the main stream of events, from contemporary annals it is evident that the regal group was stripped almost to the skin in revenge for the brutal massacre of the Ehelapola family.They were then, due to the intervention of the British , transported by coach and sea vessel to Colombo. One can infer that some improvisation had been made to cover their naked bodies. Then in the capital city arrangements had been made to clothe them more decently.

Believe it or not I met a descendent of a female who had a hand in making new dresses for these stripped females. Special care would have gone into the dress of queen Rengammal as she was scheduled to sit for a portrait by the Beira. Though this female, let us call her Kolomba achchi does not mention this fact specifically it is clear that she had watched this portrait being drawn from a boat that plied between Maradana and Colombo Fort where were settled the Dutch seamstresses. Remember this period was the aftermath of the capitulation of Dutch territories to the British who had been magnanimous enough to let any Dutch man or woman who decided to stay on to do mainly within the precincts of Colombo Fort. Stranded there , many a Dutch lady took to sewing as a livelihood.

But I must deal more with the beginning of this tale and go back to my informant G.H.Zoysa who was residing at Mount Lavinia at the time I met him. He was originally from the Zoysa cum Rajapakse clan who had migrated from Balapitiya to Colombo during the peak period of cinnamon trade. In fact the Rajapaksas who resided at Maradana in that complex now where Ananda College rises to the skies was one of the kingpins of this trade cum plantation..The GH Zoysa family had still not migrated to the capital but a rather extrovert lass of their relatives had made it a habit of traveling often between Colombo and Balapitya, carrying good doses of gossip back home. As she advanced in age she came to be known as Kolomba achchi and it was from her or her descendents (more likely in the context of the log priod in between) this grandson or great grand son had heard many snippet of this tale.

When the royal group landed in Colombo in 1814 from the waterfront many a problem was created for the then governor Brownrigg ,the chief of which was dressing up the half dressed fugitives. By some cunning means certain castes of the low lands had wormed their way into the close association of the supreme ruler. So, according to the narrator, the Rajapakse Walavva of Maradana often entertained the Governor and his family. In one of the conversations that Kolomba achchi who too was in and out of this mansion,overheard it leaked out that clothing the royal fugitives , especially the females, had become a vital problem.

It can be inferred that Kolomba achhi now took upon herself the task of entrusting the Dutch seamstresses to making dresses for the group. However it is not clearly mentioned that Rengammal’s Western style dress was made within this commission.Perhaps since it contained many pieces that were later put together, the dress had remained a mystery but it is clear that the Dutch ladies were behind the clever attempt that was further crowned with many beaded necklaces and pendants placed in apt places..

Yet Kolomba achchi according to grandson Zoyza had been witness to the drawing of this portrait. There was no land transport then in Colombo and the whole city was sodden with water. Maradana was one landing jetty and the woman was taking material to be sewn by the Dutch ladies .So the young woman had been plying by boat between the landing jetty of Fort and this jetty when she saw the queen posing for a portrait in a beautiful gown . As the White painter painted away ,another, obviously his wife stood by holding a container that packed brushes and paint.

Kolomba achchi had not seen this dress early and Zoysa surmises that as this was a special occasion of a drawing of the most beautiful of the king’s queens some persons of a higher level than Kolomba achchi had negotiated with the Dutch tailoring females.

With the artefacts that were returned to Ceylon from England on the approach of the grant of independence was this portrait and the very next year it adorned a calendar due to its very sensational beauty.

Next it made its way into the Colombo Museum and is displayed today by the side of a robbed jacket that was later replaced by a chic western style frock.