Musings  

Did Leonard Woolf expunge Buddhism from Beddegama?

by Padma Edirisinghe

A Sri Lankan village minus the sanctified ethos of Buddhism is rather unthinkable. But did the pen of a clever writer carve one?

As the colonial matrix of the British empire developed, the home govt. sent many a directive to the official hierarchy in the colonies to initiate ways and means to improve good relations with the conquered country. One of them was that the officers from England should make an attempt to learn all about the culture and history of the subjugated nation. It was a very tactful technique that the earlier conquistadors had never thought of.

Leonard Woolf was one of the Englishmen who overdid this injunction for he not only went round studying the native way of living but went on to write books on them. "Beddegama" was the crowning result of these endeavours. Many years later, the story went on even to flash on the silver screen where brilliant cinematic figures expended their capabilities much to exultations of the audience, despite the fact that the village depicted was a strange one even to the average Sinhala man and woman. The film popularized the book in our own times.

Initial story

Newspapers raved over the film and further raved on the initial story, Beddegama, extolling this literary work by Woolf as one of the most excellent exponents of our village culture. But not all were of the same consensus. Many just took it for granted. After all it was a White man's work. But there was at least one strong critic who opined that Woolf was simply instilling hoodoo and black magic into our innocent villages permeated by Buddhism. For Woolf, this faith, so overpowering in the island ever since the 3rd Century BC., simply did not exist. No robed monk ever walked the village nor the jungle footpaths. Society was just cruel and utterly disorganized, its members demonstrating a way of living very much akin to that of the four-footed who romped around them. No moral principle guiding them. What circumstances propelled me into all this? That critic, I presume, he was the one, wrote to me years back. Or I am not sure whether I had egoistically presumed so, and that it could have been a mere carbon copy of letters sent to other participants of the seminar on Woolf. I did not go round checking nor was there small talk about the circulation of such a letter.

Famous figure

To begin from the beginning, it was the early years of this century when was I was in the aftermath of my retirement. I had made some headway in the media field by this time when I got an invitation to deliver a speech on the famous figure. The seminar was to be held at a famed educational institute in Ruhuna and Naturally I felt rather flattered. I had read books by Woolf and books on him too. I had read his life story and liked his utter frankness when he divulges how he lost his virginity to a Burgher girl riding a bike always on the streets of Jaffna. He had then been a mere officer in Jaffna and used to parade the streets when he met this bike mate, a daughter of a Burgher officer who had been posted to Jaffna. Somehow or other I became an avid reader of his works after I read his adventures as champion of female rights in distant Magam Pattu (Hambantota district). His championing the poor and the oppressed came much later. There, women were not allowed to cover their breasts then, not all women but those of the Berawa or drum beating class. Why this caste alone was subject to this exposure, no one not even the sociologists have explained. Anyway, as Woolf rode hither and thither, this time on horseback administering his services, a group of these females thronged round him and beseeched him to do away with this peculiar ban. He promised to do so, but back home consulted his arachchi who pronounced the ban to be traditional and advised him not to act contrary.

Woolf had been so enraged by this advice that he had replied with a choice verbal retaliation that suggested the sexual gratification the men derived by watching those half naked innocent women at their chores such as pounding paddy.

African village

I cannot remember whether I included all these details in my speech, but I remember doing the optimum homework for it. Fished out all his bio-data and all his achievements and tried to do my audience justice in the premises of Ruhuna University. But I deliberately omitted mention about a letter I had received back home that did shake me somewhat. The writer had titled his letter, "Woolf and BLACK MAGIC".

I cannot remember the full contents of the letter, but certain sections I do remember where he states that Woolf was thinking about an African village when he wrote his famous novel Beddegama. There was a belief in the village that a lass in Beddegama had given birth to a deer cub. Do Buddhists ever believe such a thing? And the villagers acting with such venom against the innocent girl when this talk goes around. Where is Buddhism in Beddegama? Woolf simply destroys it in this tale that is sure to do world rounds.

So rattles on the anonymous writer trying to prejudice me.

By not mentioning the contents of that letter I thought I had ended the matter but on the corridors I met a person who informed me that he is on the symposium panel and that it was he who nominated me as a speaker. We got into further conversation and then I happened to mention the letter that I received.

High principle

He got almost infuriated and asked for the letter but I did not have it with me. Had not taken it along for the simple high principle I held in not respecting anonymous matter sent. In my official capacity I had got dozens that all ended in the WPB.

This letter of course I had not thrown out for there were some points to ponder. Now the panelist simply oozing with anger said that he knows who has sent this letter and he would have sent such spurious letters about Leonard Woolf to all other speakers. He was in such a fury that he would have throttled that correspondent if he made his appearance there. Anyway, it set me thinking as to whether only positive matter has to be presented on the person discussed.

The tale did not end there. The sessions closed earlier than expected and we had the option to leave earlier. We had been put up in a Matara resthouse which the following day or night had been washed away to the seas with any occupants who opted to stay over. Though tempted to stay over in that picturesque landscape with Pigeon Island beckoning us for a tour in the bluest of Southern oceans, by leaving early we had battled or outwitted the dreadful tsunami and saved our lives! Perhaps forces dealing with white magic were in action in that zone this time. The supernatural, some know-alls state, do have a habit of roosting in the most unexpected places.