Features

Martin Wickramasinghe: The making of a Sri Lankan mind

Published

2 months ago

2026/07/26

By Uditha Devapriya

Regarded as one of Sri Lanka’s finest public intellectuals, Martin Wickramasinghe (1890 – 1976) unleashed the possibilities of radical thought in 20th century South Asia. His 50th death anniversary fell this week, on July 23.

A tiny island some 30 or so miles from India, Sri Lanka has a recorded history of more than 2,500 years. Its recent history has been marred by ethnic conflict, civil war, and political and economic crisis. This has tended to dominate international reporting at the expense of other aspects. In reality, the country is popularly marketed as the pearl of the Indian Ocean. The more cynical and pessimistic, mindful of its troubled past, call it a teardrop. Both groups are right: the half-full bottle, after all, is also half-empty.

Yet at one point, the country was well known for its contributions to regional, even global, intellectual exchanges. Historical records tell us of monasteries that served as seats of learning and monarchs who patronized monasteries. Pilgrims and travelers from far-flung regions, including Europe, West Asia, and China, wrote about their visits to the country and their encounters with these establishments. Such exchanges continued for much of the island’s history, well into the colonial period. Conquered by Portuguese forces in the 16th century, and later by Dutch and British forces, by the 19th century Sri Lanka figured in at the center of an empire on which, it was said, the sun never set.

During this time, the popularization of print media, or print capitalism as the anthropologist Benedict Anderson puts it, led to the spread of ideas that reinforced notions of nationhood and nation-state. In 19th century British Ceylon, the press and print media were dominated by European and missionary interests. Later these platforms found their way to other parts of the nation. This paved the way for debates and discussions across racial, religious, and language lines. That, in turn, laid the foundation for a generation of public thinkers, writers, and scholars of repute in Sri Lanka.

Among these public figures was Martin Wickramasinghe. Little known outside the region, but hugely popular in his country, Wickramasinghe has been described as the quintessential organic intellectual and the preeminent novelist and short-story writer of 20th century Sri Lanka. He was also, possibly, the most prolific public thinker of his time in the country. This week marked his 50th death anniversary. At a time of political and economic tension in Sri Lanka, his life offers an alternative framing of art, culture, history, literature, and nationalism which is more nuanced and more pluralist.

Martin Wickramasinghe was born on May 29, 1890, in Koggala, a village some 150 km from the capital Colombo in the southern district of Galle. The district stood at the center of Sri Lanka’s maritime provinces. These provinces had come under the control of successive European powers from the 16th century. Absorbing different cultural influences, in his memoirs Wickramasinghe recalls Koggala as a quintessential colonial village that was prone to reinvention and transformation. His ideas of art, culture, and history were shaped at the crossroads of the region. Reflecting on it later, he depicted a world where social structures were moving and changing. In contrast to nationalist ideologues who idealized the village as a static and unchanging entity, he saw it as a society in motion.

Martin Wickramasinghe

The middle class … started abandoning old customs and names to stand apart from ordinary village folk. Discarding male names such as Sirimal, Nimal, Gauthamadasa, and Buddhadasa, and female names such as Dayawathie, Premawathie, and Gunawathie, they gave their sons names like Francis, Henry, Samson, and Oibert, while the girls got names such as Lucy, Maggie, Laura, and Nelly.

Martin Wickramasinghe, Upan Da Sita (1961)

Martin Wickramasinghe learnt to read and write under a local village teacher. He was then sent to the village Buddhist temple, where a monk who happened to be his cousin taught him not just his first language Sinhala, but also Pali, Sanskrit, the Devanagari script, and even rudiments of English. The latter became useful when his parents decided to send him to an English school that run by the Anglican church, closer to the city of Galle. These were years of tremendous transformation in the south. While certain people prospered in economic terms, others declined. Wickramasinghe saw these changing tides of fortune. In time they would affect his own family.

Although his family had ambitions for him – he was the only son among eight daughters, a point that marked him out for special treatment by parents and elders – Wickramasinghe was forced to abandon his education when his father, a police-official, passed away. Wickramasinghe was around eight at the time. By then, his family had invested in plumbago or graphite. At the time the industry was going through a boom.

Tragically for his family, the investment failed. Drowning in debt, his mother had no choice but to remove Wickramasinghe from school and find him employment. In the early 20th century, Colombo stood as the center of the island’s economic and political power. In 1906, Wickramasinghe was sent there to work as a shop assistant.

For a young man from Galle, Colombo must have appeared strange and somewhat alien. A deeply Westernised, urban, and sophisticated space, ordered and controlled, it was the residence of many of the country’s wealthiest residents. Entrenched in European customs and attitudes, these residents, known as Ceylonese, were almost distanced from the rest of the country. Yet though it was embedded in colonialism, it was in Colombo that decisions were made and reforms were directed to change the country’s administrative and political structures. It was here that the island’s leading social and political movements unfolded. Familiarising himself in his surroundings, Wickramasinghe adapted to these developments, observing them and often taking part in them.

In Koggala Wickramasinghe had shirked formal education. His memoirs, published in 1961, depict a child who disliked classroom learning and frequently played truant. Yet while he resisted formal schooling in Galle, he immersed himself in books in Colombo. He patronized leading bookshops in Pettah, the commercial center of the city, where he worked and lived. Eventually he discovered the writings of freethinkers, rationalists, philosophers, scientists, and anthropologists. Among the authors he read at this point were the American radical thinker Robert Ingersoll and the English biologist Thomas Huxley. Through them, he discovered Charles Darwin and other science writers. Their ideas influenced him. Over time they shaped his attitudes towards society, culture, and religion.

My mind was possessed by a desire to learn about the beginning and end of the world. None of the bookshops in Colombo carried these books. Cave and Co. had some books which carried these titles. I bought a copy of a collection of essays called Human Origins for fifty cents and read it. I realised that my English was not good enough to comprehend everything in these essays. I hence bought a pocket English dictionary and read Robinson Crusoe and later Gulliver’s Travels.

Martin Wickramasinghe, Upan Da Sita (1961)

To understand his progress at this stage, Wickramasinghe’s intellectual evolution must be contextualized. In the late 20th century, Sri Lanka witnessed the peak of a Buddhist Revival. Tracing its origins to the late 19th century, this Revival was led by monks and activists who were protective of their faith. They frequently published polemics against other groups, especially Christian missionaries. Determined to restore Buddhism to what they regarded as its foremost or rightful place, they envisioned a world where their identity stood over all others. Wickramasinghe saw these developments from afar. Refusing to conform, he evolved a somewhat different interpretation of culture and identity.

Wickramasinghe was just 24 years old when he published his first novel, Leela, in 1914. Despite its fairly predictable plot, he depicted a clash between tradition and modernity. Rather than celebrate traditional values, as many in the Revival did, he explicitly celebrated modernity and intellectual progress. At a time of great social change in Sri Lanka, this message proved off-putting for monks and activists. Not surprisingly, in the press, the novel was branded as an attack on Sinhala Buddhist values.

We cannot hope to advance if we stay attached to old traditions and practices. From the tiniest animal to the human species, everything in this world is connected to the outer world, the environment. This is an indisputable truth. Everything around us changes from moment to moment. If we adapt to these changes, we will progress. If we refuse to adapt to them, we will decline.

Martin Wickramasinghe, Leela (1914)

Encouraged by the response to the novel, two years later, in 1916, he began writing to the press. His first article, “Vruksalatha saha Sathwayo” (“Plants and Animals”), published in a leading daily Sri Lankan newspaper, the Dinamina, posed a daring question: if higher forms of life such as animals and humans were subject to the laws of reincarnation as dictated by Buddhism, shouldn’t lower forms of life, such as plants, be subject to them as well? Going beyond even his critique of tradition in Leela, this first article opened him to a barrage of angry comments by readers. Once again, he had resolved to go against the grain and to use his knowledge to reinterpret his faith and culture.

Taken together, his first novel and his first article laid the foundation for his career as a writer and a thinker. In 13 novels, several short stories, and countless essays, many of them published in newspapers, he explored aspects of his society through an anthropological lens. In doing so, he made two somewhat unique contributions.

First, in Sinhala, Wickramasinghe introduced literary, cultural, and scientific terms and ideas to a vernacular audience. At a time when Sinhala nationalists uncritically valorized the past and held it as an object of veneration, Wickramasinghe popularized the most contemporary, radical ideas from the West among his countrymen. In doing so he made them aware of other ways of framing identity, beyond the restrictive, often insular forms which nationalism took, and has taken since then, in Sri Lanka.

Second, writing in English, he applied the frameworks of the leading anthropologists of his time – the two most prominent being Bronislaw Malinowski and Ruth Benedict – to his community. As the anthropologist Sarath Amunugama noted in an interview with me, in delving into his society so deeply, he made Sinhala Buddhist culture “as valid an object of study as any other rural traditional society in the world of his time.”

This contribution was unprecedented for two reasons. First, as mentioned before, he refused to subscribe to nationalist and nativist ideologues. Although he identified himself as Sinhala and Buddhist, he emphasized that culture was not an abstract entity, that it was changing and rupturing all the time. His upbringing in Koggala made him conscious of the fluidity of culture and how societies were borrowing from each other. Against such a backdrop, he refused to romanticize and “utopianize” his culture. Instead, he made it a subject of critical scrutiny. Far from belittling it, he felt this to be the only way forward.

We are living in Ceylon like an integrated community… An integrated independent community implies a language, culture, and tradition of their own which are, of course, continuously changing. Language and tradition are aspects of culture. The most important thing for an independent community is its changing culture, which unites them in spite of the diversities of class and social habits.

Martin Wickramasinghe, Sinhala Language and Culture (1975)

This was evident even in his fiction. In novels like Gamperaliya (1944), which has often been compared to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s great saga of the Italian nobility, The Leopard, he charts the economic changes which transformed the country in the late 19th century. Like Lampedusa’s novel, Gamperaliya portrays a clash between an old aristocracy moored in traditional values and a new elite moored in the capitalist ethic. Considered as the definitive realist Sinhala novel of the 20th century, it was hailed as a masterpiece almost right after it was first published by Ediriweera Sarachchandra.

Second, as a public figure, Wickramasinghe communicated his ideas through the popular press. At the time newspapers enjoyed a considerable circulation and were featuring essays on literature, art, and religion. Wickramasinghe made use of these platforms to convey his ideas on these subjects to a wide audience. In doing so, he enabled the transmission of new and modern ideas to a very receptive readership.

With the public as his audience, Wickramasinghe also strived to deconstruct theories of art, culture, and literature which until then had been inaccessible for lay readers. In books like Aspects of Sinhalese Culture (1952), Buddhism and Culture (1964), Buddhism and Art (1973), and Sinhala Language and Culture (1975), he introduced new theories and tried to democratize knowledge. Lacking formal schooling, self-taught and self-formed, he valued the power of ideas and frequently questioned received assumptions.

When doing so, he did not shirk from courting controversy. His first novel, Leela, provoked colorful reactions, especially from monks. Almost 60 years later, in 1973, he repeated this feat with his last novel, Bava Taranaya. Depicting the life of the Buddha – a highly sensitive topic – with unusual frankness, Bava Taranaya scandalized audiences. Monks and activists took issue with how he had portrayed its subject. Not unlike Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, extremists branded it as a heresy, with one person requesting authorities to jail its author. Though the then government decided against such an action, the controversy his novel provoked showed that Wickramasinghe chose to be a contrarian even at the very end of his life. He would pass away three years later.

In that sense, perhaps his single biggest contribution, as a Sri Lankan and South Asian literary figure, was that he used a comparative approach to whatever he wrote about. As the literary scholar Chamila Somirathna has written in her MA dissertation on Wickramasinghe, he adopted a multifaceted view of concepts and theories. Over time this transformed him into a cosmopolitan critic who valued diverse perspectives.

While he did not reject the existence of the university system, he envisioned the emergence of several universities which would he believed would allow a better dialogue, even controversy, between different ideas, resulting in new forms of knowledge… He also argued that language and literature do not necessarily belong to academic institutions, but to everybody. The fact that [he] used newspapers as one major medium for discussing literature and criticism reflects his view that access to the study of literature and criticism is the right of the general public.

Chamila Somirathna, Re-envisioning a Discipline: Martin Wickramasinghe’s Contribution to Comparative Literature (2016)

Wickramasinghe’s study of evolution and anthropology opened him to the links between different aspects of culture. Yet, as the renowned Sinhala language scholar and linguist Sandagomi Coperahewa observed in an interview with me, Wickramasinghe’s fiction, his novels and short stories, tend to be read to the exclusion of his radical writings. Partly because of this, he is stereotyped as a Sinhala Buddhist thinker, even though his essays and articles reflect a more complex, nuanced perspective.

Because of this omission, his absence from the pantheon of modern – and modernist – thinkers in South Asia should not come as a surprise. Wickramasinghe lived, worked, and thrived at a time when South Asia was undergoing a profound transformation in its culture, its society, and its politics. Coming of age at the twilight of colonial rule in Sri Lanka, he formulated theories of art, literature, culture, and religion that could not have been more different to the insular visions of nativist-nationalists.
It is for that reason that Martin Wickramasinghe deserves to be read, deconstructed, and demystified, as more than a Sinhala, Buddhist, and Sri Lankan thinker. Like that other pluralist thinker of 20th century South Asia, Rabindranath Tagore, Wickramasinghe imbibed a pluralistic view of society which differed from his colleagues.

Unlike those who saw it as something to be venerated, Wickramasinghe perceived the past as something we could never return to, something we should not idealize. The title of one of his well-known books, Kalunika Seveema (In Search of Kalunika, 1950), reveals his attitude to the past: in Sinhalese folklore, “kalunika” was an herb said to impart long life on those who found it. But as with most folklore, it simply did not exist. For Wickramasinghe, the past was a little like kalunika. Full of promise and potential, it could never be found or retrieved. Going in search of it, he pointed out, was akin to a fool’s errand.

Uditha Devapriya is an independent researcher who works at the intersection of art, culture, history, politics, and international relations. From 2021 to 2024 he was involved in the production of an illustrated biography of George Keyt by the historian and art scholar Dr SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda. He is presently engaged in a biographical study of Martin Wickramasinghe that will focus on his role as a public intellectual and critic. A consultant to the Martin Wickramasinghe Trust, he was previously Chief International Relations Analyst at the foreign policy think-tank Factum. He is the author of five books, including an official history of S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, and has delivered lectures on Wickramasinghe physically and online in Sri Lanka, India, and the UK.

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Features

Day of Judgements and Political Fallouts

Published

8 hours ago

2026/09/27

Thilina Walpola

Supreme Court

Rajan Philips

The second anniversary of Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s election as President has come and gone, but not before getting marked by a spate of judgements delivered and announced on a single day following the anniversary. Far away in New York, it has been a week of speeches by state and government leaders making their pilgrimage to the 81^st Annual Sessions of the United Nations that is entering its ninth decade. President AKD did not make the trip this year to the UN Sessions, which are now reduced to being a convenient meeting place for world leaders to hold sideline meetings on bilateral as well as other contentious matters.

Sri Lanka is not in the crosshairs of any such contentions, but there are enough internal crosshairs that the NPP government and a feckless opposition are constantly trying to avoid. The day of judgements too has come and gone. All in all, it was a good day for the NPP government, at least in the sense that the government suffered no reputational damage from any of the three judgements. There were two Supreme Court rulings, one on the bill for the 22^nd Amendment to the Constitution and another on the constitutionality of the Anti-Corruption Amendment Bill. The third court ruling was the verdict given by the Colombo Permanent High Court following the Trial-at-Bar of 24 people accused for their role in the 2019 Easter attacks.

Easter Justice

The three trial-at-bar judges, Navaratne Marasinghe, Ramanathan Kannan and Sujeewa Nissanka, reached a unanimous verdict and found 15 of the accused guilty and found the other nine not guilty and released them forthwith. The accused were spared of the death sentence, but the lengths of rigorous imprisonment sentences are just as bad. One was sentenced to 260 years, four got 240 years each, five 220 years, and another five 200 years. In addition, the court ordered the instant confiscation of the movable and immovable assets of all 15 found guilty.

The verdict marks a substantial milestone in the search for justice on behalf of the victims of the Easter attacks. The government can claim some political credit for the conclusion of the trial after seven years of fits and starts, and high level stymying under three presidents who preceded President AKD. Much greater credit of course belongs to the hundreds of law enforcement officials who built up a mammoth case of 23,270 charges against 25 suspects (one of whom died in hospital during the trial) and won convictions of 15 of them.

But this is not the end of the journey for those seeking Easter justice based on the whole truth. There are other trials going on and the elusive mastermind is yet to be found. Mohammed Ibrahim Mohammed Nawfar (alias Naufar Moulavi) is one of the 15 convicted by the Permanent High Court. Naufar Moulavi was identified in May 2021 as the mastermind by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government. The government claimed that FBI investigation had confirmed it. This claim is not supported by the FBI affidavit filed by agent Merrilee R. Goodwin in a US Court in California, in December 2020.

The purpose of the FBI affidavit was to support the indictment of Mohammed (Moulavi) Naufar, Mohamed Anwar Mohamed Riskan and Ahamed Milhan Hayathu Mohamed “for conspiring to provide, providing, and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, namely ISIS” (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham), in violation of US laws. But neither Naufar nor the other two were identified as masterminds. The only mastermind identified in the affidavit is “Jahran Mohamed Cassim, also known as (“aka”) Mohamad Cassim Mohamad Zahran, aka Zahran Hashim (“Zahran”). Zahran killed himself in the suicide bomb he detonated, along with scores of victims, and spared himself from earthly trials.

To close the loop on this, the three men identified in the FBI affidavit, namely, Moulavi Naufar, Mohamed Riskan and Ahamed Milhan, are among the 15 convicted by the trial-at-bar High Court. But their conviction does not bring closure to the enduring question whether there was a political mastermind(s) behind the 2019 Easter attacks. There is still no clarity on what the former Attorney General Dappula De Livera publicly alluded to as evidence of “a grand conspiracy behind the attacks that killed 269 people and injured over 500.”

That was on 18 May 2021, and the statement was a follow up to the letter that Mr. De Livera had written on the state of the police investigations, to then Inspector General of Police (IGP), the late C. D. Wickramaratne. Mr. De Livera soon went on to retire after a remarkable prosecutorial career, and reportedly turned down the government’s offer of appointment as High Commissioner to Canada. Mr. Wickramaratne himself has since died under rather tragic circumstances.

Those who allege that the Catholic Church is making unproven allegations about Easter attacks masterminds, conveniently gloss over the fact that the Church is not accusing anybody of being a mastermind, but is only asking for a thorough inquiry that will put to rest, once and for all, the perennial question about the Easter mastermind. The difference now is that after suffering frustrations with three presidents and their governments, the Church is experiencing a positive response from the current president and his NPP government.

Amendment Politics

Aside from the lawfare politics of the Easter attacks, the politics of the 22^nd Amendment to the Constitution is running its course after the Supreme Court ruling that a referendum is not required for the amending bill to become law, but only a two-thirds majority in parliament. The ruling was widely expected but not because of some ‘fix’, but because it would have been silly to find a judicial reason to have a referendum on the retirement ages of judges. This is not to absolve the government for its missteps on this matter and for putting everyone through months of constitutional contortions. Rather it is to highlight the absurdity of getting exercised virtually over every constitutional amendment and insisting that enacting the amendment without a referendum is tantamount to an assault on democracy. The referendum requirement has become a constitutional curse.

The 1972 Constitution of the First Republic had a very straightforward amending procedure with no referendum requirement, so straightforward that JR Jayewardene was able to throw out a whole (1972) constitution lock, stock and barrel, and replace it with his new constitution of a totally different (presidential) persuasion, simply through a parliamentary select committee process and a two thirds majority in parliament. No one called for a referendum to justify so momentous a change, but now a referendum is required to determine at what age a superior court judge can retire. Nonetheless, as President Jayewardene’s admirers and followers celebrate his 120^th birth anniversary, there is no gainsaying that regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with his presidential achievements and legacies, JR Jayewardene was without question the most consequential political leader of Sri Lanka in the 20^th century.

In the 21^st century and on the 22^nd amendment, with no referendum required, the Bar Association is changing tack and calling on parliamentarians to vote with their conscience, without toeing the party line. After Friday’s vote, it may want to poll the MPs to find out who among them voted listened to their conscience, and who toed the party line. The Association may be having a difficult time going through the withdrawal syndrome after months of heightened exertions. As for the opposition and Sajith Premadasa, the latter has simply promised that a future SJB government will repeal the 22^nd Amendment. To what end? To reenact another episode of confusion and distraction.

An Economynext commentator has described the Supreme Court ruling on the referendum requirement for 22A, as being “surgical in its constitutional analysis.” Well said. The ruling plausibly addresses every good and bad argument that was flung at the judges and demonstrates, citing copious precedents, that at the end of the day, no matter who the individual judges and their abilities are, and what anyone thinks of them, the ‘Court’ can find its collective voice and express itself with clarity and authority.

The same Economynext commentary interprets the 22^nd Amendment as “a foundational prerequisite for operationalizing the newly enacted, stringent Anti-Corruption Act, which is a key commitment of the government era for the IMF.” The commentary suggests that “multiple clauses in the 22nd Amendment are designed to satisfy governance and anti-corruption structural benchmarks within the ongoing IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF) agreement.” While noting the risk of scaring investors who might view 22A as being anti-democratic and antithetical to judicial independence, the commentary goes on to opine that the passage of 22A combined with a strong and systematic anti-corruption drive could be a boost to investor confidence, especially in the critical sectors of logistics, renewable energy and technology.

The above is an interesting interpretation even though I am not sure whether anyone associated with the government has formulated the intentions of the 22^nd Amendment quite this way. Objectively, the argument is plausible and will justifiably rile the ire of the left opposition to the NPP government and its inclination towards the IMF. At the same time, there is no mistaking the government’s intention and determination to fight corruption in politics and public life. Apart from, or rather as part of, its arresting politics, the government is also going ahead with the passage of the Anti-Corruption (Amendment) Bill, which too has had its determination by the Supreme Court, albeit by a different three-judge Bench, almost concurrently with the 22A ruling by the five-judge Bench. The Supreme Court’s determination on the Anti-Corruption Bill was triggered after it was challenged by Transparency International Sri Lanka.

But unlike the SC ruling on 22A, the ruling on the Anti-Corruption Bill singles out a provision as requiring approval in a referendum for its enactment. The provision involves Clause 17 of the Bill which elevates the bail granting threshold for determination by a High Court and not a Magistrates Court as currently practised. The subject offence involves a bribe not less than Rs. 100,000, or causing a government loss of not less than Rs. 500,000. The Court held that such a change infringes the fundamental rights of citizens against arbitrary detention and will require a referendum approval. The Bill of course could be passed without a referendum after removing the specific provision. Remarkably, the government argued that the proposed amendments to the Anti-Corruption Act are necessary to remove current bottlenecks, achieve conformance with UN standards, and comply with the IMF program in Sri Lanka.

Features

Father’s horoscope reading on the worst time in my life seemed coming true

Published

8 hours ago

2026/09/27

Thilina Walpola

Vidyodaya University

Little breathing space between papers at the final exam and my mind goes blank answering Sinhala paper

(Excerpted from The Art of Governance, autobiography of MDD Pieris)

Then came the final blow. When the time table for the final examination was out, I discovered that I would have to answer all my nine papers, of three hours each at one continuous stretch without even a half days break! I was due to answer the European history paper one afternoon; then go on next morning to British history; afternoon to Ceylon history; the next morning to English Poetry; afternoon to English drama; the following morning to English prose; and that same afternoon to suddenly switch from thinking and writing in English to thinking and writing in Sinhala, answering the first of the three papers in Sinhala, with the other two coming morning and afternoon the following day! Several of my friends urged me to go and speak to the university administration about a change, but at the same time, others who had had difficulties and sought recourse reported that they were rather rudely treated by the officers concerned.

This deterred me from going. I was a polite person by nature and just as in the case of Mr. Athulathmudali about whose insistence on politeness I have already written about, I too resented the prospect of being treated rudely. Therefore, I decided, quite foolishly no doubt, and come what may to go through and sit for the nine papers in four and half continuous days. Thus began the most difficult and harrowing period of my life, a period even worse than the experience at the university entrance examination.

In that instance, there was certainly disappointment and frustration but since I was attempting a near impossibility, there was less stress because mentally I was prepared for failure. This was reflected in a reasonably good appetite, and the ability to sleep. This time, at the final examinations, I lost both. Normal eating was impossible. My stomach was in knots. I just went through the motions and nibbled something and basically sustained myself with a combination of powdered milk and Ovaltine. Sleep became disturbed. After six hours of strenuous concentration a day answering question papers, there was little the mind could absorb by way of preparation for the next day.

During the day, nothing was possible since the morning’s paper was over at noon, and by the time you walked back from the Arts block to Marrs Hall just to look at the food and freshen up and then walk back to the examination hall to be there about 10 minutes before the 2 p.m. start of the next paper, there was neither time nor inclination to look at or absorb anything. I did try to look through whatever I could for the next days two papers during the night whilst keeping in mind the necessity to get some rest and sleep. Therefore, I did try to get six hours of sleep in the night. But it turned out to be an unhealthy and disturbed sleep leaving you not fresh, but jaded in the morning.

The mind was overactive. By this time, the numbers in the hall had dwindled due to the vacation. Only the few sitting for their final examination were in residence, and they were busy with their studies. There was therefore also a sense of loneliness and isolation prevailing. Added to all this was the horrible thought of failing and having to repeat all nine papers the following year. One had very much to try to find some degree of good cheer from within one’s own resources. Given my predicament I had precious little of that.

In these almost nightmarish conditions, I struggled through eight of the nine papers. The last paper during the final afternoon was the third paper in Sinhala literature, which was on prose. I still have a vivid memory of that afternoon. Rain clouds were building up and as we got down to answering the paper, it was getting quite dark. The lights shone brightly in the examination hall. There were five questions to be answered and I had just finished answering one, and had barely started on the next, when my mind went completely blank. I have never experienced such a thing before or since. The thinking processes suddenly stopped as if a plug had been pulled out from an electricity supply. I was in the middle of a sentence, I found impossible to complete. It was total disconnection.

There was just nothing I could do except to lay down my pen and gaze out of the window. There were two things in my favour at this critical moment. I possessed a temperament that didn’t panic easily or once embarked on a course, give up easily. I therefore calmly decided to stop trying to struggle, and relax. I was aware that precious minutes were ticking by. But I knew that what could not be cured must be endured, and that any attempt at force and struggle would only serve to aggravate the situation. That part of my mind was clear and rational. I spent almost 20 precious minutes doing nothing. Then gradually I found that I was able to focus once again.

I cautiously and with a degree of fear took up my pen and leaving room to complete the question I had begun to write on, started on a new question. The ideas flowed once again. I had however to be careful. There was no guarantee that everything would not come to a stop once again. I had already lost valuable time. Any further problem now would be the end of the paper and the end of perhaps the whole examination. I therefore deliberately slowed down my pace of writing and wrote slowly and steadily not pushing myself.

When the time came for the papers to be collected I had been able to answer only three out of the five questions in full. For the balance two, I was only just able to write down a few points. Answers in continuous prose were not possible. Up to this time, I had hope of at least passing the whole examination and obtaining my degree. Now, I was not so sure. There was a distinct possibility, I would fail the last Sinhala paper.

The next day I went home to Colombo, utterly drained. It appeared that my father’s prediction after reading my horoscope was not only accurate but frighteningly so. I too believed with him that there could not possibly be a worse period in the future. Starting from the stress of suddenly having to change schools in mid university entrance course to the end of my participation in school cricket through contracting measles, to the enormous trials and tribulations of the university entrance, to the disappointment of not being able to read for English “honours,” and now this situation at the final examination was almost too much for one person to take.

I was in a state which perhaps verged on a nervous breakdown, For a good two weeks at home, I was listless, unable to concentrate on anything. I could not read anything. Even the newspapers repelled me. The sound of music was irritating, and sleep desultory. I was taken to see the doctor, who advised complete rest. He did not give medicine. It was clear that I had severely overtaxed the system, and time would be the healer, as indeed was so gradually much to the great relief of my parents and myself. The newspaper once again began to interest me, and gradually books. Even then, I could not read for long periods for some time. I used to lose concentration and the mind began to wander.

In due course, I received a letter from the university, inviting me to teach an English course to the new batch of students about to enter the university. This was the vacation course in English for them. But I was just in no mood to teach. I was now back to normal, but did not wish to take upon myself the responsibilities of a teaching assignment. Therefore, I wrote back politely declining. But the letter from the university was a boost to my confidence. I knew that I would not have been called unless I had fared reasonably well, at least in my English papers, and got at a minimum a “B.” But what of the rest? I was still apprehensive. What came to mind was the unfinished Sinhala paper, and its possible impact on the whole examination.

Assistant Librarian Vidyodaya University

When the results came in due course, to my great relief I had passed. There was no question of a class. Nor was I expecting one. What I dreaded was sitting for the whole examination once again. I could now get this episode of my life out of the way and decide how to proceed. By this time the new Vidyodaya University had just begun to function. My father was a member of the Governing Council of the Vidyodaya Pirivena, the Vidyadhara Sabha and for long an associate and a friend of the renowned scholar Ven. Weliwitiye Soratha, the head of the Pirivena, who was the first Vice Chancellor of the new university.

Our family had many connections with Vidyodaya, including my maternal grandfather Mr. C. Don Bastian Jayaweera Bandara, himself a renowned scholar, writer, publisher and social worker, having had his higher education there. I for my part, for a period studied Sinhala under Ven. Soratha. Busy as he was, he found the time to teach me because of these family connections. I must have been a good student in his opinion, because he very graciously presented me a two volume set of his monumental work of the Sinhala dictionary, a task which he undertook and completed all by himself, a set which is one of my valued possessions even today.

When it became known that I had passed out, Vidyodaya was keen to have me and my father was equally keen that I should help out in whatever capacity. Finally, I was appointed as an Assistant Librarian and along with others, plunged into the task of setting up a proper library for the new university. At this time, the university functioned in the premises of the Vidyodaya Pirivena at Maligakande and it was rapidly becoming apparent that space was becoming a serious problem.

One of the most important tasks of a librarian is to classify knowledge accurately and correctly and this had to be carefully done. The system of classification adopted at the time was the Dewey Decimal System, and I spent much time at home poring over the volumes containing the system, so that during the working day classification and the typing of the card indexes, etc., could proceed with speed. Accuracy and speed were both necessary, accuracy, because a misclassified book is a lost book, speed because hundreds of books were lying on the floors, in cartons, in crates, on windowsills and all over the place.

I found the wide reading that I had done whilst at Peradeniya now of great assistance. With a quick perusal I was able to determine the classifications and sub-classifications. This was important. For instance, if one took up a book on European history, one had to determine whether it should be classified and appear on the shelves as general history; a history of a period; diplomatic history; economic history; social and cultural history; military history; a history of important treaties, and so on. This was so for all subjects and the wider your reading the easier it was.

But always at the end of the day was a general conference at which we took up for discussions amongst other matters, certain books which were exceedingly difficult to classify, partly because their contents approached the borders of many different subjects. Titles were frequently misleading. For instance, the book “Two eggs on my plate,” had nothing to do with cuisine. It was a tense memoir of certain military activities during World War II.

Features

The Cinnamon Captain’s Circuit

Published

8 hours ago

2026/09/27

Thilina Walpola

Three Maps of Ceylon Cinnamon

From the Pathfinder Collection

By Jennifer Moragoda
jennifermoragoda787@gmail.com

A remarkable Dutch map of Ceylon made in 1719 allows us to follow cinnamon through the country almost village by village.

Part of a series of thirty-six maps showing territories of the Dutch East India Company, it was drawn by Joannes van Campen and shows mainly the south-western portion of the island then under Company control. The twelve korales or provinces are distinguished by colour and extend, in the map’s description, from the river Caymelle to the Valave. Brohier notes that Caymelle was the Dutch name for the Maha Oya. A brown line marks the boundary of the Kandyan king’s territory. Within this political geography, a red line encloses what might otherwise be described simply as ‘Canelle Landen’: “the expanse of the luxuriant cinnamon bushes from the Chilaw river to the hook of Dondra.”

What makes the map extraordinary, however, is its detail. It marks the old administrative divisions through which the cinnamon country extended; villages and places associated with the seasonal work of the peelers; the forty-six numbered points along the annual route of the Cinnamon Captain; and the five coastal places to which the peeled bark was delivered.

Two further Dutch maps narrow the lens. A plan of Salpiti Korale maps cinnamon gardens and grounds among localities that are now part of greater Colombo and its suburbs. At an even more microscopic level, three drawings of a single chena near Hanwella represent individual trees by letters and colour and enumerate them.

Together they preserve an unusually detailed geography of Ceylon cinnamon and the enterprise built around it under the Dutch.

Van Campen’s map in facsimile M. F. N. Rotteveel’s 1901 facsimile of Van Campen’s 1719 map.

Much of that detail can be recovered today through the meticulous work of R. L. Brohier and J. H. O. Paulusz. Their descriptions and translations of Dutch maps and records provide the context that makes otherwise cryptic routes, symbols and localities intelligible.

A Circuit Through Cinnamon Country

Van Campen’s map immediately provides an overview of the country from which cinnamon was obtained. It is divided according to the old Sinhalese territorial and administrative divisions of korales and pattus. Many of their names, and the places associated with them, remain recognizable today, although their old boundaries are now less familiar. The map may surprise modern readers who are unaware that its cinnamon country extended as far north as the Chilaw River and south to Dondra.

The map also makes clear that the geography of cinnamon did not coincide neatly with political boundaries. It marks the limits of Dutch territory and the adjoining lands of the Kandyan king, while cinnamon also grew beyond Dutch-controlled territory. Access to cinnamon in Kandyan territory could therefore depend upon relations with the Kandyan court.

The most striking feature of the map is the minute detail with which this cinnamon geography is recorded. Forty-six numbered points trace the ordinary land route followed by the Cinnamon Captain, head of the Mahabadda or Cinnamon Department, on his annual general visitation at the commencement of the harvest. Starting from Colombo, his circuit took him north and then through a succession of korales to the south before he returned along the coast to Colombo.

The route recorded in Brohier and Paulusz runs through Negombo, Pittigal Korale, Hapitigam Korale, Sinna Korale, Rayigam Korale, Pasdun Korale, Wallalawiti Korale, Galle Korale, Beligama Korale, Morawa Korale and Dolosdas Korale, the latter embracing the Gangaboda and Welaboda Pattus of Matara and the eastern and western Giruwa Pattus of Hambantota.

On the map, the numbered stations allow that journey to be followed across the country. Even where individual names become difficult to decipher on a reduced reproduction, the extent of the circuit can be grasped.

But another set of small red circles gives the map an even more unusual human geography. In the words of its description, these indicate the villages and places “in which and near which” the cinnamon peelers commonly pitched their tents during the peeling season “in order to gather that costly bark.” These temporary encampments belonged to the older system of harvesting in which parties of peelers travelled through the cinnamon country, cutting suitable stems and bringing them back in bundles to be peeled and fashioned into quills.

The red circles are scattered through the cinnamon country densely enough that the map gives a visual impression of the scale of the seasonal harvest before one has deciphered every locality. J. H. O. Paulusz considered the map “of unusual value, indeed indispensable for studying the history of the Salagama community because it illustrates their manner of life, the districts in which they lived, and the hardships and dangers they endured.”

The Captain’s numbered route and the peelers’ encampments therefore record two related geographies. One is the official circuit of inspection. The other is the far more dispersed geography of the people actually gathering and preparing the cinnamon.

The map completes the picture by identifying five coastal delivery points—Negombo, Colombo, Beruwala, Galle and Matara—to which the peeled bark was “carried on their shoulders and transported with great labour.” Taken together, these details allow the old cinnamon enterprise to be visualized almost in motion: the Captain moving between his 46 stations; peelers establishing seasonal camps in and near particular villages; cinnamon being gathered and prepared in the surrounding country; and the finished bark moving towards five points on the coast.

The map also bears the letters A–H on a smaller circuit associated with Maradana, “where the best of that fragrant bark is peeled.” Brohier’s explanatory note identifies the area within this orbit as including Maradana, Wellicadde, Kirilepona and Bamblepitie—names recognizable today as Maradana, Welikada, Kirulapone and Bambalapitiya. These are now parts of a densely built city; on Van Campen’s map they belonged to the geography of cinnamon.

That juxtaposition is one of the pleasures of reading the old maps. Familiar names survive, but the landscapes attached to them have changed almost beyond recognition.

Salpiti Korale, Plot by Plot

A second map sharpens the focus further.

Where Van Campen’s map provides an overview of the geographical reach and movement of the cinnamon enterprise, the detailed plan of Salpiti Korale attaches cinnamon more closely to individual grounds and localities in and around what is now greater Colombo. Similar detailed plans were drawn for other korales and areas in which cinnamon grew.

The plate itself carries a striking collection of names familiar to a modern resident: Kotte, Mirihana, Welikada, Nawala, Pepiliyana, Kollupitiya, Wellawatte and Galkissa, or Mount Lavinia, among others. They appear beside or among numbered and outlined cinnamon grounds. The importance of the map is not that all of modern Colombo lay within Salpiti Korale—it did not—but that it allows particular 18th-century cinnamon localities around the expanding city and its eastern and southern approaches to be set against places we know today.

A related survey shows how closely Dutch mapping followed Colombo’s expansion. Brohier notes that, as settlement spread beyond the Fort and Pettah, a map made about 1766 by Lieutenant C. D. Wentzel surveyed the Colombo district for a radius of five miles in all directions from the Fort. Particular care was taken to mark the cinnamon-growing districts, partly for the information of the authorities and partly as a warning to inhabitants.

The records preserve some striking glimpses of areas we do not normally associate with cinnamon. A Dutch governor deplored the number of valuable bushes being “pitifully cut down for firewood especially near Liveramentu (Thimbirigasyaya-Narahenpita) where it grows luxuriantly.”

It is difficult now to associate Thimbirigasyaya and Narahenpita with luxuriant cinnamon, yet that is precisely why this cartographic detail matters. Pepiliyana, Nawala, Welikada, Wellawatte and other familiar names cease for a moment to be simply modern suburbs and become part of an older cinnamon geography.

In this sense, the Salpiti map performs a different task from Van Campen’s. The first shows the astonishing geographical reach of the cinnamon enterprise. Salpiti brings us down almost plot by plot.

Down to the Individual Tree

A third example reduces the scale to a single piece of ground. Three charts dated 1720 depict a chena called Katugalavila in the village of Degambedda in Hevagam Korale, about half an hour’s journey from the fort at Hanwella. The original survey was by L. Boomgart; the version reproduced by Brohier and Paulusz is an 1899 facsimile by M. F. N. Rotteveel.

The three drawings show the same ground before clearing, after cutting and burning, and after planting and regrowth. Seventeen kinds of tree are identified by letters, with their Sinhala names recorded in Dutch spelling. Before clearing, the plot contained five cinnamon trees; in the third stage it contained 229 cinnamon shoots and young trees. Brohier called the plan both “a picture of the ground” and a “working-plan,” and remarked on its striking representation of detail and use of colour.

This small survey is useful here chiefly because it shows just how far Dutch cartographic attention could descend: from an extensive cinnamon country, to individual grounds, and finally to individual trees.

The 1719 map shows the cinnamon country extending from the Chilaw River to Dondra. The Salpiti Korale map brings us into recognizable localities around Colombo and its suburbs. At Degambedda, near Hanwella, the cartographic lens descends to a single chena and finally to individual cinnamon trees.

Taken together, the three maps turn the broad designation Canelle Landen into something much more precise: a country of rivers, political boundaries and old administrative divisions; roads, villages and seasonal encampments; identifiable cinnamon grounds; and, finally, individual plants.

They also help explain the practical appeal of later attempts to concentrate cinnamon production in more accessible and systematically cultivated grounds. Van Campen’s map makes visible the enormous geographical reach of the older, dispersed system—the distances travelled, the seasonal encampments and the labour required to bring the prepared bark to the coast. The hardships of that system are less visible on the map itself, but they are amply recorded in the contemporary documentation. The later transformation of cinnamon cultivation is another chapter. These maps preserve the geography that preceded it.

Retracing the Circuit

There is a modern postscript to this story. In recent years, the Pekoe Trail, a long-distance walking route through the tea estates of the hill country, has offered a new way of experiencing Ceylon’s montane landscape and tea heritage. The Cinnamon Captain’s circuit suggests the possibility of a low-country counterpart.

It need not be a walking trail. Selected stages of the forty-six-point circuit could be retraced largely by road, linking surviving place names and old cinnamon localities with places where cinnamon is still cultivated today. The korales no longer function as administrative divisions, roads have changed and much of the old cinnamon country has been transformed or built over, but enough of the underlying geography survives to make the old route intelligible.

Three centuries ago the circuit was travelled at the commencement of the harvest by an official inspecting the cinnamon country. Retraced today, it could offer a way of rediscovering a geography that these extraordinary maps have preserved in remarkable detail.

Notes: This article draws extensively on Volume II of R. L. Brohier and J. H. O. Paulusz’s Land, Maps & Surveys: A Descriptive Catalogue of Historical Maps in the Surveyor General’s Office, whose detailed descriptions, annotations and translations of Dutch maps and records make it possible to reconstruct much of the geography discussed here.

Images 3–5 reproduced from R. L. Brohier and J. H. O. Paulusz, Land, Maps & Surveys, Vol. II (1951).