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by Prof. J. B. Disanayaka

Review of 'Maname Mathakvi' (Nuwana Media Services: 2003)

We live in three kinds of worlds: a world of knowledge based on facts and figures, a world of belief based on myth and magic and, a world of beauty based on sense and sensibility. And at the Peradeniya campus all three worlds merged.

Professor Sarachchandra

At Peradeniya I had the good fortune of meeting two unforgettable men who shared the same name - Sarath: Sarath Amunugama, the author of the book Maname Matak Vi (Recollections of Maname) and Professor Sarachchandra - the creator of the epoch-making, 'Maname'.

Meeting them shaped my own way of life and thought in more ways than one. For Sarachchandra was a trail-blazer in the field of modern literature and theatre and Amunugama was a dynamic leader in the making.

Today, Sarachchandra is no more. He passed away a few years ago while serving as the Chancellor of the University in which he taught for many years. He was the only university Don around whom a school of thought emerged in the grooves of academe. This school was named 'the Peradeniya school' and after him the school collapsed.

Amunugama has also achieved (almost) all his dreams of becoming a dynamic leader. He joined the faculty as a lecturer in sociology at Peradeniya but decided to leave the campus to join the civil service. He led the first ever strike that we took part in at Peradeniya.

After days and days of protest marching along the Galaha Road carrying banners and shouting slogans, Amunugama demanded that the VC meets the student body. The VC acceded to Sarath's demand. He went to 'The Lodge' - that is what the VC's residence is called at the campus - with members of the Action Committee but the VC wanted only Sarath in his office.

Today I can remember neither the demands for which Sarath wanted us to fight nor what happened to the list of demands that he took with him to the VC. The only thing I remember is that Sarath persuaded us to call off the strike assuring that all is well that ends well.

Today another of Sarath's dreams has come true. He has published a book on Maname - recording not only his recollections of Maname but also his analysis of its text almost word by word. This is the first time that I ever read such a textual analysis of Maname - thorough and inspiring. It's a wonderful book because I also share some of the experiences that he writes about.

Sarath and I entered the University of Ceylon at Peradeniya in 1957 - Sarath from Kandy and I from Colombo. As we met for the first time on the corridors of Arunachalam Hall, we shared one common aspiration: to meet the man who created Maname. For Maname had inspired both of us so much that we wanted to know him as intimately as possible.

In one sense, I was luckier than Sarath: I followed a special course in Sinhala and this gave me a chance to listen to this great Disapamok day in and day out in the classroom. Sarath's great teachers came from the Department of Sociology; Professors Ralph Peiris, Laksiri Jayasooriya, Gananath Obeysekere, Stanley Tambiah, and Alex Gunasekera.

I saw Professor Sarachchandra for the first time at the B-Room in the Arts block when he came for his very first lecture on Sinhala literature. The rag - though banned - had just begun and we were eagerly waiting for Professor Sarachchandra to come to the lecture theatre in time to save us from the grip of our honourable seniors.

The lecture room was full of young men and women from different parts of the land eagerly awaiting the arrival of the great master. Enters a man through the left door and the entire B-room falls into silence. He surveys the audience carefully and begins to lecture on the definitions of literature. What erudition. Gems of wisdom coming from the great master himself.

There is no time to lose. One by one, we lower our heads and begin to take down notes. He shows a thorough understanding of the aims of literature. Suddenly there is a hustle bustle and we all look up. The lecturer disappears through the right door and another man enters the B-room. Why did Professor Sarachchandra leave in a hurry?

To make things worse, the lecturer who followed was not at all impressive. His language was too colloquial and he did not touch on any of the definitions of literature that any lecturer ought to discuss in his very first lecture. He was so informal in his manners that some begin to leave the B-room. How dare these seniors waste our valuable time?

On the second day at the B-Room we discovered to our great surprise that the man who entered the room second was none other than Professor Sarachchandra himself and the one who preceded him was a senior undergraduate. That was my first meeting with Professor Sarachchandra.

Since I read Sinhala for my degree I had the chance to meet Professor Sarachchandra not only in the lecture theatre but also at his residence on Sanghamitta Hill. On many an occasion he invited us to tea and as we sipped our tea served by his wife, we listened to many of our friends singing and playing several musical instruments.

Professor Sarachchandra was a unique kind of lecturer - a lecturer who did not bother us with notes as many others did but who inspired us with his inquiring mind and critical eye. The notes that his contemporaries gave us in the class room are misplaced but the knowledge and wisdom that Professor Sarachchandra imparted to us still remain alive in our hearts.

Like Sarath, I watched Maname in the year of its production - as a student about to sit for the University Entrance Examination. It was the fourth of November - the very second day of the performance - and the place was the Lionel Wendt in Colombo. My Sinhala teachers at Ananda - Mr. Jayatissa Abeykoon and Mr. Baldwin Kuruppu who were themselves students of Professor Sarachchandra at Peradeniya - took us to see this play because it would give us a different kind of aesthetic experience.

I had by then seen a few plays at the YMBA in Borella but this was my first experience at the posh theatre in Cinnamon Gardens. If I remember right, the theatre had many empty seats. As the curtains were raised, came a man dressed as a brahmin carrying on his hands an ola-leaf manuscript. We had never seen on the Sinhala stage a man like that before.

From then onwards it was an experience of pure aesthetic joy. I left the theatre with one firm determination: that I must enter the university somehow and learn at the feet of this Guru who was like the raja-guru-the royal teacher - of the play itself.

That night I read Professor Sarachchandra's 'The Sinhalese Folk Play and The Modern Stage' again and for a few more days I kept on burning midnight oil deciphering his world of Nadagam. "Nadagamas" wrote Professor Sarachchandra "could be termed folk operas, in the sense that they are enacted almost entirely in the medium of song".

Shyaman Jayasinha, (the pote-guru) Ben Sirimanna (Prince Maname) Hemamali Gunasekara (the Maname queen that I saw) and Edmond Wijesinha (the king of the Veddahs) and Lionel Fernando (the chief of the Veddahs) were haunting me with their voices and music. I developed such a romantic view of the campus that I resolved with determination to go there.

I was one of the ten to gain direct entrance to the university from Ananda that year. Sarath entered the university from Trinity. Though Sarath did not offer Sinhala as a subject, he was well versed in many aspects of modern Sinhala literature. We spent long hours in our rooms talking not only about literature but also about drama, music, painting and Marxist politics. Unlike Sarath, I was allergic to politics.

On many an evening, our group expanded to include a few others whom our hall-mates had already nicknamed 'Sinhala kulturs'. Among the 'Sinhala kulturs' were many who later became professors, civil servants, writers and other professionals.

There were, in the Arunachalam Hall itself, Hemapala Wijewardana who gave up the civil service to become a professor in Sinhala, H. L. Seneviratna who became a professor in Sociology in the States, Abhaya Attanayaka who became a professor in Geography at Sri Jayawardanapura University and Saram who became a professor in Sociology in Canada.

Dhammika Amarasinha, my room-mate, was the first among us to publish a book-a Sinhala translation of the 'First Men in the Moon' - during our undergraduate days. Bandula Jayawardana, who passed away recently, was both friend and philosopher, because he was already working as an editor in the Buddhist Encyclopaedia. 

(To be continued)

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