Variety

Royal standard - lost and found

One hundred and ninety seven years ago, the Convention between the Kandyan chiefs and the British Governor, handing over the Kingdom of Kanay (Kanda Uda Pas Rata) to the British, was signed on March 2, 1815.

The British who ruled the low country from 1796 now became rulers of the whole island. Lanka became a colony of the British Empire and from that day Lanka became Ceylon.

The last king of Kandy Sri Wickrama Rajasingha had been taken prisoner along with his two wives about two weeks early, on February 18, and sent to Colombo. They arrived in Colombo on March 6.

An Englishman named Knighton who was seated next to the Governor, Robert Brownrigg at dinner on February 19th, when the news of the capture of the king was received, has written in one of his sketches, "from that day we may date the extinction of Ceylonese Independence, an independence which had continued without any material interruption for 2,357 years."

What happened to the King's flag-the Royal Standard - the flag with a yellow lion holding a sword in his right paw, on a red background with a yellow border and four stylised bo leaves in the four corners? Had the King taken the flag with him when he went into hiding in "a house of a subordinate headman about a mile beyond Meda Maha Nuwara?"

No one knew and no one cared. No one seemed interested enough to find out what happened to the Royal Standard - the King's flag. That flag had no significance or use now. From March 2, it was the Union Jack, the national flag of Britain, that was hoisted on important occasions.

For nearly 160 years the Lion Flag was forgotten and its whereabouts unknown until E. W. Perera discovered it by chance in England.

It was E. W. Perera who also took a petition to the Secretary of State for Colonies in 1918 hidden in his shoe, to prevent the authorities from confiscating it. He was known as the Lion of Kotte and his home in Kotte is now a national museum.

He gives in detail how he discovered the flag in his monumental work Sinhalese Banners and Standards published in 1916 as a memoir of the Colombo Museum.

When he was a student in London in 1908, his curiosity was roused by a statement in a book Ceylon and its capabilities by Bennet, that the Royal Standard of the last King of Kandy was deposited at Whitehall together with the eagles of Napolean" (Whitehall is where the Government offices are), says E.W.P.

"The search of the United Service Museum was fruitless.

A glimmer of hope raised by a statement of an official of that institution that some of the flags had been removed to Chelsea Hospital was dispelled the next moment by the positive assurance that no Kandyan flags were among the number.

"The next best thing was to examine the charges in the arms of Sir Robert Brownrigg, who was granted the banner of Sri Wikrema Rajasinha as an honourable augmentation on the fall of Kandy.... Soon afterwards, however, I discovered the missing banner quite unexpectedly at the Chelsea Hospital. Acting upon a suggestion of Lord Stanmore (Hon. Sir Arthur Gordon) who evinced a lively interest on the subject, the writer visited that institution, and was rewarded with the discovery of three Ceylon banners. (Sir Arthur Gordon was a former Governor of Ceylon). A coloured key-plate on the wall led to the discovery of the flags, which were hanging in the Great Hall along with other standards and the eagles of Napoleon.

"Two were hopelessly faded and the third could only be recognized after being renovated. Two were judging from the key-plate clearly representations of the royal flag and the other probably the banner of the Atapattu Lekam."

E.W.P. sketched the flags from the key-plate. The royal flag was copied in colours shortly alter by Messers Southwood & Co., Rejent Street, London, for D.R. Wijewardene who was also a student at that time in England.

And that copy is reproduced in E.W.P.'s book Sinhalese Banners and Standards.

How did the Royal Standard get to England? Who took it there? The noticeboard beneath the flags, says E.W.P. "intimated that they had been taken by Captain Pollock in 1803." Who Captain Pollock was is unknown.

Early in 1803, the British invaded Kandy. One troop from Colombo and another from Trincomalee converged the banks of the Mahaweli on February 20. Next morning some troops crossed the Mahaweli Ganga and invaded Kandy, which they found deserted.

Two more troops marched into Kandy on February 24 and 25. Captain Pollock must have been one of the captains commanding a troop. How he got hold of the Royal Standard is a mystery.

* The dates are from Ceylon by Henry Marshall

- Sumana Saparamadu

Monkey long believed extinct found in Indonesia

Scientists working in the dense jungles of Indonesia have "rediscovered" a large, grey monkey so rare it was believed by many to be extinct.

They were all the more baffled to find the Miller's Grizzled Langur "its black face framed by a fluffy, Dracula-esque white collar" in an area well outside its previously recorded home range.

The team set up camera traps in the Wehea Forest on the eastern tip of Borneo island in June, hoping to captures images of clouded leopards, orangutans and other wildlife known to congregate at several mineral salt licks.The pictures that came back caught them all by surprise: groups of monkeys none had ever seen.

With virtually no photographs of the grizzled langurs in existence, it at first was a challenge to confirm their suspicions, said Brent Loken, a Ph.D. student at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and one of the lead researchers.The only images out there were museum sketches.

"We were all pretty ecstatic, the fact that, wow, this monkey still lives, and also that it's in Wehea," said Loken.

The monkey, which has hooded eyes and a pinkish nose and lips, once roamed the northeastern part of Borneo, as well as the islands of Sumatra and Java and the Thai-Malay peninsula. But concerns were voiced several years ago that they may be extinct.

Forests where the monkeys once lived had been destroyed by fires, human encroachment and conversion of land for agriculture and mining and an extensive field survey in 2005 turned up empty.

"For me the discovery of this monkey is representative of so many species in Indonesia," Loken told The Associated Press by telephone.

"There are so many animals we know so little about and their home ranges are disappearing so quickly," he said. "It feels like a lot of these animals are going to quickly enter extinction."

The next step will be returning to the 90,000 acre (38,000 hectare) forest to try to find out how many grizzly langurs there are, according to the team of local and international scientists, who published their findings in the American Journal of Primatology recently.

They appear in more than 4,000 images captured over a two-month period, said Loken, but it's possible one or two families kept returning.

"We are trying to find out all we can," he said. "But it really feels like a race against time."

Experts not involved in the study were hugely encouraged."It's indeed a highly enigmatic species," said Erik Meijaard, a conservation scientist who spent more than eight years doing field research in the area.

In the past they were hunted to near extinction for their meat and bezoar "stones," he said, which can, on occasion, be found in their guts.Bezoars, as Harry Potter fans know from lectures given by Prof. Snape to first year students, are believed by some to neutralize poison.

Meijaard said the animal has long been considered a subspecies of the Hose's Leaf Monkey, which also occurs on the Malaysian side of Borneo, but it now looks like that may not be the case.

"We think it might actually be a distinct species," he said, "which would make the Wehea discovery even more important."

- Associated Press