Independence Day Two Thousand Five Hundred Years Ago

by Ernest Macintyre

“Me mage putha novetha”
“Is this not my son”

It was to be my last few days in Peradeniya University. I was seated on my bed wondering what it had all been about. We made friends which would last a lifetime and that was enough. We had had experiences, one of which was called “Maname”, the work of dramatic art created by Ediriwira Sarachchandra about circumstantial fate and the human condition, which would last as long as Lanka existed.

The final exams were to begin on the next day, which was why I felt frustrated that Sarachchandra’s next creation ” Sinha Bahu” was to have its first public tryout this evening. At that moment, Rasanayagam, whom we shortened to “Rasa” like my Macintyre had become “Mac”, walked in. I had told him about “Sinha Bahu” that evening and our exams the next morning. “Machan” he said, “Whatever is going to happen at the exam tomorrow, will happen whatever we do tonight, we are ready for the exam, let’s go to “Sinha Bahu”.

I made contact with my female friend, Sita Fernando at Sangamitta Hall, to hear that she had already decided to see ” Sinha Bahu” that evening, despite the exams the next day.

And so it was that I and my two friends found ourselves that evening, waiting for the play of the legendary Lion, seated on the terraced cut outs on the earth of the circular open-air theatre ,called “Wala” in Sinhala.

A single spotlight, right front, revealed the Pothe Gura or story teller, chanting the opening words of Sinha Bahu, a play using, overtly, a tale from the first part of the Mahavamsa legend, that in time, led to the origin of the Sinhala Nation.The tragic story unfolded in music, dance movement and the poetry of Ediriwira Sarachchandra.

As the stage lights went out, to end the experience, almost abruptly, when lion Sinhaya fell dead from his human son’s third arrow in the chest the dumb founded silence, lasting seemingly to continue without let up, covertly suggested other considerations beyond the extracted part of the Mahavamsa story. The word ‘theatre’ as a performed event, usually satisfied at closing curtain that the subject matter, the story was rounded off as a whole. When this performance, of Sinha Bahu ended in the way it did, it seemed to invite the audience to think of what was left unperformed in the larger story of the Mahavamsa which the they were familiar with. The origin of the Sinhalese.

The three of us had this feeling and the measured clapping in the open air suggested slow hand movements because of accompanying thought.The implications of this unusual response to the end of a play were in Sita’s mind as we finally left the open-air theatre. Sita had obtained special permission from her warden at Sangamitta Hall to come back late, that night.

We walked to the New Peradeniya Hotel, just three quarters of a mile away and sat down to await our dinner. I had a glass of arrack, in my hand, so had Rasa. We started discussing Sarachchandra’s “Sinha Bahu”. Sita was clearly excited.

” What we experienced tonight could be, in effect, a new theory of theatre. This theory has to be worked from what we experienced, because, I think, it is unwritten anywhere.”

“The prolonged silence when the play ended suddenly, and the thoughtful measured clapping, conveyed something.” I said.

Sita continued,

” The plot line from the Mahavamsa legend of the origin of the Sinhala people, is very well known to Lankans, especially Sinhalese. Unselfconsciously, the legend is a part of a people’s being. Do you realize what Sarachchandra may have done? He ends the play, the moment the Lion father falls dead, with a sudden blackout in the lighting. Play over! But it is not over . In the theatre he leaves unperformed, the rest of the legend, stopping at a point

“The playwright is aware that his audience cannot but create another longer play in their thoughts and feelings, relating to this play. That theatre experience can extend from a play experienced to another conceived in the mind.

At that point of the conversation, it was getting late. We were ready to walk back along the Galaha Road . There was some moonlight.

After walking for a short while Sita said that the continuity to the abruptly paused Sinha Bahu had already formed in her mind.

“Tell us, “said Rasa.

Sita related it, stopping on the road now and then, at points in her imagined story whenever she felt like an excited discoverer.

Sita: I don’t think that Sinha bahu as king of a place called Sinhapura, after killing his lion father, would have got laid down on cloth, for a flag, a figure representing the life he put away to move on as a human.

I said, “Logical”

Sita: The Mahavamsa does not tell us, what his son prince Vijaya was rebellious about, to make his father expel him and his followers from the kingdom .

I could not remember whether the epic says what Vijaya was rebellious about, but Sita was probably right.

Sita: Yes, Sinha bahu ,as a young boy , did not ask why they lived in a cave, like animals. When he grew to manhood, he asked his mother Suppa Devi. Similarly, it was when Vijaya had passed from childhood that he first noticed that his father’s two hands looked different, more like the paws of an animal, he did not know about a lion grandfather who had been killed . Sinha Bahu’s explanation to his very young son was that sometimes hands in people are deformed at birth in this way. The barely passed childhood Vijaya, accepted the story.

Vijaya grew up, becoming a young man. It was his turn to ask why they left one kingdom for another. But his father kept putting him off, saying things like, ” I have no time now, another time”. This happened too many times, not to arouse some kind of suspicion and mystery in Vijaya. He then went to his mother Sinhasevali. She was as sympathetic as Suppa Devi her mother was when Sinha Bahu asked why they were confined in a cave.

Sinhaseveli told her son the whole story.

Vijaya was not only stunned , but distressed. His distress soon turned to anger against his father. It became visible.

His anger was so great that he had to tell his friends and followers. One day a friend who was a good painter of temple murals, offered an idea. He said he could paint on cloth a lion and that Vijaya could proclaim it as the flag of the kingdom. His followers would support him. Vijaya was sadly satisfied that his grandfather could be reborn only on cloth. The work began.

When it was created there was a feeling in Vijaya that this was the most he could do . His re-born grandfather was of the colour of gold, and he stood against a background of reddishness, boldly, with a sword held up in his right paw.

It didn’t take long for Vijaya and his followers, about seven hundred, to run boldly through the country, waving the flag, high on a staff, proclaiming it the flag of the kingdom.

This rebellious behaviour of his son had a complex effect on father Sinha Bahu. Complex, because there was a related history before Vijaya turned against him. Though he had knowingly killed his father, gradually a feeling of guilt crept into Sinha Bahu. Though he had consciously put his father ” behind him” to move on in his human story, deep seated was the semi -unselfconscious feeling of guilt that it had to be that way. Sinhasevali his wife- sister first realized this when Sinha bahu told her that her name and his were not their doing, but now he felt something about it which he couldn’t explain. It began to explain itself to Sinhasevali when he told her that he was naming their new kingdom, Sinhapura.

Now with Vijaya treating him with disdain the feeling of guilt accompanied him more frequently.

When Sinha Bahu’s close followers in court reacted in extreme to the growing rebellion in the country ,and proposed that Vijaya be put to death Sinha Bahu could not bear the thought of his being remembered in history as one who killed both his father and son.

The result was a compromise. The guilt-ridden father’s compromise was to expel from the kingdom Vijaya and his many hundreds of rebellious followers, with their families.

With his army doing the work, they were all seized , put into boats which were pushed out to journey into the ocean. No one, not even his followers knew that the flag wrapped up by Vijaya, was hidden in the boat.

You know the rest, landing in an island called Lanka, the misadventure with Kuveni and the beginning of the Sinhalese ,Vijaya becoming their first king. As he unfurled the flag ,of his grandfather, Vijaya and his followers, his people, felt independent for the first time. “

Our Tamil friend, Rasa did not contribute much to the content of the evening. But he listened intently to the story of the Sinhalese, and said at the end, ” So then what about the Tamils?”

Sita was quick. “Very, very long after Vijaya, the Sinhalese put in two stripes in front of the Lion, one for the Tamils and the other, for others, like Kuveni’s original people , the Moors, Burghers and Malays who came later.”

They reached a point on the road where , at a distance, they could now see in the still remaining moonlight, the now empty and silent open-air theatre, where Sita’s imagination had been set in motion about the first Independence Day.