Malalagama Liyana Mahattaya

Re-visiting Martin Wickramasinghe, six decades later, proves to us that he is still with us, and will always be with us. We meet him again as a short story writer, in a new collection compiled by W. A. Abeysinghe, short stories written between 1938 and 1951. The first volume contains 41 short stories. 15 of them had never been included in any of the Wickramasinghe collections, but had appeared only in newspapers and periodicals from 1928 to 1949.

The book opens with an essay on Short Stories, written by Wickramasinghe in 1951 and published in the collection 'Vahallu'. What he saw in the Sinhala short story over sixty years ago, is what we find even today, and it is an essay to be read by our young literati and students of literature. "The Sinhala novel to be fed by numerous streams to form into a mighty river could only be achieved if we could study and learn from our ancient writings in addition to the western writing styles. ...The traditions of a civilized world is like a life stream, even if it remains still for long periods, it is always alive. By throwing away such traditions we are cutting down our arts at its roots."

Wickramasinghe refers to Jataka stories. Andhabhuta Jataka is an example to show that a short story should not have unnecessary words and unnecessary descriptions. He also says "Short stories cannot be written by learning the rules of short story writing. It is by experience and by his own mistakes that a writer learns. He should also learn to understand and use his intelligence to choose what is suitable and not."

He ends the essay, "A writer should be able to devote all his time for his creative work. One who spends his time in seeking praise and benefits from the wealthy and the powerful, would only be fooling themselves."

For some of us who have read many of these stories before, we get an opportunity here to see them again, with our life experience of a few more decades, to find something more in the stories. For the young generation, it is an opportunity to learn of life in our country during the first half of the 20th century. We go back to this period, with a writer who never severed his umbilical cord from the place of his birth, and could still write about Koggala and also using all the knowledge and experience he had gathered from his insatiate thirst for reading and learning, added to his experience in the world of newspapers. For him Koggala was never an 'Imaginary Homeland'.

Then we meet the journalist M.W. in Dr. Sandagomi Coperahewa's book, 'Martin Wickramasinghe Puwathpath Kala Mehevara'. It is about the 'Pattarakaraya', or the 'Liyanamahattaya' as he was known among the villagers, and his service to the print media in our country. He was engaged in writing for over six decades and most of us know him for his novels and some of us from the films based on the novels. But he was also a journalist, a 'Pattarakaraya', to use his own words, who had been an editor of several Sinhala newspapers from 1920 to 1946.

Martin Wickramasinghe was born in the village Malalagama in Koggala on May 29th, 1890. In 1906 he had come to Colombo to find employment as a clerk, and then had moved to Batticalo. His first, 'Leela' was published in 1914, and 87 books later in 1974 he published his last book, 'Sinhala Vicara Maga'. One of the greatest sons of our motherland passed away on July 23rd, 1976.

Even though he had received PhD and DLitt awards from several universities in Sri Lanka, he never used the title Dr. with his name, and he had always acknowledged his humble beginnings, having completed his formal education only up to grade 3 at the Buonavista Vidyalaya in Unawatuna. Yet he became not only a bilingual writer, but his writing spread over Sinhala culture, religion, history and our language. He was also the first person to popularise the ideas of Charles Darwin and Neitzhe.

Dr. Coperaheva writes about how Wickramasinghe wrote under the pen names of 'Malalagama M. W.' and 'Hethuwadi' on various issues, probably influenced by the publications of the Rationalist Press Association, since 1916. Other pen names he had used had been 'Vijitha Manuvarna', 'Susantha Manuvarna' and 'Mayurapada'. He had challenged many beliefs and practices. About the myth of the Aryan, he had written in 1918, quoting Issac Taylor, that it was Max Muller who had introduced the term Aryan, and that it was only a language and there was no such race as Aryan, and continues his comment that the term 'Arya Sinhala' is a meaningless term.

In an article on the Sinhala language published in the Silumina in 1954, he refers to the shortage of teachers for the science classes in Sinhala for grade 8. He blames the Sinhala community who looked down upon the Sinhala Language and tried to use English only.

Today most journalists and media personnel are often found to complain that they do not find the time to read anything outside their immediate interests, that they do not have time to read even their own copy or edit them, and there are often issues on media ethics.

There is so much we could learn from a person who had received his formal education only up to grade 3, but who managed to master not only the Sinhala language, but also English, Pali, Sanskrit, and Sinhala, English and Indian Literature, Science and the Theory of Evolution, the great philosophers around the world. He still found the time to be a full time editor of a newspaper and continued to write 13 novels, nine collections of short stories, three biographies, 31 books on various subjects, all in Sinhala, and also seven books in English.

MW was one of the greatest Sons of the Soil.

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