MUSINGS:

Robert Knox, making a comeback to triumph

by Padma Edirisinghe

What is a howler? An example could be the statement that the famous Robert Knox came to our island to write a book. Writing books was far from the youth's mind as he wandered among the Kandyan hills, all alone, his father too dead in utterly miserable circumstances in Hathara Korale. Yet, according to the then secretary of the Royal Society stationed in London, Dr. Robert Hooke by name, when he went back he had carried the whole of Kande uda rata, that is the highlands, in his head.

His book that earned many a plaudit in the West and got translated into many Euro languages, is described as the best available source book for the contemporary social and economic history of Ceylon. How did Knox gather all this information? Best answer could be by just eclipsing himself in the wombs of rural highlands and associating only the lower rungs of society.

Abhorred

He just abhorred higher institutions as the royal court though he could have easily found a welcome there by a monarch, ie. Rajasinghe 11, thirsting for new faces and new experiences. Knox himself narrates an incident where, he recounts the evil fortunes of a Dutch man who makes his presence in the Kandyan Court and is selected by the king to tutor him in the Dutch language.

After the tutoring session what did the impetuous king do? Got him killed for teaching him a lot of gibberish! Of course, the king had begun a venomous attitude towards the Dutch race who had begun fleecing him on the pretext of helping him against the Portuguese.

Anyway it is obvious that the monarch was utterly ignorant of the presence of this British captive.

His presence was not such a strange phenomenon in this extra ordinary period when the Whites in the exuberance of adventure in new lands just seethed in Asia.

Even when certain officers motivated by good intentions tried to introduce him to the mighty king, Knox somehow contrived to avoid the encounter. The peculiar system of bondage practised added to the non-contact. Though he and his party abandoned were dubbed prisoners, it was a peculiar kind of imprisonment that only a novel-minded ruler could have drafted.

Captives

These captives were assigned to some selected families in different regions and there they had to live and work for their livelihood. According to the writer's own observations of how they lived in these villages, the captives lived very free. She visited (on information received) the Kollara or Kolluara family of Legumdeniya off Gampola in the 1980 decade who had made a name for harbouring Robert Knox in the 17th Century.

It was obvious that to the ancestors of the head of this household the future famous author had just been a headache.

No one ever guessed that he was going to produce a work of high academic magnitude that was to make rounds in Europe and so just let him run behind bulls in the paddy fields as part of his allotted work.

Very often according to Kollara the youth was absconding and came in only for his meals. What was he doing? The clever foreign lad was not idling but associating the villagers, studying their habits and mannerisms, learning the language, cunningly tracing his route of escape. Did he have in his mind, the draft of 'Historical relations of Ceylon'? Not at all.

All his formal learning had by now left him. Only the Biblical knowledge remained garnered from a bible that an islander had handed to him miraculously. Perhaps that kept him still conversant with his English.

The Bible was of emotive value too, for his pious mother had got him to read parts of it everyday. The poor woman no doubt waited and waited in vain for her son and husband to return and herself went to heaven. Perhaps this religious education imparted by his mom explains his resilience and his armour against female attractions that could have eternally bonded him here.

For out of the 12-14 group who got stranded in the island when their ship faulted a good number succumbed to the charm of local women and chose to stay over. But not Knox and his close friend, Rutland. Their strange flight across the North central parts of the island ending up at the fort of Arippu and then making their escape in a Dutch ship enroute to Europe from Batavia can get encased in a separate book.

Escapade

This escapade too proved successful as Knox and his partner were never distracted by other elements. Escape was their only aim. After nearly 20 years of captivity the duo would have presented a strange sight.

A witness probably has this to say, 'Here to the port of Arippu have come two very strange men. They speak the local language very fluently, are dressed in the local fashion, chew betel always ."

Was Robert Knox repentant that he never underwent a presentation at the exquisite royal court of Rasingh Deiyo? Never. He knew with wise intuition that danger lurked there.

The monarch was very powerful and knew his statecraft well but he could be dangerously eccentric too. The strange thing is that though Knox avoided the court and preferred to mix up with the hoi-polloi, he still kept intact his knowledge of not only intimate palace matters but of the turbulent political matrix too.

That the king was playing one European race against another, was in the orbit of his knowledge.

Similarly he knew that the king was haunted by a feeling of insecurity and changed palaces and even beds very often, that he got his food sampled by others before he ate it (Fear of food poison). The king also had not much affection to his wives, who seem to be of South Indian stock and just neglected them, not summoning them for any function. The king also was not religious contrary to the policy of the pantheon of Lanka's kings to whom Buddhism acted the foremost mentor...Knox ascribes this also the fact that the king's mother (Dona Catherina) was a Christian and that his tutors were Xtian friars as Fr. Negrao. In fact the king had once got the much heralded Kandyan Esala pageant stopped leading to the Nillambe rebellion.

Who provided him with all this apparent gossip when he himself never entered the city premises?

Absence

In the absence of any written literature on the subject, main source could be the villagers, most of them now his customers, grown so due to his cunning business sense.

He had begun lending money and even purchasing land. Eladatte remained his last purchase and from one household he procured a little lass, a product of the mixed marriages his group had engendered and whom he named Maria.

By this act Knox just embedded himself in the mountainous society of the highlands.

The methodical man that he was he was totally sensible too as to the future. Maybe he could die amidst the mountains after reaching old age too. Maria then would look after him. But he managed to get back and even die a capitalist after working as a captain of a ship, the Tonqueen.

That ship even hauled slaves (while the captain chose to forget his own past slavery though absurdly mixed up with freedom too)! Did he forget Maria? No. He sent documents to Ceylon, via the Dutch Govt, conferring all his land in her name.

And do not forget the map he produced, considered to be very reliable.