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Ashley Gibson, author of the book gives a vivid and graphic description of the Island, and portions of the book appeared serially in the Fortnightly Review, Chamber’s Journal, Outward Bound, etc.
The book has nine chapters, namely , A Rose Red City; Night and Morning, Beasts & Super – beasts, The Coming of Vijaya, The Stones in the Jungle, Gems, Drums and Incense, The Compleat bachelor and Blue and Gold.
In the first two chapters of Rose- Red City and Night and Morning, he gives description of the city of Colombo and its land marks, as grand Oriental Hotel, Galle Face Hotel, Hulftsdrop, the last as hive of lawyers and shrine of justice and shops of Lalchand, Detaram, Chandiram. In describing its night life, he state “At the Hotel de Palmiers (it is not in the directory), you meet all the world and his wife who go-a-voyaging beyond Suez”. He remarks about Colombo “Barren of any intellectual life or collective desire for it, deaf and blind to the appeal of things of the mind, Colombo certainly is any threatens to remain.”
Beasts and Super Beasts gives a good account of Island’s elephants, birds, crabs and cobras. He devotes major part of his narrative to his experience about Kraal and catching of an elephant and killing of the mahout by the elephant. The importance of wild life in the Island can be guessed from his remarks: “You cannot live in Ceylon for three months and not learn something about natural history!”
In the chapters on ‘COMING OF VIJAYA’ and ‘THE STORIES IN THE JUNGLE’, he narrates the legend of Vijaya taken from Mahavamsa and that of Umadatta, elephant Kandula and Gamani. He blasts the theory, once held, that under the Golden pre-European regime, the population of the place was in the neighbourhood of fifty million or 40,000,000. He describes Anuradhapura a mere hamlet without either interest or importance, holding that real Anuradhapura has died and buried a number of times. He then describes Bo-tree, the sap still running feebly in its few gnarled limbs; ‘Brazen Palace’ of king Gamani, once eleven Storeys high and covered with plates of glittering copper; Polonarrwa, with its architectural gem in miniature, bathing pool in the form of an eight-petalled lotus- an exquisite thing.
In Gems, the author traces history of gems – stating this trade is the hands of immigrant Moormen; and that the law enacted that all precious stones unearthed on crown and private lands in the Kandyan province were ipso facto the property of the king, About one of the gems known as ‘Toramalli’, he says ‘Apply the x-rays to a dull and heavy- looking tourmaline and you can get as brilliant a colour as you would wish for’. He describes other gems, such as moonstones, and the manner in which pearls are gotten.
In Drums and Incence, we read about ‘Dalada Maligawa’ or ‘Temple of the Tooth’. Fa-Hian, the Chinese globe- trotter noted down the details of Anuradhapura Perahere and from that day to this, the ritual has not altered.
The Compleat Bachelor is an autobiographical sketch of Robert Knox. Here the author states that ‘Caps were set at him in that long twenty years, we know, but never with success’ and adds ‘Not a bit of it, for all the wiles of his good kinswoman Mistress Bonnell.’
The book is illustrated with 30 black and white photographs.
Sinhale And The Patriots 1815-1818
Author: P.E.Pieris
Our Price: $89.00
History of Ceylon Book - IV
Author: H. C. Ray,
Our Price: $39.00
Memoirs Of The Archaeological Survey of Ceylon Vol
Author: S. Paranavitana
The Rock And Wall Paintings of Sri Lanka
Author: Senake Bandaran
Our Price: $129.00
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