The Ceylon Journal, Vol. 1 No. 2:A remarkable production

Reivew by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
Edited by Avisha Mario Seneviratne

When over forty years ago I produced the first volume of the New Lankan Review, which proved popular if controversial, I realised that the real test would be producing a sequel. That was managed after a year, and I continued publication over eight volumes, stopping with a memorial volume for Richard de Zoysa after his death, for by then I had got Channels going, the journal of the English Writers Cooperative. That had more limited scope, for it was about creative writing, whereas NLR had had social criticism too. But by 1990, I felt it was time to move on to other things, and began my intensive work with regard to English Language Teaching.

This preamble is because I have to express my congratulations to Avishka Mario Seneviratne for having so swiftly produced a second number of his Ceylon Journal, ably fulfilling his commitment to make it a bi-annual publication. And once again he has amply justified his commitment to expanding understanding of ‘the very many facets of the history of Sri Lanka’

A couple of writers feature again after their fascinating contributions to the first number. But they deal here with very different subjects, the distinguished historian C. R. de Silva moving from a study of Galle to an account of Dona Catherina, whom the Portuguese hoped would be a puppet sovereign of Kandy, but who instead provided legitimacy to Vimaladharmasuriya, who wrenched the kingdom from Portuguese control.

Avishka himself, having written previously about the enigmatic Ronald Raven Hart, moves to the inspiration for the Journal, Charles Ambrose Lorenz, and has a fascinating account of his work and the contemporaries who helped him along. The glimpses of giants of the last century, such as Christoper Elliott and Richard Morgan, and the Britishers who ran the place including the intellectual Emerson Tennent who sadly supported the excesses of Viscount Torrington during the 1848 rebellion, are richly evocative of those distant days. And happily Avishka illustrates the article with reproductions of Lorenz’s caricatures of his contemporaries.

The volume is dedicated to Fr. S. G. Perera, whose history textbook was a staple in schools for many years. There is a rich account of how he filled the gap when there was no material for the study of local history, even though one of the more enlightened British governors noted the need for schools to take this up. And that article is followed by a helpful bibliography of Fr. Perera’s publications, which include interestingly ‘A Priest’s Letters to a Niece on Love, Courtship and Marriage’.

There are two interesting excursions into the byways of our history. Manohara de Silva, who had written in the previous number, now deals with the ambiguities in the different versions of the 1815 convention, and notes how the British won round the Buddhist clergy by a different version in Sinhala about the primacy of not just Buddhism but the Buddha Sasana, which would include the Sangha. Very different is the account of the Nittaewa, in which Pradeep Jayatunga, looks at two very different early accounts, and concludes that evidence of a human dimension has been crowded out by stress on bestial characteristics.

Fascinating was the account of a now almost forgotten politician, Wijayananda Dahanayake, who was briefly Prime Minister. This was almost by accident since the most senior member of the cabinet, C P de Silva, was away when Bandaranaike was assassinated and Dahanayake had been acting. He had a glorious time, sacking the ministers who had contributed to his elevation, and then setting up a political party which won no seats at all in the election that followed. But he was back in the July election, and then became a Minister in the UNP government of 1965, though he left that party soon after its defeat in 1970.

But he was back again, not in 1977, when he lost as an independent, but shortly thereafter when he had got the victorious candidate for Galle unseated through an election petition which he argued himself. And having then come in as a UNP candidate in the by-election, he was briefly made a Minister by J R Jayewardene, before that long parliament was finally dissolved in 1988.

As with most of the articles in the Journal, the meat of the account of Dahanayake is not in the record of his life in parliament but rather in the personal touches. Some of the anecdotes are well known, such as his donning of a loincloth to protest against state restrictions on dress material, but even more telling is his producing in parliament the jacket of a hospital attendant and telling the Speaker, a renowned philanderer, that he was sure he was quite familiar with this. And perhaps most characteristic of the man was his reply when asked why he travelled in third class in trains, when parliamentarians were given first class tickets, that it was because there was no fourth class.

I have dwelt at length on Dahanayake because I have a soft spot for him. Embedded in my memory is a journey in his car from Kandy when he gave me a lift, after we had both been staying with the Government Agent W J Fernando, and he enriched the journey with a disquisition of the joys of English literature. He was immensely erudite, and the article captures that as well as his entertaining quixoticism.

Then there are two pieces about interesting visitors to this country in the first couple of decades after independence. Malaka Talwatte writes about Taprobane Island, which was rented for many years by the American writer Paul Bowles. Amongst his guests was Peggy Guggenheim, and the article expands on her contribution to enhancing the appreciation of modern art. When I was very young I read about this dimension of the contribution of that extraordinary family to the display of art, but I did not know before that she had spent some time in this country.

The second about visitors is related to this, in that it deals with Donald Friend, who spent several years with Bevis Bawa at Brief. The latter took Friend on a visit to Taprobane Island when Bowles was there, and wrote about the problems Bowles had with the locals. That was the main reason he left the place.

The writer of ‘Friends of Friend’, Srilal Perera, is not described in the note with which the volume begins, giving details of the writers. I have no idea then of his background, but he must be congratulated for a rich account of not only artists such as the architect Ulrik Plesner, but also the controversial planter Mark Bracegirdle whom a Governor had tried to deport in the thirties. The connection is tenuous, for Friend lived in Ceylon in the fifties, but a biographer noted that he moved in the same circles as Bracegirdle in London after he had left Ceylon.

Another cultural activist who did much for the country is commemorated in an article by Michael Meyler, who is described as a language teacher, writer and editor. He writes about Richard Boyle, who died in 2023. Having come out first to Sri Lanka in 1973 to work on the not very successful film ‘The God King’ with Lester James Peries, he was so taken with the country that he was involved in two more films here during the next few years, including with the redoubtable Manik Sandrasagara.

Meyler is most entertaining about the various projects Manik devised which Richard tried to support, but more fulfillingly he met here his future wife Sharmini Chanmugam, and they set up their own video production company. Their work was much appreciated, and they were commissioned to create memorable accounts of the country, though Richard also worked on a series of books which explored elements of our languages and interesting personalities.

I have written at some length about many articles in the second Ceylon Journal, and still not mentioned the keynote piece which records many depictions of Adam’s Peak through the ages, in literature and through sketches. The article, by Donald Stadtner, an American academic, has fabulous illustrations from a 15th century manuscript now in Paris, about which I had known nothing previously. It deserves to be better known, and the writer and the editor must be congratulated for giving it a wider audience.

In addition to the many articles, the journal has a note about the launch of the first number last August, and reproduces the text of the thought-provoking keynote address made by Rohan Pethiyagoda. In tracing the history of rubber cultivation, he touches on social and economic changes which rubber supported, and regrets what he sees as a mindless reaction to colonialism so that ‘We rejected the good values of the West along with the bad: like courtesy, queueing and the idea that corruption is wrong’.

The journal is a remarkable production and, since the second lived up to the first, I am sure the third will appear soon and continue with similar excellence.