Category Archives: literary achievements

December 24, 2014 · 1:17 am

Tina Faulk’s “The Island of Singing Fish: a colonial childhood in Ceylon”

 

singing fishCeylon is a magical island which has enchanted adventurers, writers and soldiers for thousands of years.   It has, over six centuries, been ruled by three Great European Powers, Portuguese, Dutch and British. The legacy of these remain, in the language, culture, architecture and –most of all- the islanders themselves. The Island of Singing Fish is the story of a Sri Lankan family that began over five hundred years ago when Roelof Dircksz, a young Dutch trader working for the East India Company (the VOC) came ashore and married into a spice trader family in Galle Fort …. It’s the story of a family, a community and an island, written with love, nostalgia and the yearning for an island we all once called home…. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under australian media, British colonialism, communal relations, cultural transmission, female empowerment, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, world affairs

November 25, 2014 · 4:38 am

Story-Telling in the Past: A Critique of Benedict Anderson and Post-Modern Conceits

Michael Roberts ….. This essay appeared as a booklet under the auspices of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, in 2002, ISBN: 955-580-068-7, one that took up  46 pages. A modified version became chapter 2 in Roberts, Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period, 1590s-1818, Colombo, Yapa Publications, 2004. It has also appeared in Colombo Telegraph where readers will be entertained by the blog comments.

****  ****

The word “media” connotes a great deal today: it suggests a powerful force, a pervasive influence, a job market and much more. These connotations mark the technological force of the television set and the computer in the contemporary global order. Among academics in the 1950s and 1960s, a similar power was attributed to the written word, that is, to the word in print form (as distinct from palm-leaf). Both phenomena can be treated as signs of modernism. In the 1950s and 1960s this imprint of modernism within the social sciences was embodied in “modernisation theory.” This theory was one of the ruling models in social science literature and was rooted in the distinctions between “modernity” and “tradition,” and the related differentiation between “modern societies” (invariably Western) and underdeveloped “traditional societies.”[1] In questioning the rigidity of this distinction in their book The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: 1967) with reference to South Asia, the Rudolphs implicitly emphasised the force of such forms of conceptualisation.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under British imperialism, Buddhism, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, meditations, performance, pilgrimages, politIcal discourse, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, power politics, religiosity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, terrorism, transport and communications, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes

November 21, 2014 · 7:49 am

The Poet Richard Murphy’s Account of Killings in the 1980s in Sri Lanka

Padraig Colman, Extracts from his “Rambling Ruminations of an Irishman in Sri Lanka,” at http://pcolman.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/richard-murphy-long-version/

MURPHY 2 ………. I was surprised to learn that Murphy spent a great deal of his childhood in Ceylon where his father, Sir William Lindsay Murphy was the last colonial Mayor of Colombo (and first Municipal Commissioner from 1937 to 1941). Richard was taken to Ceylon at the age of six weeks, having been born in a damp, decaying big house in the west of Ireland. The young Richard Murphy spent holidays in Diatalawa, which is not far from my home. After leaving Ceylon, Sir William succeeded the Duke of Windsor as Governor of the Bahamas. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under atrocities, British colonialism, discrimination, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, JVP, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, literary achievements, meditations, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, riots and pogroms, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, working class conditions

September 18, 2014 · 9:21 am

Don Martino De Zilva Wickremasinghe (1865-1937) — Savant, Linguist and Epigraphist … with Notes about HCP Bell, Archaeologist (1851-1937)

Thiru Arumugam, courtesy of The Ceylankan, Journal 67, vol XVII:3, August 2014, pp. 18-22.

Thiru photoThiru Arumugam

Don Martino De Zilva Wickremasinghe was born in the Southern Province in 1865. He passed away in 1937. He was educated at Richmond College, Galle, which was originally called ‘The Galle School’. It was founded on 25 July 1814 by the Weslyan Methodist Missionaries and is the oldest English medium school in the country. Although he did not have a Bachelor’s degree, Wickremasinghe was appointed Lecturer in Tamil and Telugu by the University of Oxford. Subsequently he became Head of the Dravidian Department, University of London. He lectured at the School of Oriental Studies, University of London which was renamed in 1938 as the School of Oriental and African Studies. It has been described as the world’s leading Institution for the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle-East. The jewel in its crown is the Library with over a million volumes. Wickremasinghe was completely fluent in the following languages and lectured in most of them at University level: English, German, Sinhala, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit.

Wickremasinghe photo2 a grainy image of Wickramasinghe taken in London in 1899

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under British colonialism, cultural transmission, heritage, historical interpretation, life stories, literary achievements, sri lankan society, unusual people

July 25, 2014 · 2:25 pm

Sudharshan Seneviratne talks to the people of The HINDU

Meera Srinivasan, in The Hindu, July 2014

SS Pic by Meera Srinivasan

When Sri Lankan archaeologist Sudharshan Seneviratne drove down to Chanakyapuri on a hot day recently, memories of his Delhi days came back gushing. From being a student in the city in the 1970s to returning now as the highest representative of his country, life has come a full circle, says Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to India who, as a student, spent a decade in India, studying in New Delhi and later researching early Buddhism in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

On 13th Amendment: In an interview to The Hindu , days ahead of his big move, Mr. Seneviratne says issues such as the implementation of the 13th Amendment — India has been pushing Sri Lanka to devolve more powers to its provinces as per this Amendment — the fishermen’s conflict or [the claim to] Katchatheevu could be resolved by coming together and working without “being parochial about it”. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under centre-periphery relations, constitutional amendments, cultural transmission, education, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, Indian traditions, life stories, literary achievements, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, world affairs

July 25, 2014 · 12:23 pm

Gunesekera’s NOONTIDE TOLL: Tip-toeing through Sri Lanka

Paul Binding, reviewing Noontide Toll, by Romesh Gunesekera, Granta, pp.256, £12.99, ISBN: 9781620970201

NOONTIDE TOLL‘The first night I stayed in Kilinochchi, I was a little apprehensive,’ admits the usually cool-headed Vasantha, van-driver and narrator of all the stories in Noontide Toll. Kilinochchi was the operational centre of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) until the Sri Lankan army’s entry in January 2009. Now the town offers amenities like the Spice Garden Inn, with glass-walled cafeteria and reception desk overflowing with coconut flowers and bougainvillea. Yet its assistant manager, Miss Saraswati, belies such luxurious blandness. A rat suddenly appears in the café; immediately she hurls a bottle, breaking the creature’s skull without destroying the implement. ‘I stared at Miss Saraswati. “You learn to do that at Jaffna hotel school?” ’ Next morning Vasantha notices ‘the trigger finger of her right hand was callused and discoloured at the edge’.

Miss Saraswati calls the van-man a ‘peacemaker’, and often he feels himself ‘a kind of doctor’. Those long journeys on which he takes passengers ‘looking for something lost and irretrievable’ are surely a form of ‘healing’. He has certainly learned to keep his counsel, so many revelations does he hear of grave splits in identity. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under authoritarian regimes, cultural transmission, education, Eelam, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, life stories, literary achievements, LTTE, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people

June 10, 2014 · 2:37 pm

Remembering a Renaissance Man, Ediriweera Sarachchandra

Ranjini Obeyesekere

Born at the cusp of the 20th century, at a moment when the cross influences of colonialism, nationalism, and Buddhist revivalism had a powerful impact on the psyche of Sri Lankan intellectuals, — generative as well as conflictual — the life and work of Ediriweera Sarachchandra, represents a transformation of these forces into works of path breaking scholarship and brilliant creativity. His erudition was legendary, and his influence on generations of students as well as the public has made him a household word in the country.

SARACHCHANDRA 11-ISLAND Pic from Island

I will present a few vignettes to try to capture the intellectual range of his erudition, his sensitivity to the cultural and social demands of his time and his innate creativity that enabled him to fuse the many influences and exposures of his life into magnificent literary and dramatic works.

Born to a Christian mother and a Buddhist father, and named Eustace Reginald de Silva, he transformed himself, his name, and his world, to become Ediriweera Sarachchandra —  perhaps the foremost intellectual, scholar, teacher, and creative artist of 20th century Sri Lanka.  Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cultural transmission, education, heritage, Indian religions, Indian traditions, life stories, literary achievements, performance, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, unusual people

June 9, 2014 · 9:59 am

History-Making in Lanka: Problems

Michael Roberts … re-presentation of an article that appeared initially in http://www.federalidea.com in April 2008 and is presented here with minor refinements.**

Central themes in the understanding of Sri Lanka’s recent as well ancient history have been fashioned by two occupational categories, namely, schoolteachers and politicians. The school teachers of the first 75 years of the twentieth century were mostly well-meaning personnel trained in the British empiricist traditions. Their tendency was to regard history as a collection of undisputed facts that could be juxtaposed along a chronological line. There was limited attention to the interpretive dimensions of the trade and the potential for debates around these interpretations. This heritage has been implanted in recent decades by what masquerades as an educational system (where I suspect that in practice it is a process of rote-learning that is now twisted by pliant teachers in each language stream to suit ethnic claims).

44-a classroom and its teacher a classroom in the 19th century

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under British colonialism, Buddhism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, heritage, historical interpretation, Left politics, life stories, literary achievements, nationalism, politIcal discourse, population, power politics, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, world affairs

June 5, 2014 · 1:41 pm

The Carpenter-Prēta: An Eighteenth-Century Sinhala-Buddhist Folktale about Jesus

Richard F. Young, courtesy of Meiji Gakuin University in Japan and where it appeared in print in 1995

Abstract: A Sri Lankan folktale presenting Jesus as a delusory emanation of Mara is discussed here for its significance in understanding how Christianity was seen by the early-modern Sinhalese. By depicting Jesus as demonic and his teachings as inimical to Buddhism, Sri Lankans situated Christianity in the context of the cosmic rivalry between the Dhamma and the disordering forces of Mara. The Hindu background of certain motifs in the folktale is considered, as are its probable origins in the religio-political milieu of the eighteenth-century Kandyan kingdom and its relevance to later Buddhist revivalists. This study also questions empiricist approaches to Sri Lankan historiography, and pro­poses that folklore provides scholars with an invaluable supplement to Western docu­mentary materials and the island’s official chronicles when attempting to reconstruct the indigenous perception of European Christianity.

Keywords: Buddhism and Christianity — Jātaka— Jesus — Māra — Milinda —Rājāvaliya

SEE https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/140 Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under cultural transmission, disparagement, historical interpretation, Indian religions, Indian traditions, life stories, literary achievements, politIcal discourse, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, zealotry

June 4, 2014 · 1:20 pm

Leonard Woolf’s forgotten Sri Lankan novel

BBC and Nick Rankin

The Bloomsbury Group and Sri Lanka are rarely spoken of in the same breath, but that is partly because Leonard Woolf’s groundbreaking first novel, The Village in the Jungle, is unjustly ignored, argues writer and broadcaster Nick Rankin.

WOOLF AT HOME--_getty624She was born Virginia Stephen, daughter of the Victorian bookman Sir Leslie Stephen, but when she married in 1912, her name changed to Virginia Woolf, and she went on to become the best-known woman writer of the 20th Century. Her lesser-known husband, Leonard Woolf, however, wrote and published a novel first. That almost forgotten book, first published in 1913, is called The Village in the Jungle and it is a remarkable work because it is the first novel in English literature to be written from the indigenous point of view rather than the coloniser’s. It’s not a book about the white chaps at the club who run the show, but about those at the very bottom of the imperial heap, the black and brown fellows who don’t even know they’re part of an Empire, but who just survive day by day, hand to mouth, as slash-and-burn agriculturalists. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, governance, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, politIcal discourse, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, world affairs