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Gone to ruins

P. D. A. S. Gunasekera, Ratnapura Group Correspondent

The Pethangoda Royal Gardens of the Sitawaka Kingdom with recent excavations great historical value, containing among the finds invaluable Museum-pieces, associated with the King of Sitawaka Rajasinghe has gone to ruin. But this situation has still not caught the attention of the authorities, sources said.

The location of the one-time Royal Residence and palace of the famous war-hero King Rajasinghe, who as tradition has it, had brought the Portuguese king and his retinue of bodyguards to their knees, today lies, in half-wilderness stripped of the Royal splendour of the centuries past.

The historic 'Bamboo-Bushes' that studded gardens and lined the Royal-paths adding to the beauty of the rolling-parkland still stands in varying stages of decay and destruction.

Many stories both pathetic and romantic have been vowen around the death of the king shrouded in mystery. Two popular versions of the Royal-demise are still current in and around Sitawaka. According to the traditional belief, the King had died of blood-poisoning consequent to a prick from a Bamboo thorn under the foot.

The other, a more romantic one attributed the death to a cobra-bite, whose healing was arrested by a spell. The story goes, that the King, who was enarmoured of the 'devinely-beautiful-wife' of an 'Astrologer-cum Kattadiya' Dodampe Ganithiya, had carried on a clandestine affair with her, much to the chagrin of the defenceless husband who in his 'unbearable-jealousy,' seizing the opportunity, had cast a 'deadly-spell, upon the wound of the cobra-bite with holding the healing process by powerful 'black-magic', until the king breathed his last irresponsive to the best snake-bite treatment in the Kingdom.

Ven. Pethangoda Rajasingharamadhipathi Ratnagala Sangarathana Nayake Thero, identified the thorny-Bamboo-bushes as a special species of Una-Bamboo, peculiar to the Rajasinghe-Park imported from India according to available historical evidence and records.

The Una-Bamboo bushes, are now a rare species, centuries old, dying by degrees, due to the vandalism of the new generation, the Thera added.

The park and its surroundings are still filled with a store of historical information, sites, places of ancient worship to the discerning.

The Berandi Kovila built by the King in 1518 on the request of a Hindu-priest, whom the king had, befriended, and later become a devoted follower of 'God-Siva' was renovated by H.C.P. Bell in 1890. The Kovila is also a monument to the Dravidian art of store Masonry, borrowed from India. The place hidden under the brush-wood has now become the hunting ground of the vagabond.

It is indeed a relief to the connoisseur of art and architecture that Minister Karunasena Kodituwakku, even at this later date, had taken steps to build, at least a security cell for the future preservation of the remains of a glorious past.

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