Kulik’s theory of a meteorite
The Siberian forests, too, are as impenetrable, as desolate, hostile and inaccessible as the tropical wilderness in Africa or South America. Until the 1917 Revolution of the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), that toppled the Tsarist regime of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, leading to the establishment of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), fewer Europeans had ventured to enter them than had gone into the southern jungles. The Evenk people of the region were extremely primitive and superstitious and they were afraid of the place where Ogdy, god of fire and thunder, had come down from heaven to earth to destroy by fire all those who ventured there. After the blast, the villagers dashed out into the streets in absolute panic; some wept in terror, convinced that the end of the world had come. Russian mineralogist Leonid Alekseyevich Kulik (1883-1942), though self-taught and with no proper academic training, was inspired by the event, grasping the fact that the Tunguska affair was scientifically very important. In the spring of 1928 Kulik, after having hacked his way through the immeasurable fallen forest, reached the epicentre of the explosion: an open spot ringed with trees lying on the ground, all with their roots pointing in the same direction. He concluded that the awe-inspiring destruction was caused by a huge meteorite. Nevertheless, he did not come across any fragments of such a meteorite and neither did he succeed in finding the crater which must have been made. Vasili Sytin, one of his colleagues, formulated the most absurd of the 77 theories: that a very violent wind was the cause of the disaster, but Kulik adamantly clung to his belief that it must have been a meteorite. Finally, he assumed that fragments of the supposed meteorite would be found underneath 25 metres of frozen ground and marsh water must have filled the crater, but half a century later, it was clearly shown that the impassable swamp in the epicentre was a normal taiga formation. Prof. Vasiliy Grigorievich Fesenkov (1889-1972), the eminent Russian astrophysicist, admitted that the Tunguska catastrophe was not caused by a meteorite. The disturbance of such severity could not have been brought about by meteorites and the light phenomena that lasted three nights in succession in 1908 could not be due to any cloud of particles of a terrestrial origin.
Was it a comet?
Therefore, Prof. Fesenkov argued that a comet blew up above the taiga. This, in any way, was not a brand-new idea, since the American astronomer Fred Lawrence Whipple (1906-2004) had favoured this notion in 1930, supported by the Russian astronomer I. S. Astapovich. It was particularly the skies that were aglow during the nights of 30th June and 01st and 02nd July both in Siberia and Central Europe which were the major reasons for adopting the comet hypothesis. It was assumed that this glow could have been cast by the comet’s tail within the earth’s atmosphere. The periodic comet Encke orbits the sun every 3.3 years and it was in the vicinity of Tunguska on the date of the explosion. This comet was first recorded in 1786 by French astronomer Pierre François André Méchain (1744-1804) and its orbit was computed by German astronomer Johann Franz Encke (1791-1865). Yet, the hypothetical Tunguska comet cannot have been small in view of the fact that the energy released has been estimated today at 10²³ ergs at least (equivalent to about 30 million tons of TNT-fifteen hundred times as great as that at Hiroshima). If in 1908 a comet of that size had hit the earth a crater several kilometres across and hundreds of metres deep would have been made, but the swampy epicentre did not show any trace of such a thing. Another reason for rendering the comet theory highly questionable, has to do with ballistics. The felled trees proved beyond doubt that there were two shock waves: one before the explosion and the other after the object had burst. Russian aircraft designer A. Y. Manotskov, by means of electronic calculating machines and by reconstructing the flight as seen by eye-witnesses, proved that the “thing” slowed down its velocity, which at the moment of impact was 0.7-1 km per second in place of the usual 10-60 km per second for normal comets and meteorites. This comparably low velocity is close to that of modern supersonic jet aircraft and if it had plunged down at this speed-an insignificant one for planetary bodies-then according to the laws of aerodynamics, it would have needed a mass of one thousand million tons to bring about the destruction which has now been assessed and mapped. The remains of such a monster have not been found. Therefore, Prof. Felix Yurievich Zigel (1920-1988), an aerodynamics professor at the Moscow Institute of Aviation, also regarded as a founder of Russian ufology, threw away the comet theory.A guest from the cosmos?
In 1946, in the Russian magazine Vokrug Sveta (meaning Around the World), the science-fiction writer Alexander Petrovich Kazantsev (1906-2002), suggested that the Tunguska blast could have occurred when a spaceship from another planet, supplied with nuclear energy, tried to land in the Siberian forests. As this was a nuclear explosion nothing would have remained of the spacecraft, especially as it burst above ground, thus leaving no crater as such. According to the writer, this would explain why, right in the epicentre, some trees remained upright but dead whilst in other areas, trees were uprooted. Kazantsev’s theory was debunked by some scientists as being fantastic. But, in the terminal phase of the descent of the object, according to the most recent speculation, the object appears to have approached in an eastward direction, then changed the course westward over the region before exploding. The same opinion was reached by Zigel, who was involved in the training of many Russian cosmonauts. Based on the eye-witnesses’ accounts and the physical data, Zigel was convinced that the object, before it exploded, carried out a manoeuvre of which no natural object is capable. Thus, Zigel, together with the Russian rocket and aviation experts, supported Kazantsev in believing that the remarkable cylindrical object could only have been “an artificial flying craft from some other planet”. Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917-2008), the famous English science-fiction writer and futurist, who co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is regarded as one of the most influential films of all time, was a proponent of the meteorite theory, but ironically, his novel Rendezvous with Rama, set in the twenty-first century, focuses on a cosmic intruder entering our solar system, initially mistaken for an asteroid, but eventually discovered to be an interstellar craft. Clarke immigrated to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1956 to practise scuba driving. Nevertheless, the evidence of a vehicle from an advanced extraterrestrial civilisation, carrying travellers who were vapourised in a blinding flash of light, cannot be viewed as absolutely conclusive.Antimatter or black holes?
Another theory, put across in 1965, suggested that a small body of antimatter floating through space might have collided with the Earth. This accident produced gamma rays and an explosion. Scientists asserted that this would explain the absence of any residual material. In 1928, British scientist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984), regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century, theorised that there must be a particle identical to the electron with a positive electric charge instead of a negative one. Four years later his theory was proved right in the laboratory. As soon as antimatter meets an atom of ordinary matter, they are destroyed, unleashing a destruction with an intense flash of light and violent radiation. The latest explanation was that a tiny “black hole” hit Siberia, passing through the entire earth and emerging in the North Atlantic. The concept of black hole, on the surface, appears to be vague and to many scientists the idea seems to have been directly lifted from science fiction. Yet some scholars, like the British physicist, mathematician and author John Gerald Taylor (1931-2012), the author of Black Holes-The End of the Universe?, have taken the subject seriously. In theory, a black hole forms when a massive star collapses at the end of its life cycle. It is a huge lump of matter that has shrunk so much that it has become invisible. Owing to its enormous density it generates gravity of such a magnitude that not even light could escape it. Taylor labelled a black hole “a bizarre object” and compared it to a “cannibal, swallowing up everything that gets in its way…” Russian experts of the Tunguska event have examined these new theories, but ultimately rejected them on the basis that they did not match the actual evidence.Other hypotheses
A test of a nuclear bomb; a consequence of testing of Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American inventor (1870-1924), who designed the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system; 2.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas igniting; and a chunk of the Sun that broke away and was flung towards the Earth, landing catastrophically in Tunguska.Theory of midges
American science writer and author Brian Andrew Dunning (born in 1965) has put forward another exceptional but interesting theory to account for the mysterious explosion. He says that the detonation of a cloud of midges could have caused the blast. Pointing out how sawdust, when dispersed in the air, is violently explosive, a swarm of midges, if sufficiently dense, could produce the same effect, he says. According to Dunning, the cloud, as has been calculated, would need to measure some 5 cubic kilometres to cause a blast sufficiently large to match the seismic data of the event. Midge is a small two-winged fly that is often seen in swarms near water or marshy areas where it breeds.Other natural and man-made explosions
Human History is marked indelibly with the destruction caused by great explosions. In about 1500 B. C. most of the island of Thera (later called Santorini) in the Aegean Sea, near the Greek mainland, disappeared in a volcanic blast while in 62 A. D, an earthquake, caused by the eruption of Vesuvius in Italy, toppled the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum near Naples. The Tunguska explosion, that scarred the face of the earth, is thought to be the loudest in the history of mankind. Yet, the 200 megaton 1883 volcanic eruption on 21st October on the island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait in Indonesia, was equally destructive and the explosion was heard 4800 km away and its soundwave travelled around the globe seven times, causing over 36,000 deaths and ensuing tsunamis. Then, on 30th October 1961, the 50 megaton Tsar Bomba, a hydrogen aerial bomb, designated as “AN602”, was tested in Russia (then the Soviet Union) by a group of nuclear physicists. The bomb was dropped by a parachute and the crown of the resulting mushroom cloud was 65 km high. The mystery surrounding the Siberian holocaust, however, cannot be erased from human memory or allowed to sink into oblivion. Even though more than 100 years have slipped by, the ultimate clue to the riddle is still confounding us. ***]]>The tiny Easter Island, a special territory of Chile since 2007, covering an area of 163.6 km² and separated from the rest of the Polynesian chain by the ocean water, is surrounded by three volcanoes that give the island a triangular shape. Although the island is full of volcanic soil, it is a picturesque place with surging breakers, precipitous cliffs, towering volcanoes and open, windswept slopes. But, what attracts the visitor most, are the island’s iconic giant stone statues with their brooding eyes staring into the far-off sky over a barren landscape, facing away from the ocean.
The statues or moai, meaning “statue” in Rapa Nui language, are carved out of buff-coloured volcanic stone called moai. The average height of the moai is about 4 m, usually weighing around 13 tons. The tallest of some 900 such statues erected, stood almost 10 m and weighed 82 tons. The heaviest moai was shorter, but weighed 86 tons. One unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been nearly 21 m tall with a weight of about 145-165 tons.
A notable research on the statues was done in 1914-15 by Katherine Maria Routledge (1866-1935), an English archaeologist and anthropologist. She described the island as a place where the past is the present and where the shadows of the departed builders still possess the land. Other researchers include the American W. J. Thomson (1886); Alfred Métraux (1902-1963), Swiss and Argentine ethnologist; Henri Alfred Lavachery (1885-1972), a Belgian who was the first professional archaeologist to visit the island; Fr. Sebastian Englert (1888-1969), a German Franciscan missionary and linguist, known for his pioneering work on Easter Island in 1935-39, where a museum is named after him; Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002), the famous Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer (1955-56); and American anthropologist William Thomas Mulloy (1917-1978). Due to the painstaking efforts of these scholars many toppled statues in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, possibly resulting from European contact or internecine tribal wars, were restored to their original positions.
Who built the statues and what did they signify?
The inevitable question as to who carved such magnificent statues has given rise to many surmises. Some scholars have disclosed amazingly interesting stories, saying that Easter Island was the Lost Continent. Others opined that it could have been inhabited by beings from outer space or the islanders were direct descendants from ancient Egyptians. However, modern researchers are unanimous in theorising that the people who carved the moai were none other than the Polynesians.
Contrary to these suppositions, the islanders have their own tale of descent. Their legends have it that their religious leader named Hotu Matu was defeated in a battle and was forced to leave his homeland: archipelago of Hiva. One of his men had a vision of a new homeland somewhere in the direction of the rising sun and seven men were sent to locate it, thus discovering Easter Island. Hotu Matu arrived in Easter Island with various plants and animals, but he did not live for long. Before his death he divided the island among his children: a reason for the island being divided into so many groups. Scholars do agree to this native legend to some extent. They believe that the descendants of Hotu Matu created these great statues, possibly from 1110 A. D. till 1650 A. D. the year in which all construction was halted as revealed by the radiocarbon dating.
Today many archaeologists are of the view that the statues signify symbols of religious and political authority and power and also a representation of the deceased ancestors of the indigenous clans. In ancient Polynesian religions, carved stone and wooden objects, when properly fashioned and ritually prepared, were thought to be charged by a magical spiritual essence called mana which, according to local tradition, was preserved in the hair. The more recent moai carried pukao on their heads. Pukao were hat-like structures or topknots, carved out of red scoria (a basaltic lava). Red is considered a sacred colour in Polynesia. Meanwhile, a 2019 study concluded that the moai might be related to improving soil fertility and thereby critical food supplies.
American archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg, who has studied the moai for many years, believes that they may have been carved in the image of various paramount chiefs. According to her, the statues may have played the role as ceremonial conduits for communication with the heavenly gods. She asserts that their physical position between earth and sky puts them on both secular and sacred ground, thus mediating between sky and earth, people and chiefs, and chiefs and gods.
In another 1979 study, a team of archaeologists discovered that the hemispherical or deep elliptical eye sockets of the moai were designed to hold coral eyes with either black obsidian (a kind of volcanic glass) or red scoria pupils.
The transportation of the statues
The question as to how the moai were transported has given birth to many assumptions. According to the traditions of the island, the statues were filled with supernatural powers (mana) and they themselves walked to their appointed places. Another interesting story is that carpets of sweet potatoes and crushed yams were laid on the slopes and the statues were slid along them. Recently, Mulloy suggested that the statues were put on a Y-shaped curved bottom sledge, arguing that the jutting out belly and chin of the moai was not executed to give any style but was a result of the use of the Y-shaped sledge. Once the statue was placed on the sledge, the statue was pulled by the ropes on a road covered with reeds and grass.
Explorers become exploiters
The first recorded European visitor to the island was the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen (1659-1729). He found it on Easter Sunday on 05th April 1722 and named it “Paasch-Eyland” (18th century Dutch for “Easter Island”). (“Isla de Pascua”, the island’s official Spanish name after it was annexed by Chile in 1888, also means “Easter Island”). But, the island has been known by many other names as well. The phrase Te pito o te henua is said to be the original name of the island. French linguist Alphonse Pinart (1852-1911), based on the Rapa Nui word pito, also meaning ‘navel’, translated the phrase as “the Navel of the World”.
Roggeveen found out that the islanders were living in thatched huts and could barely make a meagre living by doing a little bit of cultivation. In 1770 the Spanish navigator Felipe González de Ahedo (1714-1802) visited the place and named it “Isla de San Carlos” or “St. Charles’ Island”. Four years later the great English explorer Captain James Cook (1728-1779) came to the island, followed by the French Admiral Jean François La Perouse (1741-1788). All these visits were very brief and hardly gave any new information to the world about the island except that the islanders numbered 3000-4000, that they practised cannibalism, and that tribal chiefs were always warring against each other.
By the 19th century the situation changed and soon the isolated islanders were transformed into slaves. In 1805 the American ship ‘Nancy’ carried away 22 islanders as slaves while Peru also invaded the island from 1859 to 1862, about 1000 islanders being shipped off to Peru as slaves. Many of the enslaved inhabitants were skilled artists and with them the secrets of the carving trade too died out. Of the 100 islanders who were released, only 15 managed to reach the island but they were infected with the dreaded small pox which spread rapidly and the island population decreased further. By 1877 only 111 inhabitants were left and when the Chilean colonists arrived they found the islanders living in complete misery and poverty. The island became a possession of Chile and the giant statues began to arouse the interest of the world.
An ecological disaster?
It is evident that formerly Easter Island, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995, was covered with green vegetation, teeming with animal life. Around 1000 A. D. palm forests had covered about 70% of the island. Today there are hardly any trees, except for a few bushes, ferns, grasses, sedges, etc. The natives grow bananas, sugar-canes and sweet potatoes and breed domestic fowls, goats, cattle and sheep.
What denuded this once fertile island of its ancient palm woodland has puzzled many ecologists. In 2005, Pulitzer prize-winner Jared Diamond of the University of California concluded that the inhabitants of the now depopulated island had cut down the palms to build sledges for statues and roofs for homes: an act of self-destruction.
But, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo of the University of Hawaii, presented another explanation in a series of papers. Based on DNA evidence and chewed palm remains, they proposed that Polynesian rats which the immigrants brought with them had eaten palm tree nuts, thus triggering deforestation.
However, German ecologists Andreas Mieth and Hans-Rudolf Bork from the Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel do not subscribe to this hypothesis of a major rat impact to account for the deforestation of the island. Referring to the several millimetre-thick charcoal layers from fires, distributed over large areas of the island, they presume instead that widespread fires in the woodland can be the only reason for the landscape denuded of trees.
Still a fourth suspected cause has been proposed: drought. But, according to scholars, this does not seem to have a big effect on the lush vegetation which the island was once covered with.
The unfolding of events on Easter Island may sound a note of dark warning and forebode a bleak future for humanity. “Easter Island’s isolation makes it the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources”, writes Diamond. He says that humanity contains the seeds of its own destruction. ***
]]>The eighteenth of June of this year was a day of significance for the staff, old and present students and well-wishers of Maris Stella College of Negombo as the day marked the centenary celebrations-a major milestone-of this prestigious seat of learning in the country.
The origins of this Catholic college date back to 1922 when on 13th July 1917 four Marist brothers came to the fishing town of Negombo, 34 km north of Colombo, and took over the management of St. Mary’s College, the leading school in the area at that time. They had arrived first in Batticaloa on the eastern coast in 1911. In 1922 the school moved to its present site under its new name of Maris Stella College. The history of the primary school goes back to 1921 when Bro. Lewis Gervaise, a Frenchman, was the principal of the elementary school (1922-1926). Three long cadjan sheds housed eight primary classes.
The brothers who had joined St. Mary’s College, were in dire need to expand their sphere of education in the island (then Ceylon) and searched for new land. In 1920, Anthony Coudert, the then French archbishop of Colombo, transferred to the Marist brothers the property known as ‘Coppara Handiya Estate’ which was in extent of eight acres and 19 perches. The property was a gift to the Catholic Church from two sisters -Mrs. Rosa Isabella De Croos Dabarera and Mrs. Mary Christine De Croos Rajchandra. The two donors wished that the property must be used for founding a Catholic college to provide education for boys of the area.
When World War II broke out in August 1939, the school was requisitioned in part the following year by the Royal Artillery as its headquarters. Although the Royal Artillery moved out in November, the Royal Air Force occupied the buildings in 1941. The college was put under the protection of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. There were frequent practices of Air Raid Precautions. Trenches were dug for shelter against possible aerial bombing. The school had been closed for Easter holidays in 1942 when the Japanese launched an air raid though the invaders were turned back.
Marist vision and mission
Following the 1789 French Revolution, the Catholic Church in France suffered severely at the hands of the revolutionaries when the bishops, priests and religious were killed in their thousands. But, when Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in 1815, this persecution ended, thus ushering in a period of religious freedom that brought about a religious re-awakening among the young people who were interested more and more in becoming priests and religious. Inspired by this new trend favourable to the Church, a young priest by the name of Marcellin Joseph Benedict Champagnat (1789-1840), born near St. Etienne (Loire), France, and ordained in 1816, founded the following year the religious Congregation of Marist Brothers devoted to Mary and dedicated to education of the poor, the marginalised and the underprivileged under the name of ‘Little Brothers of Mary’. Although at his death there were only 280 Marist Brothers in the south of France, this number grew to 1500 Brothers in 1856. Today, there are about 5000 Marist Brothers and tens of thousands of Laypeople who follow in the footsteps of the saint in spreading Marist education in 74 countries around the world. The feast of St. Marcellin Champagnat falls on 06th June which is his death anniversary.
When Maris Stella College of Negombo proudly steps into the next century it would be worthwhile here to highlight the Five Pillars of Ethos on which the Marist vision is fashioned, namely, Presence, Simplicity, Family Spirit, Love of Work and Inspiration of Mary the Blessed Mother.
A centenary Mass was celebrated on the picturesque and environment-friendly premises of the college on 18th June. Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, in his homily at the Mass, said that the current state of the country is indeed pathetic and miserable. “A revolution of attitudes is much needed right now with every citizen placing the country above themselves”, he added. The archbishop pointed out that a majority of the country’s youth is planning to leave the country behind in these turbulent times. “If this continues, the politicians will not have any citizen to serve …Everyone must take this into mind and work together for the betterment of the country leaving behind political debates and elections”, the prelate reminded.
Bro. Sunanda Alwis, the principal, said that Maris Stella College has produced 24,119 productive citizens along with four bishops and 89 clergy for the Catholic Church within the last century.
Notable alumni of the college
Maris Stella College, the motto of which is Iter para tutum (‘Show us the way’ in Latin), has produced a number of prominent citizens in various professions. Among them are academics Prof. Carlo Fonseka, a former president of the Sri Lanka Medical Council; Prof. Leslie Panditharatne, a former chancellor of the University of Peradeniya and chairman of the University Grants Commission, perhaps the oldest living Maristonian at age 92; A. N. S. Kulasinghe, founding chairman of the State Engineering Corporation of Ceylon; J. F. A. Soza, Supreme Court judge; politicians Wijayapala Mendis, mayor of Negombo and a former Minister of Textile Industries; P. B. G. Kalugalle, a former cabinet minister and diplomat; Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, a former Minister of Civil Aviation and Airports Development; Paul Perera, a former Minister of Science and Technology; artists Eddie Jayamanne, popular comedian and actor; Ranjan Ramanayake, popular actor and politician; Ashan Dias, actor and TV host; Sunil Mihindukula, journalist and author; Camillus Perera, popular newspaper cartoonist and publisher; Rohan and Rohitha Jayalath, famous Sri Lankan reggae duo of the Jaya Sri Band; Dinesh Subasinghe, talented composer and violinist; entrepreneur Merrill Fernando, founder of Dilmah tea company; and international cricketers Graeme Labrooy, Dushmantha Chameera and Dasun Chanaka, and Wendell Labrooy, former domestic cricketer. ***
- The present writer is happy to write this note of achievements of the college as Alma Mater of his late father.
The Namomagazine team comprising the founder and I had mooted the idea of venturing out on a fact finding mission to Jaffna on behalf of our readers. The objective was straightforward and it was to gather first-hand information about the life in Jaffna after a fierce 30-year war. We intended to derive details and information from multiple sources and from wider perspectives by conducting one on one interviews. Mostly, we wanted to see the conditions for ourselves on ground. So, we set out on our journey early morning on 08th April 2022 by a rented car and decided to take the route via Puttalam to Anuradhapura as the first leg of our journey. On the way, we had a quick breakfast at a joint in Chilaw and cruised to Anuradhapura on a straight run. Upon reaching Anuradhapura city limits, we used the by-pass road bordering the sacred city to avoid the rush in the town. So, our objective was to reach the peninsula by lunch hour. Throughout our journey so far, we witnessed long queues of men with plastic cans and vehicles at each and every filling station to fetch Petrol, Diesel and Kerosene oil. Now, we noticed that our fuel level in the tank had dropped to half and therefore, felt the need to top up to be on the safe side although we would have made it to Jaffna with what we had. Fortunately, we found a filling station in a thinly populated A-9 road and experienced a sigh of relief with a topped up tank once again. By reaching Elephant Pass, we both felt acutely hungry and dropped in at a restaurant run by SL Army to have lunch. They didn’t have much of a choice but decided to have a fill anyway without knowing the conditions in Jaffna after another 45 minutes run.
In a place that was once a war torn zone
We reached Jaffna town safely and now, our task was to move into the hotel at KKS where we had made an advanced booking. Since I was driving, I urged my companion to switch on GPS to find the way. But, to our amusement, GPS directions took us on a rough road. We rose to the occasion and brushed up his little Tamil knowledge to seek directions from passers-by. Our communication skills in Tamil sufficed. We finally reached our destination by about 4 pm in the evening. ThalSevana Hotel run by the SL Army was to be our accommodation for three nights. Despite our advanced booking, we once again reviewed the room plans and decided to check into a suite a little distance away from the main complex of the hotel. It was a lovely place overlooking the Indian Ocean and room was quite spacious too. The staff at the hotel comprised Sinhalese and Tamils in a mix and were hospitable to the guests although they showed a lack of training to such professional level. There was no time left for any activity on our first day as it was late evening when we settled into the room. We were told that the dinner was not served to rooms so that we decided to venture out to the city for dinner. This time, we got clear directions leading to Jaffna town via Chunnakam and Kokuvil. This time, we were on a carpeted road and it was a straight run to Jaffna town. We wanted to draw some money from an ATM machine so we found one in Chunnakam. After doing some purchases at the adjacent Cargills Food City, we came across a restaurant right in front of the supermarket. Since we were quite hungry by then, we tended to check out the food available at the joint.
Planned errands for tomorrow after a surprise meal
To our utter surprise, we found Beef curry on the display which is usually a taboo meat in Hindu dominated Jaffna peninsula because cows are venerated by Hindus according to their faith. Our initial query was to know whether they were Muslims in the first place but they disowned our impression. No more questioning ensued and we were treated to a sumptuous meal and it was taken in well for me particularly after a hectic day of driving all the way to Jaffna. We too seemed satisfied but couldn’t condone the hotness of spices in Beef curry. There was another surprise in store for us and it came in the way of language. The owner and the waiter spoke impeccable Sinhala while serving us. The owner went the extra mile to come to our table personally and inquire how we felt about the food being served. We allayed our doubts about being in a land of unknown by now as we found Jaffna people to be genuinely friendly and hospitable. They were warmly receptive to Sinhalese. This phenomenon persisted during the entirety of our Jaffna tour and at no point, we were made to feel like aliens by Jaffna people. After supper, we retired to our bed and had a good night sleep until we got up a little late in the morning on the following day. We had a lot of plans for the day but were deprived of the morning session due to heavy rain. We were eager to meet Arun Siddharthan, the de-facto leader of the Jaffna resistance group known as Ava Group. He is formally the convener of Jaffna Civil Society of which the office is situated on the ground floor of his own residence in Chunnakam. We made contact with him through a journalist based in Colombo. So, Arun invited us to his office, sending us directions on GPS and spoke to us in flawless Sinhala so that we made it to his office with no hassle. The first thing I noticed while entering his office of Jaffna Civil Society was a Buddha statue placed in his study. Being a Buddhist, it aroused my curiosity.
Unusual experience with a man of a different mindset
Arun Siddharthan, an unassuming young activist from Jaffna peninsula went on to explain why he is keeping a Buddha statue in this manner. He declared that he has been immensely inspired by the ideals of Buddhism and therefore, he has become a keen student of Buddhist philosophy. He further explained that he hails from a low caste family background whereas his paternal and maternal grandfathers were toddy tappers. As a result, his lineage has been deprived of many rights which other citizens enjoy at will. They were not allowed to pray at Kovils or temples. He specially mentioned Nallur Kovil which was out of bounds for them for ages. After a long drawn struggle, they won the right to pray at the Kovil on condition that they would have to enter the Kovil bare bodied. Now, it has been made a normal custom so that everyone enters Nallur Kovil bare bodied. He pointed out that the caste issue has been deep rooted among Tamils especially those who live in the peninsula. He quoted Indian Great B.R Ambedkar who was instrumental in mass converting his socially marginalised people to Buddhism, in protest of social injustices meted out to them. Arun is visibly inspired by this epic and vowed to follow the suit. Benedict and I were convinced that he is a well-read person with a wide ranging viewpoint. At our request, he agreed to give us an exclusive interview which the readers can view on this forum now.
This article will be continued ………………..
]]>More than 2000 years ago, Herodotus (484-425 B. C.), the ancient Greek historian, described the Sahara as a region of sand and heat, with high dunes and salty hillocks, and vast waterless areas. He said that it was inhabited by people with strange and exotic customs. But it was not always like this. The Sahara was once a green and fertile country. What transformed this region of lush vegetation into an arid desert? What caused the rainfall to stop abruptly, bringing about a drastic climatic change? Will the Sahara green up again?
The Sahara, meaning “desert” in Arabic, covers an area of 9,200,000 km² and it is the largest hot desert in the world. The desert comprises much of North Africa. To the south, it is bounded by a belt of semi-arid and tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and the Sudan region of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Few know that this vast Sahara desert was not always a horrid wasteland with sand dunes where people and animals die of thirst. Centuries ago, the Sahara was a pleasant fertile land where rainfall was a common feature and where trees and grass grew and streams flowed abundantly. Many wild animals had made it their habitat while art and culture too were very impressive.
The Negroid people, who lived there, hunted a large variety of land and water animals as geological and archaeological factors corroborate this fact. The number of rock paintings and engravings in the Sahara, left behind by early Holocene artists of the current geological period, is much higher than those found anywhere in the world. For instance, the cave paintings, discovered at Tassili N’Ajjer in Southern Algeria, highlight this bewildering truth. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site having one of the most important groupings of prehistoric cave art in the world and covering an area of more than 72,000 km².
How this green fertile land became one of perfect death as it is today has always puzzled scientists. They now attribute the change to monsoon rains. Northern Africa, according to their latest research, was wetter between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago and this ended around 5000 years ago. Geologists and modern climate scientists call this span of time the African Humid Period (AHP), also known as the “Green Sahara”. The area of the present-day Sahara was covered with lush vegetation, stretching right up to the Arabian Peninsula. The main factor behind this humid period with heavy monsoon rains, in fact, is planetary in scale: cyclical changes to both the tilt and orbit of our planet Earth, resulting in about 4%-8% more solar energy hitting the planet than it gets today. Solar radiation is always changing due to natural orbital cycles. This warmed up the northern hemisphere, causing powerful winds to move towards it, shifting up the monsoons which drench South Africa today, thus pouring water onto the Sahara and allowing the vegetation to grow there. Dust records indicate that there was a dramatic decrease in moisture around 5500 years ago when a slight wobbling once more of the Earth’s orbit caused a decrease in the solar energy. At this point the AHP ended quickly and the Sahara returned to a sandy desert as it is now and people clustered back around the Nile and other water resources for their existence, founding the great pharaonic civilisation. Meanwhile, some geologists have even hypothesised that 230 green Sahara periods may have occurred in the past eight million years.
The orbital shifting and the resulting climatic changes were not the sole factor that has led to this depraved condition of the Sahara. Human beings too have had their part in these climate changes. The increasing number of domestic animals destroyed plant life while mountainous woodlands were burnt off and reduced to grazing land. Vegetation, gradually, deteriorated: from savanna it became steppe and from steppe it became desert. The only remnants left were paintings and artefacts that boast of the past glory and legacy of this once hospitable land of luxuriant foliage and moist environment. In Algeria and Libya, scholars have found astounding evidence of earlier human occupation. Along the waterways that are nothing but sand today, vestiges of fireplaces, grinding stones, hunting tools and even mounds of fish bones have been found. In 2000, a team of archaeologists hunting for dinosaur bones stumbled upon a graveyard in Niger: traces of a community who had lived in the Green Sahara. Languages of Mali in Western Africa and Ethiopia in Eastern Africa are very different from each other, but strangely they still have similar words for “hippo”. Some linguists claim that this could bear abundant evidence of the fact that people from these cultures, though separated by a vast distance today, once lived in the same place among these semi-aquatic African mammals.
Early explorers of the Sahara
The first adventurers were English explorer Dixon Denham (1786-1828), Scottish explorers Bain Hugh Clapperton (1788-1827), Walter Qudney (1790-1824) and Major Alexander Gordon Laing (1794-1826). Laing became the first European to cross the Sahara and reach the fabled city of Timbuktu in Mali, a landlocked country in West Africa. Although he was murdered there, the French explorer René Caillié (1799-1838), who came there, disguised as an Arab, succeeded in leaving the place unscathed. He reached Morocco after facing torrid heat, whirlwinds and scarcity of water and often lured by the torment of the mirage.
Caillié’s journey through the Sahara was a remarkable feat as it paved the way for further regular encroaching journeys of the French. Frenchmen soon embarked upon colonial activities, military campaigns and building of the Trans-Saharan Railway through Algeria to Sub-Saharan Africa to the south, intended originally to connect coal mines and boost trade throughout North Africa. For their excursions they had to produce the definite maps of the area that revealed the true picture of the Sahara with high mountains, dotted with olives and cypresses. These maps were prepared by the German explorer Heinrich Barth (1821-1865). His findings sowed the seeds for archaeological research that proved that the Sahara period was divided into two pre-camel and post-camel periods: a finding supported by French geologist G. B. M. Flamand who did a comparative study of the cave engravings of Southern Oran in Algeria.
By 1956 the scientific interest in the Sahara had grown and numerous French expeditions were sent to Tassili N’Ajjer. The earliest paintings were found to be produced by a Negroid ethnic group, but other primitive artefacts, found at various places, showed that this region may have been inhabited from the very dawn of man’s existence.
Besides the art, research equally unmasked the political history of the Sahara desert: the continuous struggle between the tribes. The semi-nomadic Tuareg people, who practise Islam and belong to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family, are the predominant ethnic group that inhabits the region. The frequent warfare diminished the population and the kingdoms disintegrated. The severe droughts may have been the cause of such warfare. In 1913, a terrible famine struck the region and over one million people perished of hunger, disease, murder and fratricide. In 1972-74 the disaster hit the Sahara again: famine and influenza epidemic aggravating the horror of the region. Hunger made people commit the most dreadful acts: murder, looting and killing one’s own children. Despite such natural disasters, the Sahara continues to exist and people are still inhabiting the area.
Ecological link between the Sahara desert and the Amazon rainforest
The Sahara desert in Africa and the Amazon rainforest in South America are so different and far apart from each other, but surprisingly, both share a vital ecological link. A new geophysical research proves that without the more than a hundred million tons of dust that blows in the wind across the Atlantic Ocean from the Sahara desert, the Amazon rainforest, the largest on earth, would cease to exist. The research paper says that this dust from Africa contains the vital source of plant nutrient: phosphorus. It is a tiny 1/10th of 1% of the Sahara dust but in total 22,000 tons of it fall upon the Amazon annually. This amount of the nutrient is equal to what the constant rainforest rains wash away each year. What an astonishing and perfect balance of nature!
A large part of the African dust blows from the Bodélé Depression in Chad in north central Africa. The 500 km long, 150 km wide and around 160 m deep depression is an ancient lake bed containing huge deposits of dead microorganisms loaded with phosphorus. Ocean pastures of the Atlantic and Amazonian soils, in turn, are short of this important chemical element. Thus, the entire Amazon ecosystem depends on the fertile Saharan dust to replenish the loss of a vital plant nutrient caused by rains. ***
]]>Vesak that commemorates the Birth, Enlightenment and Death of the Lord Buddha is the most important day on the international Buddhist calendar and on an initiative taken by Sri Lanka it was declared a holiday by the United Nations.
Sri Lanka was unable to celebrate this religious festival in a proper manner for the past three years due to the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist attacks and the global coronavirus pandemic that hit the county in the ensuing two years.
To help celebrate the festival the government suspended the lengthy power cuts on the Vesak day and the day that followed.
Vesak of this year, however, was scaled down due to political upheaval owing to the economic crisis that had dampened the enthusiasm of the people. Compared to other years, there were fewer dansal (wayside stalls that offer free food and refreshment to passers-by) and thoran (pandals), giant illuminated structures, erected in Colombo and other towns to depict the Jathaka tales (past lives of the Buddha). Fuel and cooking gas shortage, the difficulties in organising events and the possible night curfew were the main reasons for the lower number of dansal and thoran this year. Despite the increased price of coloured tissue papers, elders and children were eager to buy them to make their own Vesak kuudu (Vesak lanterns) that would illuminate their houses at night while others were seen buying such colourful lanterns from wayside vendors to hang in front of their homes to signify the light of the Triple Gem: Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha.
The Buddhist Flag, flying at the homes of Buddhists and public places, is also a common sight during the festive season. The flag, used by Buddhists throughout the world, was originally designed in 1885 by a committee of Sri Lankan Buddhist monks and laymen. Its vertical bands represent blue, yellow, red, white and orange colours of the aura which Buddhists believe emanated from the body of the Buddha when he attained Enlightenment.
The festival of this year focused more on religious ceremonies than on State festivals in the aftermath of a week of civil strife marked with violence, arson, destruction of properties and death, for Vesak has always been an occasion for unity, harmony, joy and happiness in society; a time to reinforce and propagate the message of peace and compassion to all people, as preached by the Buddha.
During the week of Vesak, the selling of alcohol and meat is usually prohibited and slaughter houses are also closed. Alms giving activities are given prominence while private and government organisations sing bhakti gee (Buddhist devotional hymns). Devotees clad in white throng temples throughout the island to make offerings to the Buddha, observe his five precepts, meditate and listen to homilies of monks. Temples echo as the devotees sing gatha (Buddhist chants).
During the festive period, the capital Colombo witnesses at night a massive influx of people from other towns and villages in the country who come in busloads to see pandals with illuminated paintings and mechanically operated multi-coloured lanterns that move around a mother lantern, and to partake of free meals and drinks provided at refreshment stalls. Vesak kalapa or Vesak Zones are also set up to entertain visitors.
Sri Lanka’s role in declaring Vesak as an international public holiday
Although Buddhist festivals have traditions dating back to centuries, the first conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB), held in Sri Lanka in 1950, put forward the decision to celebrate Vesak as the Buddha’s birthday across the many Buddhist countries. The WFB was founded in that year in Colombo by Sri Lankan academic and diplomat Gunapala Piyasena Malalasekera (1899-1973), born in Panadura, south of Colombo, who was the then Ceylon’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union, Ceylon’s High Commissioner to Canada and the United Kingdom and Ceylon’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) in New York. He was the Professor Emeritus in Pali and Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies.
Acting on a proposal to declare Vesak as an international public holiday, which was tabled at the UN General Assembly by Lakshman Kadirgamar (1932-2005), a distinguished Sri Lankan statesman and the foreign minister (1994-2001) of the then government of Sri Lanka who was assassinated in Colombo by an LTTE sniper, the UN adopted on 15th December 1999, resolution 54/115, internationally recognising the Day of Vesak as a public holiday at UN Headquarters and other UN offices around the world. The first international Vesak celebration was held in the UN in New York on 15th May 2000 with the participation of 34 countries.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his Vesak message for Buddhists around the world, reminded that this year Vesak arrived at a moment of multiplying crises: an unequal recovery from COVID-19, the punishing effects of climate change, conflicts, divisions and violence. “Each crisis reminds us of how far we have fallen away from Lord Buddha’s timeless teachings”, he said, urging people to honour Buddha’s wisdom by coming together as one, in solidarity, and shaping a better, more peaceful world for all people. Guterres, a Portuguese politician and diplomat, who assumed office in 2017, served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002.
Meanwhile, the UN Resident Coordinator Hanaa Singer-Hamdy in a press release assured that the United Nations stands with Sri Lanka and she admired the resilience shown by its people, and expressed hope of a peaceful recovery from the current crisis. ***
]]>Arun Siddharthan (AS) is always at the centre of controversy although he advocates non-violence to achieve the objectives for marginalized people in Jaffna peninsula. Hailing from a family of toddy tappers considered to be a low caste in Tamil feudal system, he was robust in his assumptions and critical of the Jaffna elite for step-motherly treatment meted out to them in the society. Today, he is the convener of Jaffna Civil Society and manages its office on the ground floor of his apartment at Chunnakam. He radiates youth and vigour in his character and is extremely friendly too. He is the representative of neo young generation in Jaffna after the war. He talks about life in Jaffna after 30-year war from his own perception. The following are the excerpts from the exclusive interview he had given to the Namomagazine (NM) in Jaffna.
NM- It has been more than 12 years since the war or ethnic conflict ended. How do feel about the life of people in Jaffna in the aftermath? What changes of life have you witnessed in them?
AS- First of all, I want to mention that there was no ethnic conflict as such. Ethnic conflict denotes a different meaning. It is a problem within different ethnicities but such issue never prevailed here. I believe that this problem was created by outside forces like India to achieve their petty political agendas. As you know, Sri Lanka is situated at a strategic point on the maritime route and therefore, many countries were eyeing Sri Lanka to wrest control of. The war was orchestrated by those interested countries. They wanted to control us and interfere in our affairs. They not only supported LTTE but other armed groups too. There was no ethnic issue in Sri Lanka. But, these countries not only funded extremist elements but trained, armed and equipped them. Thank God. It was over now. In terms of development, nothing tangible happened so far. Nothing improved. Nothing addressed. There are much more to be done for this region, even at grass root level. In fact, Jaffna based politicians have failed in this. They are not genuinely interested in taking the development to the next level.
NM- So, in terms of infrastructure development, are you satisfied about the development initiatives? Can you elaborate on this aspect?
AS- As far as infrastructure development is concerned, it is under the scope of Central Government. They did well. I have travelled much in south even to rural villages so I have come across some broken roads in that region. But here, all the roads have been carpeted and well maintained. I think that Central Government did their part well. Even the restoration of railway line was a commendable act. The Central Government has built up many facilities and amenities.
NM- Going back to the original subject of war, you would have been a youngster when the war ended in 2009. If you happen to revisit your memories, can you explain the last phase of war and your perception about LTTE?
AS- From the very beginning, we were not with LTTE. We were not convinced about their ideology either. We never thought that a separate country could be created in a small country like this. It was a figment of an unrealistic imagination. War was a business for those who had migrated to other countries. They needed the war to achieve their sinister motives. Yes, we had some issues like administrative and language problems but a separate country was not the answer. It was a dirty game of politics and of those politicians whose sustainability depends on it. Personally, we had bad and unforgettable experiences with the war. Our family lost all maternal uncles. We lost 16 of our family members due to the war. My father in law was abducted by LTTE when my wife was just 5 years old. He never returned home and is presumed dead today. Even today if you see around in our household, you see only females. It is just like Russia after WW II. The same fate befell us during the time of war. We lost so many things in life. There is no fair war in the world.
NM-Do you think that LTTE ideology still remains in the underlying of Jaffna society?
AS- No. I don’t think. Irrespective of any ideology, war is a need only for those who benefit out of it. Here, it is the same case. Some people made good money out of war. Since I closely work with a cross section of people in Jaffna, I know for sure that they don’t want another war or conflict. They just want to lead a peaceful life. People know that a separate land is not a solution. I know some elements are trying to create troubles here especially the Tamil diaspora. They are doing this from their comfort zones. Diaspora still tries to promote LTTE ideology to gain petty advantages because their survival depends on it only. I have always been outspoken against Tamil diaspora. Most of the days in the wee hours, I was woken up by outrageous calls received from overseas. I know that diaspora is gunning for me.
NM- You have formed an organization called ‘Jaffna Civil Society. What are your objectives in forming such an organization? What is your target group in this organization?
AS- The objective behind forming this organization is a straight forward one. During the war and after the war, we being marginalized people of the society never had a proper communication channel to voice our grievances. I felt that the high class elite society continued to suppress us even after the war. And we were denied of the right to speak. We needed an organization to raise our voice too. Here, there is another facet that should be disclosed. Now for example, there is an organization to safeguard the interests of those who had gone missing. But, you need to bear in mind that LTTE and other armed groups abducted our own people. These incidents have been submerged now. Our organization aims to be outspoken on these issues. So, Jaffna Civil Society stands against social injustices.
NM- Is your organization a political party or aligned to any political party or backed by any political movement for that matter? Can you elaborate on your current membership too?
AS- Clearly, we are not a political party but we have a political stand. We need help from central government to achieve our set objectives for the people of Jaffna. So, it can be any government and that is immaterial to us. We are prepared to work with anybody and any political party. We have never received any funds from the central government or any other organization but we were assisted in solving administrative issues in the peninsula. At the moment, we have about 3000 youth members in our organization. We have a women’s front as well which is headed by my wife. Altogether, we have a total membership of 6000.
NM- So, your organization is committed to promoting peace and harmony? How do you plan to do it?
AS- We always stand for a united Sri Lanka. True, I speak Tamil but we are Sri Lankans after all. My personal view is that we received free education and free health in this country. We also love our country. Tamils should also love this country. This is our country too. We should not be influenced by extremist elements which maintain a stance that this country does not belong to us. Even during LTTE rule, I openly criticized LTTE and decried caste system. I was a journalist working for a national newspaper. I used my capacity to raise voice against social injustices. But, some elements in Jaffna society felt threatened by my actions. They felt that I was harming their political base. In actually speaking, people in north and east know the negative side of LTTE and their wrong doings. Prabhakaran was wrong. He didn’t have a political education. Do you think that India will ever allow another Tamil nation to be created alongside of Tamil Nadu which has a population of 800 million whereas we have only 2,000000 – 3,000000 Tamils in Sri Lanka. I have read a great deal about world revolutions such as Cuban and French revolutions and revolutionary leaders like Che Guvera. So, I have a fair understanding about the subject. Prabhakaran misconstrued the concept of Ealam due to lack of political education.
NM- Our last question is why is your organization called ‘Ava’ Group’? If so, what is your mission connected with it?
AS- There is no such organization by that name. You know we grew up in a violent society. Even killing was encouraged and justified. Our society had been traumatized and war syndrome persisted or remained in the Jaffna society. In the aftermath of the war, the parents used to come to us for solutions in the event of acts of misbehaviour by their children. In such cases, we responded quickly. In one such occasion, we called over at a police station to resolve an issue. Somebody in the police quipped ‘Ava…ava meaning they have come in Sinhala. One Tamil journalist who was present at the police picked up this word and branded us as Ava Group. We are not for violence by any means. We stand for non-violence.
]]>The tradition of Passion Play has been in existence in Sri Lanka for over three centuries but its roots cannot be found in the island. According to Fr. Dr. Anthony Fernandopulle, Director of St. Nicholas’ International College in Colombo, even though some crude forms of folk drama such as demon and fertility rituals and mask dances and dramas were present in the Sri Lankan Buddhist culture, it was the Catholic Church that first introduced Drama in Sri Lanka in its authentic form, coming down to us from the Europeans.
Fr. Fernandopulle, who has earned his PhD at the University of London, writes in his enthralling book entitled The Origin and Development of Passion Play Tradition in Sri Lanka that there is no evidence of drama in the early history of Sri Lanka, stating boldly that the traditional religious idea of Theravada Buddhism viewed drama as an incitement to passion while some have equally suggested that dancing and acting too was not encouraged as lower caste people were involved in it.
In his book the priest scholar refers to various types of Nadagam, Jathaka (Buddha’s Reincarnation) stories, sokari, kolam, kavi nadagam, etc. He says that despite their abundance of dancing, drumming, feasting and public demonstrations at Court, there is a paucity of evidence of any development of literary drama at any time in the history of the Sinhalese literature.
Dr. Edmund Peiris, the erudite late bishop of Chilaw (1897-1989), Dr. Ediriweera Sarachchandra (1914-1996), playwright, novelist, poet and literary critic and Professors Ashley Halpe, scholar, and Sunil Ariyaratne, scholar, film director and lyricist, have also accepted the fact that it was Frs. Joseph Vaz (1651-1711) and Jacome Gonsalves (1676-1742), Oratorian missionaries from India from St. Paul’s Jesuit University in India who brought with them the Passion Play tradition to Sri Lanka on their arrival from Goa, India. Goa has exerted a significant influence on Sri Lankan culture, politics and also the Church.
This new Passion Play tradition emerged during the persecution of the Catholics by the Dutch. It was immensely helpful, enabling the faithful to visually reflect on the important events in the life of Jesus, particularly His passion, death and resurrection, and it spread rapidly to different parts of the island.
Passion Play in Duwa
The colourful Passion Play in the coastal village of Duwa near the traditionally Catholic town of Negombo, could be the oldest and the best known Catholic drama not only in Sri Lanka but also in Asia. It has come down from generation to generation with well-preserved traditions. It could be the second oldest Passion Play still performed (though cancelled recently due to the pandemic) after the world famous Passion Play in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau in Southern Germany. Originally, the Duwa pageant was enacted with statues alone based on the script of Fr. Gonsalves. When Fr. Marcelline Jayakody (1902-1998), musician, lyricist, author, journalist and patriot, known as the “Priest in the Temple”, and respected by the Buddhist majority, became the parish priest of Duwa in 1939, he introduced a new script and humans for most of the cast, replacing statues, counting over 250 actors, all from this fishing hamlet. In 1982 the State honoured the priest with the title “Kalasuri” (Master Artist) and in 1983 he won the Ramon Magsaysay Award from the Philippines, considered the Asian Nobel Prize.
Passion Play in Boralessa
In the 1920s and 1930s the village of Boralessa in the diocese of Chilaw became famous for its Passion Play staged by layman Lawrence Perera with a different approach. He modelled his drama on the technique of the world famous German Passion Play at Oberammergau, using human actors for all the scenes, but at the same time imparting traditional dramatic features to his drama with a blend of Christian and Oriental music played with Western instruments. Perera’s Passion Play, which fascinated even the foreign spectators, was a landmark performance at the time, but the Catholic Church banned it for using female actors for the play.
Passion Play in Halpe
The Passion Play, named Aho Mage Senageni (Oh! my people!), enacted in 2000 in the village of Halpe in the Colombo archdiocese, was unique in that the creators of this drama were given the opportunity for the first time to use costumes from the renowned Passion Play in Oberammergau. It was directed by Alexius Fernando from the village of Wadduwa, south of Colombo.
Passion Play in Thambakanda
For the first time in the history of the country, the Passion Play, staged in 2012 at St. Bruno’s church in the village of Thambakanda in the northwestern Kurunegala diocese, brought together many leading cinema and TV stars in Sri Lanka. It was produced by Prem Fernando and coordinated by veteran Sri Lankan film star Cletus Mendis. Jeewan Kumaratunga, a former senior cabinet minister and popular actor, played the role of Jesus and the music was composed by Dinesh Subasinghe. This drama on the passion of Jesus created history in the island: 1.) It was the first Passion Play in the world with the highest number of senior artists on the silver screen. 2.) It was the first time in any part of the world that a cabinet minister of a country portrayed the character of Jesus.
The late Fr. Ernest Poruthota (1931-2020), veteran film critic of the Sri Lankan Catholic Church, also known as the “Priest of the Sinhala Cinema”, highly lauded this presentation. The priest rendered a yeoman service to Sri Lanka’s film industry and founded the Sri Lanka branch of the OCIC (International Catholic Organisation for Cinema and Audiovisual), headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. Sri Lanka OCIC has been instrumental in moulding many who have become veterans today in the field of cinema and television in the country.
Passion Plays have been staged in various other parishes in Sri Lanka as well in addition to the above venues for these religious pageants. ***
]]>According to historic records, there were three saints by the name of Valentine. One of them was martyred in Africa with his companions but nothing much is known about him. The other two-one a bishop from Genoa in northern Italy and the other a priest-were martyred on 14th February in the 3rd century during the reign of the Roman emperor Claudius II, also named “Gothicus” (214-270 A. D.). As both of these saints were decapitated at the behest of the emperor on the same day, though of different years, many believe that their martyrdom originates from a single legend which became splintered and the gruesome incident, therefore, refers to one and the same person.
Folklore and certain documents record that the priest Valentine (some say that it was bishop Valentine of Terni near Rome in central Italy) defied an edict of Claudius II who banned or postponed the marriage of youths in his empire, who were to be recruited to his army, as it would diminish their military prowess and make them homesick for their wives and children when they were in the battlefield. Valentine, who clandestinely married the youths, was thrown in prison to be beheaded. The legend has it that the jailor of the prison, named Asterius, challenged Valentine to prove the power of his God by restoring the eyesight to his blind daughter named Julia. On praying over her eyes, Julia was miraculously cured of her blindness and Asterius embraced Christianity. The emperor, angered at his conversion, had him decapitated along with Valentine. Another legend says that Julia loved Valentine but the veracity of the story cannot be confirmed. However, on the eve of his execution, Valentine wrote a letter to Julia, signed as “From your Valentine”. This has given rise to the custom of the greeting cards of today on Valentine’s Day carrying these words. The name of the sender is never mentioned and everyone becomes a ‘Valentine’. It is said that this custom, to a certain extent, helped to link the saint with lovers and married couples.
Lupercalia: fertility festival of the Romans
Anyone visiting souvenir shops in Rome could buy a special souvenir that symbolises the city: a small statue of a she-wolf suckling two little children. The story of this souvenir is very interesting. Amulius (794-752 B. C.) was a Roman king who ordered to drown his twins in the river Tiber as a punishment for the disobedience and infidelity of his wife Rhea Silvia who was seduced by god Mars, god of war in Roman mythology, thus conceiving the twins. The servant who was commissioned with this task sympathised with the children and put them in a basket and floated it down the river. They were saved by god Tiberinus, Father of the River, and the twin brothers survived under the shade of a tree by the river bank, whereupon a she-wolf suckled them in a cave now known as Lupercal. Finally, they were brought up by a shepherd named Faustulus. The twins, named Romulus and Remus, grew up and founded Rome.
Since the 6th century B. C. this she-wolf was honoured on 15th February in a Roman festival named Lupercalia. It was also held for the fertility of women, to appease evil spirits, purify the city and bring health. The festival was also known as “Februa” giving the name to the month of February.
The priests, taking part in the ritual, killed a goat and a dog and applied blood on the forehead of two other priests who then stripped off their clothes. The blood was wiped off with a piece of cotton soaked in milk (the red roses given on Valentine’s Day symbolise the colour of the blood). Then the two priests spanked the bums of young married women with the skin of the goat they had just slain, to initiate fertility. The women believed that they, without fail, would be conceived due to this ritual. With the passage of time, the festival rid itself of its improper rites when a matchmaking lottery was introduced, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then live together for a year and sometimes get married or be separated thereafter if the match was not right. Therefore, this festival, at that time, was considered one for uniting couples.
Cupid, the little winged Roman god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection, is also associated with Valentine’s Day. In Roman mythology, Cupid is the son of Venus, goddess of love and Mars, god of war.
Pope Gelasius I, who died in 496 A. D., observing that the rites associated with Lupercalia, were diametrically opposed to Christian morals and decorum, sought to superimpose Christian principles on the pagan rites of the Romans, thus diverting the attention of the people to give an ethical basis to the celebration, by introducing a Christian feast-feast of St. Valentine-on 14th February. By doing so, the church leader wanted to emphasise the importance of martyrdom of the saint for the cause of uniting couples in holy matrimony.
The event which attained its present status with the customs of lavish spending of money on mass-produced greeting cards-known as “Valentines”-flowers, chocolates and other gifts, dining in restaurants, etc. is said to have no connection whatsoever with the saint or the Roman festival of fertility and purification or Pope Gelasius I. It all began with the 14th century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) who was also a government servant. The 1575th verse in one of his poems reads thus: “On this feast of St. Valentine all birds come to find their mates”. Chaucer penned his verse on the occasion of the engagement of King Richard II of England (1367-1400) to princess Anne of Bohemia or of Luxembourg in 1381. (The princess died in 1394, supposedly of a plague at the age of 28) This verse inspired the people of England, particularly the nobility. Meanwhile, a duke named Charles, who was incarcerated in London Tower, wrote a poem to his wife in 1415 ending in these words: “From me, your loving Valentine”. This letter is still kept in the London Museum. Besides, king Henry V (1836-1422), hired a poet to write a ‘Valentine verse’ for the princess whom he loved.
Saint’s name deleted from the Roman calendar
After the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) the hagiographies (literature of the lives and legends of saints) were subjected to re-examination in the wake of which the names of certain saints were removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969 due to paucity of historical records. Among them were saints Valentine, Christopher (patron saint of travellers who died c. 251 A. D.), Barbara (patron saint of lightning and fire of the 3rd century) and Bibiana (patron saint of mental illnesses who died in 360 A. D.). The church fathers replaced St. Valentine with two other saints, namely Saints Cyril and Methodius and their feasts are now celebrated instead on 14th February.
Valentine’s Day is primarily celebrated in the western world, but it is equally celebrated in many East Asian countries with Singaporeans, Chinese and South Koreans spending the most money on Valentine gifts. In India, Valentine’s Day celebrations were spread due to commercial TV channels, radio programmes and love letter competitions, but a 2018 online survey found that 68% of the respondents commented against the event. Hindus, Muslims and Christians of India do not welcome this day. The holiday has been regarded by Indian traditionalists as a cultural contamination from the West and as a celebration “alien to Indian culture”. In 2017, the Islamabad High Court in Pakistan prohibited Valentine’s Day celebrations in public places.
In the predominantly Christian Philippines, Valentine’s Day is the most popular day for weddings while in Lebanon men take women out to dine and buy them a gift. Women are also asked to marry on that day. St. Valentine is the patron saint of a majority of the Lebanese.
In 2012, the religious police in Saudi Arabia reportedly arrested more than 140 Muslims for celebrating the day and confiscated all red roses from flower shops. Only non-Muslims can celebrate the event, but only behind closed doors.
Valentine’s Day in Sri Lanka
In the predominantly Buddhist Sri Lanka too this day has come into vogue in recent times, the commercial enterprises and the media playing a key role to promote the day. In the past some Buddhist monks and Catholic priests organised spiritual and meditation programmes for youths on this day to neutralise or counter the western traditions of the celebration. Sri Lankan Catholic priest Fr. Cecil Joy Perera, an authority on liturgy and director of the “Daham Sevana” seminary in Kalutara, 43 km south of Colombo, deplores the commercialisation of Valentine’s Day even in his own country, similar to the western world. “When the country is undergoing a critical period in its economy our young generation does not need red roses, gifts, symbols of love, etc. We should not encourage such things either”, he told Namo on Feb. 13. Fr. Perera exhorted the young Sri Lankans, irrespective of their creed, to use this day for a deeper understanding of the true meaning of love, without falling a prey to the profit-oriented electronic media.
The priest also assured that Valentine’s Day was not introduced into the island by the Catholic church. “Some might see this as an indecent attempt by the Catholic church to ruin the country’s culture and its cherished values, but this is not so. We should try our best to conscientise the people about the origins and the current practices of this event”, he told Namo.***
]]>Udappu, located 105 km north of Colombo, is a traditional fishing village of Hindu Tamils in the North Western Province of Sri Lanka. This coastal hamlet is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, the south by the Andimunai Sand Dunes and the east by the Mundal Lagoon. The city of Chilaw and Munneswaram, an important Hindu temple complex, are located to the south of it.
Udappu, a village of fire-walkers, is the venue of Sri Lanka’s largest festival of fire-walking by Hindu devotees over red hot cinders barefooted, held towards the end of July and early August each year. The festival, lasting for 18 days, attracting many foreign visitors, commences with the flag hoisting and ends with the fire-walking in front of the Draupadi Amman Temple in the village.
Draupadi is a goddess from the Hindu epic Mahabharata and was the wife of the five Pandava brothers in this epic. She is equally believed to be the incarnation of Hindu goddess Kali, goddess of death, time and change.
The villagers, prior to the festival, abstain from liquor and meat, and remain vegetarian. Then they tread on coals burning at over 1500 degrees Celsius, some carrying even their little ones, and go across the embers of wood unscathed. Married women or girls who have reached the age of puberty are not allowed to perform the act.
Mastery over fire among various cultures
‘Fakirs’ (Muslim or Hindu saints or ascetics) of India are master performers of fire-walking before shaky and nervous onlookers. (The word is derived from ‘faqr’, meaning ‘poverty’ in Arabic) They cross the burning trench barefooted and appear at the other end smiling. Some say that the only explanation which seems to be somewhat nearer the truth is that the ‘fakirs’ overcome the pain with their strong willpower. Prior to demonstrating his skills, ‘fakir’ Jatoo Bhai from Calcutta, meditates and prays to the Almighty. When the climax is reached, he dances amidst flames in an attitude of ecstasy. After the dance, spectators find to their surprise that Bhai’s soles are intact with no burns at all. His clothes, remarkably, have not caught fire. In Hinduism the goal of fire-walking is self-realisation and the act is faith-based.
This daring feat, performed annually by the native Indian tribes of North America, assumes a most interesting and baffling aspect. For them, fire-walking is an exercise of purification for which they prepare themselves by building a roaring fire in the ritual hut. The performers then undress themselves and enter the circle of fire with their leader or ‘shaman’. Women often dance around the fire while men go across it. Then the leader takes out the glowing stakes of the wood and applies them on himself and on others. Anyone suffering from burns is considered to be in need of extra prayers. This is followed by each one of them drinking a bowl of salt water which they vomit into a bowl of sand. Anyone, who fails to vomit, is regarded as impure and undergoes the ritual again. Finally, the door of the hut is closed and the ‘shaman’ sits round the fire with his followers until the flames disappear and ashes cool down. The cooled ashes are then mixed with the vomit and left in the open to be blown away.
In the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific, fire-walking is a test of individual strength and courage and a test of one’s faith. For Fijians the feat needs a great deal of preparation. Ten days prior to the celebration, they must segregate themselves from women, thus abstaining from sex, and from eating coconut. Otherwise, according to legend, they would be punished with severe burns. Large river stones are collected and placed in the pit. Eight hours before the ceremony, a log fire is built over the top of the stones to heat them up. Accompanied by dances and chants, ecstasy, or frenzy, the fire-walkers are then led to the arena and they step on the smouldering stones to perform the ritual.
The Shinto-Buddhist fire-walking ceremony, held every year at the foot of the 599 m tall Mt. Takao in Tokyo, Japan, is dedicated to prayers for peace. Fire-walking is also practised in Greece, Spain, China, Tibet, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Christian fire-walkers of Greece and Spain
In some villages in Northern Greece and Southern Bulgaria, a traditional barefooted three-day ritual of fire-walking over glowing wood coals, is held annually, beginning on 21st May and ending on 23rd of the same month. The revellers, carrying the icons of Saints Constantine (306-337 AD), the Roman emperor, and Helena (248-330 AD), the empress and his mother, dance ecstatically for hours prior to entering the fire and emerging unharmed. This unique festival is named Anastenaria in Greek and Nestinarstvo in Bulgarian. The ceremony is repeated, this time indoors, by Eastern Orthodox Christians in January during the festival of St. Athanasius (296-373 AD), a Greek church father, also lasting for three days. The American anthropologist Loring Danforth (born in 1949) at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, U. S. A., in his book on fire-walking and religious healing, says that the devotees believe that the religious power of St. Constantine allows them to walk across the fiery ovens unhurt and that they consider it a miracle.
San Pedro Manrique, a municipality in central Spain, consisting of smaller villages, is known for its unique celebration of “Día de San Juan” (meaning St. John’s Day in Spanish). On the night of this day, a bonfire is lit next to the shrine of the “Virgin of the Rock” and when it has burnt to embers, the locals remove their shoes and walk barefoot over the dying fire. The festival is thought to be a remnant of a pagan tradition in pre-Christian Spain.
Experiments and explanations
In the 1890s Dr. T. N. Hocken tried to unravel the mystery. He chemically tested the soles of the fire-walkers and also licked them with his tongue, but he was unable to find any foreign protective substance and eventually absolved them of all charges of trickery.
However, English anthropologist Edward Clodd (1840-1930), president of the Folklore Society of England, claimed in 1895 that the entire exercise was a trickery. Clodd, who was sceptical about paranormal phenomena, suggested that the feet of fireproof people may have been rendered insensitive by treating them with sulphuric acid or alum. Even Clodd’s explanations were rebutted. An experiment was conducted in 1937 at Carshalton, England. A fiery pit was prepared and Ahmed Hussain and Reginald Adcock, the two contestants, had their feet thoroughly examined before and after the walk. As the scientists who watched both of them very carefully found that the whole exercise was not fraught with jugglery, they had to accept the unexplained truth that such people may be parading their ‘supernatural’ or ‘unique’ abilities.
Physicist David Willey (born in 1947), and an expert on the science of fire-walking, at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, U. S. A., is of the view that people can tread on a trench of burning coals because wood is a lousy conductor. Tolly Burkan (born in 1948 in New York) dismisses the idea by pointing to an incident in which members of his Fire-walking Institute in California successfully walked repeatedly on a heated metal grill without being burned. Burkan argues that what controls the ability to walk on fire is more than physics. “It’s your state of mind”, he says. But Willey denies such ‘mind over matter’ theories, although he agrees that self-confidence is required to take that first step.
Bernard Leikand and William McCarthy wrote in the Skeptical Inquirer in 1985 that fire-walking is possible due to the low thermal capacity of the coals as well as the short time of contact that the fire-walkers’ soles have with the coals.
Fire-walking became popularised in the United States in the 1980s as a technique for overcoming restrictive beliefs and phobias. Some fire-walks are performed in silence while others are accompanied by drumming, clapping or chanting to encourage those crossing the fire. Many have been burned literally, some needing hospitalisation, but others have undergone a rewarding healing experience, even leading to the remission of malignant tumours. Several white men have walked over fire, among them Dr. William Craig (1832-1922), a Scottish surgeon and botanist who made a safe crossing.
John Hyde, a writer and traveller in Japan, observed that the priests, before walking over their herb-strewn fire pits, rubbed the soles of their feet with salt. Hyde did the same and after a walk across the cinders, remarked that in his feet he felt only a sensation of gentle warmth, but his ankles, to which no salt was applied, were scorched.
Meanwhile, in a 2011 scientific study of global interest, the scholars produced evidence of synchronisation between the heartbeats of practitioners and spectators of the fire-walking ritual.
Fire-dancing and fire-eating
Interestingly, fire-dancing and fire-eating traditions exist as well. Egyptian and Algerian dervishes (members of a Muslim religious order who have taken vows of poverty and austerity) have reportedly swallowed hot coals, without causing the least injury to themselves, a practice which has also been reported in Sumatra in western Indonesia. In the late 1800s, a Scotsman named Daniel Douglas Home (1833-1886), was observed to handle hot coals, bathe his face in fire and lie down on a bed of hot coals. Home was a medium who, supposedly, was able to mediate communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings. He was also credited with the incredible ability of levitation to a variety of heights.
Meanwhile, ‘Trial by fire’ was an historic method of proving guilt or innocence. Fire was placed on the skin of the accused, who would not be burned if innocent.
Sri Lankan scholars challenge the feat
The late Prof. Carlo Fonseka (1933-2019) was a Sri Lankan physician, a former president of the Sri Lanka Medical Council and a postgraduate from the University of Edinburgh. He was also a left-wing political activist of the Lanka Samasamaja Party (LSSP), adhering to the Ukrainian-Russian Marxist ideology of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940). Although Fonseka, also a lyricist and a composer, was born to a Roman Catholic family, he became a rationalist and served as a vice president of the Ceylon Rationalist Association. In 1970, along with his members, Fonseka walked over fire, unharmed. Prior to performing the feat, they had consumed liquor and eaten pork in order to prove that neither a vegetarian diet nor other forms of abstinence like fasting were a prerequisite for the ritual. According to him, fire-walking depended on two factors: the thickness of the soles and the duration of contact between the soles and the glowing cinders. Yet, in a letter published in a Sri Lankan English language daily in 1970, Dr. K. Velmany, a Tamil scholar, had observed that the conditions that prevailed at the Kataragama Temple fire-walking in the south of the island and the fire-walking sponsored by the Colombo Medical School were not identical. This temple is dedicated to the Buddhist guardian deity known as Kataragama Deviyo, venerated by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and aboriginal Vedda people. The deity is identified with god Skanda, Hindu god of war.
The Ceylon Rationalist Association owes its existence much to the efforts of Dr. Abraham Thomas Kovoor (1898-1978), a Malayali rationalist who had emigrated to Sri Lanka in 1928 from his native Indian state of Kerala. He was the son of a vicar general of the reformed Syrian Church of Malabar. Like Fonseka, he too had embraced rationalism. Having served as a teacher at reputed colleges in northern and southern Sri Lanka and also in Colombo, Kovoor retired in 1959 and devoted most of his time to build up the association and make it vibrant, and he was its president from 1960 until his death. In 1963 Kovoor announced an award of Rs. 100,000 for anyone who could demonstrate supernatural or psychic powers under foolproof and fraud-proof conditions. Fonseka, in 2012, renewed the challenge and increased the reward to one million dollars.
Not only medicine-men, astrologers, palmists, soothsayers, numerologists, necromancers (black magicians), fire-walkers, telepathists (those who read thoughts of others), clairvoyants (those who see distant things beyond normal sensory contact), mediums and séances (communication with the spirits of the dead), poltergeists (known in ghostlore as noisy and mischievous spirits, moving furniture and cutlery and throwing stones, thus tormenting the victims), ghosts and apparitions, charms and talismans, apports (articles that appear from an unknown source during poltergeist activity or séances), etc. but also god-men (babas) of India and even the Bible became the targets of trenchant criticism in Kovoor’s books that were translated into many Indian languages and also into Sinhalese and that became best-sellers. His work, undoubtedly, must be commended for exposing charlatans and hoaxers who deceive gullible or credulous people for money or cheap publicity, but at the same time others have been critical of the methodology he used in his investigations. They claim that Kovoor tailored his experiments to fit his own “preconceived” notions or beliefs which they say sounds “biased” and “unscientific”.
Science accepts a fact as genuine and valid as long as it can be proven in a laboratory repeatedly, producing the same result. But, in the case of paranormal phenomena, this is not so and they are capricious: unreliable and unpredictable and therefore, discouraging to many researchers. Can this be a point for disproving the phenomena outright?
Science has made great strides in the recent past, making newest discoveries, particularly in the field of “quantum physics”. Such findings are shaking the very basis of materialists and are leading many orthodox and eminent scientists to doubt or change the views and opinions that they have held so far and that they have considered “sacrosanct”.
“We have now been able to prove, by purely scientific analysis, the existence of an invisible and immaterial world. This result is the fruit of twenty-seven years of research into gravitational waves”, says Dr. A. J. Glazewski, an American scientist of Polish extraction. ***
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