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Still a village in the jungle
Kumudini Hettiarachchi goes back in time to the remote village that formed the backdrop to Leonard Woolf's well-known novel

Four lonely pillars mark the place where the hut had once been, with the jungle's inexorable march evident even now, as it presses close with its dry thorny bushes.

Sparsely or hardly populated, a chena cultivator's hut is seen only rarely, hidden by the jungle, proving the words of a colonial "Agent Hamuduruwo" uttered so many years ago.

The wewa too with its parched patches of mud has a starkness about it aptly described by the Assistant Government Agent of Hambantota, Leonard Woolf in the early part of the last century. "The years had brought more evil, death and decay upon the village........It seemed, as the headman said, to have been forgotten by gods and men. Year after year, the rains from the north-east passed it by; only the sun beat down more pitilessly, and the wind roared over it across the jungle; the last patches of chena crop which the villagers tried to cultivate withered as soon as the young shoots showed above the ground.

"No man, traveller or headman or trader, ever came to the village. No one troubled any longer to clear the track which led to it; the jungle covered it and cut the village off...

"The village was forgotten, it disappeared into the jungle from which it had sprung..."

As we stare at the four pillars marking the place Silindu, one of the main characters in Woolf's 'The Village in the Jungle' or 'Beddegama', lived a life of fear, of evil and deprivation, we are transported back in time to the early twentieth century. It was an era when the jungle ruled the lives of the humble peasant as it does even now in remote villages scattered across the country.

The men, women and children were not only the hapless victims of the "evil" they feared which came from the jungle but were also under the almost tyrannical rule of the headman, with access to the Assistant Government Agent, a near impossibility.

The belief in the area is that 'Beddegama' was based on the lives, loves, hates and ordeals of villagers in Pallemattala clustered around the Malasna Palugalwewa. Even the shooting of the headman and a money-lending mudalali by Silindu had apparently taken place here.

What a contrast it is a few kilometres away in Meegahajandura. Where there was jungle before, in this bustling village there is life and activity. We are in the home of retired principal S.A. Munasinghe and wife Leelawathie, the grand-daughter of a Vidana Arachchi or headman.

"Yes, the Assistant Government Agent, Leonard Woolf had been a frequent visitor to my grandfather's walauwwe, as he was the arachchi of the area. It is here that Woolf held court," says Leelawathie stepping out into the garden to point to a massive, gnarled tamarind tree (the girth is 35.6 feet), forming a large canopy by the roadside.

Who was Leonard Woolf?
Leonard Woolf was just 28 when he was posted as Assistant Government Agent in Hambantota under the British in 1908, bringing under his purview all administrative and judicial matters of the area.

Woolf born in London to an affluent Jewish family had had his university education at Cambridge. From university he joined the Ceylon Civil Service and came to the country as a cadet in 1904.

"His intelligence and abilities attracted the attention of the formidable Sir Hugh Clifford, the Colonial Secretary. So at the early age of 28 Leonard Woolf found himself Assistant Government Agent - the chief administrative and judicial officer - at Hambantota. He was responsible for an area as large as Northamptonshire, sparsely populated, most of it in malarial jungle in the dry zone of South Ceylon. He spent close upon three years there, walking and riding his pony and his bicycle all over the district. He threw himself with energy into dealing with the problems facing him as administrator - chiefly those of rural indebtedness and rinderpest," says E.F.C. Ludowyk in his Introduction to 'The Village in the Jungle'.

After a three-year stint in the southern dry zone, he left Ceylon on leave in 1911 and retired from colonial service in 1912. He married Virginia Stephen the same year and took to a different career in England, that of writing along with his novelist wife. together they set up the Hogarth Press. Dedicated to wife Virginia Woolf, he published 'The Village in the Jungle' in 1913. It was reprinted twice that year. Woolf revisited Ceylon briefly in 1960 and spoke with quiet satisfaction and some surprise at the warmth of the welcome he received, and even the fact that he was still remembered, adds Ludowyk.

He died in 1969.

"When Leonard Woolf came from Kamburupitiya, he didn't have a place to hear minor cases such as chena disputes and domestic tangles. So court was set up under the siyambala tree," explains Munasinghe, proudly adding that his wife's grandfather was the Vidana Arachchi known as Don Samel Nallaperuma Disanayake. The walauwwe where Woolf sometimes stayed the night is farther down the road.

"Leelawathiege Muththa awe poniya pita, Woolf ave ashwaya pita," explains Munasinghe. "The files required for the cases were brought by bullock cart."

There was a bedroom specially set aside for Woolf in the headman's home, because it was about 32 kilometres to Hambantota from Meegahajandura.

There were no roads and at that time people had to go through elephant and bear infested jungle.

Leelawathie's arachchi grandfather had a son from the first marriage and three other children from the second. "When his wife died at a very young age, he remarried. His bride was his wife's sister," says Munasinghe. Leelawathie's father was the boy from the first marriage who took over as arachchi. Later the system changed, with Grama Niladharis being appointed. Leelawathie is one of 14 children and most of her brothers and sisters live in the area.

"The properties are handed down from generation to generation," says Leelawathie.

Woolf had been very close to the people. "He loved the villagers very much. Stories told to us by our elders show that he also liked to watch the herds of deer drinking water at the tank and was comfortable in these surroundings," says Munasinghe.

And what Leonard Woolf said so many decades ago rings true when visiting abandoned villages such as Pallemattala, for the lives of the peasantry and their fight for survival do not seem to have changed much from those times to these.

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