{"id":139211,"date":"2024-08-03T17:00:34","date_gmt":"2024-08-03T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=139211"},"modified":"2024-08-04T03:10:01","modified_gmt":"2024-08-04T03:10:01","slug":"nilgala-frontier-by-ranil-bibile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/nilgala-frontier-by-ranil-bibile\/","title":{"rendered":"NILGALA FRONTIER – by Ranil Bibile"},"content":{"rendered":"

NILGALA FRONTIER – by Ranil Bibile<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"Nilgala<\/p>\n

NILGALA, where Raja Singha, Lord of the T\u00fbn Sinhal\u00e9, vanquished the man-eating crocodile, was a dead end.<\/span><\/p>\n

ONCE, many years ago, whilst exploring this roadless terrain on foot, I came across the remnants of an ancient hewn-stone fortress. It was situated on a rocky rising rib of land between the roaring river and the brooding peaks of Ulhela and Berayahela, and lay half buried amidst the tumbling boulders and man-high mana grass of this place. I had just begun to investigate the crumbling battlements when a herd of elephants approached me, forcing me to retreat towards the waterspread of the Senanayake Samudraya.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though I longed for years afterwards to return to this remote ruin, to touch the stones once again and feel them come alive with the history they must have known; it was not to be. As the years went by, I passed oft times within a league or two of it on my many restless wanderings the Maha Vedirata. Yet I never set my eyes on it again, and often wondered as to who had built it and for what purpose it had stood there in those deep and forlorn forests, beyond the back of beyond, with nary a village or human settlement for miles around. Had it guarded a city that still lay undiscovered and unrecorded in our chronicles, perhaps lost in the mists of time? If not a city, then perhaps a great highway? But if so, then a highway from whence to whence? For today, only an elephant trail brushes past those ancient stones, and vanishes into the tall grass that rustles gently in the winds that blow across the waters of the Samudraya and up the Canyons of Makar\u00e9.<\/span><\/p>\n

THE year was 1602 A.D. The Portuguese held sway over the maritime provinces of the island, especially in the west. In the rugged mountains, the Kingdom of Kandy held out against the invader and lived its life of independence a hundred years after the first Portuguese men of war had landed. The King of Kandy – Vimala Dharma Suriya – the former Konappu Bandara, wished however for an ally to oust the Portuguese, and in the process struck upon the Dutch. And thus came to the shores of Ceylon, the Dutch admiral Joris Van Spilbergen, the first ambassador from the Prince of the House of Orange, to the only potentate in the east who claimed to wear a crown. A journal of this embassy kept by an officer of the expedition stated that the journey from the roads of Batticaloa where the Dutch ships dropped anchor, to the kingdom in the hills, was made through Nilgala, Wegama and Alut Nuwara. Reading that account, I felt that it may be a clue as to why there was a fortress in Nilgala. For, if Nilgala had once been an important way station on a route from the east coast to the Kandyan Kingdom, then a fortress may have been essential.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1620 A. D. the Danish admiral Ove Giedde too dropped anchor off the east coast of Ceylon and according to his journal he journeyed to Mahiyangana to see the King, passing through Nilgala and Bibile.<\/span><\/p>\n

An Ola Leaf Sannasa, extant, has it that during the reign of King Rajasingha I, a Veddah chieftain by the name of Maha Kaira Wanniya fought on the King’s side against the Portuguese, and as a reward, his offspring were granted, on the Sannasa, the village of Bibilegama in the Wellassa division in 1611 AD by King Senerat. They settled down at Bibile, four leagues from hoary Nilgala, and for generations thereafter ruled the area. In all that time Nilgala remained an important junction, right up to the Nineteen Hundred<\/span>
\nand Thirties when the late C. W. Bibile, the last Rate Mahattaya of Bibile-Wellassa – a descendent of Maha Kaira Wanniya – used to bivouac at the old Nilgala and Ambilinna Circuit Bungalows with his bullock cart caravan whilst on circuit of the Maha Wedirata.<\/span>
\nBut the history of Nilgala and The Valley goes back by the millennia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. R. L. Brohier stated that; \u201cDim traditions supported by other evidence associate the Gal Oya Valley with man of the Old Stone Age \u2026.this naturally refers to wild untamed Ceylon, long before its history began to be told in lithic record and monument.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Elsewhere he stated; \u201cApparently in times long past there were along the banks of the Gal Oya several natural hollows or villus..\u2026was consequently of much importance in Pre-Christian times\u201d. Parker talked of \u201cseveral reservoirs in existence there in the first three centuries Before Christ.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As for myself, I have seen in this region, the traces of a ‘Kalugalbemma’ which the timeless oral traditions of the villagers\u2019 claim is the remnant of a great highway which ran from the Raja Rata in the north to the Kingdom of the Ruhuna in the south during the dim distant past. North to south and east to west, Nilgala was a crossroads: Once upon a time so long ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

THE centuries had rolled on. From the ‘Pre-Christian’ eras, through the times of the Veddah peoples, to the coming of the Sinhala race, and the heyday of the Kandyan Kingdom, and through the invasions and embassies of the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British, as men and armies had come and gone, Nilgala had been there and seen it all, and remained, as always, a very beautiful spot upon this earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was the British who explored the region most after the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom and left many a written paean to its lure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sir Emerson Tennent, Colonial Secretary 1845-1850, talked of \u201copen glades and forest scenery…..park like meadows and surrounding woods\u2026 trees of majestic dimension and pastures through which the deer troops in herds. \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sir Samuel Baker in 1848 said, \u201cI cannot describe the country better than by comparing it to a rich English park, watered by numerous streams and large rivers, but ornamented by many beautiful rocky mountains, which are seldom to be met with in England. If this part of the country had the advantage of the Newera Eliya climate, it would be a paradise. \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Governor Sir Henry Ward who travelled down the Gal Oya through Bibile and Nilgala in 1857 had this to say: \u201cAll that nature can do to make a country attractive by the most beautiful combination of Mountains, Forests, Rivers, Fertile Valleys and rich grazing grounds upon the Hills is to be found here scattered with a profuse hand\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus did many an explorer pen a paean to Nilgala.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

BUT everything is impermanent and must change even after millennia. By the Nineteen Hundred and Forties Nilgala was only a small hamlet by the river. In that time disease and dissension wrought havoc upon this place, and its people abandoned it and scattered to other outlying settlements which had melodic names: to Hamanawa and Pammedilla, to Maladanambe and Damunuwinna, and further afield. The historic whitewashed mud and wattle circuit bungalow was all that remained, decaying peacefully in the shade of a huge mara tree amidst a grove of jak and plantain trees overlooking green fields of paddy now worked by the goviyas of Bulupitiya. Across the paddy lies a line of stately Kumbuks along the banks of the Gal Oya, from whence emanates the soothing music of waters rushing over the huge granite slabs of the river, for which reason this spot is called Lokgal Oya by the locals.<\/span><\/p>\n

THEN, as the 20th Century reached its midpoint, mechanical monsters the likes of which this isle had never seen, descended upon a spot of land below a rock called lnginiyagala to the east of Nilgala.<\/span><\/p>\n

And they changed the face of the earth. The dramatic rock of Inginiyagala was married to another hillock a mile away, and thus were the waters of the Gal Oya, which had flowed untrammeled through this valley since the earth was first formed, trapped and hindered on its journey to the sea.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the pent-up waters rose relentlessly over the many monsoon seasons, they submerged tens of thousands of acres of beautiful earth; and the historic lands around Nilgala, of Wellassa, and of the Maha Wedirata, drowned.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lands which had been the home of the Veddahs for many millennia, the cave homes to which they had given strange sounding names such as Bendiyagalge and Hitibeminigalge, Uhapitagalge and Punchikiriammagalge, drowned.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lands over which the great highways had rolled in the kingdom times of the past, drowned. They had been highways from the Country of the Kings – the Rajarata – to the country of the Ruhuna, and highways from the ocean roads of Madakalapuwa to the mountain kingdom of the Kand\u00e9 Udarata.<\/span><\/p>\n

They drowned. The glade-like lands of Aralu, Bulu and Nelli, that had been the medicinal gardens of the old peoples, drowned.<\/span><\/p>\n

The historic circuit bungalow at Ambilinna drowned. When the new Sea of Senanayaka grew to its full extent, its meandering waterspread covered the the Maha Wedirata to the east, and Nilgala became a cul de sac \u2013 a dead end.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Nilgala circuit bungalow crumbled. It\u2019s water-well came to be occupied by dead animals.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Nilgala died.<\/span>
\nThe fortress had even then been living a century or more entwined in jungle vines.<\/span>
\nBUT out of this death, a new life arose. Beyond the Canyons of Makar\u00e9, and deep in the heart of the Nilgala Frontier, river, lake, and mountain met with great beauty and harmony.<\/span><\/p>\n

The waters that drowned the great vale became home to teeming aquatic life and were fished by birds that swooped down from the sky and by men who sailed their outrigger canoes through the quiet meandering bays and the windswept open stretches of the biggest lake in Lanka.<\/span><\/p>\n

The waters that were pent up behind the Inginiyagala Dam were allowed to leave the lake only by generating power for the people. In the lowlands to the east, these self-same waters made thousands upon thousands of paddy acres green, set little subsidiary lakes aglitter with replenishing waters, and made old and dying villages resurgent once more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even the great groves of trees that drowned and died in the new Sea of Senanayaka, became breeding grounds for countless flights of aquatic birds. The sylvan glades and deep forests of the upper reaches of the lake became havens for elephants, buffalo, deer, sambhur, bear, and all the other creatures which inhabit our forests; blessed at last with a perennial supply of food and water.<\/span><\/p>\n

But when the rains are late in the season and the lake low in water, there emerges the ghosts of the lakebed – the desolate cave-homes of the Veddahs and their gaunt granite outcrops, the highways of history, and the signs of man from the Old Stone Age. In its upper reaches, the lakebed briefly turns into a brilliant carpet of green grasses and wildflowers, and the grazers and browsers come out to feed in the morning sunlight, walking nonchalantly over ground that man had once ruled with great power and confidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

ONCE upon a time so long ago, after the fall of night in a fortress far away, the metal of soldiers’ armour clanked and glowed in the flickering torchlight as traders and travellers from the far corners of the isle of Lanka met and ate and drank and gossiped over a chew of betel beside the hewn stone battlements. As the night grew deeper, one by one they fell asleep, lulled by the soothing sounds of the waters of the Gal Oya rushing over smooth boulders. Perhaps they were occasionally disturbed by the tinkling of a pack bull\u2019s bell or the neighing of a soldier’ s horse.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you spend a moonlit night there today, you will still be lulled to sleep by the soothing sounds of the waters of the Gal Oya rushing over its smooth flat boulders. But if you are disturbed at night today it will be by the trumpeting of elephants or the wild and unforgettable cry of a pack of jackals howling at the moon. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nilgala lives<\/span><\/h2>\n

—————-<\/p>\n

This paean to the Nilgala Frontier is dedicated to my father Prof. Senaka Bibile who explored this region while still a schoolboy at Trinity College Kandy when, during school holidays, he accompanied his father the Rat\u00e9mahattaya C.W.Bibile on his official circuits of the roadless Wedirata which they traversed by foot and by bullock cart, bivouacking in the wilderness. Later, when I was a schoolboy at Trinity, my father encouraged me to \u2018go explore\u2019 the Maha Wedirata which I traversed by foot and by bullock cart just like him. If not for my father, I would have been just another city-bound teenager and missed the life-enhancing adventures of Wild Ceylon.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

FOOTNOTES,<\/span> ILLUSTRATIONS,<\/span> MAPS<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Author\u2019s note: The following entries are not strictly restricted to the above article which is really a paean to the Nilgala Frontier \u2013 the heart of the Maha Wedirata.It is not a learned treatise but more of a \u2018memoir\u2019 of my travels in the Nilgala Frontier. To make the article more meaningful I have included a variety of photographs from the region taken over many years on many journeys and expeditions. Hence the photographs are not in a strict chronological order as such but are included to illustrate the scenes that I have seen and the adventures that I have experienced in the territory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maps are included as they are important to give the reader a \u2018sense of place\u2019, as well as to provide some navigational waypoints for future adventurers. I hope you enjoy the maps as much as I do. The write-ups below may even seem a little meandering and disjointed, but bear with me as I take you on a journey to a fascinating area and through some fascinating history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Below: Extracts from the \u201cNilgala\u201d 1 inch sheet showing the Author\u2019s own annotations for better navigation<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n

\"map\"<\/p>\n

Note the information about the reservoir culled from various sources. This is something I have entered on most of my 1\u201dsheets where important water bodies are shown, The blank blue areas of the waterspreads are perfect for this data.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Maps and cartography are subjects close to my heart. The old \u201c1 inch:1 mile\u201d scale topographical sheets of Sri Lanka (no longer in print) are part of my treasured collection. Those 72 sheets, compiled by intrepid surveyors footslogging through the island and its wild places, have far more details on them than the modern maps published by the Survey Department which are mostly based on satellite imagery. An example is the \u2018Kalugalbemma\u2019 in the Maha Wedirata about which I explain on Page 16. Another such example of \u2018footslogging accuracy\u2019 are the old Yala area maps. They<\/span>
\nhad useful, maybe even life-saving information, such as waterholes marked \u201cWater in August\u201d (the dryest month). Old explorers and hunters used the information to survive. <\/span><\/p>\n

That information is needed even today by the Pada Yatra pilgrims. I remember making a journey along the pilgrim path through Yala East during the parched month of July and coming across some emaciated pilgrims almost dying of thirst who begged me for \u2018a drop of water\u2019 The importance of waterholes was also demonstrated during an expedition we made through Yala East in search of a lost monastic complex in bear-inhabited caves on a remote rock outcrop called Talaguruhela in the Yala Strict Natural Reserve. We had two official armed escorts from the STF but they drank the water rations too quickly and we had to ration the water \u2018by the gulp\u2019 in the last two hours of the return trek through the burning scrub jungle. GPS won\u2019t find you water in the arid jungles, but the old survey sheets can show you where to go if you know how to use a topo sheet and a compass.<\/span><\/p>\n

When talking of the Maha Wedirata I have to include my own Bibile Family history which is inextricably linked with the Maha Wedirata ever since the Veddah Chieftain Maha Kaira Wanniya\u2019s family were given the area on a Sannasa by King Senerat of Kandy in 1611 AD. (See Sannasa on page 31). It was a huge swath of the Maha Wedirata given to my ancestors in recognition of that Vedda Chieftain\u2019s valiant efforts to defend the Kandyan Kingdom from the invasions of the Portuguese, and for providing a safe haven for the King and his family and the Kingdom\u2019s wealth during Portuguese incursions. That is detailed in the history-books including the \u2018Parangi Hatana\u2019 (Ref Page 30).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bibile Family-Veddah nexus is in the document published at the link below.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"returne<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de\/index.php\/transfer\/article\/view\/101809<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The German anthropologist Baron Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt visited Ceylon, Bibile, Bibile Walauwa, and the Bibile Rat\u00e9mahattaya C.W.Bibile in 1927 and went with CWB on an expedition into the Maha Wedirata with CWB\u2019s elephant \u2018Mudiyans\u00e9\u2019, his horse, and 40 porters, carrying 40 tons of equipment and food. After living with the Veddahs in the deep jungles he called them a \u2018Noble Race\u2019, something that no Sri Lankan has ever done. He wrote extensively about them and published a book. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Egon_Freiherr_von_Eickstedt<\/a> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

More on von Eickstedt, his expedition, research, and book appear later in this article<\/span><\/p>\n

Below: The T\u00fbn Sinhal\u00e9 (\u0dad\u0dd4\u0db1\u0dca \u0dc3\u0dd2\u0d82\u0dc4\u0dbd\u0dda) Map showing the location of Bibile in the Ruhunu Rata of old<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"3n<\/p>\n

In the days of the Kandyan Kings and their Veddah allies, the route from the maritime \u2018Roads of Batticaloa\u2019, where the Portuguese anchored their ships, to Kandy, was up the river valley of the Gal Oya past Nilgala and what is now Bibile town, to Mahiyangana near Dambana where Mahaweli disgorges into plains of Bintenne, and from there up the river valley of the Mahaweli into the heart of the Kandyan Kingdom. Members of Maha Kaira Wanniya\u2019s tribe guarded those eastern approaches to Kandy, battling the Portuguese as the Portuguese tried to pass through the inhospitable jungles of the Maha Wedirata along the Gal Oya. Rewarded for their bravery by the King with the lands of the Maha Wedirata, Maha Kaira Wanniya\u2019s descendants settled in Bibilegama (now Bibile) as that area had plenty of water from underground streams coming from the Madulsima Range and emerging as perennial springs (\u2018bubulas\u2019) at Bibilegama. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\u2018Bubula\u2019\"<\/p>\n

A \u2018Bubula\u2019 of Bibile: This one in the Bibile Walauwa garden Left, 1927: Rat\u00e9mahattaya C.W.Bibile & Family and the von Eickstedts at the spring or \u2018bubula\u2019 in the Walauwa<\/em><\/span>
\ngarden Right, 1967: The Author (at right) and friends at the tank built around the same bubula as a constantly overflowing reservoir<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

And so, the Veddah descendants of Maha Kaira Wanniya became settled landowners and agriculturists, were appointed as Chieftains, married into the Uva Kandyan Families, built a Walauwa, and ruled the territory. Even after the takeover of the Kandyan Kingdom by the British in 1815, the Bibiles were granted the area to administer as Rat\u00e9mahattayas and ruled through four generations of Rat\u00e9mahattayas beginning in 1819.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"bibile<\/p>\n

Above: The 4th Rat\u00e9mahattaya, C.W.Bibile and family, and the Walauwa elephant \u2018Mudiyans\u00e9, photographed by von Eickstedt in 1927 in front of the new Bibile Walauwa built by C.W.Bibile\u2019s father, W.R.Bibile, the 3rd Ratemahattaya. There was an earlier Walauwa which was described by the German anthropologist Dr. Emil Scmidt who came to Bibile in 1889 and met the 2nd Rat\u00e9mahattaya Abesundera Bibile and son W.R.Bibile (3 rd RM) at the Parana Walauwa (Old Walauwa).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"cw<\/p>\n

C.W.Bibile (seated) and minor chieftains dressed in their ceremonial attire pose for von Eickstedt in the Walauwa garden in 1927<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

von Eickstedt recorded the interesting relationships of the Uva Veddahs with the Uva Kandyans in a paper titled \u201cRacial history of a Sinhalese-Wedda Aristocratic Family\u201d and states, inter alia,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAmong the distinguished Sinhalese families of the Uva district ( Eastern Ceylon) with their extreme proudness of tradition who for many centuries have served the oldest dynasty of the world, several are boasting of a direct descendence from the old aborigines, the Wedda. The rigid and arrogant caste spirit of the old Sinhalese \u00e9lites just in Kandy (the Ceylonese highland, independent till 1815), who didn\u00b4t even regard the inhabitants of the western lowlands with its European colonies completely as their equals, indeed treated the Weddan blood in former times as coequal\u2026.in the Eastern parts of the island, the esteem for the Weddas is still directly showing up in common behaviour: the district chief, clad in silken sarong, has to receive orders in standing while the dirty and almost naked Wedda is asked to squat down*. \u201cThe Weddas are of high caste.\u201d This behaviour is due to the far-reaching independence that even now is, or has to be, admitted to the few surviving Wedda families, and it is also due to their former position at the court and in the army of Sinhalese kings. This early influence of the Wedda chiefs was based on the great, and often deciding, importance the Wedda troups had for the power and existence of the Sinhalese kingdom as the<\/span>
\nfollowing family histories amply show.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

*To the Veddah, \u2018squatting down\u2019 is the equivalent of \u2018taking a seat\u2019 as an honoured visitor.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been fascinated by the Maha Wedirata, and more specifically the Nilgala area, and explored it on foot and by 4WD over three decades, camping out in the wilderness on numerous occasions with adventurous friends, my Uncle Ananda Bibile, and of course with Podiappuhamy of Bulupitiya, my erstwhile tracker in the Wedirata who believed that my wanderlust in the territory was due to my Veddah blood.<\/span><\/p>\n

I want to place as much as possible on record, so bear with me. My own knowledge was gained because people of the past, including the likes of Dr. Emil Schmidt (1889), Drs C.G and Brenda Seligmann (1908), and Baron von Eickstedt (1927) visited the Maha Wedirata, Bibile, and Bibile Walauwa, and worked with three generations of Bibile Rat\u00e9mahattaya from 1889 onwards and made voluminous notes and wrote books and deposited them in museums in Germany and England which were made available to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sitting with my grandfather C.W.Bibile, in the daytime heat and the nighttime lamplight of Bibile, Baron von Eickstedt researched and meticulously recorded the Bibile Family Tree, beginning with Maha Kaira Wanniya. That data has long been lost within Sri Lanka. We have access to it today only because his papers were miraculously saved by von Eickstedt himself during the chaotic days at the end of World War Two with German cities being carpet-bombed. Here is the adventurous story of the Eickstedt papers in the words of my German research colleagues:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAfter World War 2 Eickstedt had to flee from Breslau where he had worked and lived and he had to leave all papers there. Later he went back under cover several times to rescue his material and brought it back in sacks and boxes. He kept it in Leipzig first and later brought it to Mainz. Unfortunately, he never worked with the material again. All photos and diaries were found long after his retirement somewhere in the basement of the institute. Finally, it was handed over to the Dresden Museum to my then colleague Dr. Lydia Icke\u2010Schwalbe, who had kept the connection to the institute for years, and longer than me\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thereafter the papers were kept safely in German museums and gradually catalogued. I was able to retrieve them with the help and co-operation of dedicated German researchers over a period of three years. They clearly have an amazing system of record keeping and preservation for which we must be grateful.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Author owes a huge debt of gratitude to several museums in Germany that opened their archival vaults to me, and very specially to two redoubtable German research colleagues from the museums, Dr. Carola Krebs and Dr. Maria Schetelich who doggedly pursued every lead and every document through three difficult years, including the Covid quarantines, to make possible my research, and the article whose link is given on Page 7.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bibile Family Tree was compiled by von Eickstedt from elaborate records kept at Bibile Walauwa, including ancient Ola Leaf records in the possession of Rat\u00e9mahattaya C.W.Bibile. That was in 1927. These records no longer exist with the family. C.W.Bibile died suddenly in 1936 at a young age and in the aftermath, which must have been very traumatic, many papers have been lost. I do remember being at Bibile Walauwa one day in the 1960s and my grandmother, Sylvia Bibile (Mrs. C.W.Bibile), showing me the Ola Leaf Sannasa given to the family by King Senerat in 1611 AD. That too is no longer traceable with us although von Eickstedt says there is a copy at the Badulla Kachcheri. I hope one day to find it at least the copy. The copy in this document is a paper copy from the time of C.W.Bibile, and luckily, I was given the paper copy by my grandmother in the 1960s and carefully preserved by me in my archives.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"family\"<\/p>\n

In the Nilgala Frontier<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala<\/p>\n

Nilgala talawa <\/em>\u2013 a unique landscape<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The medicinal Aralu, Bulu and Nelli trees still flourish in the talawa<\/em> which is above the waterline.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sir Emerson Tennent talked of, \u201copen glades and forest scenery\u2026.park like meadows and surrounding woods\u2026 trees of majestic dimension and pastures through which the deer troops in herds \u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026overlooking green fields of paddy now worked by the goviyas of Bulupitiya. Across the paddy lies a line of stately Kumbuks along the banks of the Gal Oya and beyond rises the dramatic peak of Nilgalahela (1582 f t – as high as Kandy )<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"gal<\/p>\n

Above and below: \u201c..the Gal Oya, from whence emanates the soothing music of waters rushing over the huge granite slabs of the river, for which reason this spot is called Lokgal Oya by the locals.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"gal<\/p>\n

\"park<\/p>\n

Above: An afternoon\u2019s excursion In the \u2018Park Country<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Sir Samuel Baker in 1848, \u201cI cannot describe the country better than by comparing it to a rich English park, watered by numerous streams and large rivers, but ornamented by many beautiful rocky mountains, which are seldom to be met with in England. If this part of the country had the advantage of the Newera Eliya climate, it would be a paradise.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Above: <\/strong>The location of the old fortress, strategically placed at the entrance to the Canyons of Makar\u00e9 – the \u2018Mouth of the Dragon\u2019. The names of the streams not named <\/em>on the Survey Department\u2019s 1\u201d:1mile map have been entered by hand by the Author, based on his tracker\u2019s local knowledge. The jungle trackers who wander the talawa <\/em>have names for each and every stream and rock outcrop as they are the navigational waypoints in the trackless talawa.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Below left<\/strong>: Upstream from the Canyons of Makar\u00e9 there are unnamed rapids, not marked on any map. I gave it a name on my copy of the map for my own reference.<\/span><\/p>\n

Below <\/strong>right<\/strong>: The remains of the hewn-stone fortress: \u201cIt was situated on a rocky rising rib of land between the roaring river and the brooding peaks of Ulhela and Berayahela, and half buried amidst the tumbling boulders and man-high mana grass of this place.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Map Legend above shows elements of the intricate data the surveyors captured while traversing the jungles on foot.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The timeless oral traditions of the villagers\u2019 claim the Kalugalbemma to be the remnants of a great highway that ran from the Raja Rata in the north to the Kingdom of the Ruhuna in the south. This feature appears on several of the old 1\u201d:1mile topo sheets of the Survey Department which were compiled in an era when hardworking surveyors traversed the country on foot and recorded each and every geographical feature on the ground. But this Kalugalbemma feature lies hidden under the tall mana grass of the talawa. Modern aerial and satellite mapping simply do not pick it up or show it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWilhelm Geiger, the brilliant linguist who translated the Mah\u0101va\u1e43sa from Pali into German, travelled to Sri Lanka three times from 1895 onwards. His interest in the historical background of the D\u012bpavamsa and Mah\u0101vamsa brought him, on his second trip (1925-1926), to Bibile in search of lost notions about the age-old overland trade routes which started from the north of India and went along the Indian west coast up to the \u2018Pearl Island\u2019 Sri Lanka, the important center of overseas trade. Geiger, like von Eickstedt, developed a friendship with Charles William Bibile, Rat\u00e9mahattaya whose intimate knowledge of forest paths helped him \u2013 Geiger – to discover the remnants of an old route leading from Anuradhapura through the Ruhuna kingdom down to Tissamah\u0101r\u0101ma on the southern coast\u201d. (Bibile et al Heidelberg \u201cReturn of the Ancestors\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

It was this Kalugalbemma in the Maha Vedirata that the Author\u2019s grandfather, C.W.Bibile, showed Geiger in 1926, for which Geiger was very grateful and wrote the following thank you note to CWB and signed off in Sinhala script.<\/span>\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Above: The Author, grandson of C.W.Bibile, visiting the Kalugalbemma in 1966 with the same safety precautions as in 1926. Note the rounded stones which are the hallmark of the Kalugalbemma. Could these rounded stones have been the base stone layer of a road where the upper layers have disappeared over the centuries, or could this long north-west to south-east aligned stream of rounded boulders be a geological fault of some sort? No one seems to know. Of course, for the old Lankans to build their pyramid sized Dagobas and the great dams, reservoirs and long irrigation canals, they must have had an intricate system of sturdy roads to transport the heavy building materials. In the background one sees the Park Country \u2013 the talawa <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Above; Anthropologist Dr. Seligmann\u2019s Map of the Henebedde Valley and its Veddah Caves, noted by him during his 1908 Expedition when he was accompanied by Rat\u00e9mahattaya W.R.Bibile, C.W.Bibile\u2019s father and the Author\u2019s great-grandfather<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"map\"<\/p>\n

Above Left: Title page from the Seligmanns\u2019 Book published in 1911. On a mission for the British Colonial Government to study and document the Veddahs, they explored the Maha Wedirata accompanied by the Author\u2019s\u2019 great-grandfather W.R. Bibile in 1908, and WRB is mentioned numerous times in the book. Above Right: The Author\u2019s own hand-sketch of the Henebedde Valley during a low water time expedition to study old Veddah caves and the wildlife. . <\/span><\/p>\n

\"rock\"<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when the rains are late in the season and the lake low in water, there emerges the ghosts of the lakebed – the desolate cave-homes of the Veddahs and their gaunt granite outcrops,\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"enjoing\"<\/p>\n

Above left: After the morning tea and \u2018pol-roti\u2019, we douse the campfire completely before heading off. Here I am pictured with Podiappuhamy at one of the Henebedde Valley Veddah-Cave camps. As can be seen, the water level is very low, which is the time to explore the history \u2018written\u2019 in the usually submerged lakebed<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Middle: Our party of six takes a rest break during the trek and re-organises the loads. The party consists of my uncle Ananda Bibile, tracker Podiappuhamy, myself, and three accompanying villagers<\/span><\/p>\n

Above right: My field note of this day says, \u201cAt 11.30 a.m., ravenously hungry after a seven hour-24 km march through difficult terrain, we stop in the partial shade of a rock outcrop to cook a quick lunch with the water we had found. Spiced noodles with tinned meat were the menu\u201d Note the size of the communal cooking pot for six hungry men<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"elephant\"<\/p>\n

Elephants are everywhere in this Park<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“..and the signs of man from the Old Stone Age.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

History written on the lakebed\u201d: We came across these stone circles which were about 12 feet in diameter. The stones were not rounded like the ones at the \u2018Kalugalbemma\u2019 (See Page 16). The villagers, in their traditions of oral history cum fables, called these circles \u2018muthu kelapu tan\u2019 (\u0db8\u0dd4\u0dad\u0dd4 \u0dbd\u0d9a\u0dbd\u0db4\u0dd4 \u0dad\u0dd0\u0db1\u0dca) – places by the old highways (\u2018Kalugalbemma\u2019 ibid) where the rich played a game of chance akin to the present day ‘Booruwa’. But Dr. Raja de Silva, a former Archaeological Commissioner of Sri Lanka, told the Author that they were most probably burial places pre-dating the practice of cremation before the practice of cremation was brought over to Lanka from India some two thousand and more years ago. He said such stone circles are found elsewhere on the island too. Dr. R.L. Brohier in his book ‘Seeing Ceylon’ states \u201cDim traditions supported by other evidence associate the Gal Oya Valley with man of the Old Stone Age. This naturally refers to wild untamed Ceylon, long before its history began to be told in lithic record and monument”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether these circles relate to the Veddahs is unknown, though it is unlikely. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"lake\"<\/p>\n

A \u2018lake under a lake\u2019. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The bund of an ancient \u2018Wewa\u2019 (Lake) which normally lies deep under the waters of the Senanayake Samudraya emerges when the Senanayake Samudraya is low in water. We march across the parched lakebed towards the ancient lake\u2019s bund hoping to find water for ourselves inside the old lake. And we did find water, and crocodiles, which prevented us from having a much-needed dip to cool off. Such are the travails of the old Maha Wedirata for those who seek to explore it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the old wewa is the 1657-foot Vanarekanda mountain. (See following maps)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"map\"<\/p>\n

Above: The old (pre-1948) Nilgala \u2018One Inch Sheet\u2019 shows many topographical features that are now drowned under the Senanayake Samudraya and are not shown in the modern (post-1954) maps. Note the scattered locations of the then known sections of the Kalugalbemma (marked above by the Author in red boxes). More sections were discovered under the tall grasses of the talawa in later years by \u2018footslogging\u2019 surveyors and added to the maps (see page 16). Then the Survey Dept switched to satellite imagery and lost many valuable ground features hidden under grass-cover and tree foliage.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"map\"<\/p>\n

Above: The Author\u2019s hand-sketched map of the area from the above mentioned dry-season expedition <\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Above: The wet-season views are very different; more scenic and pretty but without the \u2018discernability\u2019 of \u2018history written on the lakebed\u2019.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs the pent-up waters rose relentlessly over the many monsoon seasons, they submerged tens of thousands of acres of beautiful earth: The historic lands around Nilgala, of Wellassa, and of the Maha Wedirata, drowned\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Above: The lakebed in the dry season seen from near the same spot as the full lake was photographed in the top picture.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Above left<\/strong>: The Gal Oya and the lakebed in the dry season, photographed at the location of the old Embilinna circuit bungalow. Above right: <\/strong>Embilinna in 1927 with its luscious riverine forest. The Bibile Walauwa elephant \u2018Mudiyans\u00e9\u2019, being used for the von Eickstedt expedition of 1927, gets a bath. The flooding of the terrain to create the lake killed off the trees.<\/span><\/p>\n

.\"nilgala\"Above: <\/strong>Camping in the Nilgala Frontier in the 1960s required walking the 15 miles (22km) from Bibile to Nilgala in a day, and total self-reliance in the jungle, including having a thorough knowledge of map readings and compass bearings for accurate navigation, as well as obtaining one\u2019s own food from the jungle.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala<\/p>\n

Above<\/strong>: Reading maps and navigating in an era before GPS was invented. Here, I am studying the 1\u201d:1mile Nilgala Topo Sheet while seated below the brow of Bulupitiyahela (1770 ft) .<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Map, compass, axe, gun, rod & reel: Our survival gear in the Maha Wedirata in the 1960s<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Trekking into the wilds with a jaunty step<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala<\/p>\n

Above: <\/strong>Crossing the Pammedilla Oya, the halfway point on the 15-mile (22km) trek from Bibile to Nilgala: Here seen in the dry season with our tracker Podiappuhamy from Bulupitiya Village bringing up the rear, armed with his trusty 12 bore shotgun. He would not venture out of his home without the weapon. There were several streams like the Pammedilla to be forded in the journey across the well drained talawa <\/em>to get to the Maha Wedirata<\/span><\/p>\n

Below:<\/strong> Getting to the Maha Wedirata required the taking of many safety precautions against wild animals, and preferably, when we could afford it, transport of some sort for carrying luggage and provisions as it took the loads off our backs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bottom<\/strong> left,<\/strong> Crossing the Pammedilla in the rainy season circa 1966, with a bullock cart carrying the camping gear and provisions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bottom<\/strong> right<\/strong>, In 1994, in the comfort and safety of a 4WD with its roof-top sleeping quarters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There are many streams to cross on the journey to the Maha Wedirata<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"bridge\"<\/p>\n

Above Left: By 1980 there was a bridge across the Pammedilla Oya on the road to Bulupitiya from where one swings right to get to Nilgala Convenient for the villagers of Bulupitiya but bad for protecting the talawa from encroaching chena cultivators. This is <\/em><\/span>my late Uncle Ananda\u2019s lovely old Ford on the newly built Pammedilla Oya Bridge. My uncle insisted on crank-starting the Ford every morning for decades. With the old crank-starting option one never had to worry about a dead battery!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Above Right: We spot a lone elephant which had to be avoided at all costs in the wide open treeless plain as we were on foot. Luckily the wind was in our favour, and if we stayed still till the animal moved off, we would be safe: And we were.<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n

We are headed for Bulupitiya village to meet up with Podiappuhamy and set off by foot to Nilgala and a trek through the Gal Oya National Park. We are armed with my uncle\u2019s licensed shotgun for self-defense, and of course armed with all the necessary permits from the WLD, in return for my providing the WLD with detailed reports on the wildlife, encroachers, and signs of poaching. The poorly funded WLD did not have the resources on the ground for patrolling this huge roadless Park in which solid ground is designated as \u201cNational Park\u2019 territory with all the attendant protections, but in which the water surface is merely designated as a \u2018Sanctuary\u2019 where fishermen from Inginiyagala are allowed to fish but not to get down from their boats and step on solid ground. A somewhat unworkable set of regulations as the water levels rise and fall depending on rainfall. The fishermen of course \u2018go ashore\u2019 and have illegal fish drying \u2018wadiyas\u2019 on solid ground \u2013 illegal, but to which the undermanned WLD turns a blind eye. But worse is the poaching by fishermen and others. In the 1980s with the war raging, even the underfed soldiers in surrounding camps were not averse to supplying themselves with a little venison or wild boar or even buffalo meat to supplement their rations. And I have seen animal carcasses stripped clean to the bone and cartridge and bullet casings on the ground nearby and reported to the WLD who could do precious little to curb that poaching. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala<\/p>\n

Above: <\/strong>The Nilgala Frontier is where the avifauna of the dry-zone, the wet zone and the mountain zone co-mingle.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a paradise for ornithologists.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala<\/p>\n

Above: I<\/strong>n the 1990s, the Wild Life Department would provide an armed guard for protection during my foot-expedtions <\/strong>into the Nilgala Frontier and its Gal Oya National Park, whereas, in the 1960s, the Author and his fellow exploreres were free to carry their own licensed firearms into the territory.But after the JVP uprising of 1971, that was forbidden.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala<\/p>\n

My faithful tracker Podiappuhamy (seen here in a turban) in the back of my 4WD in the Nilgala talawa.<\/em> Podiappuhamy disliked vehicles and preferred to walk in the talawa<\/em> with his loping-rolling gait and could cover about 5 km per hour on foot.<\/span><\/p>\n

On one occasion I hired a tractor-trailer to go to Nilgala as the excursion group had weaker, less fit members. Those who know, know, that there is no bumpier ride than in the trailer of a tractor. After an hour, Podiappuhamy said he\u2019d rather be thrashed by a wild elephant than go again in such a contraption !<\/span><\/p>\n

This hardy soul, to whom I could entrust my life in the wilds, passed away before the end of the millennium, about the same time I was exiting Sri Lanka for good. With his passing, there died a body of knowledge that was irreplaceable. The younger generation, in my own experience, have no knowledge to navigate these still somewhat trackless forests, and have no jungle survival craft worth talking about.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Maha Wedirata<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Above is a general contour map of the Maha Wedirata showing points of interest and some of the dramatic peaks and valleys, and the overall terrain which made it inhospitable to both the Sinhalese and the foreign invaders. Even the British Colonial power left the Veddahs alone but gave them special privileges; one of which was the right to grow marijuana for their own consumption, an activity that could land any other Sri Lankan in jail.<\/span><\/p>\n

The wild terrain depicted in the above map is seen in the following photographs. This territory is where the Veddahs gave refuge to the Kandyan Kings. None of the invading western armies dared to venture into this wild landscape guarded by the Veddahs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Wild terrain: The Maha Wedirata<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo the Wedda were powerless in the kings territory and the king was powerless in the wedda territory. Out of this specific and strong relations developed which could be described as a social symbiosis.\u201d<\/span>
\n– Baron Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt, 1927<\/span><\/p>\n

The dramatic peak of Ulhela (1515 ft) dominates the scene as it soars above the surrounding jungle plains.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Anthropologist-explorer Baron von Eickstedt who visited Ceylon, Bibile, and Bibile Walauwa, and befriended Rat\u00e9mahattaya C.W.Bibile in 1927, states, quoting parts from the Parangi Hatane et al: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yet these \u2018backward\u2019 people … were among the most faithful servants of the King. To the Veddahs of Wellassa <\/strong>it is said were entrusted the King’s treasures, twelve of them being chosen to be the custodians and invested with silver girdles and canes embossed with silver, and a special dress to distinguish them from their fellows. They would stealthily enter the palace at night and interview the King when they desired orders on any matter affecting their charge.”\u2026<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

“When pressed hard by the invasions of the Portuguese which were soon to follow, it was to them that the King used to entrust the Queens, and they would shelter them in temporary huts, brightly adorned with greenery according to Sinhalese custom, constructed in the dense forest which stretched for fifty miles\u201d \u2026.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLater, under distress by the Portuguese the king would entrust them the queens who would be protected by them in an area of deep forest between Welasse and the first row of Batticaloa mountains. So the Wedda land was in a way the last refuge of the Singhalese kings.\u201d \u2013 \u201cAnd our King could no longer stay in the city, had no strength for the fight – but with his family, his precious gold and precious stones, with his slaves and his files and treasures – King Senerat then sought refuge in the districts of the Weddas, that was because his fame was darkened and his (religious) merit unsuccessful – and the courage of the men melted like wax in front of the flame of the imperious enemies of the Franks<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

For services rendered to the Kandyan Kingdom in protecting it from the Invading Portuguese during the Reign of King Rajasingha I (1581-1593 AD), King Senerat of Kandy (reign: 1604-1635) granted vast tracts of land in the Maha Wedirata on a Sannasa to the descendants of Veddah Chieftain Maha Kaira Wanniya in 1611 AD, starting with<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was the beginning of the \u2018Bibile Family\u2019 settling in Bibile in the Wellassa region of the Maha Wedirata.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sannasa of 1611 AD<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

English translation of the Sannas<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"srilanka\"<\/p>\n

Note:<\/span>
\nThe Saka Era is believed to have been founded by King Shalivahana of the Satavahana dynasty in India. The year the King was crowned was made year zero. This is believed to have been 78 AD. Hence one adds 78 years to the Saka Era to compute the corresponding year for the Christian Era, i.e. The \u2018AD\u2019 year.<\/span>
\nHence 1533 Saka is 1611 AD<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

The little patch of paddy at Nilgala, surrounded by the wilderness of the Maha Wedirata<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Seen from Inginiyagala: Parts of the Maha Wedirata drowned under the Senanayake Samudra. The dramatic wild peaks are seen across the water in the hazy distance. Even today, it\u2019s a mysterious land, probably visited only by a few people as it is still mostly inaccessible and remote and far from comfy hotels.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Above<\/strong>: The Author\u2019s view of Ulhela on one of his expeditions to the Maha Wedirata. Fire destruction like this happens in the dry season.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

Above: <\/strong>Two photographs from von Eickstedt\u2019s expedition of 1927 shows Ulhela dominating the route.<\/span><\/p>\n

The left photo shows Ratemahattaya C.W.Bibile\u2019s family elephant \u2018Mudiyans\u00e9\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

CWB also lent the Walauwa horse to von Eickstedt. The elephant and horse (and even the Ratemahattaya\u2019s palanquin or \u2018Dolawa\u2019) were more useful means of transport in the trackless terrain than any car of that era.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nilgala\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Mudiyanse\u2019 crosses the swollen Gal Oya with humans from the expedition clinging on<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

von Eickstedt wrote in his field notes, inter alia: \u201c After a 3\u2010hour march through park jungle, the ford of the Gal Oya was reached. Underneath the deeply down\u2010hanging trees the murky gurgling waters flowed hurriedly and soaked the trunks, from the small islands, only bushes stuck out. Therefore, the horse had to be sent back to Nilgala, and the elephant under the Kovala was the first to steadily cross the stream. Then he had to cross the river six more times, under the heavy burden of our luggage \u2013 while the Haute Vol\u00e9e of the exped. (incl. servants) swang itself on his back and the porters, paddling at his side, clinched to the ropes as well as to his ears and tail. Three, among them the headman of Hamatulla with his picturesque cloth (he was Shikari and guide of the exped.), dared to cross the river swimming.: \u201c <\/span><\/p>\n

\"elephant\"<\/p>\n

Mudiyans\u00e9 at the Bibile Walauwa with RM C.W.Bibile and two of his sons Senaka (later to be Prof. Senaka Bibile) and son Ananda seated on top (in 1927)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

THE VEDDAHS:<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

From Brave Warriors who defended the Kingdom from European superpowers, to<\/span>
\ninconsequential nobodies in post-colonial Ceylon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much learned treatises and books have been written about the Veddahs, but I want to connect some different dots.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"dam\"<\/p>\n

Above: The dam at Inginiyagala that drowned the Maha Wedirata and destroyed millennia old history and homelands.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Truth to say, my own feelings about the Dam, the Samudraya, and the Gal Oya National Park are conflicted. It is a beautiful lake, and the National Park is a great habitat for wildlife. But we need to take cognizance about what we, as a nation, did to the Veddahs. Too often we hear Lankans lamenting about what happened to indigenous people <\/span>on the other side of the planet with nary a thought for our island\u2019s own indigenous people. In Canada such indigenous people are called First Nations because \u2018they were here first\u2019. Canadian First Nation get numerous benefits including royalties from minerals or resources extracted from their traditional lands; resources such as oil <\/span>and forestry products, and other revenues including tourist lodges in their homelands. They also have traditional hunting and fishing rights in areas where non-First Nations cannot enter, hunt or fish. In Sri Lanka on the other hand, Veddah lands have been appropriated not only by other people but also by the Government and turned into <\/span>National Parks (Gal Oya, Maduru Oya, et al) into which the Veddahs are forbidden to enter. The Government makes money from Park Entry Fees but don\u2019t give even one Rupee to the traditional owners of the Land who live in poverty. All that must change, and Canadian models can help. <\/span><\/p>\n

To get back to a little history:<\/span><\/p>\n

Baron von Eickstedt addressed several issues in his book:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"book\"<\/p>\n

For example, Eickstedt quotes Paul E. Pieris in his book about the Portuguese era based on the Singhalese Parangi Hatane chronicle. (Bold emphases below is by me): <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cthe Wedda land was in a way the last refuge of the Singhalese kings.\u201d .<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cKing Senerat then sought refuge in the districts of the Weddas.. Kumara Wanniya, the youngest son of Maha Kaira Wanniya of Morane, later married the daughter of another Wedda chief. His two sons fought under different Singhalese kings against the Portuguese and later against the Dutch. King Senerat gave them the title and authority of a Mudiyanse. In times of peace Mudiyanse were the high officers of the palace guards. In times of war they would have to recruit the weapons and capable team of their feudal area and lead them against the enemy. Normally only Singhalese noblemen would become Mudiyanse\u2026. When the king recaptured the fort of Batticaloa from the Portuguese yet another Bibile Mudiyanse was mentioned who had excelled in the <\/span>battle\u2026.the kings on Kandy in their history had to seek alliances against all kinds of enemies, starting with the Tamils threatening them from the north, later European intruders at the West coast. The Wedda served as irregular rifle corps (Sch\u00fctzenkorps) and were useful because of their touching loyalty as guardians of the treasures<\/span>
\nand women of the king.<\/span><\/p>\n

In another section von Eickstedt states: \u201cSo the Wedda were powerless in the kings territory and the king was powerless in the wedda territory. Out of this specific and strong relations developed which could be described as a social symbiosis.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was during the so called Kandyan rebellion when the Wedda for the last time fought for the freedom of the King of Kandy. The rebellion started in 1817 in the province of Uwa which had never seen a foreign ruler before. It was organized by the head of the province the Dissawa of Badulla. According to the lore and family tradition the then<\/span>
\nvery young Ratemahatmaya Hinbanda of Bibile who was subjected to the Dissawa of Badulla is said to have played an important role in it. He was a descendant of mentioned Jayasundara who himself belonged to the chief clan, the Mahabandaralage of the Wedda. Till today they live very close to Bibile. These are the Danigala Wedda who could be visited with the help of the Ratemahatmaya. They still keep loyal family connections with the house of Bibile like Hinbanda did in the past. Hinbanda lead his troops to Badulla. There he met the British resident Wilson. Today there is a monument at the spot where Wilson was killed by the arrows of the Wedda. The war continued until 1822 and devastated the whole area. The Bibile family members turned to their fiefdom after<\/span>
\nhaving spent time with their relatives, the Danigala Wedda who had found refuge at the Danigala Rock. Four fifth of their territory was lost\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

For 200 years these so called \u2018backward people\u2019, the Veddas, fought and repulsed three European Superpowers of those eras \u2013 the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British, protecting the eastern flank of the Kandyan Kingdom while those same superpowers conquered huge swaths of territory across the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"map\"<\/p>\n

The Portuguese Empire (Left) and the Mogul Empire, (Right) <\/span><\/p>\n

Even the inexorable southward expansion of the mighty Moghul Empire towards Ceylon came to a halt when the Portuguese landed in Goa. Such was the power of the Portuguese that the Veddas stood up to.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"map\"map\"<\/p>\n

Sadly, the brave Veddas who evicted three European superpowers through two centuries, and whom von Eickstedt called a \u2018noble race\u2019 and whom the British treated with respect and privileges, were themselves evicted from their homeland by the Ceylon Government within five years of Ceylon getting Independence from the British Empire. <\/span><\/p>\n

Writer\/Author Gamini Punchihewa who worked for the Gal Oya Development Board in the 1950s wrote of pathetic scenes where the Veddahs, the First Nations of Ceylon, were <\/span><\/strong>evicted by force, weeping and in a state of shock, from lands they had lived in for millennia before the Sinhalese came to the island from India.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"NILGALA<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"NILGALA<\/a><\/p>\n

\"NILGALA<\/a><\/p>\n

Racial history of a Sinhalese-Wedda Aristocratic Family\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

If two populations live close to or even mix up with each other for a longer period of time, mixed\u00a0 marriages are inevitable to occur, and this, necessarily, had also a considerable impact on the\u00a0 cultural expressions of the resp. more civilized nation. Soaking up the mentality of another\u00a0 people leads to a reshuffling and tensions within one\u00b4s own nature. This might be particularly\u00a0 the case if there is a considerable distance between the two populations in terms of their cultural\u00a0 habitus and also, in case the more primitive gets the opportunity to infiltrate the higher levels of\u00a0 the more cultured people. Examples from the history of great nations like Romans, Arabs or\u00a0 medieval Portuguese show that such racially determined biological impacts on the cultural\u00a0 history of certain nations and social strata are not as rare as one might possibly expect,\u00a0 considering the extrinsic similarity of the respective cultural complexes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Particularly interesting, but much lesser known is it, that these phenomena can also be found in\u00a0 India – the country of allegedly rather rigid caste systems. The severe caste mentality of the Indian conqueror people knew numerous exceptions, and these have strongly influenced the\u00a0 biological consequences of social seclusion. Within the whole large complex of territories\u00a0 occupied by Indian monarchies, the relationships between the Aryan or Dravidian master\u00a0 peoples and the oldest, i.e. the Weddoid strata of society are exempted \u2013 in surprising like mindedness \u2013 from the customary integration into caste hierarchies. The most ancient lords of\u00a0 the land were somehow standing outside the caste system and not regarded as impure by the\u00a0 higher castes of the conquerors. This created the possibility for blood of the always very\u00a0 primitive aborigines to seep in \u2013 a possibility made much more difficult for the low castes of their\u00a0 own civilized population.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reliable evidence for such blending processes between primitive and culture people which\u00a0 could certainly find the interest of racial as well as cultural science is currently almost absent\u00a0 from literature . Each and every such case, due to the differences in somatic and psychological\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

disposition of both components, would needs have to be examined and judged separately.\u00a0 Thus, a vast and productive field for racial studies opens here.The following modest notes will\u00a0 select only a few single cases from the author\u00b4s most familiar field of work. However, these\u00a0 modest notes have one big advantage: the genealogical and historical source material on\u00a0 which they are based are well guaranteed \u2013 a rather large part of them has been made available\u00a0 to me due to the kind interest of my friend C. W. Bibile, R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya of Welasse, and I\u00a0 would like to use this opportunity to once more express my gratitude for his interest and\u00a0 cooperation. Due to the special nature of the material it became necessary to check it on the\u00a0 spot, that is why I spent my few days of rest after an exhausting crossing of the jungle woods of\u00a0 East Ceylon with writing down of these data.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the distinguished Sinhalese families of the Uva district ( Eastern Ceylon) with their\u00a0 extreme proudness of tradition who for many centuries have served the oldest dynasty of the\u00a0 world, several are boasting of a direct descendence from the old aborigines, the Wedda. The\u00a0 rigid and arrogant caste spirit of the old Sinhalese \u00e9lites just in Kandy (the Ceylonese highland,\u00a0 independent till 1815), who didn\u00b4t even regard the inhabitants of the western lowlands with its\u00a0 European colonies completely as their equals, indeed treated the Weddan blood in former\u00a0 times as coequal. In our times, however, this is true of the old Kandyan families in certain limits\u00a0 only, and it is even less true of the nobility in the Western lowlands. These nowadays regard\u00a0 the Weddas as not more than a last heap of miserable \u201csavages\u201d on the verge of dying out.\u00a0 Yet in the Eastern parts of the island, the esteem for the Weddas is still directly showing up in\u00a0 common behaviour: the district chief, clad in silken sarong, has to receive orders in standing\u00a0 while the dirty and almost naked Wedda is asked to squat down. \u201cThe Weddas are of high\u00a0 caste.\u201d This behaviour is due to the far-reaching independence that even now is, or has to be,\u00a0 admitted to the few surviving Wedda families, and it is also due to their former position at the\u00a0 court and in the army of Sinhalese kings. This early influence of the Wedda chiefs was based\u00a0 on the great, and often deciding, importance the Wedda troups had for the power and existence\u00a0 of the Sinhalese kingdom as the following family histories amply show.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even in th early years of the rule of King Rajasimha I. (1571-1592) the later 18 Wedda districts\u00a0 of Ruh\u00fana \u2013 today\u00b4s \u00d9va- and Battical\u00f3a district \u2013 were independent from Kandy, while the\u00a0 northern Wedda districts had already for a long time been under nominal Kandyan rule. The\u00a0 occupation of the country by Rajasinha led some dissatisfied chiefs to emigrate. According to a\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

reliable tradition written down in document form already at the time of his grandson, M \u00e1 h a K\u00a0 \u00e1 i r a W \u00e1 n n i y a of Mor\u00e1ne W\u00e1tta<\/span>1<\/span> was also among these dissatisfied persons. He had a\u00a0 kind of permanent residence at the foot of the Mor\u00e1ne mountains in Bint\u00e9nne, the remnants of\u00a0 which are shown even today,. After a long stay in Dam\u00e1negama, in the far North-East of today\u00b4s\u00a0 Nilg\u00e1la K\u00f3rale, he left his eldest childless son there and with his second son K u m \u00e1 r a W \u00e1 n\u00a0 n i y a of Wel\u00e1ssa <\/span>2 <\/span>returned to the area of today\u00b4s Bibile. There must have happened a\u00a0 complete reconciliation between king and Wedda prince, because soon after, the names of\u00a0 both sons are found among the names of guardians of the royal treasure. P i e r i s, in his\u00a0 voluminous history of the Portuguese Era in Ceylon <\/span>3<\/span>, relying on the original old Sinhalese\u00a0 source Par\u00e1ngi H\u00e1tane, describes the Wedda as in the following way:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c And yet these backward people\u2026.. were among the most faithful servants of the King\u00b4s\u00a0 treasures, twelve of them being chosen to be the custodians and invested with silver girdles and\u00a0 canes embossed with silver, and a special dress to distinguish them from their fellows. They\u00a0 would stealthily enter the palace at night and interview the King when they desired orders on\u00a0 any matter affecting their charge.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From this report the great independence on the one side, and on the other the eminent trust in\u00a0 the Weddas who even today are regarded as reliable is clearly evident. The same can also be\u00a0 inferred from another tradition, describing the immediately following unfortunate historical\u00a0 period of the Sinhalese rule:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201d When pressed hard by the invasions of the Portuguese which were soon to follow, it was to\u00a0 them that the King used to entrust the Queens, and they would shelter them in temporary huts,\u00a0 brightly adorned with greenery according to Sinhalese custom, constructed in dense forest\u00a0 which stretched for fifty miles between Wel\u00e1sse and the first range of Battical\u00f3a hills, a region\u00a0 into which the Portuguese never succeeded in penetrating.\u201d<\/span>4<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

1 M \u00e1 h a means \u201ethe Great, the Elder\u201d; K \u00e1 i r a is even now a widely met Wedda name; W \u00e1 n n i y a is the\u00a0 medieval term for chief and up to this day in favourite use as title, and M o r \u00e1 n e is the name of the most\u00a0 distinguished Wedda clan.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

2 Wel\u00e1ssa means \u201eland of the thousand stripes of ricefields\u201c, a very ancient name pointing to former wealth and it\u00a0 is used even today to denominate the district of the R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya of Bibile, although for already thousand\u00a0 years the land is covered by dense forest jungle.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

3 P i e r i s: Ceylon, the Portuguese Era\u2026.. 1505.1558. Vol.I, Colombo 1913, 327\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

4 Cf. P i e r i s , op. cit. I, 329<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In times of emergency the Wedda land had been the last resort of Sinhalese kings. When\u00a0 after countless atrocities Kandy, too, fell into the hands of the Portuguese, the king was forced\u00a0 to flee:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c But with his family, his juwels of gold and his gems, his slaves\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

and records and his treasure chests,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

K i n g S e n e r a t s o u g h t r e f u g e i n t h e P a t t u o f t h e W e d d a h s, for his glory was dimmed and his merit had failed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And the heart of the man melted as wax before the flame of the fierce Parangi foe.\u201d<\/span>5<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Kum\u00e1ra W\u00e1nniya, the younger son of the Wedda chief M\u00e1ha K\u00e1ira W\u00e1nniya of Mor\u00e1ne who\u00a0 had gone to Bibile, got married to the daughter of another Wedda chief, whose name is not\u00a0 known. Under the command of different Sinhalese kings his two sons participated in several\u00a0 campaigns against the Portuguese and later on against the Dutch and were awarded the title\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

and office of a Mudiy\u00e1nse <\/span>6<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

by king S\u00e9nerat ( 1604-1632, see above). At the same time, both\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

brothers were simultaneously, i.e. on legal grounds at first the elder, J a y a s \u00fa n d a r a M u\u00a0 d i y \u00e1 n s e (see family tree), entrusted with the hereditary fiefdom of the villages Bibile and\u00a0 Alanmulla, and a royal document was issued to confirm it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This royal document, written by steelpen on strips of prepared T\u00e1lipot leaves, is today preserved\u00a0 in the archive of the British Registry in Badulla under Nr.5, a reprint being in possesion of the\u00a0 author. Even nowadays the village Bibile belongs to the progeny of the old Wedda prince and\u00a0 the lines of this note are written in the Wal\u00e1ue (aristocratic residence) of his great-grandson in\u00a0 Bibile.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The following details, being of interest for the racial history from the early period of the Bibile\u00a0 family, may be given here. In the Arang\u00e1 Palace in Weg\u00e1ma, \u201cwhere the daughter of the\u00a0 Battical\u00f3a W\u00e1nniya was the Queen of the King\u201d (evidently, the king had different wives in his\u00a0 different palaces), a Bibile and a Kaud\u00e9lle Mudiy\u00e1nse had the command over the royal guards\u00a0 (again a typical Wedda office!). From this report we also see that the wife of the king (we are\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

5 P\u00e1rangi H\u00e1tane: cited after P i e r i s, op. cit. I, 417. P\u00e1rangi = Portuguese.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

6 In peace times, the Mudiy\u00e1nse were higher officers of the palace guards, while in war times they were charged\u00a0 with deploying the people of their fiefdom capable of bearing arms and with marching against the enemy in lead\u00a0 of them. This is, so to speak, a typical Wedda office, but clad in a high position, connected with dignity and\u00a0 fiefdom, both usually granted to especially excellent, but mostly Sinhalese nobles only.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

talking about Wimalla Dh\u00e1rma S\u00fariya I., 1592- 1604, the 172<\/span>nd <\/span>ruler of the Sinhalese) had been\u00a0 the daughter of a Wedda prince, i.e. the W\u00e1nniya of Battical\u00f3a, and that, consequently, also\u00a0 Wedda blood rose up into the royal family.<\/span>7 <\/span>The Sinhalese chronicle further states that during\u00a0 the reign of King S\u00e9nerat (see above), when he resided in Mayang\u00e1ne, a Bibile Mudiy\u00e1nse was\u00a0 appointed as one of the guards for the young prince T\u00edkiri B\u00e1ndara (the later king Rajasinha II.,\u00a0 1632 \u2013 1684). When he himself (i.e. Rajasinha II, M.S.) during his reign recaptured the fort of\u00a0 Battical\u00f3a from the Portuguese, a Bibile Mudiy\u00e1nse who had excelled in battle was endowed\u00a0 with two Portuguese as his slaves \u2013 a fact that is also not without interest in terms of racial\u00a0 science. Furthermore, to the great favour that just the Bibile Weddas enjoyed at the royal court\u00a0 can the fact be traced back, that it had been the daughter of an Urulew\u00e1tte Adigar \u2013 i.e. of a\u00a0 senior minister from an ancient Kandyan family \u2013 who, on royal command, had been married to\u00a0 the Jayas\u00fandara Mudiy\u00e1nse of Bibile. In any case, the reliable and influential Wedda prince,\u00a0 himself belonging to the most distinguished – the \u201croyal\u201d- Wedda clan, should in this way be\u00a0 bound more closely to the throne. With the same purpose in mind, he might have given his\u00a0 sister into marriage to the court noble Pubb\u00e1re B\u00e1ndara.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Anthropologically speaking, these marriages are important because they vouch for when and\u00a0 how noble Sinhalese blood got into the purely old-Weddid Jayas\u00fandara and, vice versa, Wedda\u00a0 blood was received into the Sinhalese noble family of the Pubb\u00e1re B\u00e1ndara. Thus, the\u00a0 descendants of both families were both half Weddoid, half Sinhalese and, biologically speaking,\u00a0 both descendants of M\u00e1ha K\u00e1ira W\u00e1nniya. This is important because with the childless\u00a0 grandchildren of Jayas\u00fandara, the first male line dies out, and Pubb\u00e1re B\u00e1ndara K\u00e1ragahawela\u00a0 (also a grandson of Jayas\u00fandara) who by cousin marriage (through which no fresh blood from\u00a0 any side comes into the family) continued the old family tree, biologically as well as legally, by\u00a0 adopting these three childless grandchildren (see family tree).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, this old Wedda family had preserved its purity for three generations and in the fourth to\u00a0 fifth generation had become half Sinhalese. In the seventh generation the male line again\u00a0 extinguished, but was continued biologically and legally by cousin marriage of L\u00f3ku M\u00e9nika with\u00a0 Kah\u00e1ttam H\u00ednbanda. Because the husband went over to settle in the house of his wife, this\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

7 This was by no means the first time. Already Wij\u00e9ya, the banished viceroy of Gujerat in Northern India, who later\u00a0 became the first Sinhalese king (543-505 B.C.), had married a Wedda princess. Her and her children\u00b4s unfortunate\u00a0 fate has been recorded in the Great Chronicle of Ceylon\u201d(cf. W. G e i g e r, The Mahavamsa, London 1912, Chapter\u00a0 VII, pp. 55-61) and is mentioned also in most of the popular history books on Ceylon.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

marriage was called B\u00ednna-Ehe. Then,in the sixth till eighth generation only Sinhalese names are found among the married-into families. But because almost exclusively all these families\u00a0 belong to the old nobility of Eastern Ceylon it seems quite unlikely that they should n o t\u00a0 contain Wedda blood. It merely can\u00b4t be made out to what degree this was the case.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the last century, that has seen the final decline of the Wedda people and at the same time\u00a0 the downfall of the old kingdom of Kandy (probably not coincidentally), among the higher\u00a0 families such kind of intermingling with the Weddas seems to have ceased. More and more \u2013\u00a0 with continually improving economic conditions – Sinhalese settlers inserted themselves in the\u00a0 old Wedda territories. At first only being labourers for the Weddas, soon they easily got\u00a0 ownership rights in the vast jungle areas where land was so cheap. And although nowadays\u00a0 both parties deny any mixed marriage, anthropological inspection, the Registry lists and casual\u00a0 crossexamination test to the contrary. But the new mixture seems to have concerned only the\u00a0 lower strata, i.e. the lower Wedda clans and the lower Sinhalese castes. There is no doubt that\u00a0 such a kind of mixture has existed earlier, too, if only not in such relatively large scale as it is\u00a0 nowadays happening among the remaining tiny Wedda groups. The race mixtures during more\u00a0 than two millennia easily explain why, as it was evident during my expedition, a unification of\u00a0 the archaic Wedda features in one individuum today (and also during the whole period from\u00a0 which we have pictures of Wedda people) has been extremely rare.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Based on the report of a mixed race Wedda, Lewis <\/span>8 <\/span>describes the fusion of Weddas in the\u00a0 Westminster Abbey area which formerly had around the old G\u00f3vind-H\u00e9la in the M\u00e1ha-W\u00e9di R\u00e1ta (Great-Vedda-Country) been a main area of the Wedda: \u201c\u2026.his grandparents belonged to\u00a0 a clan\u2026.who lived in a wild state in the Lenama forests, but in time those who survived of this\u00a0 clan became reconciled to their Sinhalese neighbours, and at last came to associate with them\u00a0 and ultimately, by marrying and intermarrying, they abandoned their forest life and settled in and\u00a0 aroud Salawe, or Hallowa Rata.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Among papers recently shown to the author by chance in the Registry in Bulup\u00edtiya (N\u00edlgala\u00a0 K\u00f3rale) were several Sinhalese-Wedda mixed people listed by their names. For a systematic\u00a0 study of this process of intermingling it would be now the most opportune time and also a last\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

8 Lewis, F.: Notes on an exploration in Eastern Uva\u2026Journ. Ceylon Branch R.Asiat.Soc. 1914,XXIII, No. 67, pp.276- 293, 10 Taf., Colombo 1916<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

possibility. Unfortunately time and financial means of my expedition prevented working in this\u00a0 direction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The family tree of T a l d \u00e9 n a M \u00e9 n i ka might serve as an example how the old noble\u00a0 families of Eastern Ceylon are interspersed with Wedda blood from the long lucky times of this\u00a0 people and, moreover, how the marriages in the country itself \u2013 which were absolutely normal \u2013 can be taken in a very limited way only to represent a further racial sinhalesization of lineage.\u00a0 She is the wife of William R. Bibile, the head of the ninth generation of the lineage and the\u00a0 mother of Charles W. Bibile, the current family head, who, like his father, grandfather and great\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

grandfather, holds the office of R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya (District Official or Administrator) of W\u00e9lassa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is also a Wedda chief appearing as the primogenitor of the family of Tald\u00e9na M\u00e9nika:\u00a0 N\u00e1dena Kum\u00e1ra V\u00e1nni Unn\u00e9he.<\/span>9 <\/span>His office had been near B\u00f3kotuwew\u00e1tte in W\u00e1ttek\u00e9lle, in the\u00a0 high mountains north from B\u00e1dulla (the provincial capital of Uva), where nowadays since long\u00a0 no Weddas are living any more. He got married to Ponn\u00e1ra B\u00e1ndara Galag\u00f3da, a girl from a\u00a0 noble family (as the name Galag\u00f3da tells, i.e. roughly \u201cvon Felseneck\u201d). She had been \u201cat the\u00a0 court of Kum\u00e1ra S\u00ednha, Prince of Uva, at B\u00e1dulla\u201d<\/span>10 <\/span>and should therefore have been a kind of\u00a0 lady-in-waiting, married to an officer of the Palace Guard.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The names of the offsprings of this couple, the First Parents of the Tald\u00e9na family, are\u00a0 immediately and exclusively Sinhalese. This is regularly true for all cases known to me, and\u00a0 this makes genealogical research more difficult. The extremely long names and richly adorned\u00a0 titles here, mostly shortened without changing the meaning, are an additional difficulty, as is\u00a0 also the extremely frequent use of the same first names. But again, this latter circumstance\u00a0 makes the titles valuable for identification, although even they are rather variable and changed\u00a0 several times during the lifetime of a person. Sometimes, in the closest family circle, individuals\u00a0 bearing the same name \u2013 and this is happens rather often with siblings \u2013 were distinguished by\u00a0 <\/span>loku <\/span>= big and <\/span>punchi <\/span>or <\/span>hin <\/span>= small, as can be seen from the family trees. That the personal\u00a0 names had played a rather minor role could already been inferred from the historical data for\u00a0 the Bibile family, where all chronicles only talk of \u201cthe Bibile Mudiy\u00e1nse\u201d. This genealogical\u00a0 problem holds also nowadays true for the Weddas. Very often they are not able, even with their\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

9 V\u00e1nni = W\u00e1nniya = Wedda chief, Unn\u00e9he = general title, such as \u201eHis highness\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

10 Genealogical table of the Bibile family, p. 52, M.S.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

best and honest will, to exactly tell the name of their wife, their mother or just their own name,\u00a0 and they sometimes are only properly determing it after having asked their fellow tribals. It\u00a0 often also happens that they change their names: thus, e.g., the Vid\u00e1ne (chief) of H\u00e9nn\u00e9bedde,\u00a0 Porom\u00f3la<\/span>11 <\/span>simply took the name of the first husband of his second wife, i.e. S\u00edta W\u00e1nniya.<\/span>12 <\/span>On\u00a0 the other hand, they recount for you subito and without hesiting the most complicated degrees\u00a0 of relationship \u2013 this is because they represent for a Wedda the real names for the person he\u00a0 has to deal with.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Apart from the features of name-giving described above, the ancient chronicles offer another\u00a0 difficulty, namely an indifference towards exact dating. In the documents, the historicity of\u00a0 events is always fixed by geographical, not by chronological orientation. The place where the\u00a0 king or fiefholder stayed and the local circumstances of previous or contemporary events play\u00a0 the preeminent role. Even recently, a priest could at once indicate the name and residence of\u00a0 the king under whose rule his dagoba had been built, when I asked him \u2013 but he could not give\u00a0 me any hint at the date.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why any exact chronological data are absent from the family tree of Tald\u00e9na\u00a0 M\u00e9nika. The only reference point is again Kum\u00e1ra S\u00ednha holding court in B\u00e1dulla, on which\u00a0 event I currently don\u00b4t have any detailed information. The only possibility to approximately\u00a0 determine the date of the Sinhalese mixing with the old Wedda tribe is by counting the number\u00a0 of generations. According to the pedigree it dates back four generations. Mrs. Tald\u00e9na M\u00e9nika\u00a0 lived from 1869 till 1919. If we take 25 years for one Ceylonese generation, the racial mixing of\u00a0 Sinhalese and Wedda people may have started around the year 1769, that means, in the\u00a0 second half of the 18<\/span>th <\/span>century. The descendents of this family continue to live in B\u00e1dulla up till\u00a0 now.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is evident that these old families whose members had been Diss\u00e1was (Province chiefs) and\u00a0 R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmayas (District chiefs), are deeply rooted in the land. Due to the excellent intellectual\u00a0 and human qualities by which a great deal of the family members are excelling, due also to\u00a0 their love of the country, their impartiality and loyalty to their duty they are, even in our times,\u00a0 valuable administration bodies of the British government. A letter of a high British officer, dated\u00a0 March 4<\/span>th <\/span>1913 and addressed to the R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya William R. Bibile can serve as\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

11 Good photo in C.and B. Seligmann: The Weddas, Cambridgen1911, Table VII\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

12 Good photos of him found in Seligmann, op.cit., Table V-VI\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

interesting evidence, because it acknowledges and at the same time admires \u201cthe strong\u00a0 feudal ties\u201d that connect this family to the land.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this connection I might also touch upon an important and for the Bibile family fatal event\u00a0 because it is related to the problem of the cultural-biological position of the Wedda \u2013 the\u00a0 Kandyan Rebellion on which unfortunately an in depth historical study is lacking up till now. It\u00a0 started in 1817 in the Uva province which until the beginning of British rule of 1815 had not yet\u00a0 experienced any domination by foreigners, and was organized by the Diss\u00e1wa of Bad\u00falla. The\u00a0 execution of the British resident by arrows of Wedda troups at the road from Bad\u00falla to Bibile \u2013 nowadays there is a memorial on the spot \u2013 was the signal for a general uprising. At this\u00a0 occasion the Wedda had been \u2013 and for the last time at that! \u2013 auxiliary troops of the Kandyans.\u00a0 According to a popular tradition, about which for understandable reasons the world will never\u00a0 get correct details any more, the young R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya Hinbanda of Bibile with his Weddas is\u00a0 said to have played a leading role at the execution. Long after the uprising had been\u00a0 oppressed in the Northern old Kandyan mountain districts, the fights continued in Uva, roughly\u00a0 until about 1822. The province was completely devastated. The Bibile family finally flew to the\u00a0 wild mountaineous region of the Eastern inner jungles where the Weddas of the old Mor\u00e1ne\u00a0 clan \u2013 relatives of them, as tradition has it -dwelled on the Danig\u00e1la rock. The family was forced\u00a0 to purchase its return at the price of about 4\/5<\/span>th <\/span>of its extensive landed property.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Additional data for the racial history of the Bibile family and its relation to the Wedda is\u00a0 made available by the current anthropological material, offered on the one hand by the family\u00a0 itself, and on the other by the last existing group of their traditional ancestors, the last Weddas\u00a0 of the old princely clan of the Mor\u00e1ne, settling in the Danig\u00e1la mountains.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The p h o t o s from table 1 show the grandfather and the father of the current R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya,\u00a0 as well as himself and his son. The description of the grandfather, given by the anthropologist\u00a0 Emil S c h m i d t from Leipzig who must have been in Bibile about the beginning of August\u00a0 1889, is quite accurate. S c h m i d t says:\u201d After a long time came\u2026.the father of the\u00a0 R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya, in European dress, a beautiful Sinhalese head with a high forehead and long\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

rolling white beard.\u201d13\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, Abes\u00fandare Bibile had been the characteristic anthropological\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

typus of a distinguished Kandyan, the north indian blood of his father Hinb\u00e1nda absolutely\u00a0 dominating and the old Wedda blood of his mother Loku M\u00e9nika absolutely not recognizable\u00a0 any more. Completely different it is with his son, although his mother is the last representative of\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

13 E. S c h m i d t: Ceylon. Berlin 1897, p. 72.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

an old purely Kandyan noble family full of rich traditions.<\/span>14 <\/span>E. S c h m i d tdid this already notice,\u00a0 too; he describes the then R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya as follows:\u201d He was yet a young man, Sinhalese,\u00a0 but with his long, straight, pitch black hair, parted in the middle and combed back, with his hard featured, bony face, the dark piercing eyes, strongly protruding aquiline nose he reminded me\u00a0 more of a Red Indian than of a native of Ceylon\u2026. His movements and manners were polished\u00a0 in a European way.\u201d<\/span>15<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, on the group photos preserved by the family, the old R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmaya\u00b4s looks differ\u00a0 from those of the average type of the Kandyan nobility. His nose is rather high, as is typical for\u00a0 the \u201cAryan\u201d (better to be called <\/span>north indid <\/span>from the racial point of view) inhabitants of Ceylon.\u00a0 But at the same time it shows a considerable width at the nostrils. Wide, distended nostrils,\u00a0 however, are one of the best marks of the Weddas, as also the protruding cheekbones that\u00a0 might in a large face look \u201cbony and Red Indian\u201d. By chance I found a passage in L e w i s<\/span>16<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

with a quite similar description of a guaranteed mixed Wedda breed: \u201c The general cast of\u00a0 features is reminiscent of the North American Indian, in that the nose and cheek bones are\u00a0 strongly pronounced.\u201d Examples of Weddoid formes of noses see on tables 2,6 and 7. The wide distended nostrils seem to be a highly characteristic feature of Weddas and Wedda\u00a0 mixed people, they also reappear in his son, the current R\u00e1temah\u00e1tmayam in a very expressive\u00a0 way (see table 1).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

14 Bibile Wal\u00e1ue ( Wal\u00e1ue = seat of Nobles) preserves documents and silver swords, presented to this family by Sinhalese kings.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

15 E. S c h m i d t, op. cit.,p. 39\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

16 F. Lewis, op. cit., p. 287<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

END<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Click here to receive your free copy of the eLanka Newsletter twice a week delivered directly\u00a0to\u00a0your\u00a0inbox!<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NILGALA FRONTIER – by Ranil Bibile NILGALA, where Raja Singha, Lord of the T\u00fbn Sinhal\u00e9, vanquished the man-eating crocodile, was a dead end. ONCE, many years ago, whilst exploring this roadless terrain on foot, I came across the remnants of an ancient hewn-stone fortress. It was situated on a rocky rising rib of land between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":139244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,66168],"tags":[67064,66170,67065],"class_list":{"0":"post-139211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-aside","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-articles","8":"category-articles-articles","9":"tag-nilgala","10":"tag-ranil-bibile","11":"tag-senanayaka-samudra","12":"post_format-post-format-aside"},"yoast_head":"\nNILGALA FRONTIER - by Ranil Bibile - eLanka<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"NILGALA FRONTIERbyRanil BibileNILGALA, where Raja Singha, Lord of the Tun Sinhala, vanquished the man-eating crocodile, was a dead end.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NILGALA FRONTIER - 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