Tusk, Tusker, Rogue Elephant & Jumbo

In my earlier post on the Kombuwa, I referred to an elephant's tusks. Alas, at the time I had no image available and had to resort to plagiarising from a 17th century woodcut. Well, I had the good luck this morning to come across a really good-looking pair of tusks on a really magnificent-looking pachyderm.

Tusker, Hokandara Rd, Thalawathugoda

This chap was probably returning home after taking part in a perahera, a religious procession. Note the chains around his neck in the picture below:

Tusker, Thalawathugoda

'Tusker' can refer to any animal with tusks, eg. a wild boar. However, in the Sri Lankan context, 'tuskers' are, invariably, elephants. Henry Charles Sirr (Ceylon and the Cingalese, William Shorberl, London 1850) referred to them as 'tusk-elephants'. It was left to Sir James Emerson Tennent (Ceylon: an Account of the Island, Physical, Historical - Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, London 1859) to use the term 'tusker' for the first time (cf. Oxford English Dictionary).

Incidently, the OED credits Tennant with introducing 'Rogue Elephant' into the English language. However, it appears to have been Sirr (op cit) who did so:

It is well known these animals are usually found in herds, and when a solitary elephant is seen, the Cingalese say that it is a rogue-elephant, "hora alia", who has been expelled for nefarious and turbulent conduct by the other members of the herd.

In the Sinhala tongue, an elephant is an aliya (plural ali). A tusker, on the other hand, is called an æthaa, from the Prakrit hatthi (cf. Hindi hasthi) - 'elephant'. Now, the English 'Elephant' came (via Latin and French) from the Greek 'elephantos' or 'elephas' which, in turn probably came from the Phoenician 'elu' (the same as the Hamitic), although it might have originated from the Sanskrit ibhah. One wonders whether the Sinhala 'aliya' came from the same root as the Phoenician/Hamitic.

The earliest known examples of the Brahmi alphabet, as I mentioned in regard to the Kombuwa, are on potsherds, dating from the 6th century BC, found at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and at Kodumanal in South India. It is possible that it was a form of Phoenician, transplanted by traders. Compare the Brahmi and Phoenician alphabets.

Phoenicians bring treasure to King Solomon (Thanks to Karen Hatzigergiou)

The Phoenicians, along with the ships of Tarshish were hired by King Solomon (he of the mines) to bring his hardware and day-to-day groceries:

And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones. (1 Kings 10:11)

For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks. (1 Kings 10:22)

It may be postulated that the Phoenicians and the Tarshishites were both familiar with India and hence Sri Lanka.

Interestingly, although Phoenician was a Semitic language, the general Semitic term for 'elephant' is pil (Arabic and Persian fil). A sub-species of the Asian elephant survived in Mesopotamia until the 9th century BC, when seems to have been exterminated by overhunting. So the Semitic people had their own word for the jumbo.

Now Jumbo, as most people will know, was the name given to a famous 19th Century elephant which died. Being about 4 metres ( 12 feet) high at the shoulder, it posthumously lent its moniker to large things, from the Jumbo Jet to the oxymoronic but mouth-watering Jumbo Shrimp , via an entire range of jumbo orchids, from the Jumbo Ego to the Jumbo Pip.

The dead Jumbo was stuffed and exhibited at Tufts University, an institution of higher learning in Medford, Massachusetts. Alas, the taxidermised mastodon was destroyed in a fire, but that never loosened the affectionate ties that ivory tower had with the tusker. In its hallowed memory, the Tufts University Science Library has created a database known as 'Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase' or TUSK.

Jumbo the statue

Another Jumbo, this time a diminutive statue of an elephant from an amusement park, adorns the campus. By comparison with the person of average height standing next to it, it is obvious that it cannot be above 3 metres at the shoulder. On the other hand, compare the height of the tusker I saw with that of its Mahout:

Tusker with Mahout, Thalawathugoda

About equal to the original Jumbo I should think. Its tusks may be seen in all their splendour in this photograph, but they are dwarfed by the ivory on Millangoda Raja, an Elephant with really long tusks (allegedly the longest in Asia).

More on Daniel Detloff von Ranzow and immigration to Australia.

Following my posting on The Old Dutch House, I received a comment from Leo van der Plas of Delft, the Netherlands. His von Rantzau website is a veritable mine of information on that aristocratic Teutonic family.

He confirms that Daniel Detloff von Ranzow, who was transported to Australia in 1838, was a son of Carl Ludvig von Ranzow, the son of Daniel Detlev von Ranzow and Johanna Elizabeth Cramer. He adds that Carl Ludvig was a former governor of Riouw, then residing in Malacca and Liem Akhaniong.

He further mentions that the Malakkan newspaper in 1836 carried an account of a fight which occurred between Carl Ludvig, Daniel Detloff and a servant on one hand and a Mr de Wind on the other - certainly unfair odds for a fight, more like a mugging.

Entry on for July 1836 on p 93 of Asiatic Intelligence, in the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany, vol xx.

So Daniel Detloff the younger, No 6095 in the van der Plas Rantzau database, appears to have been of a rather fiery nature, to say the least.

His father, the 'poor old count' Carl Ludvig was born in Mannar, in Northern Sri Lanka. The ancient port of Maha Tittha ('great harbour') had been in existence for two thousand years before the Portuguese built a fort there in 1560. This was captured in 1658 by the Dutch, who rebuilt it in its present form in 1686.

So Daniel Detloff is definitely in contention for the first Sri Lankan Dutch Burgher immigrant to Australia. The first Sri Lankan immigrants, were however, the O'Dean family.

Hon. Frederick North, later 5th Earl of Guilford, established the 1st Ceylon regiment, the first Malay regiment in the British Army, in 1802. It wore the distinctive scarlet uniform of the 'redcoats'.

Drum Major Jainudeen, a Malay of the 1st Ceylon Regiment, went over to the side of the King of Kandy - who had his own Malay regiment, the Padikkara Peruwa - in the first Kandyan War of 1803-1805. Upon the fall of the kingdom in the 2nd Kandyan War 1815, he was captured and transported with his Sinhalese wife Eve and children to New South Wales. Their arrival on board the vessel Kangaroo was reported in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser of 17th February 1816.

He was originally known as William O'Deen or O'Dean, but later became Hooden. Later still he was identified as John Wooden and the family became totally 'Aussiefied' (or, given their final name, 'lignified').

For more on Sri Lankan immigration to Australia, see James Jupp, The Australian people: an encyclopedia of the nation, its people and their origins, Cambridge University Press, 2001; ISBN 0521807891, 9780521807890.

A postscript: a 2nd Lieutenant Henrik Mattheus van Ranzow served with the 3rd Ceylon Regiment under the British, possibly one of the sons of August Carel von Ranzow. The Dutch were common but rich, and the German aristocracy noble but poor, so the latter served the former as merceneries.

Another PS: in the Parliamentary Papers, Volume 34 (London: HMSO, 1840), on p10 of 'Colonial Pensions' are two items: L 22 10 s paid as pension to Count ACF von Ranzow aged 71, in January 1820 and L 15 paid to his son and daughter at the same time.

ADDENDUM  July 2012
Paul Thomas  of Monash university has written a scholarly article on O'Deen, which may prove definitive. An abstract plus a pay-to-download version is available at:

OODEEN, A MALAY INTERPRETER ON AUSTRALIA'S FRONTIERLANDS, Indonesia and the Malay World, 40:117

Pattini Devale, Panama

After the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, I made several trips to Pottuvil on the East Coast of Sri Lanka with loads of supplies for the displaced people. On one such trip, in early April, I continued south to the village of Panama (pronounced paa-nuh-muh).

Over 200 years ago, on the 13th of September 1800, an Englishman, William Orr, Esq (a civil servant) visited Panama on the way from Tangalle in the south to Batticaloa in the East. According to his report to the British Governor,

Paoneme contains sixty inhabitants, who cultivate seventy-three amonams of paddy ground.

The following year Thomas Anthony Reeder, surgeon of the 51st Regiment of Foot (who was to die soon after, during the 1st Kandyan War) travelled in the opposite direction. According to his journal,

Panoa is situate on a plain surrounded by jungle. Here are some cultivated fields, and several large stocks of paddee.

A year later, the British Governor himself, the Hon. Frederick North (later 5th Earl of Guilford), followed the southward route. He was accompanied by the Inspector of Hospitals in Ceylon, Thomas Christie, Esq, who reported that

Panoa is a considerable village, and the country round it abounds with paddee fields.

What these descriptions - which appear in James Cordiner's A Description of Ceylon (London, 1807; Dehiwela, Tisara Prakasakayo, 1983) - show (apart from the recognised inability of the English to tackle with any accuracy the phonetics of foreign place names) is that Panama's chief attraction was its paddy fields. The surrounding jungle was far more notable to these perfidious Albionians: Christie was highly excited by the sight, en-route to the village of

a herd of wild hogs, and an alligator, both of which allowed us to approach very near.

Rock, fields and tank at Panama

When I visited the place, however, it was in the knowledge that it possesses a Devale (temple) of the goddess Pattini. The shrine, on a rocky spot on the shore of a tank, is a Buddhist one. However, Hindu shrines of Pattini also exist, although she was not originally a Hindu deity.

Main Pattini shrine (larger photo available here)

Pattini is a goddess of fertility, who may originally have been a middle-eastern deity, Potnia. Mogg Morgan calls Pattini one of the many names of Isis, pointing out that in both cases the male consort is killed and dismembered, but brought back to life by the female deity.

Pattini was said to have been born from a mango and to have destroyed the city of Madurai by tearing off her breast and casting it on the ground, a sort of divine nuclear hand-grenade.

Image of Pattini in the shrine. The doorway to her right leads to the inner sanctum

Pattini was married to Palanga, a mythical ancient South-Indian version of Prince Philip. Palanga appears to have done little except hang around being dissolute with a pretty young mistress and get himself killed by a wicked king. Nevertheless he is propriated as 'Alut Deviyo' ('the New God'), having his own shrine next to his more powerful wife's.

Palanga's shrine (larger photo available here)

Originally Pattini and her consort did not have elaborate temples to house them, the present structures having been built in the 1920s. Instead, two large tamarind trees served as shrines.

Tamarind tree (original Pattini shrine)

In addition to the two large temples, two smaller shrines have been built to the Parakasa Deviyo, the guardian deities of the temple precinct - who punish those who misbehave on the premises.

Shrine of one of the two guardian deities (Parakasa Deviyo) (larger image available here)

One of the central rituals of the Pattini cult is the Ankeliya, the Horn Game, which is similar in concept to the town games of Uppies and Downies in Britain - including it being a male-only sport. In the Ankeliya, two opposing teams, the Udupila ('Upper team') and the Yatipila ('Lower team') try to break the horn of the opposing team in a game of tug-of-war.

Horn tree and channel for the 'thunderbolt tree' (another, larger photo of the Horn Tree available here)

The Upper team tie their horn to the 'horn tree', which grows about equidistant from and slightly behind the shrines of Pattini and Palanga. The Lower team tie their horn to a large tree trunk about 4.5 m (15 ft) long, pivoted in a 2 metre (6 ft) long channel and held in position by logs called 'haepini kandan' ('female cobra trunks'). This tree trunk is called a 'Thunderbolt Tree' (henakanda - cf Anaconda). Paranthetically, these Milliganesque references to snakes in what is, after all a fertility ritual should make a psychoanalyst positively drool.

Closer view of the channel for the 'thunderbolt tree'

The two horns are hooked together and two ropes are tied to the 'thunderbolt tree'. The two teams tug on the ropes, moving the the 'thunderbolt tree' forward and bringing tension to bear on the two interlocked horns until one of them snaps. The winning team - the one whose horn doesn't break - gets to yell obscene songs at the vanquished team; certainly worth more than a cash prize.

To see some photos of the ritual, go HERE.

If you want to visit Panama, it is quite close to the lovely Arugam Bay, which has a few hotels. If you want to learn more about Pattini, you can go to this website or read Gananath Obeyesekere's excellent anthropological study, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984; ISBN 0-226-61602-9). And here is an interesting take on Pattini in the context of modern Western society.

Colombo, the Pettah, the Dutch Museum & the von Ranzows

Colombo was called Kalanpu by Ibn Battuta. A mainly Muslim trading port, the Portuguese took it over in 1517 and drove out all the non-Christians. They built a large fort, which encompassed present-day Fort and Pettah.

The Dutch and Sri Lankan armies before Colombo

Allied with the Sinhalese king Rajasinghe II, the Dutch under Gerard Pieterszoon Hulft laid siege to and captured the fort in 1655. The Hollanders were in the employ of the Netherlands East India Company, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC.

The VOC logo

The hitherto feudalistic Lusitanian colony was henceforth to be run with capitalist, Teutonic efficiency. The thrifty Dutch reduced the size of the fort to the area now encompassed within the Colombo city-core known as the 'Fort'. The remainder (outside the new fort) became the outer fort, the 'Pettah'.

Map: Dutch Period Museum marked with orange cross

The Fort is divided from the Pettah by a broad canal, linking the harbour to the Beira lake, which may clearly be seen on the map.

The Dutch Period Museum (larger Photo available here.)

On Prince St in the modern Pettah lies the 'Old Dutch House'. It was built in the late 17th century and was originally the home of the Dutch governor, Thomas van Rhee (1692-1697). In 1796 the British, who displaced the Dutch, took it over and made it into a Military Hospital . Still later it became a post office. The building was restored in 1977-81 and was opened to the public in 1982 as the 'Dutch Period Museum'.

Entrance to the museum

The museum is open daily - except Fridays - from 0900 to 1700 (9 am to 5 pm). Embodying the architectural features of a tropical colonial Dutch town house, it displays old Dutch furniture and artefacts and portrays aspects of contemporary Burgher life and culture.

Old Dutch furniture

Among the items illustrating the Dutch period is a copy of a portrait of Gerard Hulft, the VOC's First Councillor and Director-General of the Indies, Commander-in-Chief of the military forces over the waters of Ceylon and the Coast of India. Hulft was killed during the siege of Colombo.

Gerard Hulft by Flinck (detail)

The original of the portrait by Govert Flinck is at the the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Among the original occupants of the Old Dutch House was apparently August Carel Fredrik von Ranzow (also known as August Carl Friedrich von Rantzow, 1789-1844), who styled himself Graf (Count). He was a scion of an aristocratic German-Dutch-Danish family with the (rather Ruritanian-sounding) name of von Rantzau , who traced their ancestry back to Charlemagne. A son of Count Ferdinand Anton von Ranzow of Wolffenbuettel, his progeny engendered Brohiers, Sissouws and Greves, among others. He returned to Brunswick and married an equally aristocratic baronness, and three of the ensuing sons returned to serve the VOC in Sri Lanka.

Another relative who served the VOC in Sri Lanka was Daniel Detlef von Rantzow (1741-1822), who is mentioned, in a list of those attending the funeral of a Robertus Cramer, as having married the daughter of OnderKoopman Salomon van Lier: "Anna Sophia Lier married in 1768, being a widow, with count Daniel Ditloff von Ranzow". He appears soon after to have married Johanna Elizabeth Cramer (possibly a relative of the aforementioned Robertus Cramer?).

Altogether, he had 22 children, one of whom, Ludvig Carl (born in Mannar, Sri Lanka) had numerous descendants, including the van Ranzows of California. Ludvig Carl's son Ferdinand appears to have served in Java. The Ranzows certainly went forth and multiplied.

The Slavic-sounding Detlev name seems to have been in the family since the early 1600s. Interestingly, the first von Ranzow immigrant to Australia appears to have been another Daniel Detlev von Ranzow (or Daniel Detloff Von Ranzow - born 1821), who had been transported in 1838 from Prince of Wales Island. The Australian National University's Elena Govor thinks he was Russian, from the Alaskan island of that name.

She says that he had

"non-European looks – yellow skin, dark hair and dark chestnut eyes. It is known that he was a literate man and had served as a captain’s mate on a ship, been arrested for an attempt to murder, sentenced for life in Bombay and deported to Australia. In 1841 he was released on parole."

Penang was named 'Prince of Wales Island' by the British, so he could possibly have been from there, rather than from an island of the same name in Alaska or Canada. It sounds like this Daniel Detlev was a mixed-race Burgher, possibly a descendant of the aforementioned Daniel Detlev. In which case, he was probably the first of many thousands of Sri Lankan Dutch Burgher immigrants to Australia.

Yudanganawa

Near the town of Buttala in the Moneragala district, is Yudanganawa, an ancient monastery dating back to the 2nd century BC.

Map: Yudanganawa marked in yellow

I went there in early 2005, on the way back from Tsunami relief work in Pottuvil on the East Coast. At the entrance to the complex of Yudanganawa (which means 'woman of battle' or 'beauty of battle') stands the small dagoba of Chulangani or Chulanganawa ('small woman').

Chulangani stupa

Chulanganawa was the site of a battle between King Dutugemunu (Duttha Gamini Abhaya) and his younger brother Tissa (Tisa):

And between those two there came to pass a great battle in Culanganiyapitthi: fell many thousands of the king's men. (Mahawamsa, ch. xxiv)

Tissa not only defeated his older brother, he also captured the king's war-elephant, Kandula. Dutugemunu didn't re-capture his beloved pachyderm until much later. Kandula was the most celebrated elephant in Sri Lanka's history, later being used to batter down the wrought-iron gate of a fortress:

Roaring like thunder he came, daring danger, and with his tusks pierced the panels of the gate and trampled the threshold with his feet; and with uproar the gate crashed to the ground together with the arches of the gate. (Mahawamsa, ch xxv)

As an aside it might be mentioned that, in the 21st century, Kandula's monicker was bestowed on the first male elephant to be born to the Smithsonian zoo by articifial insemination - itself the child of a first-generation Sri Lankan immigrant to the USA.

Amazingly, after his eventual victory, the king commemorated his defeat in this battle by building the Yudanganawa monastery here. It is not often that one hears of a monarch celebrating his setbacks, especially a defeat as humiliating as this one!

Close by the dagoba is the image house or buduge (literally 'Buddha House'). Only the foundation, the pillars and part of the altar remain.

Image house ('buduge') at Chulanganawa

The approach to the main dagoba at Yudanaganawa reveals its impressive size. It is not as tall as the three large dagobas at Anuradhapura, but it is much broader at the base. Unfortunately the site is heavily forested, so I found it difficult to take a good photograph of the dagoba itself.

Yudanaganawa: main dagoba and image house

I first visited the image house. This is a mediaeval structure, possibly built on foundations similar to those of the Chulangani image house. Inside, it is illustrated in a typical mediaeval manner, with statues of deities and frescos and bas-reliefs on the walls.

The gateway to the inner sanctum is guarded by two painted bas-relief lions rampant. Sri Lanka has not had native lions for many centuries, and the artist was not familiar with what was almost a mythic beast. Hence, the lions looked more like large mastiffs. However they look frightening enough, so their purpose of inspiring awe in the beholder was probably served.

Doorway to inner sanctum of image house

The inner sanctum was very dark and I could just about get photographs of the frescos and statues on my cheapish camera. The art was very mediaeval - a regression from the artistic wonders of the 1st millenium - and, in comparison with the ancient structures visible outside, was not very impressive. That may have been why they installed the two fierce looking guardian lions - to strike terror in the souls of scoffing art critics.

Inner sanctum

The Archaeological Department has been carrying out excavation and conservation work at Yudanganawa for years, and it should continue for at least two decades more. When I went there the scaffolding, which had been erected to help with the archaeological work, was much apparent on the sides of the main dagoba.

Yudanganawa dagoba - note scaffolding for conservation work

The dagoba is quite different in style from conventional stupas - unlike them, it is built in two 'stages', with a smaller dagoba surmounting the massive main structure. It is rather as if the builder had sliced off the middle layer and laid the apex directly onto the base (as is apparent in the photographs below).

Noting that there was nobody around, your doughty correspondent decided to scale the scaffolding and (illicitly and with malice aforethought) climb up on top of the massive dagoba.

The view from the top

The view from the top was quite impressive. It was also good to be able to see, close-up, the consevation work going on right on top of the dagoba. It was quite obvious why this work was necessary - there were trees growing on top of the structure!

Conservation work on top

It was possible to see the hundreds of thousands of bricks of which the dagoba is composed. I wish one could say that the dagoba is made entirely of brick, but I am informed that this is not so: apparently the building contractors of yore were as shifty as their modern counterparts, and many dagobas have cores of clay.

The small stupa on top of the massive base

More on the Kombuwa

My most illustrious and venerable older sister has given me greater insight into that magical-looking musical instrument, the Kombuwa. The term Kombuwa, originally a Tamil word, also stands for the non-initial letter 'E' in the Sinhala script.

Kombuwa, the Sinhala non-initial 'E'

My copy of Jayalalitha Swami's Tamil-English dictionary advises me that a kombu is the horn of an animal, a wind instrument, a branch of a tree, a shoot of ginger, an elephant's tusk, a pole of a palankeen, a symbol for the vowel 'e', or an opening in the side of a tank through which the water flows in or out.

The pro-Separatist website Tamilnet tells me (in relation to the place name Kompansaintakulam) that Kompu is in Tamil, a branch, a horn of an animal, a musical horn, a tusk; and in Malayalam, a Horn, a tusk, a musical horn, a branch, a pole, a mast, a spear. (P and B are both represented by a single letter in Tamil, hence the two different spellings).

Tamilnet also tells me that the Sinhala kombuwa is a musical instrument shaped like a French horn. However, neither the modern Sinhalese instrument nor the Tamil one look like a French horn. Another website gives more pictures of a Sinhalese kombuwa, for comparison.

The Malayalam (Keralite) one, on the other hand, does look more like a French horn. It also resembles the Sinhala non-initial 'e' letter.

Kerala kombus (Wikipedia)

The Tamil letter for the non-initial 'e' looks like this (and the Malayali is similar):

The non-initial 'e' letter in Tamil

Sinhala, Tamil and Malayali are all written in scripts derived from Brahmi. The earliest known examples of the script are on potsherds, dating from the 6th century BC, found at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and at Kodumanal in South India.

Hence it is likely that the terms for the letter all originated from a word which meant either 'branch' or 'horn' in a Dravidian or pre-dravidian tongue.

The tusks of an elephant looked like this to a 17th century English illustrator (please try and ignore the man being crushed by the elephant):

Elephant in Knox's Historical Relation

This is a fairly accurate representation, and it bears a strong resemblance to the South-east Indian kompu.

The Sinhalese kombuwa looks more like a French horn which has been untwisted and made straight in a less-than-perfect manner:

Mahanaga school bandleader with a kombuwa

Oorusitano Tank, Mahagama

Map showing Oorusitano Wewa (cobra location on southern shore)

From the Mahanaga school we continued to the bund of the local tank, which is called the Oorusitano Wewa, built by king Mahanaga (3rd century BC). The tank originally covered an area of over 700 acres (280 hectares) but siltation has led to its shrinking to about 400 acres (160 ha).

Oorusitano Wewa from the south

Mahanaga means 'Great Cobra'. The cobra was a sacred animal - one was said to have given shelter to the Buddha. In Sri Lanka it was a guardian of the waters. Here is the original, carved at the time of Mahanaga, of the seven-headed cobra symbol later used by the Symbionese Liberation Army (of Patty Hearst fame) as its emblem.

Seven-headed cobra (see large image and location here)

There used to be two of these guardstones, but the other was moved to the Lord knows where in the past 4 decades. The cobra was carved in the time of king Mahanaga and was supposed to guard the waters.

Seven-headed cobra (showing relative size)

It lies at a place where a tunnel, part of a watercourse which drew water from the Oorusitano Wewa, discharged itself into the open.

The tunnel

When I looked into the tunnel I found that it was full of bats and smelled of guano. You might just see the bats fluttering in the centre of the photograph, in the light at the end of the tunnel.

Upper surface of the tunnel

A tale surrounds the name of the tank and that of this watercourse. It seems that a child had been found living among wild boar. He was rescued and brought up among humans and given the name of Sookara Sitano or Ooru Sitano, meaning Mr Pig. When Mahanaga built the tank, the entry to the watercourse (the sorrowwa) was hidden. Nobody knew how to control the flow of water out of the tank.

A silt trap in the middle of the tunnel.

Mr Pig had a magic clay pot. He would shake the pot and water would rush through the watercourse. One day somebody made a hole in the pot, so it lost its magic. The water would not flow. Therefore Mr Pig and his wife flung themselves into the water and water began to flow down the watercourse. When Mr Pig fell into the water, he made a 'buck' sound, his wife hit the water with a 'bock'. Hence the watercourse was known as the Buck-bock sorowwa.

Children swimming in the new watercourse

Today a new watercourse has replaced the Buck-bock sorowwa. I went down to its shores and one of the boys bathing in it shouted that there was a diya balla, a 'water dog' behind me. I looked round and spied an Indian Otter (lutra lutra nair) on the far bank. It dived in just before I could take a photograph. Its head is just visible underwater, just below the rocks on the centre-left and just to the right of the clump of grass on the right of the photograph.

New watercourse, looking downstream

On the road to Mahagama

Map of the hinterland of Hambantota, showing Mahagama

On the weekend I went to Mahagama, close to Sevenagala. This Mahagama was one of several ancient towns of that name, which were capitals of the southern Sri Lankan principality of Rohana (modern Ruhuna). This particular village is said to be the capital of Mahanaga, the brother of king Devanampiya Tissa, who fled Anuradhapura and established his own kingdom in the south.

To get to Mahagama we turned left (eastwards) just before Embilipitiya and drove along the dam (the bund) of the Udawalawe tank (reservoir) .

Bund of Udawalawe reservoir

The Udawalawe tank was created by damming the upper reaches of the Walawe river in order to provide water for the farmers of lower Sabaragamuwa and Ruhuna. The main road to the Udawalawe elephant sanctuary and beyond lies on top of the bund.

Approaching the Udawalawe sanctuary, we pass European tourists who have hired Land Rovers and are out for a good day of elephant spotting - Udawalawe is one of the best places for seeing Sri Lankan elephants (elaphas maximus).

European tourists

Udawalawe sanctuary is marked by an electified barbed wire fence. Some elephants gather along the fence to get goodies from visitors, like this one:

Elephant, Udawalawe reserve

Some years ago, one of these elephants had managed to cross the fence and had ravaged the nearby houses. However, the villagers told us that they have not had any problems recently.

The elections to the Uva Provincial Council were due on 8th August, so the campaign was in full swing. Opposite where I took the picture of the elephant was an 'election office' of the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance, festooned with posters of candidates. Moneragala is a classic centre-left district, so UPFA posters were much more in evidence than that of the other parties.

UPFA 'election office'

A TV programme featuring Shasheendra Rajapaksa, one of the prospective UPFA candidates for the Moneragala district of the Uva province (13 is his lucky number!) was due to be videotaped at the Mahanaga school at Mahagama. I found the school band ready to welcome the guests, who were late; the band was restive.

Mahanaga school band

The band, who were dressed in saris, had an interesting mix of western and oriental instruments. The leader, on the right of the photograph, carried a curvy horn known as a kombuwa.