Dangerous Inheritance (31 page)

This extraordinary contrast in conditions in the two parts of the island makes it seem strange that Ceylon's ancient civilisation should have been confined to the dry plains of the north, now very sparsely populated, instead of developing in the mountainous south where in modern times all the wealth, industry and great bulk of the population has become concentrated. Yet it explains the vast irrigation system created by the early Sinhalese Kings; for only by conserving the heavy
falls of rainwater in innumerable reservoirs could the crops be grown to support their people.

From Dambulla onwards all the vegetation was parched and many trees and bushes had lost their leaves; so it was easy to see for some way on either side into the jungle, which seemed to hold even more wild life. On the side road they had taken they caught sight of several kinds of deer and monkeys, bears, snakes and once a leopard drinking at a distant water-hole, before they had covered the last twelve miles of their morning's run which brought them to Sigiriya.

After a good lunch at the rest house there they explored this strange natural formation that a powerful and evil man had so amazingly conquered for his own protection. It was a vast column of granite six hundred feet in height and on its broad circular flat top there were the remains of what had once been a splendid palace.

It had been built in the fifth century A.D. by King Kasyapa. He had murdered his father by burying him alive and, fearful of the vengeance of his brother Moggallana, had selected the top of the rock as the perfect place in which to fortify himself. There he had reigned for eighteen years, to leave behind a memory so potent with evil that for fourteen centuries no-one had dared go near the rock, and even in recent times archaeologists had found difficulty in persuading natives to work for them excavating the ruins of the palace.

But now Sigiriya had become recognised as one of the marvels of the ancient world, not only for the incredible feat of building a palace on its summit, but also because in caves in the rock there are frescoes and inscriptions testifying to the extraordinarily high state of Sinhalese culture in the distant past. The paintings are of women and depict two types which might well be of different races: jewel-bedecked beauties with pale golden skins toying with flowers, and much darker ones who were evidently their attendants. The inscriptions on the ‘Mirror Wall', so-called from the lovely sheen that time has given it, are love poems in praise of these ladies and as delicate in sentiment as any written by the mediaeval troubadours of Europe many hundreds of years later.

In the branches of the forest trees near the huge rock pile they noticed a number of great balls up to four feet in diameter, and Simon asked Fleur what they were.

‘Hornets' nests,' she replied, ‘and when Douglas first brought me to see Sigiriya he told me a strange story about the hornets in this neighbourhood. Very little sugar cane is grown in Ceylon and the peasants have never been able to pay for imported sugar; so they have always used honey to sweeten things. Yet they have never learned to keep bees; they rob the nests of the wild ones. There are many kinds of bees, from tiny creatures up to the big
bambara
, which make the best honey. They make their nests in high places under overhangs of rock where they are protected from the wind; so you can imagine what a suitable place Sigiriya was for them. In the old days there were hundreds of swarms here. Then, quite recently, sometime in the twenties, the hornets, which had lived for generations at peace with the bees, suddenly declared war on them. Why, nobody has ever discovered, but for weeks on end the most terrible battles were fought in which tens of thousands of insects were engaged. The
bambara
's sting is nearly as poisonous as that of the hornet; but the hornets won and wiped out the entire population of bees in the area.'

From Sigiriya they accomplished the twenty-mile run to Polonnaruwa in ample time to spend the late afternoon among the ruins of Ceylon's second most ancient capital. From as early as the fifth century A.D. northern Ceylon had been invaded by Dravidian races from southern India and, for a time, Tamil Kings had even succeeded in establishing themselves in Anuradhapura. In spite of this the old Kingdom of Rajarata, apart from short periods, had maintained itself in power and splendour until near the year 1000, when dissensions among its ruling caste made it unable to resist further the waves of invasion by the darker-skinned people.

Yet the retreat of the Sinhalese to central Ceylon was very far from being a rout; it was in the nature of a long-term strategic withdrawal. Realising that it would be impossible to grow enough crops to support their people unless enough water could be made available, the Sinhalese Kings entered on
immense labours over a long period of years before finally abandoning their old capital of Anuradhapura. In the neighbourhood of Polonnaruwa they created artificial lakes, some of which are over thirty miles in circumference, and many smaller ones. These so-called ‘Tanks' were connected by a network of canals and locks so skilfully planned that for efficiency they rivalled the system of aquaducts by which the Roman engineers supplied with water the great cities of their Empire. Then, in due course, they built their great new capital, covering many square miles with streets, palaces, courts and temples.

The heyday of this great city had been during the reigns of the Norman Kings in England. Then early in the thirteenth century internecine wars had led to its abandonment and gradual decay. For six hundred years jungle had encroached upon it, the swelling roots of trees in time bringing down tall statues of the Buddha and thick creepers prising apart sections of once solid wall; so that now it was a great area of tumbled ruins emerging here and there from a sea of vegetation.

Yet those ruins still displayed a wealth of intricate carving, and enough of them remained comparatively undamaged to give an idea of the city's ancient grandeur; among them the Vatadage, once a great shrine, and the twenty-five-foot recumbent statue of the Buddha at the Gal Vihare.

As Truss, who had relieved Fleur at the wheel for the afternoon, drove them slowly along the dirt tracks that wound in and out among the masses of crumbling brick, thick tangles of jungle and the remains of ancient waterways, they became even more fascinated by the teeming wild life that abounded on every hand, than in the ruins.

Many of the Tanks, owing to the decay of their embankments, had long since become no more than dry jungle-covered depressions, but others in the past fifty years had been restored. In their shallower parts innumerable crocodiles could be seen basking on mud-banks, herds of elephant and wild buffalo were enjoying their evening bathe, flocks of flamingoes and pelicans skimmed the surface seeking fish, while among the palms, talipot trees and dense bush that fringed the water hordes of monkeys chattered, birds with plumage of every hue
flitted from branch to branch and, occasionally, a bear or leopard could be glimpsed making its way through the undergrowth.

The reclaiming of the ‘Tanks' had been with the object of making a great new agricultural settlement for the landless, so in the neighbourhood of Polonnaruwa there was again a population of many thousands. But it was a poor and squalid area of shacks the sight of which depressed them.

However, the rest house in which Douglas had booked them accommodation for the night—like the great majority of the hundred and more that have been established by the Government to the great benefit of visitors to Ceylon—proved everything they could have desired. The food was plain but excellent, the rooms clean, the servants polite and obliging. As Fleur remarked, it was only the minor officials with Communist leanings who were officious and offensive to the British; the Sinhalese people as a whole were kind, generous and most friendly.

After they had dined they went out on to the screened verandah and, when they had ordered drinks, Fleur said:

‘If you're to get the best out of what you are seeing, now is the time for me to tell you something of the history of the island.' Then as they settled down, she went on:

‘From ancient times throughout the East, Ceylon has been known as Lanka, and the Sinhalese race derives its name from
sinha
which is the Sanscrit for lion. Unlike their neighbours in southern India they are of Aryan descent, as is shown by their features, comparatively fair skins and, in many cases, blue eyes. Their recorded history goes back for two thousand four hundred years and there is ample evidence to show that they once had a civilisation that could have rivalled those of Egypt or Babylon at the same period; so they have a past of which they are justly proud and must never be thought of as an ignorant people.

‘They are known as the Lion race owing to the myth by which they account for their origin. It is said that some time during the millennium before Christ there lived an Indian princess who made her parents very unhappy because she was a
nymphomaniac. Having quarrelled with them, she ran away with a caravan to a distant part of the country then, as men could not satisfy her, she tamed a lion and went to live with him in his den. By him she had twins, a boy and a girl. At the age of sixteen the boy, whose hands and feet resembled the paws of a lion, broke out of the cave, carried off his mother and sister, and later killed his father, the lion. For this feat he was offered the Kingdom of his grandfather, who had just died; but he refused it, made his mother Queen there, became King of the country in which he was born and married his sister. The poor girl is said to have borne him twin sons sixteen times, and the eldest of them was named Vijaya.

‘Vijaya was a thoroughly bad hat, and so enraged the people by the depredation that he and a great band of his followers made on them that, at last, his father was forced to send him and his seven hundred toughs into exile. He landed with them in Ceylon in 504 B.C. on the very day that Gautama Buddha died, and the last decree of the Buddha was that Vijaya should be protected by the gods and make Lanka for ever the stronghold of his religion.

‘In that lies the root cause why through all the centuries the Sinhalese have displayed such unswerving loyalty to Buddhism. But they were fortified in their belief by other happenings. In 307 B.C. the great Indian Emperor, Asoka, sent his son, the Prince-Priest Mahinda, on a mission to spread further Buddhism in Ceylon; in 288 B.C. a branch of the sacred Bo-Tree, under which Gautama attained enlightenment, was sent here and planted at Anuradhapura, and he is said to have visited the island himself three times, the last occasion being when he set foot on Adam's Peak.

‘Of course, as with other religions, there have been schisms and, occasionally, heretic Kings; but neither time nor conquest has lessened the pride which the Sinhalese feel in being a chosen people; and still, today, they look on the Sacred Tooth at Kandy as the talisman that guarantees the divine protection of their race.

‘The greater part of what we know about early Ceylon is due to the
bhikkhu
Mahanama, who lived in the fifth century. In a
chronicle called the
Mahavamsa
he left us a history of the first thousand years of the Rajarata Kingdom and its splendid capital, Anuradhapura. It not only records the doings of warrior and saint Kings like Dutugemunu, who was both, and killed the great Tamil King, Elala, in single combat then buried him with high honours, but also describes the development of Buddhism. It has an extraordinary similarity to the Old Testament, and goes a great way to explain why the Sinhalese, like the Jews, should look on themselves as a unique and chosen people.

‘In ancient times the wealth and culture of the Sinhalese Kingdom was recognised throughout the whole of the then known world. It was famous as the “Land of Jewels”. Chinese, Greeks and Romans all came here to trade for its precious stones, spices and beautiful woods. How long that commerce lasted you may judge when I tell you that the coins of twenty-five Roman Emperors have been dug up here by archaeologists, and there are hundreds of Chinese inscriptions on the walls of caves in which lived hermits who came here because it was the favoured country of the Buddha.

‘The Rajarata Kingdom lasted for twice as long as the Roman Empire and even when, in the time of our William the Conqueror, the Sinhalese withdrew from Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa their ruling caste continued to live here for a further two hundred years in a luxury that rivalled that of the Indian Princes.

‘It was not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that a decline suddenly set in for which two explanations are possible. King Parakrama Bahu I, who ruled during the latter half of the twelfth century, was as great a builder as the early Pharaohs. The works this tyrant decreed should be undertaken were so vast that a great part of his people must have been employed upon them as slaves. That may have led to agriculture being neglected to a point where the nation fell a victim to famine and exhaustion. On the other hand it is possible that for the first time the
anopheles
mosquito arrived here bringing malaria and the disease devastated the population. Probably it was a combination of both.

One thing is certain: malaria has been the curse of Ceylon for the past six or seven centuries. Many thousands of people died from it every year and its ravages debilitated the whole nation. No effective means of checking it could be found until the discovery of D.D.T. Then, during the war, when Ceylon became Britain's main base in Asia and Earl Mountbatten's Headquarters, the Imperial Government launched a great campaign to stamp it out. In five years the number of cases was brought down from over three million a year to a little over one million, and since Independence the Ceylonese Government has continued the war against the mosquito with marked success, greatly reducing the death rate.

‘At the date Polonnaruwa was abandoned the Roman Empire had already ceased to exist for eight hundred years; so from that time the Arabs became the principal traders to the island. Then in 1505 the Portuguese, under Francisco de Almeida, first landed here. Twelve years later they erected a fort at Colombo, and became the undisputed masters of several of the coastal areas for the next hundred years.