Historic rescue of Sigiriya
S. PATHIRAVITANA
I have not met Mr Mathmaluwe, but reading his collection of
interesting essays he gives me the impression of being a venerable old
gentleman with lots of time on his hands to write very leisurely to an
age which can hardly be described as being leisurely.
Sigiriya: a gem of beauty |
But the variety of subjects he writes on is so wide that it should
catch the attention of any reader at any one point. The variety being
such that it reminds me of what Lewis Carroll prompted one of his
characters to say, “The time has come” the Walrus said, “to talk of many
things, of shoes and strings and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.”
I must say, however, that the book is more about kings in various
fields and less about cabbages. For what is more heroic than the rescue
of Sigiriya from the state it was in when it was first described by the
Englishman who saw it, Major Forbes.
It was in such a decline that the access to it was impossible as
described by Forbes around 1833, being also the haunts of leopards: “We
crept along the narrow grooves from whence portions of the building had
fallen...after clambering up the loose bricks which formed the
termination, succeeded in entering the gallery, and proceeded along it
for about hundred yards...I felt so giddy from the heat as to be unable
to accompany my friends; and I was sincerely glad to see them descend in
safety, for some portions of the crumbling building which they displaced
might be heard crashing among the boughs of the trees at a great depth
below.”
That has been stopped by one of the ‘kings,’ as I call them - H.C. P.
Bell. Any other man would have despaired of ever going to the top of the
rock - the heat, the scarcity of drinking water, the difficulty of
getting labour and the absence of steps leading to the giant lion’s
paws.
He was lucky to find a local blacksmith, Salamanhamy (an honourable
mention of his name is in Bell’s report), who showed his superhuman
skill in building a strong iron bridge gaining access to the lion’s
paws. This essay is useful in particular to those who are unaware of the
many difficulties that visitors faced. The work Bell did paved the way
for making Sigiriya today, along with the restoration work done by the
Cultural Triangle, a gem of beauty.
Entrance to Sigiriya rock |
From Sigiriya he shifts his vision to America. This is not to say
that there is a confusion of interests. He is pretty orderly in the
arrangement of his essays. They are put into different sections like Art
and Literature, Religion, History and Archaeology, Personalities, Rural
Scene and the Village and so on, so that you may satisfy your interests
first and then go on to investigate the others.
I chose to read about Robert Frost, another king, a king of poets,
after reading about Bell. My own acquaintance with Frost has been a
brief encounter, but that alone was sufficient to endorse what Mr
Mathmaluwe says about Frost’s outstanding qualities as a poet.
Frost is so different from the poets who came before him in the
States. He is more European or rather universal in his poetic vision. As
this essayist points out, “He speaks for all humanity and for all time.
It bears a more enduring significance and there is every possibility
that his voice will be heard again and again for a long time.”
He also points out that Frost seems to have understood his role in
poetry. “Frost himself knew this and was speaking of this when, in that
six-line poem ‘Questioning Faces’ appearing in his last collection he
writes of the owl who has,
‘Caught colour from the last evening red
In a display of under-down and quill’
His observations on the rural scene and its progress in this country
are very close to my heart. Where is progress leading us to? He asks,
and points out to what even some of our Western thinkers like Rousseau
and the more recent Fukuyama and Arnold Toynbee have been thinking and
talking on.
This essayist is speaking of his own experience that of a man who has
lived all his life in a village in Matale. To all those who are in the
Gama Neguma programme what he says is very important if they are working
towards the well-being and happiness of the gama and the goviya.
This is the village he lives in as told by him. “The Sinhala village
was the last bastion of tradition and for a surprisingly longer time
than its counterpart in the low country, it remained impervious to
foreign influences that came from the West; but then how much longer
could it have continued that unequal battle?
The flood gates opened when the Radio and TV infiltrated this sacred
grove: from time immemorial they had their traditional folk arts and
modes of entertainment, their folk songs, ‘Kavis’ and folk drama:
participating in these activities not only provided them with
entertainment, but also they promoted friendship, close co-operation and
close community life that was the very life breath of the village.
At these periodic spectacles, their gods were worshipped and demons
placated... This writer knew such a village which in fact could be taken
as typical of those remote Kandyan villages. It was truly a Shangrila.”
There are very many informative essays of such a wide range that the
book is in a way kind of small encyclopedia for our times. The heroic
struggle that Walisingha Harischandra made against our colonial rulers
in trying to save Anuradhapura, our sacred city from falling into a
market place, is scarcely remembered today.
These are the struggles our Marxists should have commemorated had
they but the word patriotism in their political vocabulary.
In his leisurely moments this essayist may have strayed into writing
essays on subjects like ‘Incest - a Royal prerogative? to discus whether
it was a Royal prerogative or not and wondered whether there are
supernormal persons who decided our destinies. And did at the same time
sit back to enjoy a popular song, ‘oba apple malak waagey lassanai’ and
go into raptures. I know many people respond to the music of this song
just as I did. But the imagery, I must say, stumped me.
Where have I seen an apple flower I asked myself and how does it look
if there is one going around. These thoughts disturbed my enjoyment of
the melody as the lyrics were not in place for me. The song is not less
beautiful though for that, but slightly jarring because I cannot
visualise an apple flower, never having seen one. Have I raised an
aesthetic problem?
As for the title of this book, which associates Buddha’s thought with
the meditations of Aurelius’ stoical thinking, it is being said that
stoicism originated in India.
This is not the place to go into it at any length. That nearly
everything that made Europe inventive or philosophical originated in
India, is discussed in a book that was out recently with the title Zero
Is Not The Only Story authored by an Indian doctor, Priyadarshi. |