Beautiful Malabar darlings of Lankan kings

Beauty advertisements are very popular at present. Some of them are even tinged with history. The writer noticed one such recently that propagated the use of a facial ointment that according to the advertisers made Malabar women of the early 19th century very attractive enticing even our monarchs. In fact the later Kandyan Court seems to have been seething with these beauties.

Curious I engaged in a mild research (using the Internet) as to this kingdom that had turned a supply store of royal damsels for Lankan last kings, both Sinhala and Nayakkar. It describes Malabar as the Southern part of India’s West coast, South to the famous state of Goa. It now includes most of Kerala state and the coastal region of Karnataka state. In the bygone days, it had corresponded to the Chera state. The British connected it in the early part of 19th century to its Indian kingdom.

Whether these damsels actually applied the advertised ointment is a moot point but soon Lankan kings were “ordering them”, I mean not the ointments but the queens. Though the last Nayakkar kings were known for their Malabar consorts the practice of bonding with them seems to have begun with Rajasinghe 11 ennobling his mother, Dona Catherina to the “Last Sinhala queen status”. He seems to have had no desire for the local females.

Archives

Either, according to the finding of our now deceased historian, Dias Abeysinghe who spent more time in the archives than at home, the Keeravali Pattu that had supplied royal maids had by this time got dried up and new sources had to be sought, preferably from India. Come to think of it, there had been always this leaning towards India when it came to obtaining the regal partner.

In fact the practice had begun right from Vijaya who chased away to the Bimba forests the local wife and children born of her to wed an Indian princess of noble heritage. The practice had continued. One reason for this practice could be that it was better to get linked to a family far away so that her origins would not be pried into. Even now in our mundane society families look for marriage connections of far off distance so that they would not be pestered with a whole host of new relations at the door. Whether this factor influenced royals too is a matter to be looked into. When a bride from the Gampola area belonging to the Goigama caste, next in status to royalty, was proposed as the main queen to Vira Parakrama Narendrasinghe, he opted for a Malabar princess. The decision spelt the end of the Sinhala regime for the Nayakkar brother-in-law who took over from there using a long defunct law of succession. But we have skipped. Let us get back to the antics of Rasingh 11 who though savvy in battle seems to have had a muddled personal life.

Queens

According to Robert Knox the king was never seen in public with his queens who were imported women from Malabar. By the way Dr. Lorna Devaraja in her well-researched book on the Kandyan kingdom deals much with the queens. According to Henry Marshall, narrator of the times and army general Rajasinghe 11 cared little for the security of his wife and family and left them in the palace of Hanguranketha while he crossed swords with the Portuguese and Dutch in the cause of Lanka’s sovereignty.

What made him marry Malabar princesses? No. Not the much advertised ointment that made them beautiful. Never had the time for such frivolities. But by nature he had some leanings. He seems to have cared for the Catholic missionaries than for the Bhikkhus, this stemming perhaps from the fact that the latter including Fr.Negrao were his tutors (an arrangement made by his Catholic mother). He had the boldness to suspend the Kandy perahara that however sparked the Nillambe rebellion.

He changed his palaces often and even his sleeping sites for fear of getting killed at midnight by rebels who were already scared off by the tumultuous cacophony of beating drums. He was very careful of his food for it could be poisoned. No wonder, he preferred a foreign Malabar wife to that of a local wife. One wonders in what language the couple spoke for the language of Malabar desha then had been Malayalam. Maybe they hardly spoke, a clever arrangement experimented by a Georgian king of England.

Cosmopolitan outlook

King Rajasinghe 11 himself of cosmopolitan outlook (so cosmopolitan that he imprisoned many aliens to diagnose their cultures) had known many languages including Tamil. Letters to his brother had been written in Tamil, that could end up in the surmise that the court language then had been Tamil. (Apologies to die-hard nationals) Rajasinghe 11 had been succeeded by Vimala Dharma Surya 11, quite a normal prince compared to his father, with his temper tantrums and unexpected changes of mood, some volatile..

No records exist as to the details of his wives. But the connections with the Malabar part of India seem to have gone on. That explains the entry of Konkani brahmins into Kandy at the time of Vira Parakrama Narendrasinghe. He allowed a critical work of Buddhism by a Konkani priest to be presented to him in the royal court that led to much displeasure of the Buddhist clergy and Buddhist populace. In fact the work on a church they were to build in Kandy had to be stopped due to these happenings. For the first time the Sinhala Buddhists were showing open opposition to the Catholic church and its activities. But they did not show the same animosity to the Malabar queens.

Perhaps they considered them as innocent dames who could do no harm.

No harm they actually did but they became the custodians of Tamil culture within the palace. Beautiful they would have been and agents of populating Kandy with their tribe who thronged from poor Malabar state to affluent Kandy giving the street their relatives dwelt in, a new name, ie. Malabar street (Name is now removed).