Of 'Ruhuna' and the Rajapaksas
 

by Kalakirti V. Vitharana, Professor Emeritus, University of Ruhuna

The term "Rohana" has been with the Sinhalas for the last 2600 years - i.e., for approximately 10,000 generations. According to the Mahavansa (IX. 10), Rohana, a brother of the Sakya Princess Bhadda Kaccana (like other brothers who arrived along with him) founded a settlement under his name which ultimately came to be applied to a whole exclusive region.

It is generally agreed that its southern limit lay along the Kalu Ganga and joined the head-streams of the Mahavali Ganga on the mountains and ran along it (North, then East and finally NE) to its very mouth in the Kottiyar Bay. The region to the South and East comprising nearly half the area of the whole island was the old Rohana, inclusive of a major portion of the Central Hills (the Malaya Rata, only a geographical region).

Rohana locations

The other boundary was of course, the sea-coast from Kalutara southwards, then east-wards and finally NNW-wards almost up to Trincomalee. It meant, therefore, that Alutgama, Ratnapura the historic and larger portion of the city of Kandy, Badulla, Batticaloa and Muttur were Rohana locations.

But would that be a generally acceptable opinion during the present times? Would a person from any of these locations today (proudly!) say, "I am from Rohana?"

Likely not, for even "Rohana" is not, by far, a popular term now - it is "Ruhuna" - the Sinhala derivational term stemming from the Sanskrit 'Rohana'. Over 20 verses of the Sigiri Graffiti composed 12 or more centuries ago refer to the region as 'Ruhunu' or 'Ruhuna', and the King Nissanka Malla of the later decades of the 12th century refer to the people of the region as 'Ruhuno' emphasizing that they were not of a deceptive character or were above suspicion-nivancavo.

However, the older term does remain and is widely understood, although the other is that which is widely used as in Ruhune di kiri (the buffalo curd) Ruhunu netum (the dances). Ruhunu bera (the drum) etc.

But that is not the major issue-such linguistic phenomena are rather commonplace. The major issue as far as I believe, lies somewhat away, and anticipates the question: 'Is the old political region called Rohana or Ruhuna the very geographical region called Ruhuna today?'

Born in village just on the outskirts of the town of Tangalla (located 122 miles or 196 km from Colombo on the A2 highway, almost in the centre of the southern coast that strikes East-West), I was used to hear in my childhood and early youth (ie., before I left my native village for 'pastures new'), that a certain youth known to us is about to get married to a maiden 'of Ruhuna' or that another has left his home to cultivate a field or hena (chena) 'in Ruhuna', each indicative of a village or location east-wards of our neighbouring town, beyond Ranna and Hungama, perhaps in the flood-plain of the Walawe Ganga.

It suggested that Tangalla was not in Ruhuna - that it was safety to the west of a harsh region of arid thorn-and-scrub jungle, desolate and rather more fit for the beasts of the wilderness than for human beings.

Then, destiny brought me to Galle (and the world to a World War!) where at Mahinda College a few teachers referred to me as the 'brat from the wilderness of Ruhuna....and Tangalla' and my schoolmates fooled me as one used to eat kurakkan in Ruhuna (and not the bread and bajiri available in wartime Galle!).

So Tangalla was in Ruhuna, although Galle was outside of it! Then from Galle, the Mahinda cricket team went up to Kandy to play a match vs. Dharmaraja, where a brilliant straight drive or a lusty square-cut by any of our batsman was greeted by, "A typical Ruhuna stroke!"

So Galle was in Ruhuna... but not Kandy - south of the Katugastota bridge! This now provides the background to the main issue - the dilemma: 'Where exactly is 'Ruhuna' of the present day?'

An attempt at supplying a quick answer is attended with some risk, I think, for there may be claims based on some factor beyond one's immediate comprehension. But to answer its corollary - where Ruhuna is not, appears to be relatively convenient: It is no more the sprawling political division of old occupying nearly half the island's total territory - far from it, or even a major portion of it.

The Southern or the left bank of the Kalu Ganga (on the West), the Eastern and the Southern or the right bank of the montane upper reaches and the eastern bank of the lowland reaches of the Mahaweli Ganga right up to the eastern coast are not accepted today as belonging to Ruhuna.

Nor are the interior plains and the rolling upland region of Sabaragamuwa and Vellassa, and the coastland of Panama further to the east are so regarded. They all have their geographical and cultural identities, and those native to or domiciled in these respective regions would, with justifiable pride, lay claim to their Pasdun Korale, Udarata, Uva, Digamadulla, Sabaragamuwa, Vellassa and Panam Pattu ancestry with hardly a reference to Ruhuna.

This process of elimination brings the Southern coastal region, with no recognizable line of demarcation except the east-west disposed coastline of about a 100 miles in length, into focus with a firm premonition that 'Ruhuna must be here....because it is nowhere else!'

East-wards of Galle (where I was referred to as a brat from the wilderness of Ruhuna, sixty years ago), the Ruhuna of the present begins to appear as in a thick haze where the inhabitants of the area even 20 miles to the north of Galle and Matara would identify themselves with these cities, and would rather not say 'We are from Ruhuna'.

Nevertheless, a 'Ruhuna Vidyalaya' was founded on Matara's eastern border during the 1940s and about two decades ago, the Venerable Dr. Kamburupitiye Vanaratana established a line of monks for the purpose of granting Higher Ordination (upasampada) and named it 'Sri Rohana Parsvaya' (parsvaya: 'Chapter').

Nearly two centuries ago at Na-otunna (located almost equidistant from Matara and Tangalla) there lived a poetess named Ruhuna Hamine (or Runa H.). And over this area to the east of Matara (as at Kekanadura, Tihagoda and further east towards Tangalla - at Akura - babila (near Dikwella) there lived (and yet do live, though in diminished numbers) families that specialised in the 'Low Country' or 'Ruhuna' tradition of the indigenous dance, resuscitated by an outstanding exponent - S.H. Savuris Silva of Tangalla whose father and teacher was S.H. Konnehamy of Kudavella, five miles to the West.

Such families also live today at Kadurupokuna bordering Tangalla and at Hatagala 12 miles to the east. Over 60 years ago few learned youths of Tangalla publishing a literary journal, named it 'Rohuna Kumara' (Kumara: Prince); and a 'Ruhuna Bus Company' served the region between Matara and Tissa during the contemporary times.

And in more recently, the Ruhuna University came to based at Matara, the Ruhuna Navy camp at Tangalla, and the great fane of the God Mahasena or Skanda, fifty miles to the east has been referred to in popular parlance as 'Ruhuna Kataragama Devalaya'. And Magam Pattu, the eastern administrative sector is also thus referred as 'Ruhuna Magam Pattu'.

It should also not be forgotten that the Sri Lanka's highest variety of buffalo curd, as measured by its coagulated density and thickness of its surface-cream once came from the flood-plains east of Tangalla - the Ranna Oya, the Walawe Ganga and Kirindi Oya in the main.

That Ruhune dikiri would not drip down even if its container was turned upside down, and could be carried in a thinly textured handkerchief. Some excellent honey with treacle also come from the sub-montane region of Kirama and Katuwana, approximately 15 miles to the north of Tangalla.

It may also be remembered, of course, with far greater dignity and pride that in this very region was born our first hero King - Dutugamunu, at least four of his ten military commanders (yodha) and his lordly war-elephant, Kandula or Kadol and that yet another heroic monarch, Vijayabahu I, was nurtured during his childhood and trained in the techniques of war here, and also that the nucleus of their armies was formed by the youths of this region.

It is likely this factor - that they crushed decisively their very formidable foes, assuring thus the perpetuity of the local kingly power at two extremely critical moments of our history, that has invested the people of this region with an aura of heroism - not that there were no other mighty struggles, and not that no heroes were born in other areas of our country.

Perhaps it is because of these factors unconsciously accumulated in the hearts of the people native to the Giruva and Magama regions (with no discernible boundary landwards northwards) that have made them prone not to say "We are from Tangalla, Ambalantota, Hambantota etc." They would rather say "We are from Ruhuna!" with all meanings implied!.

Land of hero and buffalo

So the essential 'Ruhuna' of the present day appears to be that southern coastal territory generally to the East of Matara, and particularly to the East of Tangalla extending upto the Menik Ganga and Yala at a breadth of about 20 miles - the land of andity and hardship where grow the coarse grains Kurakkan, tala and meneri and bada iringu and sini kekiri and the land of the hero and the buffalo.

It is with these considerations in the background that I recollected how on that wet evening of May 1945. i.e. 61 years ago, at Weeraketiya, ten miles to the north of Tangalla of the Giruva Pattu, to Minister of Education - the Hon. C.W.W. Kannangara stepped on to the stage at the occasion of a certain funeral and commenced his speech and soon terminated it in six Sinhala simple words: Ruhune sinhaya avasanayi.

Mage desanayat avasanayi! (Ruhuna's lion is no more. My speech too is no more!)

The 'lion' that was no more was Don Mathes Rajapaksa, Member of the State Council for Hambantota of the British Crown Colony named Ceylon. And through his oration of six seconds - the type of which has not been heard since, the Hon. Kannangara made the largely rural Ruhuna audience know, what the rest of their country thought of their leader.

A lion - a king of animals though, and one with an over-powering personality, fearless and devoted to the safeguard of his people!

A description of Ruhuna (as we now know) of 60 years ago may be found irrelevant in the present context, specially with the availability of starkly realistic portrayals of life and surroundings by, Leonard Woolf in his 'The Village in the Jungle' (translated into Sinhala as Baddegama) based on his personal experiences in 1912 and before.

This was indeed, the period of early youth of DM, born in Weeraketiya in 1896, and as an educated scion of a relatively wealthy rural' family, knew that there was much to be done at grassroots if he chose a career of service to his people rather than one of service to his own self as a government servant.

As a student at Richmond College, Galle and Wesley College, Colombo he had been tutored by some of the best teachers of the land and thus principals who represented the cream of general and theological learning of England; and in the public life of Colombo during later years he had listened to and / or associated with outstanding personalities such as Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, D. R. Wijewardene, Sir James Peiris, Sir D. B. Jayatilaka and a host of others inclusive of the newly emerging left-oriented intellectuals.

Nearer home, the towering personality, Dr. S. A. Wickramasinghe was his relation. The experience gained by such broad association, and his own in-depth awareness of world-affairs provided for him the pragmatic avenue of attaining rural leadership - a rural leadership not encompassing the whole world's rural environment, nor the rural environment of the whole of Sri Lanka either.

He chose to be the leader of his little native region - the Giruva and the slightly wider haven where the old hallowed usage. Rohuna or Ruhuna had found sanctuary.

And even there his heart's core was rather not with the Ruhuna of kings and heroes or the royal elephant that once turned the tide of history or the curd and honey that bestows ambrosial delight, but the hardy unsavoury kurakkan that formed his people's - the common man's staff of life, and which symbolised too his own unrelenting link with the soil of the Giruva on which he placed the first toddling paces of his life.

And so, he chose as his personal hallmark the scarf of dull maroon - the un-attractive colour of an ear of kurakkan (as of a pittu, talapa, halapa or roti made of its flour). It has now run down the line decorating the torso of his successors for the past seven decades. That, indeed, needs to be so!

Serving Ruhuna

He served the people of his Ruhuna (and others too) exemplarily, expecting nothing in return, materially and spiritually from anybody at any time, functioning also as the Member of the State Council for Hambantota for nine years (1936-45) upto his passing away.

He worked as a human with the spirit of a lion (see above) bowing to none even during those more critical days of the World War when (specially after 1942) even we of Ruhuna had to consume the atrocious bajiri (Hindi, bajri, mis-called a rice!) and cow-pea seeds bored by a weevil (gulla), dead inside.

He did not have a clique - nor did he encourage any around him (with the equivalents of the pandan karayas, horikadayas, henchiyas, patalayas etc. of today), he did not belong to any persuasion (even a political one which he easily could, with the chance of becoming a leader), he did not shout from the roof-top slogans and phrases the practical meaning of which he did not understand, he did not organize rallies and 'shouting rallies' (udghosana) of his supporters in order to gather further supporters, he did not indoctrinate youth into his way of thinking and he did not call for anger and hatred on the part of anyone towards any other.

All these thousands of man-hours utterly wasted on economically futile and socially disastrous actions were directed by him to be utilized by the rural folk of Ruhuna for some useful constructive purpose. It is unfortunate that he died young not living into the era of political independence that was to commence in only three years to come.

He would have, no doubt filled into one or more of the new roles that made demands on pragmatic thinking that was characteristic of him. But the aura of his dynamic personality had come to pervade firmly over the Ruhuna domain that from 1945 upto 1989, a Rajapaksa has been elected to some constituency or other of Ruhuna - particularly to Beliatta and Mulgirigala, and for the whole of the Hambantota District from 1989.

It was on Don Alvin (D.A.) with whom I personally had the fortune of meeting on many an occasion, on whom the elder brother's mantle fell in 1945, thus recognising his simple but highly principled character. And, inclusive of D.M's own nine-year period from 1936, this family's political connection with Ruhuna has lasted an un-interrupted seventy years.