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The Kandy Pageant: Sri Lanka’s Own ‘Son Et Lumiere’ Festival

YWCA and Thai Garden Resort treat Charknork Schoolchildren to a fun day

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The Kandy Pageant: Sri Lanka’s Own ‘Son Et Lumiere’ Festival

by Peter Cummins

Introduction

The first - and lasting - impression of Sri Lanka is ‘green’. From stepping aboard the Sri Lanka Airlines Airbus, with its splendid decor, livery and smiling in-flight attendants in their green saris, to the green expanses of the tea-growing country high up in Nuwara Wliya, some 2,000 metres above sea-level, Sri Lanka is the ‘nirvana” of eco-tourism and the Green Peace movements.

Actually, my own visit to Sri Lanka was rather limited, but no less exotic for being brief. I was urged to go by my Sri Lanka colleague Dr. Gamini Abeysekera, the personable representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Thailand - and sponsored by Sri Lanka Airlines and the Sri Lanka Tourist Board. “My life would not be complete,” Gamini assured me, “until I had seen, at first-hand, the Kandy Esela Perahera,” held at the full moon (the Esala) of July/August. “And take your camera,” he did not really need to counsel me!

Kandy Lake and the Dala Maligawa pictured at dusk.

How right he was, for, along with countless thousands of Sri Lankans, sight-seers, visitors and just plain folks who thronged to Kandy to see what is mooted as “the grandest torch-lit pageant in Asia”, I witnessed the overwhelming magnificence of the spectacle. Although many had already seen the Perahera the previous night, they camped out along the route, some waiting more than 16 hours for the Grande Finale.

The major difference for the festival this year was the absence of fighting, bomb threats and assassinations which, understandably, reduce the enthusiasm of any groups for any festival - anywhere in the world. The peace accords between the Sri Lanka government and the LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan), ending decades of murderous civil war, which has been the cause of upwards of 60,000 deaths since July, 1983, had been brokered by the Norwegian government and will, in fact, be held in Thailand from 12 - 17 September.

The Maligawa Tusker, bearing the Buddha Relics, sets off to the Perehara.

Thus, it was a crowd which, feeling safe for the first time in two decades, filled to over-flowing every available space along the route. The ‘village green’ in front of the Dalada Maligawa (the sacred Temple of the Buddha Tooth Relic), lying parallel to the main road along which the cavalcade was to pass, was a veritable sea of animated, friendly and smiling humanity.

The Dalada Maligawa, its surrounding temple complex and other close-by temples and shrines are also the repositories of Sri Lanka culture, architecture, art, history and, of course, religion. Rare paintings, frescoes and stone carvings present a marvellous panorama to the visitor. Religion and culture are inextricably woven into the fabric of Sri Lanka.

From the very earliest travellers, Sri Lanka was constantly mentioned as ‘Seyllan” by such chroniclers as John di Marignoli, a Papal Legate to the court of China in the Fourteenth Century. A piece of folklore still bandied around is that Adam made a visit to this “bewitching island” and, somehow, forgot to return to Eden. (There was not a word about Eve’s thoughts about Adam’s this.)

From “Seyllan’, the island has had a number of sobriquets, including “Serendib”, a lasting and appropriate name bestowed by Arab traders who went to the island seeking exotic spices and the aromatic sandalwood. Serendipity, of course, meaning “the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident” (“Concise Oxford Dictionary) is most apt for the lovely island.

The Annual Kandy Esala Perahera

Kandy, the “hill capital” is some 130 km east of Colombo and was so named by the colonial rulers in the nineteenth century. The British derived the name from the original form of “Kande-uda-rata”, dropping the suffix and changing ‘Kanda’ in the Sinhala language, meaning hill, to the easier-to-pronounce anglicised version, Kandy. This charming city, clustered around the hills and overlooking an artificial lake, was the capital of the Kandyan Kingdom which succumbed to British rule in 1815.

The pageant itself lasts for more than a week, with the climax on the tenth night which corresponds to the full moon. Whip-crackers lead the way for the two-kilometre long procession, beating the road with their whips to herald the procession, while torch-bearers, with copra lamps held high, pour a magic and romantic light onto the spectacle. For 10 days, the ancient cannon booms at sunset, announcing the imminent start of the Perahera. Trumpets, conches, oboes and drums beat out a rhythm while a huge contingent of Kandyan dancers and drummers perform, their stunning period costumes adding a blaze of colour to the spectacle.

Crowds stroll the green in front of the Dala Maligawa.

 

The moon obliges and shines its magic radiance down on the scene. Kandyan chieftains clad in traditional attire inter-mingle with more than 100 magnificently draped tuskers, with brilliantly hued caparisons, outlined by twinkling lights. The magnificent elephants actually sway to the drumbeats, as they virtually ‘dance’ along the route of the procession which takes some five hours to pass.

The magnificent facade of the Devala Maligawa - a blaze of lights for the ceremony.

The origins of the Kandy Esala Perahera, as it is now celebrated, date back to the eighteenth century, and since modern times, include the Maligawa Perihera (the procession of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic), with the Maligawa Tusker, resplendently adorned, brilliantly outfitted in an iridescent red caparison, with tiny lights outlining the huge Tusker’s massive bulk, bearing the casket containing the sacred relics (not the Sacred Tooth Relic which is enshrined in perpetuity at the Dalada maligawa) of the Buddha. This ‘super-star’ leads the four equally-endowed elephants representing Devala, the shrines dedicated to Sri Lanka’s mythical gods: God Natha, considered the ‘Bodhivista (the next Buddha), God Vishnu, acknowledged as the guardian deity of Sri Lanka, Kataragama, the Warrior God and Pattini, the Goddess of Virtue.

The huge crowds are mesmerized by the grandeur, the colour, the atmosphere and the emotion of the Esala Perahera.

The crowds wait patiently along the route of the Perahera.

Curiously, the most pervasive account of the Kandy Festival is that written by Englishman Robert Knox who was incarcerated by the then Kandyan King Rajasinghe II, from 1660 - 1679. Knox describes in detail the order of the procession which, even some three hundred years ago, was well organized and well rehearsed, with each component in place, while the King himself rode a horse in the parade. “The Priest bringeth forth a painted stick ... before which the people bow down and worship, each one presenting an offering,” wrote Knox. “The Priest then takes the painted stick on his shoulder and is placed upon an elephant all covered in white cloth, upon which he rides with all the triumph which the King and the Kingdom can afford, through all the streets of Kandy.”

Then, as now, heavy responsibility lies on the shoulders of the Astrologer (the Nekath Mohottala) to divine the exact time of the commencement of the Perahera activities and rituals.

The “water cutting” ceremony at the Mahaweli River, which loops around Kandy, is the grand finale of the festivities, which Knox describes as a symbolic event in honour of the God Indra, when goblets of water are scooped from the river by the four Devales to be returned to the temple “where they are kept until the following year and then thrown away”. The Four Devales then report the successful completion of the year’s Perahera to the Head of State.

Although, of course, the Kandy Perehera is strictly a Buddhist celebration, paying annual homage to the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha, Kandy has a large number of hallowed and vibrant shrines, temples, churches and mosques, reflecting the multi-religious character of the city - in fact, of Sri Lanka itself - Buddhist temples, Hindu Kovils, Christian Churches and Muslim Mosques A just manifestation of a country colonized by the British, the Dutch and the Portuguese at various times and an ethnic population comprising Singhalese, Tamil, Moor, Malay and the Burghers descended from their Dutch and Portuguese forefathers, as well as the forest-dwelling aboriginal Veddhas - now, 54 years after independence from Britain, all Sri Lankans.

One cannot but walk away from the Perahera somewhat chastened by a spectacle which reaches beyond the limited grasp of a merely human manifestation of pageantry which is indigenous to every culture: the Perahera embraces - if only for a fleeting moment - the totality of the universe.

The Elephant
Orphanage

Want to adopt a baby? What about a little cutie weighing a mere 200 kg? Approximately half way between Colombo and Kandy is the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage. Maintained by the Department of National Zoological Garden, the orphanage was established to feed, nurse and house baby elephants found abandoned in the forest.

Many of the young ones are found in pits and ravines where they have fallen - often injured - while foraging for food and water. Others are the victims of development which has destroyed their natural environment. This latter calamity sounds familiar to residents of Thailand, as we daily see these unfortunate ‘gentle giants’ being paraded around the dirty, polluted streets of Bangkok, forced out of their natural habitats by ruthless development and brought by their mahouts to ramble the sois and arteries of the city, competing for space with the motorized traffic.

Baby elephants enjoy their daily ‘dip’.

The Pinnawela elephants have a rather better lifestyle, with the feeding and bathing in the soothing waters of the lower reaches of the mighty Mahaweli River, Sri Lanka’s biggest and longest waterway. Now, some 16 years since it was established, the orphanage already has its first generation of ‘youngsters’ bred at the site.

A visit to the orphanage to see the elephants feeding, walking (swaying?) down to the river and then enjoying their morning ‘dip’, is just one highlight (one I managed to see, would be more like the truth), on the road to Kandy. It is possible, as some of the photos illustrate, to go very close in to the herd, right at the river’s edge.

Visit too brief

My only regret was that there was not more time to see a little more of “the Tear Drop of the Indian Ocean”: its forests, magnificent beaches, its mountains, its seven UNESCO-designated National Heritage Sites (including the spectacular Water Gardens), the impregnable rock-fortress of Sigiriya, with its fifth century ancient ruins, the architecture, flora and fauna... Not the least, its smiling, gentle people. The list is endless. In fact, it is known that, in spite of its relatively small size (some 65,000 sq. km., compared to Thailand’s 513,000 sq. km.), Sri Lanka is home to one of the world’s richest bio-diversities: something Mahatma Ghandi - a man not noted for flowery language (unless he was talking to his British ‘masters’) - once described “as a scenery sublime, unsurpassed on the face of the earth.”

Waiting for the parade - some sat for 16 hours.

SriLankan Airlines, naturally, promotes the home country and, now with peace at hand, the enormous potential of tourism is gaining hold. Working closely with the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, the national carrier is offering a vast range of holiday and stopover alternatives with its “Adventure and Exotica” promotional schemes to all destinations.

A great lure is a “Connecting Point Services Scheme” whereby the hotel costs are absorbed for travellers transiting through Sri Lanka to other world destinations, for stopovers of between eight to 24 hours in Colombo. This is aimed at “whetting the appetite” of any traveller passing through, to come back for more. I, for one, shall return at the first available opportunity, camera at the ready, to explore every square metre of this undiscovered treasure. When mass tourism discovers the delights of this island, I shall be happy I was there before it, as I was in Thailand more than two decades ago.

I look forward to hearing again that traditional warm, friendly Sri Lanka welcome greeting “Aybowan” - meaning, “may you live long”. And then I shall have my first cup of Ceylon tea - unquestionably the world’s best - and I shall certainly live longer as a result of both the greeting and the tea!

The Rotary Club
of Jomtien-Pattaya

Skal International

Pattaya Fun City
By The Sea

www.pattayarotary.org