A study of the traditional Sinhalese village

A book which is pleasant to read and able to scan through illustrative pages is an invaluable gift for all times. Here then is a ‘coffee table book’, a well known genre, the derivative of which I am not quite certain. It comes as a welcome variant to the existing pattern of tourist documentation. The work is titled as ‘The Monk and the Peasant’ (subtitled as a study of the traditional Sinhalese village).

The text is by J B Disanayaka, professor emeritus of the University of Colombo, and the photographs and the layout designed by a well known personality Tilak Hettige, an international award winning artiste. The book comes to the reader as a wide pictorial cum document with resourceful material culled from the culture, religion and history of the country. It is visually presented to make a better awareness of the subject revolving round the role of the monk and that of the peasant in Sinhala village. It may not be a living entity devoid of communication byways and crosscurrents of a nation and its people. The monks are venerated just not for their heritage, but also for their manifold activities from the temple premises spreading and stemming from it to the entire village.

Peasant’s functions

This is made possible via religious teachings and susceptibilities. Over the years, especially in the Sinhalese village, hand in hand goes the function of the peasant for he is just not another toiler of the earth and a supplier of food stuff, but also familiar to many other struggles overcoming via a steadfast mind as influenced by the religious teachings. Thus this is a subject which is thoughtful and full of insights.

The entire book is written with a mission, which underlines the values of the study of the traditional Sinhalese village. The text is not pedantic but laid down with sensitive observations and personal experiences gathered over the years and as the writer says from his childhood working with his father who had been a traditional Sinhalese physician (vedamahattaya).

Though trained as a linguist, an anthropologist and a folklorist J B Disanayaka attempts to interpret common matters pertaining to the subject in the simplistic manner possible, laying down the folk beliefs, sayings, legends, myths and wise cracks and erudite Pali stanzas, Sinhala folk verses that make the text look vivid and colourful. This I felt as absent in many a book written prior to this venture, which was done predominantly by trained sociologists and colonial administrators of our country, inclusive of such persons as Bryce Ryan, Henry Parker, Emerson Tennant, Hugh Neville, Leonard Woolf, R L Spittel and many others over the years.

In this text of J B Disanayaka, there are several quotes from such scholars as Sarachchandra, Coomaraswamy, Wickramasinghe, Gunasinghe and Amunugama, but he has his own identity and stamp in the ultimate interpretations of his observations and experiences. In the first instance, he recreates the broad spectrum of the village taking into account its lands sacred and profane.

Average villager

The writer says that in the traditional Sinhalese village two tracts of land are held sacred: temple and threshing floor (kamata, kalavita or pavara pola). The temple derives its sanctity from Buddhism, the teachings of the Buddha, the other the threshing floor gets the influence of Buddhism as spread to the moulding of a popular folk religion which is pervasive in many ways to the life structure of the average villager. From here the discourse stems into segments in the temple subtitled as the land of the faithful, the school without walls and a haven for the artist.

In this context, Jataka tales are taken as example of the visual and moral education medium in the temple which goes hand in hand with the sermons of the monks. The sound patterns such as hevisi are traced as and shabda puja are traced as duties in the temple premises indicative of various sound messages. Each segment carries sufficient examples with colourful photographs which enable additional vision and insight into the text. Followed by this broad spectrum of study, the function of the monk is laid down taking into account his day at the temple, his rites of passage, ritual of the rain retreat, his relations with the peasant, and his relations with the community. Like in a laboratory clinical exercise the reader is taken around a traditional village temple from place to place tracing the activities woven around the place.

The monk leads a life of absolute celibacy says the writer, and adds that his relations with the opposite sex are minimal. He does not meet women in seclusion nor does he meet them under the same roof. But they meet at the congregation halls with other males. As such the personality of a monk depends on the noble pious qualities inherited over the years. Then comes the interpretations regarding the peasant which cover his day at the threshing floor, his use of language in the cultivation process, especially in the threshing floor, his speech moulded in Buddhist idiom, and his pilgrimage to sacred places covering the collective activities linked to agrarian families. The reader finds insights to various rites and rituals connected with the agrarian culture.

One example is ‘alutsahal mangalle’, the ceremony of the new harvest. Disanayaka underlines how the much discussed caste system has seeped into the structure of living conditions and made to over pervade in the traditional village. This is shown as observable during some of the events connected with the dawn of the New Year or the Sinhala avurudda. But the instances where it is made impossible are also shown when it comes to collective communal activities. Thus the reader is made to understand that though the caste system remains as a brand name, it has no proper and firmer roots in practice. The concluding chapter covers broadly the concept of values that we are after all equal, and that things must be shared, and that animals too should share love of humans and that the money earned is not the only thing, and that the elders need and deserve respect.

Traditional standpoint

The intention of Disanayaka is to present with vivid examples the harmonious relationship that exists between two most honourable persons of the village: monk and the peasant. He also underlines that the traditional ways of these two honourable persons are gradually changing and /or waning off from its traditional standpoint due to various reasons of the living conditions as well as other social, political, technological and economic factors. But by and large, the situation has to be understood as it still exists in some of the remote areas of the country.

This needs to be rediscovered as a subject that opens a window to some other areas of darkness enlightening us on sociological matters so far unearthed by scholars, and laid down to be buried over times.

This work may help scholars in other parts of the world to gauge the traits of our own culture enabling studies in comparative cross cultural communications, a subject area that is fast developing, and enveloping into the structures of literature where emphasis is laid on creative communication patterns. One broad outlook of the writer is that the ethical and moral foundation of the traditional Sinhalese village does not differ substantially from that of another culture.

He also pinpoints that the concept of ‘Buddhist values’ about which he has laid more emphasis in his last chapter, are no different from those values in other religious systems, perhaps a factor that some may disagree, and as such the culture and the religious values go hand in hand in any culture. In the appendices the reader finds a guide to transliteration, a guide to pronunciation, index of Sinhala words, captions of lllustrations etc. This then is indeed field and textual research in the highest sense of the term which the other members of the university staff in Sri Lanka should take seriously.

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