Features
Thapodhanaramaya in Karandeniya
By Uditha Devapriya
Photographs by Manusha Gunarathna
The Buddhist temples of the Southern Province, in particular those going back to the late 19th Century, display a uniquely fascinating style. They cannot be viewed in isolation from the Kandyan temples though, as Senake Bandaranayake has noted, it is difficult to ascertain or conclude whether they were an offshoot of the Kandyan Period, or whether they were merely influenced by it. This debate does not concern us at present: what should concern us is that the murals of these temples reflected their times, and that no two temples, even in the same locality, were ever the same, a point I gathered when I travelled some 50 km from the Sunandaramaya in Ambalangoda to Kataluva in Ahangama a year ago.
These temples contain several telltale signs which immediately give away their historical origins. These signs often tend to be more reliable guides than the written word or the oral record. To give just one example, the Sudharmaramaya in Bope, near Poddala, dates to 1736 according to an inscription at the entrance, but it probably goes back much earlier, judging by the architecture, particularly the window railings, which I am told display motifs from the Early Dutch Period. The murals seem more recent, vaguely reminiscent of the murals at the Sunandaramaya in Ambalangoda. That, of course, belies another point: no two parts of the same temple in these regions are ever the same. The architecture may be 18th century, but the paintings come from a later time, the 19th or even 20th century.
I embarked on my one-day tour across the South last year in a friend’s van. My friend resides in Karandeniya, off Ambalangoda. Since my focus was on Ambalangoda and Balapitiya, all the way until Ahangama, I overlooked the temples in his area. It turned out that the oldest temple in Karandeniya, the Thapodhanaramaya, stood in his neighbourhood. When I returned to his hometown a few weeks ago, I hence paid it a visit.
Unlike the Sunandaramaya and the Pushparamaya nearby, the Thapodhanaramaya remains neglected, though it is patronised by locals. According to its head priest its origins go back to 1856, though he argued that its history may be older. He added that the murals displayed a Kandyan style. This struck me as odd, since they looked undeniably Southern, dating at most to the late 19th century. Of course, I may be wrong.
The Thapodhanaramaya does not appear on Google. To the best of my knowledge, it has not caught the traveller’s or the art historian’s attention. Yet the murals here rank among the finest in the region, comparable to those in the Sunandaramaya or at Randombe. They are sharper and more clearly drawn, certainly much better preserved.
Some of them remind me of the murals at the Subodharamaya at Karagampitiya. One panel, which caught my eye at once, features a visiting group of noble families at the bottom half and two men clad in coat and tie in the top half. That sort of incongruity remains the most recognisable, distinguishing feature of Southern temple murals, and it is very much present here.
The most interesting mural, which is the subject of this essay, is to be found at the back, at the entrance to the inner sanctum of the temple. It was customary for Southern temples to feature a portrait of the British monarch, and for a long time that monarch happened to be Victoria. Her portrait would invariably be flanked by symbols of the British State, including the lion and the unicorn.
That was either a pragmatic response, on the part of Buddhist monks and locals, to the reality of British colonialism, or a symbol of their acceptance of the British queen as their sovereign. Given that, I was surprised to come across a portrait, not of a British monarch, but of an unidentifiable man of royal stock. Oddly enough his portrait was flanked by those very symbols of the British State, i.e. a lion and a unicorn.
One would be forgiven for assuming, as I did, that the mural represented a Sri Lankan sovereign, perhaps the doomed king himself, Sri Vikrama Rajasinghe. This, however, could not be so, since colonial authorities would not have tolerated a likeness of a king they had deposed half a century ago, and that at a place which commanded the patronage of locals and local elites. Though this theory should not be dismissed, it remains implausible. What, then, are we to make of the portrait, and who could its subject be?
As always, one requires a closer inspection. And on closer inspection, one discerns several incongruities. The portrait, though resembling a man, seems eerily feminine. The subject is wearing a crown, but he is also donning a headdress, hardly in keeping with the style of Kandyan kings. His eyes seem ethereal, foreign, hardly masculine.
He sports a moustache and a beard, but these seem detached from other aspects and symbols. The crown at the top of the panel also looks British, a point reinforced by the inclusion of the lion and the unicorn. Given these contradictions, it’s difficult to assume, still less argue, that the mural is of a Sri Lankan monarch, specifically the deposed Sri Vikrama Rajasinghe.
A friend put me on the right track. He argued that this was actually a painting grafted on another painting. What did he mean by that? In 1856, the year of the Thapodhanaramaya’s establishment, the British monarch was Victoria. She died in 1901, giving way to her son, Edward VII. It is possible that the original mural would have been Victoria’s, but that upon her passing, the painters grafted masculine qualities – the beard and the moustache – to resemble her (male) successor. This is a radical, ingenious theory, and I initially doubted it, but after examining the portrait I concede it now. It sounds more probable than the other theory, and it is in line with the period to which these paintings belong.
It is difficult to say whether this mural is unique to the Thapodhanaramaya, and whether these paintings exist elsewhere. From my travels and my reading, I can only say such murals have not caught the attention of scholars, including art historians. This may be an omission on their part, but an understandable omission, given that the Thapodhanaramaya itself has escaped the historian’s radar. What, then, are we to make of this particular portrait?
To me it represents a response, by locals, to events far removed from their home – succession in the British Crown – as well as their perceptions of their new king, a point made more relevant, I think, by the fact that the new king had visited their country in 1875. It is possible that they were sufficiently aware of Edward VII’s features, from that visit, to replace Victoria’s likeness with a likeness of her son. Of course, we may never know.
We must be grateful to Senake Bandaranayake, because his Rock and Wall Paintings of Sri Lanka remains the one stop, indispensable guide to this subject, which is as much a credit to him as it is a critique of those who sought to follow him but never did. The Central Cultural Fund, to which Bandaranaike made a seminal contribution, did much, but after a brief period of activity in the 1980s it appears to have simmered down, no doubt owing to lack of funds and patronage.
What makes it especially poignant is that a great many of these temples and murals are now fading away: as with Ozymandias, almost “nothing beside” remains of the magnificent styles and patterns which once distinguished them. In that sense, is up to us to capture and preserve these relics. The paintings at the Thapodhanaramaya, and the portrait of the mysterious sovereign in particular, underlies that point clearly.
The writer is an international relations analyst, independent researcher, and freelance columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.
by Kaushalya Perera
Time has, by and large, stood still in the business of academic staff recruitment to state universities. Qualifications have proliferated and evolved to be more interdisciplinary, but our selection processes and evaluation criteria are unchanged since at least the late 1990s. But before I delve into the problems, I will describe the existing processes and schemes of recruitment. The discussion is limited to UGC-governed state universities (and does not include recruitment to medical and engineering sectors) though the problems may be relevant to other higher education institutions (HEIs).
How recruitment happens currently in SL state universities
Academic ranks in Sri Lankan state universities can be divided into three tiers (subdivisions are not discussed).
* Lecturer (Probationary)
– recruited with a four-year undergraduate degree. A tiny step higher is the Lecturer (Unconfirmed), recruited with a postgraduate degree but no teaching experience.
* A Senior Lecturer can be recruited with certain postgraduate qualifications and some number of years of teaching and research.
* Above this is the professor (of four types), which can be left out of this discussion since only one of those (Chair Professor) is by application.
State universities cannot hire permanent academic staff as and when they wish. Prior to advertising a vacancy, approval to recruit is obtained through a mind-numbing and time-consuming process (months!) ending at the Department of Management Services. The call for applications must list all ranks up to Senior Lecturer. All eligible candidates for Probationary to Senior Lecturer are interviewed, e.g., if a Department wants someone with a doctoral degree, they must still advertise for and interview candidates for all ranks, not only candidates with a doctoral degree. In the evaluation criteria, the first degree is more important than the doctoral degree (more on this strange phenomenon later). All of this is only possible when universities are not under a ‘hiring freeze’, which governments declare regularly and generally lasts several years.
Problem type 1
– Archaic processes and evaluation criteria
Twenty-five years ago, as a probationary lecturer with a first degree, I was a typical hire. We would be recruited, work some years and obtain postgraduate degrees (ideally using the privilege of paid study leave to attend a reputed university in the first world). State universities are primarily undergraduate teaching spaces, and when doctoral degrees were scarce, hiring probationary lecturers may have been a practical solution. The path to a higher degree was through the academic job. Now, due to availability of candidates with postgraduate qualifications and the problems of retaining academics who find foreign postgraduate opportunities, preference for candidates applying with a postgraduate qualification is growing. The evaluation scheme, however, prioritises the first degree over the candidate’s postgraduate education. Were I to apply to a Faculty of Education, despite a PhD on language teaching and research in education, I may not even be interviewed since my undergraduate degree is not in education. The ‘first degree first’ phenomenon shows that universities essentially ignore the intellectual development of a person beyond their early twenties. It also ignores the breadth of disciplines and their overlap with other fields.
This can be helped (not solved) by a simple fix, which can also reduce brain drain: give precedence to the doctoral degree in the required field, regardless of the candidate’s first degree, effected by a UGC circular. The suggestion is not fool-proof. It is a first step, and offered with the understanding that any selection process, however well the evaluation criteria are articulated, will be beset by multiple issues, including that of bias. Like other Sri Lankan institutions, universities, too, have tribal tendencies, surfacing in the form of a preference for one’s own alumni. Nevertheless, there are other problems that are, arguably, more pressing as I discuss next. In relation to the evaluation criteria, a problem is the narrow interpretation of any regulation, e.g., deciding the degree’s suitability based on the title rather than considering courses in the transcript. Despite rhetoric promoting internationalising and inter-disciplinarity, decision-making administrative and academic bodies have very literal expectations of candidates’ qualifications, e.g., a candidate with knowledge of digital literacy should show this through the title of the degree!
Problem type 2 – The mess of badly regulated higher education
A direct consequence of the contemporary expansion of higher education is a large number of applicants with myriad qualifications. The diversity of degree programmes cited makes the responsibility of selecting a suitable candidate for the job a challenging but very important one. After all, the job is for life – it is very difficult to fire a permanent employer in the state sector.
Widely varying undergraduate degree programmes.
At present, Sri Lankan undergraduates bring qualifications (at times more than one) from multiple types of higher education institutions: a degree from a UGC-affiliated state university, a state university external to the UGC, a state institution that is not a university, a foreign university, or a private HEI aka ‘private university’. It could be a degree received by attending on-site, in Sri Lanka or abroad. It could be from a private HEI’s affiliated foreign university or an external degree from a state university or an online only degree from a private HEI that is ‘UGC-approved’ or ‘Ministry of Education approved’, i.e., never studied in a university setting. Needless to say, the diversity (and their differences in quality) are dizzying. Unfortunately, under the evaluation scheme all degrees ‘recognised’ by the UGC are assigned the same marks. The same goes for the candidates’ merits or distinctions, first classes, etc., regardless of how difficult or easy the degree programme may be and even when capabilities, exposure, input, etc are obviously different.
Similar issues are faced when we consider postgraduate qualifications, though to a lesser degree. In my discipline(s), at least, a postgraduate degree obtained on-site from a first-world university is preferable to one from a local university (which usually have weekend or evening classes similar to part-time study) or online from a foreign university. Elitist this may be, but even the best local postgraduate degrees cannot provide the experience and intellectual growth gained by being in a university that gives you access to six million books and teaching and supervision by internationally-recognised scholars. Unfortunately, in the evaluation schemes for recruitment, the worst postgraduate qualification you know of will receive the same marks as one from NUS, Harvard or Leiden.
The problem is clear but what about a solution?
Recruitment to state universities needs to change to meet contemporary needs. We need evaluation criteria that allows us to get rid of the dross as well as a more sophisticated institutional understanding of using them. Recruitment is key if we want our institutions (and our country) to progress. I reiterate here the recommendations proposed in ‘Considerations for Higher Education Reform’ circulated previously by Kuppi Collective:
* Change bond regulations to be more just, in order to retain better qualified academics.
* Update the schemes of recruitment to reflect present-day realities of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary training in order to recruit suitably qualified candidates.
* Ensure recruitment processes are made transparent by university administrations.
Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.
(Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.)
This week, too, the spotlight is on an outfit that has gained popularity, mainly through social media.
Last week we had MISTER Band in our scene, and on 10th February, Yellow Beatz – both social media favourites.
Talento is a seven-piece band that plays all types of music, from the ‘60s to the modern tracks of today.
The band has reached many heights, since its inception in 2012, and has gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band in the scene here.
The members that makeup the outfit have a solid musical background, which comes through years of hard work and dedication
Their portfolio of music contains a mix of both western and eastern songs and are carefully selected, they say, to match the requirements of the intended audience, occasion, or event.
Although the baila is a specialty, which is inherent to this group, that originates from Moratuwa, their repertoire is made up of a vast collection of love, classic, oldies and modern-day hits.
The musicians, who make up Talento, are:
Prabuddha Geetharuchi:
Geilee Fonseka: Dynamic and charismatic vocalist
Prabuddha Geetharuchi: The main man behind the band Talento
(Vocalist/ Frontman). He is an avid music enthusiast and was mentored by a lot of famous musicians, and trainers, since he was a child. Growing up with them influenced him to take on western songs, as well as other music styles. A Peterite, he is the main man behind the band Talento and is a versatile singer/entertainer who never fails to get the crowd going.
Geilee Fonseka (Vocals):
A dynamic and charismatic vocalist whose vibrant stage presence, and powerful voice, bring a fresh spark to every performance. Young, energetic, and musically refined, she is an artiste who effortlessly blends passion with precision – captivating audiences from the very first note. Blessed with an immense vocal range, Geilee is a truly versatile singer, confidently delivering Western and Eastern music across multiple languages and genres.
Chandana Perera (Drummer):
His expertise and exceptional skills have earned him recognition as one of the finest acoustic drummers in Sri Lanka. With over 40 tours under his belt, Chandana has demonstrated his dedication and passion for music, embodying the essential role of a drummer as the heartbeat of any band.
Harsha Soysa:
(Bassist/Vocalist). He a chorister of the western choir of St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, who began his musical education under famous voice trainers, as well as bass guitar trainers in Sri Lanka. He has also performed at events overseas. He acts as the second singer of the band
Udara Jayakody:
(Keyboardist). He is also a qualified pianist, adding technical flavour to Talento’s music. His singing and harmonising skills are an extra asset to the band. From his childhood he has been a part of a number of orchestras as a pianist. He has also previously performed with several famous western bands.
Aruna Madushanka:
(Saxophonist). His proficiciency in playing various instruments, including the saxophone, soprano saxophone, and western flute, showcases his versatility as a musician, and his musical repertoire is further enhanced by his remarkable singing ability.
Prashan Pramuditha:
(Lead guitar). He has the ability to play different styles, both oriental and western music, and he also creates unique tones and patterns with the guitar..
The JJ Twins, the Sri Lankan musical duo, performing in the Maldives, and known for blending R&B, Hip Hop, and Sri Lankan rhythms, thereby creating a unique sound, have come out with a brand-new single ‘Me Mawathe.’
In fact, it’s a very special milestone for the twin brothers, Julian and Jason Prins, as ‘Me Mawathe’ is their first ever Sinhala song!
‘Me Mawathe’ showcases a fresh new sound, while staying true to the signature harmony and emotion that their fans love.
This heartfelt track captures the beauty of love, journey, and connection, brought to life through powerful vocals and captivating melodies.
It marks an exciting new chapter for the JJ Twins as they expand their musical journey and connect with audiences in a whole new way.
Their recent album, ‘CONCLUDED,’ explores themes of love, heartbreak, and healing, and include hits like ‘Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ and ‘You Left Me Here to Die’ which showcase their emotional intensity.
Readers could stay connected and follow JJ Twins on social media for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and upcoming releases:
Instagram: http://instagram.com/jjtwinsofficial
TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jjtwinsmusic
Facebook: http://facebook.com/jjtwinssingers
YouTube: http://youtube.com/jjtwins
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