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The show that explores what makes Sri Lanka Sri Lankan.
Hidden Trails I Stepping Off The Beaten Path In Sri Lanka.
What really makes Sri Lanka? Perhaps these 5 very local cameos might provide a clue.
Hidden Trails is the subject of this podcast, which steps off the tourist path to give you a glimpse of what really makes Sri Lanka tick.
INTRODUCTION
Sacred temples, royal palaces, leopards, tea tasting, ancient frescos, sandy beaches, gourmet curries, tamarind martinis, whale watching, trekking, turtle fostering – these are the things that most visitors to Sri Lanka typically get up to.
And they are lovely: very lovely. Well worth doing. But there’s more. Much more. “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was perfect,” noted Moses with satisfaction in Genesis, and he must surely have had Sri Lanka in mind. Because what is special – most beautiful of all – is its ordinary life. The life you notice while driving its roads or walking its streets.
And it is all that enables this life that is the subject of this little, most local of tours, a tuk-tuk drive from Sri Lanka’s jungle retreat, The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. This journey will take you behind the door of what makes Sri Lanka Sri Lanka – those aspects of life that matter most to most people: god, food, water, culture, education, crafts, and local lords. These are the things that motor this little Sri Lankan community, perched in the jungle and paddy on the edge of the highlands, as it does most others. As Bad Bunny, the rapper, said, “Simple goes a long way.” Especially here, far from the busy world.
History has the hardest of times being heard in a tropical climate, which is no respecter of artefacts. Much has been lost. The haunting story of Dingiri Menika in Galagedera exemplifies this—the fate of this renowned local beauty is intertwined with that of Kandy’s last king. Selected to stimulate the moribund fertility of the last King of Kandy, Queen Dingiri Menika was kidnapped by his soldiers, garlanded with jasmine, and carried on elephants, with drummers and banner-bearers, to a stake atop Bahirawa Kanda, or Gnome Mountain, now home to one of the tallest statues of Lord Buddha.
Bound to a stake, she was meant to be a human sacrifice, though quite why anyone thought a feast such as this might make the despondent queen procreate is a mystery. Fortunately, the king’s elephant keeper got to Dingiri Menika first, rescued her, married her, and set up home with her in Welligalle Maya, on Cross Street, close to Kandy Super Phone, Ltd, a present-day mobile phone supplier. But although the king chose to terminate all future human sacrifice, his late-burgeoning liberal values were not destined to bring him any greater luck. Within a few years, he had been exiled to India, along with at least two of his four wives, the third of whom was to use her exile for bankrupting shopping sprees. Traces of the king remain in the museum in Kandy, but of the Galagedera home that housed his beautiful would-be sacrifice, there is none.
Yet the world she inhabited is not yet gone, and this tour will try to pick out which aspects of it still live on. We will visit Mrs Liyange and the tiny preschool class of tiny singing children at the ancient monastic school of Galayawe Sri Suvi Suddharamaya. And Manju and his family, beside their paddy fields, figure out all that happens to our sticky rice pudding before it gets to be anything of the sort. We will finger inscriptions so ancient they predate recorded Sri Lankan history with a script that fell out of use nearly two thousand years ago, when we call in on Gunadaha Rajamaha. This cave altar was the refuge of a king who symbolised the enduring and unique culture of the Sinhala nation that is Sri Lanka today, and who rescued the young Anuradhapura Kingdom. En route is a handloom workshop and a woodcarver, part of a great artistic tradition for which the Kandyan kingdom is famed. And an abandoned manor house dating back to the first years of British occupation.
THE KING’S HIDING PLACE
Hidden down tiny roads very close to the hotel is the ancient cave temple of Gunadaha Rajamaha, with lofty views and a deep forest hinterland, once home to one of Sri Lanka's most unlucky kings. Valagamba became King of Anuradhapura in 103 BCE, but had first to kill Kammaharattaka, his sibling’s murderer and chief general, before gaining what he regarded as his birthright - the crown.
This he did, but little good came of it. Decades earlier, royal misrule had set the grand old kingdom of Anuradhapura on a path to utter disaster. Within months of taking power, a rebellion broke out in Rohana due to a devastating drought. The kingdom’s preeminent port, Mantota, across the Mannar Strait, fell to Dravidian Tamil invaders. And at a battle at Kolambalaka, the hapless King Valagamba was defeated, racing from the battlefield in a chariot lightened by the (accidental?) exit of his wife, Queen Somadevi.
The king went into continual hiding - including here in Galagedera as he sought to build a guerrilla resistance to the invaders. His kingdom was now ruled by a series of Tamil kings who, between 103 BCE and 89 BCE, either murdered one another or fell victim to the guerrilla campaign that had become ex-king Valagamba’s passion and priority.
For 10 years of war, regicide, and rebellion cripped the land. The first three Tamil kings murdered one another, and Valagamba’s successful guerrilla campaign killed the final two.
By 89 BCE, he had recaptured the throne/. He was to rule for a further 12 years, but his religious preoccupations, perhaps magnified by his long periods of hiding out in temple caves, set in motion the island’s first Buddhist schism.
Over the following hundreds of years, the ancient little temple carried on; its caves gathering statues; its forest getting ever denser; and the walls of the rock within which it hides being chiselled with medieval drains to fend off the monsoon.
Today it remains a place for solitude and prayer; a moment of stillness to carry with you, the lintel above the cave itself inscribed with a pre-Singhalese script – Brahmi, an alphabet that dates back to the 6th BCE in India.
TEMPLE, SCHOOL, MUSEUM, PEACE
A temple of a quite different sort is next on the tour.
There is no agreed-upon word to describe a hunger for temples, but any such human condition is most easily satisfied in Sri Lanka. This island averages a temple or kovil every three miles or so. Ancient, famous, revered, enormous, historic, picking out just one to especially favour is no easy task. But the one I would pick out, for its abiding spirit of serenity, its simple good work, its connection to its community, and its halcyon calm, is Galayawe Sri Suvi Suddharamaya.
Found off a tiny back road just a few kilometres from The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel, the temple is around 400 years old, dating back to King Rajasinha II, the collapse of the Portuguese occupation of the island, and the arrival of the Dutch.
Within its grounds lie a lovely, elongated mini stupa, over 100 years old; a dormitory for its monks; ponds of koi carp; a range of Buddhist altars; a Museum; public rooms for workshops and dining; a medical facility; and the ancient temple itself.
It is overseen by Udawela Nanda Thero, whose kind and thoughtful character is almost all the argument you need to believe in the goodness of God. Half a century old, his family have presided over the temple since its earliest beginnings. Someone once said that anyone who loves books, dogs, and trees cannot be faulted for their essential goodness. And so it is here. Udawela Nanda Thero goes about his daily work, followed by his three adoring dogs, who take but a passing interest in the gentle stream of locals who come to pay their respects, touch his feet, and receive a blessing in return. Trees shade its grounds and books, and scrolls fill its library.
The temple is as much a practical expression of care as it is a spiritual one. The medical facility here opens on weekends and focuses on the needs of women and children. The temple school, which operates from 8 am to 12 noon, looks after about 30 local children aged 3 to 5. Its head teacher, Mrs Liyange, has been working here for 18 years, supported by a couple of assistants. The children, at this age, of course, learn by play; and the class includes those few children who present disabilities, so that at the very earliest of ages, no child, whatever their ability, is alienated from the others. There are several respected schools in Galagedera for children to attend as they grow older, but it would be hard to beat this pastoral kindergarten start.
The temple itself is a marvel of carvings and paintings. The central enclosed sanctum is covered in ancient Buddhist frescos and sits inside a vast, cool veranda whose roof extends to enclose the sanctum's outer walls. Frescoed walls tell their moral stories across these walls. The entrance to the sanctum itself is guarded by wood carvings dating to the building’s inception: carved lions, life-size statues of characters from the Buddhist scriptures, horses, wild animals, mystical beasts, and tableaus of notable Buddhist stories. Beside the temple sits the stupa, solid as with all stupas, but containing – what? Something, for sure, as all stupas have at their heart some relic or memory that has a special historic resonance. What lies at the heart of this one is now lost to memory.
Over 5 decades, Udawela Nanda Thero has assembled a singular museum that tells, with subtle eloquence, the story of Sri Lanka’s journey from an agrarian world to a more urban one. A great range of antique agricultural implements adorns its walls and shelves. Hand-carved coconut scrapers; little metal containers that fit together like Russian dolls, made to measure rice out in careful and agreed amounts; a paddy crusher; a vast 350-year-old Rice Safe, with an accompanying separate container made from an enormous single hollowed-out jack tree.
Each item recalls not just a lost rustic world, long since overtaken by modern machines and equipment, but also a culture with rice at its centre, as befits an island that flourished from its very beginning because it was able to harness the transformative power of water, for achieving anything more than a rudimentary agricultural existence required year-round water, and plenty of it. Water, after all, permitted greater areas to be used for growing crops and higher yield densities. It meant food surplus, profit, trade - and with it the capacity to develop an urban and industrial capability, underwritten by technical advances from construction and weaponry to horticulture, and transport. It meant that the state could better develop the organisational and professional skills essential to its success – commerce, industry, engineering, labour, planning, law, medicine, food storage, and finance.
Water management, including irrigation, storage, collection, and distribution, made the original Anuradhapuran Kingdom possible. These early Sri Lankans mastered the construction of small tanks before the fifth century BCE - the start of what is called the Tank Cascade system that developed into the construction of low embankments across valleys to dam small rivers or rivulets that would deposit their water into a series of downstream tanks, and, ultimately, paddy fields. A profoundly detailed understanding of how to refine and improve the technical requirements to maximise water availability has been developed. Inceptor zones were created between the tank and the paddy fields. Plants with well-developed root systems were used to help absorb the salts and heavy metals from the water before it reached the paddy. Tree belts were planted well above the water tanks to stop wind, waves, and evaporation. Sedges purified water run-off. Catchment forests regularise water supply to tanks during the dry season. Miniature tanks captured silt that would otherwise run into the tanks.
In this part of the country, where the dry plains meet the hills, agriculture is a beguiling mix of what works best in both zones: rice paddies and spice plantations; timber forests and orchards; rubber, vegetables, and coconuts. The droughts that plague the dry zone are mitigated here in the wetter hill country. In Galagedera, small rivers like Kospotu Oya or Iriyyagahadeniye Ela, fed by a thousand smaller streams, ensure that, whatever the season, the waters still flow. And flow, of course, ultimately to feed the very paddy land whose ancient machinery, unchanged since the time of the Anuradhapuran kings, has been collected and displayed by Udawela Nanda Thero in his unique temple museum.
But they are not alone. Other artefacts dot the museum’s walls: a medicinal boat and crusher for creating traditional medicines, a great wooden box made by the Portuguese to hold guns, a simple school slate and stylus, the laptops of its day, a paan crusher, the jingling bangles worn by Kandyan dancers, weapons and daggers that go back to the last kings. And, perhaps most poignant of all, some of the very first examples of the modern world that have so eroded this one: an ancient typewriter; a bakerite phone; a vintage cine film camera; a massive iron fuelled by hot coals.
HAPPY RICE. HAPPY LIFE
Rice, in one form or another, exists at the centre of most things in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankans consume an average of 11 kilos of curries, kothu roti, lamprais, hoppers, kiribath, and sweet puddings each month. And although healthier red rice varieties command more favour here than in most other countries, the country once supported over 2000 different strains, including heirloom varieties like Suwandel, Maa-Wee, and the dark Kalu Heenati (considered something of an aphrodisiac), which are now making a modest comeback.
The crop is planted in two seasons per year: the Maha (bigger) season from September to March, fed by the NE monsoon; and the Yala (smaller) season from May to August. Its cultivation, though improved by mechanisation and disease-resistant varieties, remains elaborate.
The overall paddy track, or Kumburuyaya, is subdivided into smaller plots – liyadi - around which ridges (niyara) are made, pierced by vakkadas to let water in. Often, small areas are left wild to feed the birds that might otherwise eat the paddy. Harrowing or preparing the land, once done by ploughs and oxen, is now mechanised. The land is levelled and seeds, often pregerminated, are sown across the watery track – the water itself is typically kept at around 5 cm above the soil. Then the wedding begins. And never stops: patience was ever a virtue best exhibited by rice farmers.
Harvesting is usually a manual process, followed rapidly by drying, storage, and milling; rapid drying is the most critical step. Many people juggle regular jobs with maintaining small pieces of family paddy, tucking their farming work into off-time and weekends, and enlisting family members to help out. And this is just what Maju, our supervisor and butler, does with his piece of family paddy near the estate. The paddy is fed by one of the district’s main streams – the Kospotu Oya, which flows even during the driest of dry seasons.
Together with his wife, Shyamalee, our head housekeeper, and his sons, he carefully manages the paddy. It lies just below the compound where his mother and other family members live – his sister, brother, uncle, aunt, and nephews - and the immediate garden around their houses, shaded by mango trees. Surrounded by his neighbours' plots and encircled by forest and hamlets, it is a perfect picture of authentic country life. And a good place to come to see the crop up close and contemplate its singular importance on the island.
HANDMADE
The modern world has not been especially kind to the island's craft folk. You have to go deep into the countryside to find genuine examples of craftwork. But every so often, as you travel the island, you hit upon a village dedicated to the obsessive production of just one item. There’s one that only does large ceramic pots. Another is lined with cane weavers. One, more perilously, is devoted to the creation of fireworks. Down south is one for moonstones; another for masks. In Pilimathalawa, just eleven miles from The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel, is one dedicated to brass and copper.
Two other examples exist just a few kilometres from The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. The first, a woodcarving workshop, is run by Mahinda Jayalath, who has been carving for 30 years. Born into a family some distance from the village, he moved here with his wife's enthusiastic encouragement, who is a local. His workshop is arrestingly modest – a mere covered shelter off a tiny back road where he and his three workers sit making their carvings. His work sits within a most ancient and celebrated Kandyan tradition, for it was here, in the Kandyan kingdom, that the island produced one of its most significant and most forgotten artists - Delmada Devendra Mulachari. Many people will have heard of Grinling Gibbons, the Michelangelo of woodcarving, who immortalised Restoration England and his patron, Charles II, with his “unequalled ability to transform solid, unyielding wood and stone into something truly ethereal. But at almost the same time, his equal by any measure was busy doing much the same in Sri Lanka.
Mulachari is renowned for many things, but the rarest by far is Embekke Devale, a 16-mile drive from The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. A medieval masterpiece, the temple has withstood wars, weather, and, most especially, the interminable conflict waged by the Portuguese and Dutch on the island’s last kingdom in nearby Kandy. By the 1750s, it was in a sorry state, its dilapidated walls noted by the rising young artist, Mulachari, who lived nearby, his family, one of several Singhala artists from the South, having come north to seek work. Wood carver, sculptor, architect, artist, Mulachari worked for the last three kings of Kandy, especially for King Kirthi Sri Rajasinha, whose 35-year reign, to 1782, was preoccupied with restoring the hundreds of Buddhist temples destroyed in the colonial wars. In this, the king was greatly helped by Mulachari, who built for him the Audience Hall and the Octagon in the Temple of the Tooth, and the Cloud Wall that surrounds its lake.
Travellers, whether local or foreign, with a temple in mind, head with unfailing sureness to The Temple of the Tooth, and not Embekke Devale. But although just fifteen kilometres apart, the two temples are worlds apart in artistry. The Temple of the Tooth has a stolid, almost bourgeois respectability. By compassion, at Embekke Devale, you enter a magical world in which formality occupies but the smallest part. In every section, in every place, are the surviving 500 statues of the great artist, each a masterpiece in itself. Exquisitely carved models of entwined swans and ropes, mothers breastfeeding children, double-headed eagles, soldiers, horses, wrestlers, and elephants – all validate why this temple is famed across Asia for its world-class carvings. But there is more. Fantasy intervenes. Erupting from a vein is a figure of a woman; a bird takes on human attributes; a sleight of hand reveals that an elephant is a bull; another, that a lion.
Today, the demand for wood carvings is for doors and windows, fretwork above doors, statues of Lord Buddha, and the odd elephant or cobra for the tourist market. All this, and more, is what Mahinda Jayalath and his tiny team put out. Should you be around for more than two or three days, he will likely have enough time to complete any special commission.
A few kilometres on from his is another small example of fine craftsmanship – this one dedicated to handloom fabrics. This unexpected outpost of the Department of Textiles has at its heart some six ancient wooden hand looms on which women weave all manner of classic cotton patterns. A shop next to it sells some of its wares: sarongs and lungis, saris, table mats, and bed linen.
ABANDONED MANSIONS
Sri Lanka is littered with ancient mansions and walawwas, some like palaces, others modest as country mice. They were once the homes, ancient or merely old, of the ruling class, a class not always popular in a democratic socialist republic. They pop up in city centres, down dusty town roads, in jungles, on plantations, amidst paddy, on mountain tops, and off country roads.
Many – if not most –are in a state of severe neglect; a few have been declared national monuments and attract basic survival care; fewer still - such as The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel - have been reimagined as shops, hotels, museums, their future blessed by round-the-clock maintenance.
One such haunting building – The Paranagama Walawwa - lies within a tuk-tuk ride of the hotel, now abandoned and dating back to 1820, a remarkably early date given that the British only signed the Kandyan Convention in 1815, bringing to an end the last independent kingdom in the country and the one that ruled over Galagedera at the time.
Just two years before this mansion was built, the Great Rebellion of 1817–1818 broke out, initiated by frustrated Kandyan chiefs disillusioned with the British colonial administration. The rebellion, now known as the Great Liberation War, was led by the celebrated freedom fighter Keppetipola Disawe, but other leaders did not support him. The British Governor Brownrigg came up from Colombo and established his field headquarters at Kandy to direct military operations against the rebels, backed by extra troops rushed in from British India. His more trained manpower eventually won the day, and the rebellion was crushed.
Keppetipola was taken to Kandy, where he was tried for high treason and sentenced to death by beheading. Bizarrely, his skull was brought to Britain and placed in the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh. When Ceylon gained independence from the British in 1948, Keppetipola was declared a national hero. In 1954, he was returned home and entombed in the Keppetipola Memorial in Kandy, next to the Temple of the Tooth. Brownrigg himself is alleged to have later stolen the priceless, gilded bronze ancient Statue of Tara, now at the centre of a dispute with the British Museum, where it currently resides.
In the two years following the end of the Rebellion and the erecting of this Galagedera mansion, the surrounding countryside, even more remote then than it is today, would have been reeling from the devastating effects of Britain’s scorched earth policy in the area – the killing of cattle and livestock, the destruction of private property and stocks of salt; the burning of rice paddy and confiscation of properties. Herbert White, a British agent, wrote of the situation a few years after 1818: “If thousands died in the battle, they were all fearless and clever fighters. If one considers the remaining population of 4/5 after the battle to be children, women, and the aged, the havoc caused is unlimited. In short, the people have lost their lives and all other valuable belongings. It is doubtful whether Uva has at least now recovered from the catastrophe.”
Little is known about the mansion, which is thought to have been built by J R Paranagama, the Dissawa (Governor of Uva) within the old Kandyan aristocratic hierarchy, and a Mudaliyar at the Kandy Kachcheri – the district secretariat. Many of the succeeding family members became notable lawyers in the country and around Kandy. Today, the mansion lies under the lightest of care from the Archaeological Department, which has nevertheless put on a new roof and rectified some of the most significant erosion that would otherwise have led to the collapse of the entire building.
That was a production written and recorded by David Swarbrick at The Ceylon Press, based in the jungle north of Kandy, at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, and set up to tell the story of Sri Lanka.