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Run for health,
run for joy This year's
categories for the run are under 15, over 50, open and family. Participants
above 15 years will cover a distance of 14 km and those under 15
a distance of 7 km. Prizes to the value of Rs. 100,000 will be awarded. The organisers of the event, the Sri Lanka Anti-Narcotics Association (SLANA) believe in development through sport. Besides being fun and improving the health, the run also promotes well-being, fairplay, participation, team work, accountability and peace. A
message of hope for the blind
By Thiruni
Kelegama Much earlier,
on a September day long ago, their mother held two bundles of joy.
They were the twins Faith and Hope. But the joy was also tinged
with sorrow, for their mother was told, "Faith will live and
Hope will die." The only consolation was that if Hope did not
die, she would be a weak child. Hope survived
and her parents were overjoyed. The happiness was shortlived. As
Hope grew up she could not face sunlight. She was in pain under
harsh light. "When playing netball, my hands were somewhere
and the ball was somewhere else. It's just that I thought that was
where the ball was," she explains. At 22, she
consulted Dr. Pararajasekeram, a leading eye specialist who diagnosed
her as suffering from bilateral macular degeneration. The causes
are unknown and no treatment has been uniformly effective. Hope, though
young, had bilateral macular degeneration, with cone dystrophy.
The cones of her eyes had been damaged since birth. She was photophobic,
suffered severe headaches and colour blind. However, she
would not give up. She took to cake making and excelled in the art
of cake decoration. The other side
was the social stigma. Traumatised by the reaction of people, Hope
and husband Edwin Mendis decided to do something together. The couple
hit on the idea of working with the blind. "I had to stay at
home and Edwin would go for work. I was helpless," says Hope.
"I was losing faith. I could not see and my peripheral eyesight
was also deteriorating." In desperation
that they resorted to spiritual healing. They attended a prayer
session of Pastor Sri Lal and, "I was healed. I did not consult
a doctor, as I did not see the need to. I can see perfectly now,"
beamed Hope happily. Encouraged by the Bible Society, Hope and Edwin have now decided to organise a programme with a difference. 'Message of Hope' will bring the disabled and the able on stage to present a concert to tell the world that a little consideration is definitely better than misplaced sympathy. The
awesome charms of the kabaragoya Apart from the
snakes already examined, there are the names for two lizards and
a terrapin among the reptiles associated with Sri Lanka recorded
in the second editions Ceylonese terrapin
(1896). Sinhala gal ibba. In the entry for terrapin in the OED2
it is explained: "The catalogue of Animals in the London Zoological
Gardens, 1896, contains thirty-three species of Terrapin, with distinctive
appellations, such as . . . Ceylonese . . ." This name was
applied to the species now known as The Hard Kabaragoya
(1681). "[Etymology unknown.] The watermonitor, Varanus salvator,
a large lizard found in south-eastern Asia." The statement
"Etymology unknown" is one of a small number of errors
I have found in the entries for Anglo-Sri Lankan words, for kabaragoya
is of course Sinhala in origin. This error will be rectified in
the OED3. Furthermore, the word will be identified with Sri Lanka. The earliest
reference in the dictionary is by Robert Knox from An Historical
Relation of Ceylon (1681:30): "There is a Creature here called
Kobberaguion, resembling an Alligator. The biggest may be five or
six feet long, speckled black and white. He lives most upon the
Land, but will take the water and dive under it: hath a long blew
forked tongue like a sting, which he puts forth and hisseth and
gapeth, but doth not bite nor sting, tho the appearance of him would
scare those that knew not what he was. He is not afraid of people,
but will ly gaping and hissing at them in the way, and will scarce
stir out of it. He will come and eat Carrion with the Dogs and Jackals,
and will not be scared away by them, but if they come near to bark
or snap at him, with his tayl, which is about an Ell long like a
whip, he will so slash them, that they will run away and howl. This
Creature is not eatable." Being such
a remarkable reptile, there are many later references to the kabaragoya
in English literature pertaining to Sri Lanka, only one of which
is recorded in the dictionary. The first reference after Knox is
by Amelia Heber in Reginald Heber's Narrative of a Journey (1825:III.167):
"In a valley, near the road side, I saw a Cobra Guana: it is
an animal of the lizard kind, with a very long tail, so closely
resembling an alligator, that I at first mistook it for one, and
was surprised to see a herd of buffaloes grazing peacefully around
it. It is perfectly harmless, but if attacked will give a man a
severe blow with its tail." James Emerson
Tennent writes in Ceylon (1859[1977]:I.151n): "In the preparation
of the mysterious poison, the Cobra-tel, which is regarded with
so much horror by the Singhalese, the unfortunate Kabra-goya is
forced to take a painfully prominent part . . . The ingredients
are extracted from venomous snakes, the Cobra de Capello, the Carawella,
and the Ticpolonga, by making an incision in the head and suspending
the reptiles over a chattie to collect the poison. To this, arsenic
and other drugs are added, and the whole is to be 'boiled in a human
skull, with the aid of three Kabragoyas, which are tied on three
sides of the fire, with their heads directed towards it, and tormented
by whips to make them hiss, so that the fire may blaze. The froth
from their lips is then to be added to the boiling mixture, and
so soon as an oily scum rises to the surface, the cobra-tel is complete." The following
reference by Constance Gordon Cumming from Two Happy Years in Ceylon
(1892:176) is included in the dictionary: "On our homeward
journey, as we drove through a cool shady glade, the horses started
as a gigantic lizard, or rather iguana, of a greenish-grey colour,
with yellow stripes and spots, called by the natives kabaragoya,
awoke from its midday sleep and slowly, with the greatest deliberation,
walked across the road just in front of us." John Still
writes in Jungle Tide (1930[1992]:226): "We put up a kabaragoya,
a huge amphibious lizard four or five feet in length, who fled into
the nearest covert where the stream ran rapidly through a narrow
filled with boulders. Kabaragoyas are the creatures whose skins
are made into ladies' shoes. They are flesh-eating animals, very
strong, fairly swift, and armed with sharp teeth and a whiplash
tail. We hunted him just as we were, swimming, wading, plunging
deep among the rocks, and following him as hotly as hounds follow
an otter. He never attempted to leave the stream, but he led us
a chase from pool to rapid and rapid to waterfall, until at last
I tailed him as he dived between two boulders. It took the three
of us to drag him out, and before his head could whip round and
seize one of us we slew him like Goliath with a smooth stone from
the bottom of the stream." A more recent
reference is by Michael Ondaatje from Running in the Family (1982:74):
"As children we knew exactly what thalagoyas and kabaragoyas
were good for. The kabaragoya laid its eggs in the hollows of trees
between the months of January and April. As this coincided with
the Royal-Thomian cricket match, we would collect them and throw
them into the stands full of Royal students. These were great weapons
because they left a terrible itch wherever they splashed on skin." H-J2 does not
include an entry for kabaragoya, but there is one for guana (iguana),
the Anglo-Indian name often given to monitor lizards during the
18th and 19th centuries. Knob-nosed
lizard (1905). Sinhala karamal bodiliya, khandu bodiliya. "Having
a knob-shaped nose." The sole reference,
from the Westminster Gazette (October 2, 1905), reads: "The
knob-nosed lizard (Lyriocephalus scutatus) from Ceylon." However,
Deraniyagala (1953) and other writers refer to this species as the
"hump-nosed lizard". Thalagoya (1681).
Ever since Robert Knox, English writers have often described the
thalagoya in relation to the kabaragoya merely because these lizards
are by far the largest to be found on the island. As there are many
references to the word in English literature pertaining to Sri Lanka,
I have passed them on to the OED as historical evidence to enable
the editors to determine whether the word merits an entry in the
third edition. My suggested definition (which should conform to
the revised definition of kabaragoya): "In Sri Lanka, the name
given to the land monitor, Varanus bengalensis bengalensis." The reference
by Knox (1681:31) reads: "There is the Tolla guion very much
like the former, which is eaten, and reckoned excellent meat. The
Chingulays say it is the best sort of flesh; and for this reason,
That if you eat other flesh at the same time you eat of this, and
have occasion to vomit, you will never vomit out this tho you vomit
all the other. This creature eats not carrion, but only lives on
herbs; is less of size than the kobbera guion, and blackish, lives
in hollow Trees and holes in the Humbosses: And I suppose is the
same with that which in the West Indies they call the Guiana." The first reference
after Knox is by John Davy from An Account of the Interior of Ceylon
(1821:117). Davy writes of the way Veddas hunted talagoyas with
packs of dogs: "Their dwellings are huts made of the bark of
trees; their food, the flesh of deer, elk, the wild hog, and the
inguana. . . . They have dogs, but they do not employ them in hunting,
except the Talagowa." In a footnote to the word inguana Davy
states: "The 'Tala gowa' of the natives; 'Le Monitor Terrestre
d'Egypte' of M. Cuvier." William Dalton
provides a reference from fiction in Lost in Ceylon (1861:366):
"This lizard, called by the Singhalese Talla-goya, is the guana
of the Europeans . . . Now, the Singhalese not only eat the flesh
of this reptile, but use its fat for the cure of cutaneous diseases."
In a further reference Dalton (Ibid.368) employs a shortened form:
"Take talla to Massa Bob, for cook; it berry good eat." Gordon Cumming
(1892[1901]:81) writes: "Another lizard very nearly as large,
called Talla-goya, is so tame that it scarcely moves away from human
beings, and even comes and lives in gardens, though it courts its
doom - its flesh being considered as delicate as that of rabbit,
and its skin being in request for shoe-making. Certainly its appearance
is not prepossessing." Alan Walters
observes in Palms and Pearls; Or Scenes in Ceylon (1892:187): "Another
variety of iguana is Monitor dracaena or talla-goya, small, and
sometimes hunted by dogs, and turned onto a curry by no means to
be despised. I have often watched a talla-goya busy at work up and
down a hedge-ridge after insects. The natives take out the tongue
from the living animal and use it in a cure for consumption." Ondaatje (1983.73)
writes: "Kabaragoyas and thalagoyas are common in Ceylon and
are seldom found anywhere else in the world. The kabaragoya is large,
the size of an average crocodile, and the thalagoya smaller - a
cross between an iguana and a giant lizard . . . "The thalagoya...
will eat snails, beetles, centipedes, toads, skinks, eggs and young
birds, and is not averse to garbage. It is also a great climber,
and can leap forty feet from a tree to the ground, breaking its
fall by landing obliquely with its chest, belly and tail. In Kegalle
the thalagoyas would climb trees and leap onto the roof or onto
the house. "The thalagoya
has a rasping tongue that 'catches' and hooks objects. There is
a myth that if a child is given a thalagoya tongue to eat he will
become brilliantly articulate, will always speak beautifully, and
in his speech be able to catch and collect wonderful, humorous information." Carl Muller provides a more recent reference from fiction in Once upon a Tender Time (1995:114): "He stuffed his catapault into his pocket. No telling, but he could bag a thalagoya - the iguana - and Daddy liked thalagoya flesh." |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
of
the Oxford English Dictionary (OED2) and Hobson-Jobson (H-J2). The
inclusion of kabaragoya is to be expected, for this name is applied
to one of the most awesome lizards in the world. On the other hand,
the inclusion of knob-nosed lizard (better known as the "hump-nosed
lizard". a species endemic to Sri Lanka) is more surprising.
Thalagoya, the name for another largish lizard species often employed
together with kabaragoya, is likely to be included in OED3. Date
of first use is provided in brackets.
Terrapin
or Common Terrapin, Melanochelys trijuga.
