The Butcher Of Uva
By Hemasiri Perera –FEBRUARY 14, 2020
Hemasiri Perera
Sri Lanka; Dawn Of The Sixteenth Century
All over the globe, on land and in the oceans the bloodletting went on unabated. So it was in the land of the pearl of the Indian Ocean. By the middle of the 16th century two conquerors from Europe had come, met with partial success in their attempt to subjugate the land, done their worst, and gone. But alas! The land and its people were in the thrall of the third invader. In the middle of the second decade of the nineteenth century, for the first time in over two thousand five hundred years the land and its people were enslaved.
With the infamous treaty of 1815 with the British, the irresponsible chieftains bartered the freedom that had endured from the passing away of the Buddha in the fifth century BC and there by ceding the crown of Lanka to George III of England.
The island was passing through the darkest era of its history. A civilization dependent on a vulnerable system of irrigation fell into disarray. Vulnerable, because the man made reservoirs that were easily breached by the enemy and not so easily repaired by virtue of their enormity. The malarial epidemics that came in the wake of these onslaughts decimated the populace forcing the abandonment of the sprawling cities that could not be sustained as the enemy struck again and again.
By the dawn of the 15th century the capital had moved to the fastness of the foothills of the central mountain massif. Even so the ancient cities and villages were not totally abandoned. Small communities survived in these reservoir-based villages under trying conditions as the jungle tide moved in over a period spanning centuries. With the huge dams beyond the means of repair by these depleted communes, they survived by resorting to the forbidden practice of tank bed cultivation.
Almost a third of the island was adorned with virgin forest, and large a portion of the balance was in secondary jungle because the kingdom had been ravaged by foreign invasions for a continuous period of five centuries. The huge man made inland seas breached and laid waste by the invading hordes had turned the once prosperous valleys, into mosquito ridden jungles where the malarial germ reigned supreme.
Arrival Of The Butcher And Massacre Of Elephants
An adequate network of roads was foremost in the mind of the master. In the past, the triple obstacles of a ring of challenging mountains, draped in a cloak of impenetrable tropical jungle and crisscrossed by perennially swollen rivers with predictable monsoonal flooding saved the mountain kingdom, even after the sprawling Indian subcontinent had fallen to the British invader. The remoteness and the security of this mountain fastness were steadfastly ensured by the monarchs of ancient times for the value of its environmental importance and for this reason alone. That the last line of kings were driven to usurp such a sacrosanct: the very soul of Lanka, was due to no other reason than the invasions of barbarians that coveted the possession of the beautiful teardrop of India. Such sporadic invasions began from pre-Christian times.
As the road builders advanced along all major river valleys, the vast herds of elephants that roamed the sprawling forests were pushed into the upper valleys. Major Thomas William Rogers who later became infamous as a butcher of elephants as year after year he decimated these majestic creatures.The serpentine roads had wormed its way into the central hills, as the butcher ordained its path with extraordinary precision and skill. The shroud of jungle gave way to the plantations of coffee, as more and more land was grabbed by the encroachers from across the seas. Hordes of alien workers were lured to follow in the wake of the road, to toil for a mere pittance, to fatten the invader’s coffer.
The elephant was the first to come to grief. They were felled by the score, and their bleached skeletons littered the tank beds, where these mighty beasts had finally fallen. The deer and the leopard were next.
Temple Festivity
Year after year, regardless of the state of siege that prevailed, the annual festival of the ancient temple was held with the usual pomp and pageantry. The colorfully caparisoned elephant had carried the relic casket in the quiet dignified manner in which, he was known to perform this holy task, for more than three decades. On completion of this principal task, the tusker and his mahout were released from temple duties, the elephant to his riverside haunt and his carer to his nearby village.
The once huge herd, now decimated, was due to pass through the vicinity, while moving south to the lowland plains.
This year as the procession wound its way through the little townthere seemed to be an ominous change in the demeanor of the magnificent tusker. Yet no one was wiser to his particular predicament. Men, women and children from the remotest villages of the province came in their thousands to pay homage to the Enlightened One, and the temple and its environs were a sea of heads, as the full moon peeped over the rim of hills to bathe the scene with golden light. Huge braziers of coconut oil were already ablaze, as the scent from flower decked altars mingled with the aromatic fragrance of burning incense rose into the air. The beat of the ceremonial drums resonated with the chanting of the devotees as the relic casket was placed on the elaborately decorated howdah atop the caparisoned tusker with his equally well-adorned mahout in attendance.
