Authoritative and compelling read

Betwixt Isles: The Story of the
Kandyan Prisoners in Mauritius
Author: Raja Bandaranayake
Vijitha Yapa Publications
Pages 360

Review: Professor Colvin Goonaratna

HISTORY: Professor Raja Bandaranayake's fame mainly rested, until October 2006, on the formidable international distinction he has achieved as a medical educationist, and a superb teacher of Anatomy.

In both domains his services as a peripatetic consultant were eagerly sought by, and willingly given to, organisations such as the WHO and medical and health-science schools world-wide.

His approach as an advisor was learner-friendly, feasible, devoid of high-sounding jargon and, above all, sensible. In Sri Lanka he has guided all the state medical schools and the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, often on several occasions at each place, to develop and implement curriculums and learner assessments along internationally accepted lines.

Now, with the publication of Betwixt Isles, Professor Bandaranayake has shown us glimpses of some other facets of his talent and skill. His book is the product of a prodigious exercise in historical research sustained over a 15-year period, entailing many visits to libraries and archives in four continents, and to the island of Mauritius, where Maha Nilame Ehelapola died in exile in April 1829.

The author writes that his first serendipitous encounter with the inscribed tombstone of Ehelapola in Mauritius had "a profound and lasting effect" on him, igniting a flame that has apparently kept burning vigorously through the toilsome and often dreary hours, days and months of labour demanded of any serious researcher into history.

The opening sentence of his book, at once unembellished and sincere, tells us why they flame burned so bright for so long: "This book was born out of a deep love for my motherland, primarily inculcated in me by my parents".

Betwixt Isles is an account of the life and death of Kandyan prisoners in exile in Mauritius between the years 1819 and 1834, a mere twinkling in the vast expanse of human history, but nonetheless a matter of consummate importance to us as Sri Lankans, when examined (as the author has done) in the context of the British capture of the Kandyan Kingdom in 1815, terminating one of the longest surviving kingdoms in the world at the time.

The book has 25 compact chapters, 6 charts summarising facts that would have been tedious to describe textually (eg. Ehelapola's pedigree, Pilimatalauve's pedigree, the fate of individual Kandyan State Prisoners and convict rebel prisoners Mauritius), 12 figures (including the signatures of Dr. James Barry, Ehelapola and Pilimatalauve, the Powder Mills and 2 prisons in Mauritius etc), 2 maps (19 Century Ceylon and the relevant Districts of Mauritius), and 4 interesting and crucially important plans of buildings in Mauritius).

A concise Introduction takes novitiate readers through the antecedent events that led to the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom into British hands, emphasising yet again, the internecine jealousies and knavery that pervaded the Kandyan nobility, and the quintessentially British amalgam of counterfeit diplomacy, cunning, perseverance and disciplined military might of the invader.

The first 4 chapters give a brief biographical sketch of Ehelapola, his capture in Kandy and incarceration in Colombo for seven years, until he was banished to Mauritius without any charges being ever framed against him.

They also contain, among other intriguing things, the author's chance encounter with one Jean Francois Guimbean, a French botanist, who had named his nursery selling plants in Mauritius Pepiniere Peradenia after the world-famous botanical garden in Peradeniya that he knew by reputation, but had never visited; three vintage ghost stories set around the Kandy Lake and around two "haunted" houses, one in Vellore and the other in Mauritius, all connected in one way or another with the story of Ehelapola; and the enigma of mysterious hands that pay regular tribute to Ehelapola's tombstone in Mauritius up to the present day. The author writes:

"Although it is established that he (Ehelapola) had no known living progeny either in Mauritius or in Ceylon at the time of his death, a mysterious hand places a lighted candle, a posy of flowers, an incense stick or a clay urn at frequent intervals on the monument.

I have seen these tributes....myself, and was particularly intrigued to note that they often coincided with the anniversary of important events, such as his birth, his death, or the entombment of his mortal remains. In spite of repeated efforts, the identity of the owner of this hand remains a mystery" (page 25).

Death sentences

In the following chapters the author describes in painstaking detail the life and times of the Kandyan exiles in Mauritius - their arrivals, living quarters, provisions, health, medical care, clothing, headgear, dietary fads, and categorisation as either State Prisoners, who had been summarily tried for insurrection and had their death sentences commuted to exile, and ordinary convicts who were banished for serious crimes not connected with rebellion against the British.

The first batch of 25 exiles that left Ceylon on 22 February 1819 on the HMS Liverpool were all State Prisoners, and included Pilimatalauve and Mattamgoda, and their two servants.

Ehelapola left the Port of Colombo on 14 May 1825 on board the Alexander, with Captain William Richardson in command. Accompanying Ehelapola were his three servants, an interpreter and his servant, and four ordinary convicts, three of whom had been sentenced to death for murder, but later commuted to banishment for life - not the sort of company Ehelapola was accustomed to before this enforced journey. Ehelapola first set foot on Mauritian soil on 6 June 1825.

Professor Bandaranayake records that Ehelapola had been treated very well by his minders during his exile, and provided with all the comforts that he had requested - a reasonably spacious residence, a butler, his choice of food and wine, an interpreter, household servants, and later, a horse-drawn carriage, that only a few of even the Mauritian elite had the privilege to own.

The author's diligent and tenacious search for the exact location of Ehelapola's Mauritius residence is a detective story of its own. I reproduce below the concluding paragraph of his account of this cameo, for its evocative poignancy that would be familiar to all discoverers.

"We were in fact standing on the very ground that the Maha Nilame would have stood upon... surveying the spectacular mountain range dominated by Pieter Both in the distance, and the solitude of the cemetery nearby. We may, indeed, have been on the very spot where he breathed his last one hundred and seventy five years ago.

I stood in silence and pondered over the long and arduous search that had brought me to this spot, and the many individuals who so kindly offered me their time and energy in my search. With mixed feelings of joy and regret I realised that my search was over" (pages 167-168).

Insights

The precise location of Ehelapola's residence in Mauritius (incidentally, rectifying several previous incorrect assertions) is but one of the large number of new findings and insights that the author has in store for the reader.

Although even a partially representative list of these would be unwieldy in a brief review I must mention a few of them, such as Ehelapola's final illness, death, cremation, and obsequies and wills; the fascinating story of Dr. James Barry who attended on Ehelapola during his last illness, and the eventual disclosure of Dr. Barry's sexual phenotype by a woman who laid out his body when he died in London much later in 1865; the confusion by previous historians regarding the two interpreters Don Bastian and Don William; and the Superintendents of the prisoners in Mauritius.

Professor Bandaranayake records that Ehelapola appears to have had a busy social life in Mauritius, often visiting the local elite by invitation or entertaining them at his residence. He wore the headdress (toppi) of the Kandyan Adigar, and insisted on being provided with the finest clothing made in Europe.

He was thus immaculately attired in white whenever he ventured outside his house, and reportedly also had a fondness for wearing his heavy gold jewellery and a ring set with a big blue sapphire on such occasions.

In time, Ehelapola was allowed to use a horse-drawn gig, purchased with his own funds, and he rode it proudly, accompanied by his interpreter Don Bastian, whose attire was apparently no less strange than that of his master. So it is little wonder that the local whites began to refer to Ehelapola as the "Prince".

"The Mauritian bourgeois would surely have been impressed by the sight of this immaculately dressed nobleman with his strange looking companion on the roads of Pamplemousses and its environs" (page 179).

In research methodology, drawing conclusions from his explorations and reporting them, Professor Bandaranayake, true to his twin vocations as medical educationist and scientist, has devoted meticulous attention to accuracy and objectivity.

These attributes are, of course, no less important for the historian than they are for the scientist. For both, accuracy and objectivity are duties, not virtues.

As the distinguished historian E. H. Carr has remarked, "It (accuracy) is a necessary condition of his (a historian's) work, but not his essential function".

What then is the function of a historian? In the 1830s Ranke stated it shortly as, "....... simply to show how it really was," but that aphorism begs many questions. Rather than venturing into a discussion of the philosophical nature of history, I choose here to quote Marx and Carlyle. First, Marx.

"History does nothing; it possesses no immense wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, real living man who does everything, who possesses and fights"

Dubious distinction

As for Carlyle, although he is given the dubious distinction of having asserted that "history is the biography of great men", nevertheless wrote in his historical masterpiece History of the French Revolution,

"Hunger and nakedness and nightmare oppression lying heavily on twenty-five million hearts: this, not the wounded vanities or contradicted philosophies of philosophical advocates, rich shopkeepers, rural noblesse, was the prime mover in the French Revolution: as the like will be in all such revolutions, in all countries."

Professor Bandaranayake's story of the kandyan prisoners exiled to Mauritius is undoubtedly focused on its "star" the Maha Nilame Ehelapola. But it is set against the backdrop of the sad saga of the last days of the Kandyan Kingdom, with its rebellious denizens and knavish nobility, a narrative that segues into the social life and contemporary times of Mauritius.

In so doing the author has combined biography with an imaginative understanding for the minds of the Kandyan people and their actions. He has fastidiously avoided his love for the motherland and interest in history from turning the book into an exercise in antiquarianism. The extensive list of references bears witness to his diligence and relentless pursuit of all sources of evidence, even ones with a remotely possible link to the subject.

Professor Bandaranayake's writing is stylish, interpretations persuasive, and attention to detail thorough without being trivial. The product is an authoritative and compelling read.

He ends his book with this characteristically piquant quotation of Oscar Wilde: "The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it". That duty Professor Bandaranayake has amply done.

Well-researched academic achievement

Tamil-Sinhala Dictionary
Complied by Professor W. S. Karunathillake
Pages 1037, Price: Rs. 2,500
Godage & Brothers, Book Publishers and Distributors, 675, Maradana Road, Colombo 10

Review: Dr. Wimal Wickramasinghe

LEXICOGRAPHY: Professor W. S. Karunathillake of the University of Kelaniya should be congratulated for having compiled a comprehensive Tamil-Sinhala Dictionary with special assistance from S. J. Yogarajah (a Senior Lecturer of Linguistics), a dictionary that would be helpful to both Sinhalese and Tamils in their quest for understanding each other's language and gaining social and cultural knowledge through the use of the language. To put it more specifically, this dictionary is more useful to all the Sinhalese who have a knack to learn or use Tamil for any purpose.

It is no doubt true that Professor Karunathillake (hereinafter referred to as 'author') has put in labour and research amounting to about a decade or so for the dictionary but it has come to light at a time when the two nationalities, i.e., Sinhalese and Tamils, that constitute more than 90 per cent of the total population in Sri Lanka have high hopes of reconciliation, emanating from the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement between the Government and the LTTE which is now in operation for more than two years, despite many violations, the latter committing the most.

The review of this Dictionary is done not by a lexicographer, language specialist or linguist, or Tamil or Sinhala scholar but by a person who, with the wisdom of hindsight, did research on his own and published a series of books, nine in all, that deal with various aspects of the English language and literature, linguistics, British and American English and Sri Lankan English.

In dealing with the last topic, he has also had time and occasion to peruse the Tamil literature published in English, including 'Taminglish' (a non-standard variety of English conversed by Tamils and it can be both English-based and Tamil-based), Tamil as a member of the Dravidian family, Sri Lanka Tamil and it dialects, and research on the Tamil language and literature.

The reviewer has had the distinction of having his review of Studies in Sri Lankan Tamil Linguistics and Culture: Select Papers of Prof. Suseendirarajah (1999), edited by K. Balasubramaniam, K. Ratnamalar and R. Subathini (Chennai: Students' Offset Press), published in the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 2001, pp. 157-166.

Biographical sketch

W. S. Karunatillake is a graduate of the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya majoring in Sanskrit (BA with first-class honours) in 1960 and then studied at the University of Puna, India during the period from 1961 to 1963, for a Master's Degree in Linguistics. His PhD dissertation at Cornell University, USA is Historical Phonology of Sinhalese: From Old Indo-Aryan to the 14th Century AD (1969).

Having been a teacher before joining the Department of Linguistics in 1972, he ended his superb academic career at the age of 65 retiring as Senior Professor of Linguistics.

The Dictionary which we review is the last one published before his retirement and the academic luminaries who were associated with the launching of this book at the auditorium of the Official Language Department, Rajagiriya on March 13, 2003 bear testimony to the fact of his academic excellence, not to speak of the publication of this Dictionary.

To his credit, he has a number of research papers on historical and analytical aspects of the Sinhala langauge, its grammar and linguistics and some papers dealing with the influence of Sanskrit on Sinhala, in many local and international journals of repute. Almost all of them are listed in the Bibliography of Publications - Faculty of Commerce and Management Studies, Humanities and Social Sciences (1959 - 1998), published by the University of Kelaniya.

He has even studied the Gypsy-Telegu Creole in Sri Lanka, having written some papers such as 'A Phonological Sketch of Ceylon Gypsy-Telegu' Anthropological Linguistics, 16 (8), November 1974, 420-424 and 'Nominal Inflection in Sri Lanka Gypsy Telegu: An Outline', in Don Peter Felicitation Volume (1983), Colombo, 143-150.

With a view to popularizing the idea that 'the teaching of Sinhala and Tamil may be one important way of fostering and perpetuating national unity,' Professor Karunatillake (a Sinhalese and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Kelaniya), along with Professor James W. Gair (An American from the University of Cornell, USA) and Professor S. Suseendirarajah (a Tamil at the University of Kelaniya at that time), published a text in English for spoken Sri Lanka Tamil, the title of which is An Introduction to Spoken Tamil (1978, together with an introduction to the writing system (the script) that is used for all Tamil material in the text.

As the authors says, 'This is probably the first text for a second language (with the possible exception of English) intended primarily for speakers of Sinhala and based throughout on a comparison of the structures of that language with Sinhala, that is, on a contrastive grammar' (xiii).

Variety

There is another text written by the author on a variety of Sinhala, mainly spoken in Colombo and its northern suburbs, with a general introduction to the sound system of spoken Sinhala and the writing system, general vocabularies (Sinhala to English and English to Sinhala) and an index to grammar (English and Sinhala).

It is entitled An Introduction to Spoken Sinhala (1992). Although mention is made of a particular variety of Sinhala used in the text, the author says that 'there are no greatly noticeable or sharply distinguishable varieties of Spoken Sinhala in Sri Lanka.' The nature of Spoken Sinhala, as he himself observes, 'shows some regional variations mostly restricted to the lexicon, and some significant stylistic variations.'

In the compilation of this Dictionary, the author has made use of many texts and papers. Among them for special mentioning is Tamil Lexicon, a great dictionary published by he University of Madras. There are many conventional Tamil-English, Tamil-Tamil, English-Tamil, Tamil-Sinhala, Sinhala-Tamil, Tamil-Hindi and Hindi-Tamil dictionaries from which the author has benefited. The list of references does not end there.

The author has had references from many other sources, among them were Tamil Nigantus, classical Tamil literature texts, modern Tamil literature and classical texts, daily Tamil newspapers, magazines, media publications, Tamil language texts, examination papers, various advertisements, and Tamil, English, Sinhala and Hindi texts that deal with Tamil grammar.

In a Preface to the text, Professor Emeritus S. Suseendirarajah of the University of Jaffna, refers to this as the latest work in the field of Tamil-Sinhala bilingual lexicography. As he mentions, 'it consists of about 80,000 Tamil words and their Sinhala equivalents. Of them a total of 2460 items are verb forms with their principal parts.

Item covering the local flora and fauna, numerals, country names and place names of Sri Lanka are included. Pronunciation of the Tamil words is indicated in Sinhala. A very useful introduction to the Tamil alphabet is also given.'

Modern literature

We can understand why the author has had recourse to some newspapers, magazines and other items of modern literature. It is because several words from the spoken variety of Tamil and several borrowings from English' are included in the Dictionary, a feature that is yet to be found in any Tamil dictionary.

The Dictionary consists of three sections: Text (in alphabetical order), Addendum and Appendices. The Text alone is good enough for a dictionary with 754 pages.

When the author came across some new words after compilation of the text, he had inserted them in the Addendum (from page 755 to page 877); if some words are repeated in the Addendum, it is because these words had specialized or more specific or additional meanings.

There are 14 appendices in the Dictionary. In Appendix 1 under the title 'Tamil-Verb Lexicon', he lists 2,460 base verbs, giving declensional forms such as verb roots, infinitive forms, present tenses, past tenses and future tenses, gerunds and verbal nouns.

Pronunciation of words is given within brackets (Verb roots are indicated by a hyphen following them and another hyphen before suffixes or terminations. Pronunciation of the words that are given in Sinhala is in line with that of the spoken Tamil in Jaffna. There is a comprehensive description of pronunciation of various sounds.

Other Appendices are also very useful and the subjects dealt with in them are as follows: Appendix 2 - Names of Trees (1094); 3 - Names of Animals; 4-Country Names; 5-Place Names in Sri Lanka (few); 6-Base Numeral Names; 7-Parts of Body; 8-Diseases; 9-Grammar-Glossary Terms; 10-Days, Months, Seasons & Directions; 11-Names of Years; 12-Conventional Tamil Words (few); 13-Abbreviations (few); 14-Symbols of Tamil Numerals.

Preface

As Professor Suseendirarajah says in the Preface, it is true that this Dictionary will be an asset to all the Sinhalese who wish to learn or use Tamil for any purpose. But it is only a Tamil-Sinhala dictionary, a book that gives a list of Tamil headwords in alphabetical order, their pronunciations within brackets and explains the meanings in Sinhala.

It is a good reference book for Sinhalese to know the meanings and pronunciation of some words at a particular point of time. But this does not help them learn the Tamil language and use it as either a spoken or written langauge.

A detailed description of the Tamil dialects, research on the Tamil language and literature, and the names of scholars involved are given in my Advanced English for Higher Education: British English, American English and Sri Lankan English (1999: 356-378).

challenge

Perusal of the dictionaries, word-wise and subject-wise, of more than 150 which are in my possession convinces me of the stark fact that compilation of a comprehensive dictionary is no easy task. But Professor Karunatillake has superbly met with this challenge. This author has also included a plethora of new words that are currently used in spoken Tamil and also some English words that have gone into the Tamil language.

I should confess that the author is neither a teacher of mine nor a close friend or contemporary. Description of all the sections included in the Dictionary shows how comprehensive it is. The reviewer has not come across any other dictionary giving so many details or subjects.

The reviewer is made to understand that after retirement Professor Karunatillake hopes to join a university in the USA to undertake his academic research further. Therefore, we may not miss him as we will continue to receive the benefits from his contribution to the language and linguistics.

Computer book for beginners

Pariganakaye Nodutu Peththa
Author: Priyantha Navarathne
Senarath Publications, 2 G/1, Pahalayagoda, Imbulgoda
98 pp Price Rs. 150

Review: R. S. Karunaratne

COMPUTER SCIENCE: Priyantha Navarathne's Pariganakaye Nodutu Peththa is all about computer hardware engineering.

With the expansion of Information Technology, a new computer literate generation has sprung up. As IT is relatively a new subject, many English books have not yet been translated into Sinhala. The present book fulfils that need to a certain extent.

The modern world of high technology could not have come about without the computer. Computers have opened up many avenues of employment. Moreover, they have facilitated the manufacturing process and enhanced modern communication.

The author explains the tasks that can be performed by the computer in a simple language. Then he traces the history of computers from Abacus to pocket computer and explains them briefly with appropriate illustrations.

This is followed by a discussion of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) that controls the entire computer system. Next chapter introduces computer software to the reader. He distinguishes between system software and Application Software.

Pariganakaye Nodutu Peththa is useful as a guide to beginners. The absence of a contents page is a serious drawback in the book.