Category Archives: cultural transmission

August 9, 2023 · 8:53 pm

Enjoying Peradeniya Campus Life in the Late 1960s

Sumangalika Dharmadasa, in  the booklet HANTHANA NIGHT , produced by the University of Peradeniya Alumni Association Western Australia in 2023 … where her title reads “Campus Life of Yore: Through the Eyes of a Fresher”” 

6th October, 1965 is a land mark date in my memory, as it surely must be in the memory banks of all the Freshers who entered the hallowed portals of the university of Peradeniya all those years ago. The sense of freedom and independence I felt after the cloistered life in school hostels was truly exhilarating.  For the first time in my life, I was free to do just as I wished!  I did not know then that I was destined to remain in that wonderful place for over 50 years.

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August 9, 2023 · 7:34 pm

Debating Australian Aboriginal Lifeways Past

Gillian Cowlishaw, at John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal 15 August 2023 where her title is “Misreading Dark Emu”** …with highlighting emphasis imposed by Thuppahi

 

Criticisms of the book Dark Emu and its author, Bruce Pascoe, continue to appear, and to become more puzzling. It is as if the overwhelming popularity of Pascoe and his message have disturbed comfortable convictions about Australian history shared across a wide segment of Australian society.

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August 6, 2023 · 3:18 pm

Straddling Disciplines & Crossing Boundaries  

Michael Roberts

In presenting an article published in Comparative Studies in Society & History in Thuppahi,[1] I have introduced quite a few readers to the issue of the boundaries that have prevailed between the disciplines of History on the one hand and Anthropology and/or Sociology on the other. In its day the CSSH was a high-quality journal which straddled these boundaries and exercised a regime that demanded great skill from those seeking to cross its threshold and gain acceptance for an article within its pages. Kitsiri Malalgoda was one of those who had satisfied its Editors with his essay “Millennialism in relation to Buddhism” which appeared in CSSH, volume 12 in 1970.

Kapferer’s Study of Exorcism Rites in Sri Lanka … & paceman Hogg seeking to remove batsmen

 

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August 6, 2023 · 12:15 am

In Appreciation of Jayantha Dhanapala

Prasad Kariyawasam: an article entitled “Remembering Jayantha Dhanapala (1938-2023)” …….. presented in a booklet entitled  “Hanthana Night” produced by University of Peradeniya Western Australia Chapter, 2023, pp. 50-52.

“For those who had the good fortune of knowing and working with him, Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapla, was the quintessential diplomat, trustworthy colleague, all rounder par excellence and most importantly, a humanitarian to the core. His early life was shaped by two great educational institutions of international repute during his time – Trinity College Kandy and the University of Peradeniya.

Ambassador Dhanapala at the 40 nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in 1984 … with Prasad Kariyawasam standing behind him

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August 4, 2023 · 12:50 pm

Introducing an Essay on an Ethnic Confrontation at a Cricket Match in 1981

Michael Roberts

This ‘encounter’ took place in 1981 and involved a Burgher Sri Lankan barracker earning the combined ‘resistance’ of an Aussie cricketer and Sinhala bystander (Sinha). As an observer of this set of exchanges, I moved beyond a clarification of the historical understandings embedded in Sinha’s success in ‘defeating’ the aggressive Burgher to address the relationship and differences between ‘typical’ anthropological studies and ‘typical’ historical work.

The essay was published in Comparative Studies in Society and History in 1985. The pdf version has been converted into Word File by my Aloysian schoolmate KK De Silva, a cricketer and soccer goalkeeper in his school-heyday. Because it is a pdf, I have not been able to assemble the Footnotes as “End Notes.” Continue reading →

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July 30, 2023 · 9:12 pm

Canadian Double Standards ….. Both At Home & In Lanka

Professor Chandre Dharmawardena

According to The Island newspaper, 25 of July 2023 [1], the Canadian High Commissioner Eric Walsh in Colombo has barged into the controversy on the Kurundi archeological site. The Canadian HC had met T. Raviharan, a politician who spearheads the protests at the Kurundi site. HC Walsh’s explanation is that “Meeting people in different parts of the country, to better understand their priorities and perspectives, is a normal part of a High Commissioner’s role.”  These words ring hollow if he does NOT meet anyone from the “other side”, or the Archaeological Commissioner and other technical people.

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July 25, 2023 · 8:22 pm

Death of a Trotskyist … In Memory of Nathan Sivasambu

Jane Russell … presenting “a fictional short story in warm testimony fo Nathan Sivasambu who was a one-off: a convinced Trotskyist, his greatest gift was in bringing people together to celebrate the era of ‘British Ceylon’ of which he was a true patriot.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was October 23rd, two days before the Centenary of the Revolution. The black and white photo of Leon Davidov Trotsky looked down from his ebony frame on the sitting room cum study wall. This version of Trotsky was unsmiling: stern – very much Creator of the Red Army, Hero of the Revolution. The photo had been taken in the early 1920’s, in St. Petersburg, when it was still called Petrograd.

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July 24, 2023 · 2:27 pm

The Agony and Ecstasy of A Pogrom: Southern Lanka, July 1983

Michael Roberts … reproducing an article that appeared initially in a collection of my essays in 1994 under the title above in EXPLORING CONFRONTATION, Readng, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994,  pp. 317-27. It was subsequently reproduced in Nethra, vol. 6, 199-213.  …. and then placed on web  in Groundviews (without its footnotes) .… https://ground views.org/2019/03/28/the-case-for-foreign-judges-in-a-judicial-mechanism-in-sri-lanka-countering-falsehoods/. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bystanders after the burning and assaulting: also at Borella Junction area, 24-25th July 1983, picture by Chandragupta Amarasinghe. There is a suggestion here that popular participation in attacks were also initiated and/or facilitated by state functionaries. It is also likely that some of those described as ‘bystanders’ were perpetrators of some of the destruction, burning and killing. I had not discovered whom the photographer was when Exploring Confrontation went to press in 1994. Let me use this occasion to record my greatest respect for the bravery and ingenuity revealed by Chandragupta Amarasinghe in extremely dangerous and trying circumstances. 

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July 19, 2023 · 8:03 pm

Traversing the Port of Colombo: ‘Fridaying’ and All That

David Sansoni **

Despite my pedagogic heritage, I never considered teaching as a career. I was surprised to receive a message (verbal, or a note… don’t remember…nor from whom…) to teach ‘Citizenship’ to an Upper IV class (12 year olds) at S. Thomas’, whence I had just graduated. Term 1, 1972. Jackson Karunaratne Esq did the Sinhala speakers, next door. He was a great help. He gave me a copy of a compilation – a ‘Civics/Social Studies equivalent of Literature’s “Choice Reading”. Just two subjects remain in my memory. A piece about the importance of History, and Gandhi. It was a fun time… a fun term…for me! I can but hope it was for the shishyas.

 

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July 18, 2023 · 11:50 am

The Temple Wall Paintings at Karandeniya

Uditha Devapriya, in the Sunday Observer, 16 July 2023, where the title reads “Interesting Temple Murals at Karandeniya” … with photos by Manusha Gunarathna

The Buddhist temples of the Southern Province, in particular those going back to the late 19th century, display a uniquely fascinating style. They cannot be viewed in isolation from the Kandyan temples, though as Senake Bandaranayake has noted, it is difficult to ascertain or conclude whether they were an offshoot of the Kandyan Period, or whether they were merely influenced by it. This debate does not concern us at present: what should concern us is that the murals of these temples reflected their times, and that no two temples, even in the same locality, were ever the same, a point I gathered when I travelled some 50 km from the Sunandaramaya in Ambalangoda to Kataluva in Ahangama a year ago.

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