Gananath Obeyesekere (1930 -2025)

Any visitor to the home of Ranjini and Gananath Obeyesekere on Dharmarajah Hill in Kandy, will remember the splendid view from the balcony of the Obeyesekere home with the meandering Mahaweli Ganga and the Hunnasgiriya and Knuckles mountain ranges in the distance. Their home was designed by Ashley de Vos, to whom Gananath dedicated his memorable book, Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas, referring to Ashley as ‘friend and master-builder’.

A visit made in 2023 in ‘the cruellest month’ of that year, of all the visits made in recent years to the Obeyesekere home on the hill, sticks out in my memory for a number of reasons, especially for one in particular. As Lilani and I were keen to look up our friends Jayantha and Maureen Dhanapala, boon companions of Ranjini and Gananath from decades earlier, Ranjini, very thoughtfully, invited the Dhanapalas to join us to lunch. It was the last time we saw Jayantha, who had not been in the best of health for some time, for he moved on less than a month later. In my tribute to the life and career of Jayantha, I noted that the six of us who had gathered around the lunch table that April afternoon, were all products of the English Department of Peradeniya albeit belonging to different generations, though Gananath was far and away, the most illustrious academic produced by the Department and the University.

As this is meant to be a personal account of Gananath, I shall not go into the details of his strikingly notable academic career. However, I wish to note for the record, those to whom he dedicated his books published during his working years at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya and at certain universities in the United States—the University of Washington, the University of California at San Diego and Princeton University, where he was chair of the Department of Anthropology and a professor from 1980 until his retirement in 2000.

The Cult of The Goddess Pattini was for E.F.C (Lyn) Ludowyk, ‘a gift long promised’; The Awakened Ones Phenomenology of Visionary Experience was ‘in memory of Neelan Tiruchelvam and for those who died on both sides of the divide caught in the cross-fire’; The Apotheosis of Captain Cook European Myth-making in the Pacific with an afterword on De Salinisation was ‘a memorial to Wijedasa’; Cannibal Talk The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice on the South Seas, as noted above was for Ashley de Vos; Buddhism Transformed Religious Change in Sri Lanka (with Richard Gombrich) was ‘For Sanjukta and Ranjini’; Medusa’s Hair An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience was ‘For Asita’; and Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist and Greek Rebirth was ‘For Ian and Roslin Goonetileke’.

Although Ranjini was one of my lecturers at Peradeniya, I did not have the opportunity to befriend the Obeyesekere duo as they left Peradeniya in the early 1970s. It was dear Ian and Roslin, intimate friends of Ranjini and Gananath, who brought us together several years later, thereby paving the path for our close friendship that developed thereafter with the Obeyesekeres. I managed to find time on my official visits to the United States during my years at the Fulbright Commission in Sri Lanka to look up Ranjini and Gananath. Our friendship deepened when they both returned home on securing Fulbright post-doctoral research awards in the 1990s and we have not looked back since. Lilani’s and my close friendship with Raja and Savitri Goonesekere also enabled us to share some memorable occasions, including the unforgettable dinner they hosted for a handful of close friends at their Park Road home in Colombo 5, to celebrate Gananath’s 75^th birthday in February 2005. Ranjini had planned a more elaborate celebration including family and their many friends, but they both decided not to go ahead with it because of the tragedy of the 26 December Tsunami of 2004 in Sri Lanka.

I have wondered, now and then, how many are aware of the fact that Gananath initially read for an honours degree in English at Peradeniya, securing First Class Honours before turning to Sociology and Anthropology. His mastery of the English language and its literature permeated all of his books, journal articles and the public lectures he delivered. Understatement, subtle put-downs (when the occasion demanded it) and civilised humour were part and parcel of his style, exemplified well in his Cannibal Talk. His knowledge of Sinhala and Sinhala literature were no less noteworthy.

Even prior to entering the University of Ceylon and becoming an outstanding product of Professor ‘Lyn’ Ludowyk and the English Department at Peradeniya, the well-read and bilingual Gananath Obeyesekere was a close associate of Amaradasa Virasinha, one of the three founders of the influential Sinhala journal Samskriti (the other two being Dharmasiri Ekanayake and S. G Samarsinghe). The close association of Amaradasa and Gananath resulted in the latter’s involvement in Samskriti in 1953 in the midst of completing his honours degree in English. Virasinha notes this development in Samskriti (2011).

Around 1949-1950, Amaradasa and Gananath combined their intellectual resources to adapt and translate the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House as Sellam Geya, the sixth edition of which was released in March 2011. Furthermore, Amaradasa Virasinha acknowledged in Samskriti that it was Gananath who had coined the Sinhala term Bhavitha Vicharaya for ‘Practical Criticism’ and also noted that the two of them had begun a new feature titled Vichara Maga in Samskriti in 1954, in order to familiarise and educate both the ordinary reader of literature and the literary critic of the significance of ‘words on the page’ in literary evaluation and criticism.

Gananath had an amazing memory to go with his profound knowledge of literature and culture in general. In the middle of a relaxed chat, he would, on the spur of the moment, break into ‘song’ as it were, reciting from memory English poetry or Sinhala ‘Kavi’ that he had read earlier. I remember his doing so many a time and oft.

Speaking of Gananath’s remarkable memory, Ranjini shared with us the other evening, an interesting tale based on a recent incident. She had been looking for the umpteenth time at the beautiful view from the balcony of their home that I referred to earlier. And on seeing that the winding river and the natural beauty of the scene appeared to be even more attractive than usual, she had asked Gananath to come and feast his eyes on it. Upon doing so, he had been reminded of a few lines from a novel he had read though he could not recall its title. Ranjini remembered enough of those lines that Gananath had quoted spontaneously to enable us to search the internet. The lines were from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and they are as follows:

. . . riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore

to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation

back to Howth Castle and Environs.

None of us had read the novel in which the above lines appear, although we were familiar with some of Joyce’s other works.

All of us who had known Gananath intimately will miss his pleasant and ever-stimulating company as much as the warmth of his friendship. So doubtless will his countless students and colleagues. But obviously none more so than Ranjini, his wife and fellow-traveller for close upon 75 years; their daughter Nalinika who has been a tower of strength to them; their two sons, Indrajit, Asita and their families who reside in the United States; other close members of the extended family including Damayanthi, Savi and Chandana; and other relatives.

However saddened all of us are, we should be glad that Gananath is now free of the indignities that age and illness force upon us. And once the essentially difficult period of reconciling ourselves to the reality that Gananath’s sojourn on earth is over, we will recall and re-live the many memories of our days and years with him, which we will continue to cherish.

Gananath’s was a life well-lived. His accomplishments were many, his contribution to the advancement of knowledge immense and his fearless outspokenness in defence of his values and principles a continuing reminder to us of the need to strive to make this imperfect world of ours a better place.

by Tissa Jayatilaka