Category Archives: cultural transmission

August 13, 2024 · 1:34 pm

As Sturdy as Sigiriya: Raja de Silva reaches His Year Hundred

Rajiva Wijesinha, in The Island, 11 August 2024, … where the title reads “Raja de Silva at 100″

I have been privileged to have come to know in the last few years the former Commissioner of Archaeology, Raja de Silva. He was at school with my uncle Tissa and last year he came home – as he used to do in his schooldays – to a celebration of what would have been the latter’s 100th birthday. And before that he had been a source of interesting books, for in downsizing his library he passed on to me several books he thought I might like.

Raja …. Cutting birthday cake

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August 12, 2024 · 3:43 pm

Polyandry, Hierarchy & Rumours Today in a ‘Traditional’ Kandyan Sinhala Village

Jayantha Perera, whose chosen title is “ekagei kaema (polyandry) – a way of life in the Kandyan highlands”  … in The Island, 11 August 2024 

Hingula is a small bazaar 60 miles from Colombo on the Colombo-Kandy Road. A narrow, tarred road starts from there, and a signboard says, ‘To Aluth Nuwara Devalayala.’ The logo of the Archaeological Department on the signboard indicates the devalaya (temple) is a state-protected archaeological site.

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August 9, 2024 · 9:09 pm

A Play That Explores Sinhala-Tamil Relations in 20th Century Ceylon

Jayantha Somasundaram in The Island 9 August 2024, …….. presenting a review COUNTING & CRACKING written for the stage by Sivanathan Shakthidharan and Directed by Eamon Flack …. and has this title “COUNTING & CRACKING: THE SUNTHARALINGAM SAGA”

Already staged in cities in the United Kingdom and Australia, Shakthidharan’s poignant drama directed by Eamon Flack, is a fictionalised version of a Sri Lanka family’s story; but not just any family. It is the Suntharalingam saga. It movingly recounts a biography that spans four generations; and in doing so it captures and critiques not just Sri Lanka’s social and cultural history, but its political tragedy as well.

 

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August 9, 2024 · 7:53 pm

Serenity with Cliff Richard’s Song by Minneriya Tank

Dr Sanjiva Wijesinha, …. whose orginal title reads “Twilight Reflections 19-A Summer Holiday”

We’re all going on a summer holiday

No more working for a week or two….”
-from a popular song of the sixties by Cliff Richard

Isn’t it amazing how hearing a few bars of a song can suddenly trigger the flooding back of a host of memories?

A Serene Scene  … Just the Scenario for “A Summer Holiday” wuth Cliff Richard

I was having dinner at a restaurant with my wife the other day – it was one of those quiet uncrowded restaurants where they have soft music playing in the background. The music is soft enough not to disturb one’s conversation, but just loud enough so that you are aware of the melody being played in the background.

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August 7, 2024 · 12:37 am

THE CEYLON JOURNAL is launched: Seeking to Elucidate the Past & the Present

The Ceylon Journal is finally out

On August 2, 2024, the inaugural volume of The Ceylon Journal was launched at the Sri Lanka Medical Association Auditorium. This new publication by Heritage Publications is spearheaded by young historian Avishka Mario Senewiratne, features 15 articles exploring various facets of Sri Lankan history, including politics, architecture, folklore, and more. Inspired by Charles Ambrose Lorenz’s Young Ceylon, the journal aims to deepen understanding of Sri Lanka’s heritage and inspire progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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August 6, 2024 · 7:55 pm

Burghers with Their Belts Unbuckled

Richard Simon …. reviewing the book  Life Under the Palms: The Sublime World of the Anti-Colonialist Jacob Haafner, by Paul van der Velde, trans. Liesbeth Bennink

In 1926, a translation of Reize te voet door het eiland Ceilon (Travels on Foot through the Island of Ceylon) by Jacob Haafner was serialized in the Journal of the Dutch Burgher Union of Ceylon. The translators, L.A. Prins and J.R. Toussaint, included in their work several passages critical of British rule in India that had been left out of the original (1821) English translation of Haafner’s book. The Twenties were a period of intense political ferment in colonial Ceylon, and the author’s fulminations against the British were very much the point of the project.

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August 2, 2024 · 1:14 am

Pictorial: “Ceylon” in the Nineteenth Century

Presented by  “Ediri” .... and having attracted 709,588 views by Dec 31, 2010 ……

Collection of Photographs of People & their life, taken during British Colonial Era (1815-1948) which downloaded through Internet. With profound thanks to photographers (expatriates for sure), we are able to view how our life in Sri Lanka (Ceylon, Then) had been more than 100 years ago. Please observe what a peaceful life, humble clothing and charming atmosphere enjoyed between the late 1800s and early 1900s. Lets View, conserve and pass them for our next Generations ………….

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July 30, 2024 · 6:36 pm

That Cricket Match in1958: A Bantering Exchange

The THUPPAHI Item re the washed out international cricket match at the SSC grounds in Late 1958  drew this SET of EXCHANGES in July 2024

A=  Skandakumar-Rasiah, 30 July 2024

Sharing a comment of a great follower of the game

Whose Idol was Peter May

B = Rasiah-Skanda, 30 July 2024

Oh yes-wonderful childhood memories

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July 30, 2024 · 1:44 am

Let’s Remove the Colonial Tropes in the Writings on Sri Lanka

Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, whose preferred title is  “Decolonizing July 1983’s Fiction and History for a Post-Ethnic Sri Lanka: Tropes of Violence and Cold War at the end of the American Century”

 “Fair is foul and foul is fair”— William Shakespeare, Macbeth

 !@#$!!!! …. The Editor’s efforts to insert appealing cartoons and/or pictures of Macbeth were defeated by the digital world’s capitalist principles & demands for payment

Why are there no Booker Prize-winning novels about mundane multicultural families that inter-married for generations, shared religion/s, language/s and co-existed for centuries, while living in relative harmony in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka? Is the trope of dark natives engaged in endless chaotic violence an international literature prize-winning bestseller that masks white mischief, including sanitized, techno-scientific AI guided drone warfare? Susan William’s brilliant and brave book “White Malice” is subtitled, “The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa’.

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July 29, 2024 · 1:32 am

A Meeting of Cultures: The Unique Vernacular Chapel at Trinity College, Kandy

Ranil Bibile … reproducing an old essay without all its pictorial  embellishments because the author does not have the original photos in his computer “as .jpegs as the articles were composed 20+ years ago and there have been many computer changes since then.” 

 Kandy! The very name is redolent of history, culture, festivals, dances, caparisoned elephants, and historic rituals. Ancient temples nestle in remote corners of this Cande Udarata – the old Kandyan Kingdom. The architecture, hipped roofs, frescoes, wood carvings and antiquities of these places of worship provide a veritable feast for the eyes, vying for attention with the surrounding vistas of cloud-capped mountains, rivers, waterfalls and verdant plateaus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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