Field Circuits and Night Outs — Kumana

(Excerpted from Rendering Unto Caesar, by Bradman Weerakoon)

The village of Kumana, at the point where the Kumbukkan Oya flows out to the sea, was the southern extremity of the (Ampara) district. The village comprised of 26 families who led an idyllic existence inside the Yala forest reserve. Its establishment dated from over 120 years before the time of my visit in 1970.

Its history was interesting. It had apparently been set up by a group of Kandyan Sinhalese from Uva who had fled during the 1848 revolt against the British rule and had found their way down the banks of Kumbukkan Oya up to the point where it met the sea. With the determination of the government authorities that this part of the Yala Sanctuary was a Strict Natural Reserve (SNR), problems had strongly cropped up about its existence as a village. There had been highly-placed individuals both for and against its continuation. Those against spoke of the anomaly of a settlement of people within a wild life reserve that would be a continuing threat to the environment and particularly to the protected species within the reserve.

On the other hand, there were the people who maintained that the village had remained small, had developed its own ecological lifestyle with the environment and was an interesting living legacy of a fast receding past. It, therefore, needed to be sustained and preserved just as much as wild life.

Soon after I assumed duties in Ampara, I got instructions from the home ministry to have the village removed lock, stock and barrel to the newly opened area on the south bank of the Gal Oya river. My first visit to Kumana in April 1971 was essentially for this purpose. It was a fascinating experience which Damayanthi and I often recollect with pleasure. Kumana is located some 23 miles south of Panama deep in the heart of the strict natural reserve.

Our jeep took us through virtual jungle tracks past the rock hermitage of Kudumbigala (the rock that looks like the ‘knot of hair on top of the head’), past Buttuwa where the last post of the Wild Life Department was sited. The trail then led across the Bagura plains where wild buffalo fed in great numbers and on through alternating forest and grassland disturbing herds of deer and sounders of wild boar as we drove deeper on.

After about an hour of travel, the jungle cleared and we edged past the Kumana villu which was at the time full of nesting flamingos. These beautiful creatures with pink feathers at the back had apparently migrated, all the way from Siberia to nest in the villu, we were told by the trackers.

A mile or two away from the villu was the Kumana village, a settlement of wattle and daub houses, where the usual cluster of women and children came out to enjoy the spectacle of the jeep and the big people from the city. A bare-bodied, fair, lean man dressed in a sarong stepped up as I got off the jeep and greeted me in perfect English with the words “Good morning, Mr GA, I am Leonidas of Kumana”.

For a moment I was taken aback and thought that this was some freak descendant of a ship-wrecked Greek. It turned out that he was Liyanadasa from Moratuwa, a former school teacher from the South who, after a failed marriage had gone to the forest and ended up some 25 years ago in Kumana. He was my interlocutor with the village and our association continued for many years.

I visit Welikade jail

Although I had close to a thousand young men and women under my charge at the Malwatte Camp, I yet had the need to see some of the detainees who had been taken to Colombo and kept at the Remand Jail in Welikada.

It happened this way: the parents of one of the girls taken in, named Renuka, who were dayakayas of the Buddangala Aramaya, came to me one day with a request to send to their daughter a parcel of soap, toothpaste and some clothes. A message had been received from the child asking for help.

I telephoned my friend, C T Jansz, who was Acting Commissioner of Prisons and inquired if the girl was there. He confirmed that she was. So on my next visit to Colombo, I took the little parcel which was handed to me by the mother of the girl. It was my first experience of going to jail. The open courtyard, as you walk through the door was full of men in prison clothing and the warden led me on to Jansz’s office where I chatted with him until Renuka came in. She was tiny, around seventeen years old at the time. She was delighted to have something from her parents and opened the package with great anticipation. It contained a bar of soap, toothpaste and a couple of white blouses.

Ampara, a Land of Forest Hermitages – the Arannyas

The many ranges of sheer rock I explored in the district had accommodated from ancient times a network of forest hermitages. These arrannyas were now occupied by the monks chiefly of the Ramanya Nikaya, who belonged to the Vanavasi tradition. Among the more interesting of these hardy ascetic monks was Kalutara Dhammanda Thero of the Buddangala Aranya and the saintly Thambugala Sri Ananda Thero of the Kudumbigala Aranya that was set on the outskirts of the Yala sanctuary.

I spent much time talking with the monks, fascinated by the history which permeated the caves and their own efforts in establishing themselves and Buddhist practices and beliefs in an area dominated by Muslim and Tamil people. Buddangala and Kudimbigala demonstrated two contrasting approaches in accommodating to one’s social and physical environment.

Buddangala, five miles from the town of Ampara, was held together by the power of Kalutara Dhammananda Thero. It was irrevocably moving forward towards modernity. Dhammanda Thero stood for attracting pilgrims throughout the year, building culverts, roads and ponds and establishing his legal rights to the 500-acre rock outcrop which constituted his domain. He informed me that he was from Kalutara and had been a mechanic in the Railways before taking to the robes. His approach was driven by his many visions of the future.

He bulldozed his way into my life when he marched into my office one morning with a long list of things to be done – primarily in infrastructure – before the annual Poson festival of 1970 began. He succeeded not only in involving me in all activities but also had me elected president of the Dayaka Sabha for life. It is a post I have held ever since. He was a very committed person who would never take ‘No’ for answer, and became a life-long friend.

The contrast between him and the Kudumbigala hamuduruwo could not have been more stark. Thambugala Ananda Thero was soft-spoken and saintly. He never asked for help but he got it from many people. He lived in the midst of dozens of caves, all with their drip ledges inscribed in the Pali texts, and practiced meditation. The caves and the inscriptions were evidence of the state of culture

which must have prevailed in ancient times when this area would have been part of the kingdom of Ruhuna.

At Kudimbigala there were no stupas and shrine rooms. It was the ideal forest hermitage to mediate and ponder on the eternal verities. Ananda Thero once gave Damayanthi and me the extreme privilege of allowing us to spend a night sleeping on a woven mat in one of the uninhabited caves. The night was cold and the sawing of the leopards close by unmistakable. The morning breakfast was as memorable — Kurakkan pittu, softened with buffalo curd and sweetened with bees honey collected from the forest.

The Deegavapi

As I dug deeper into the history of the district I uncovered more and more of its treasures and explored the many secrets it keeps so well. One of these was the remains of the great reservoir — the Deegavapi — the long tank which also excited the famous irrigation engineer R L Brohier. Could the temple of Deegavapi, and names such as Digamadulla and Akkaraipattu, provide some clue? Where indeed was this ‘long tank’ which supplied the water for the extensive paddy fields which would have led to this area to be called the `granary of the east’ — to give the phrase a different connotation from that which normally attaches to it.

There were no traces of a massive bund or irrigation system in the whole of the vast plain beginning from the foothills of Inginiyagala and extending to the coastline of Kalmunai and Pottuvil. So I surmised and some of my experiences led me to think that way, that perhaps the Deegavapi was the long and narrow lagoon which is now called the Batticaloa Lagoon, leading from Batticaloa in the north to Samanthurai in the south (where the boats from outside would anchor) and which houses close by the Deegavapi stupa. Could it be that the giant stupa, located so close to the southern extremity of the lagoon, would have been given the same name by the ancients, as the stretch of water that it overlooked?

My surmise was strengthened by my experience of discovering that the water at the southern end of the lagoon was not brackish and was being used for irrigating crops on its western side. Farmers on this side of the lagoon did yet, when the land flooded in the times of the rains, capture some part of the overflow from the lagoon in little polders and use its flow down to the lagoon to irrigate their fields which were situated between the ponds so created and the lagoon itself. Was this the reason why the ancients described this life-giving source of water as the long-tank?