"How but in custom and ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?" - W. B. Yeats
Somewhere among the remaining trees in the vicinity, the bird of the Avuruddha, the koha sings and somewhere people sing the avurudu songs. They take us back to the village scenes of our youth, where gaily dressed damsels rocked themselves on the newly improvised onchilla.

These are bird songs and people songs with the scent of wild flowers in them, the drifting of the mists in the valleys and the rhythmic flow of river and stream. They are songs of a time long past when Mother Nature dared not be raped and the despoliation of the environment not be suffered.

The onchilla songs that have come down to us from the time of our forefathers capture the rhythm of the swing ("How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue...") as they do the rhythm of the rural scene. But that is a scene that is fast vanishing as factory and tractor and container, the juggernauts of the export economy, take their toll. At least for a while, Avurudu keeps the onchillawa alive.

The rabana also, tucked away in the attic throughout the old year that is ending, throbs back to life. But also only for a while until the cacophonous loudspeaker blares out the banal tunes of the modern day.

Legend tells us that it was Vijaya who brought the rabana with him to our shores and had it played at his marriage ceremony. The rabana has the power to please. Both fair maidens and ageing women are beckoned to sit around this oldest of our indigenous drums, sing the old raban pada to the accompaniment and beat it in unison . The spirit of celebration and festivity that the rabana evokes is hard to surpass. Avurudu is the season of the rabana. But for how much longer?

Cricket, everybody's game today, is allowed to take a back seat to give pride of place, also for a while, to the avurudu kreeda. They are time-honoured national games of many names; many of them such as chakgudu, elle, orapol, buhu keliya, masok, eluwankaema and jalli are played outdoors while olinda keliya and pancha keliya are indoor games.

They are games both of individual and team skills, at the end of which the winners celebrate their collective prowess in a victory parade across the village, but not at all in the manner of the "big match" enthusiasts in the city streets of today.

There is more to these avurudu games than meet the eye. A. C. Hocart wrote thus of pora pol:

"I have witnessed in Ceylon a contest between two teams, each taking it in turns to throw a coconut until all the nuts on one side were broken. The superficial observer might have taken it for a mere game like je de laume, but one team was the god's and the other the goddess'; the winning nut was kept in the temple, and the match was merely one episode of the annual temple festival."

But that was long ago, not now.

About the indoor board games, which both children and adults play with great enthusiasm during Avurudu, our own veteran journalist S. Pathiravitane has made this observation: the end of the game is reached when the pawns (or ballo, as they are called in Sinhala), are gone ashore (goda yanawa). "To a people who have conceived existence in terms of samsara, the ever-flowing stream of life, the act of reaching the shore is a great achievement and to be greatly desired," says Pathiravitane, who discerns a metaphysical import in our simple Avurudu kreeda.

What is believed to be the oldest game of the human race is otte iratte, a popular children's game played during the Avurudu festivities. It was played in the Paleolithic Age and by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Nerenchi is another such game, dating back to the 14th century. And, we say a silent prayer of thanksgiving that there are still in our land children who know these ancient games and enjoy playing them, even for a while.

Apart from the fun and games, Avurudu is our season of custom and ceremony. "How but in custom and ceremony are innocence and beauty born?" The four main rituals of the Parana Avuruddha, (Old Year) Nonagathe (period of inactivity), Aluth Avuruddha Mangallaya (New Year Festival) and finally Isa Thel Gaema (Anointing Ceremony) and Snanaya Kireema have deep religious significance. Religion, custom, convention and superstition are all interwoven into the texture of Avurudu.

The Avurudu celebrations establish a link between the ways and values of our ancient past and the rapidly changing patterns of modern life.

The bulath hurulla (sheaf of betel leaves) ritual symbolises reunion and reconciliation, pardon for past misdeeds, an assurance of forgiveness, an oath of fidelity, a token of greetings and a pledge of loyalty. According to legend, serpents carried betel leaves folded in two in their mouths and offered them to Lord Buddha when he visited Sri Lanka. Betel leaves, betel nuts and camphor were among the offerings King Kirthi Sri Rajasinghe venerated the Sacred Tooth Relic with.

Sanctified by custom over the centuries, the bulath hurulla retains its symbolic significance as it passes from hand to hand in a gesture of goodwill during Avurudu. The isathel gaema ceremony, (anointing ceremony) is the climax of the Avurudu festivities. Oil mixed with nanu, a thick paste made from medicinal herbs in a communal cauldron at the village temple is used for this ceremony.

Would the rush of commercialism permit these age-old rituals to hold? The trend of modern Avurudu celebrations seems to be a shift from the sacred to the secular, from piety to gaiety, from the holy day to the holiday.

But there is always the trembling hope that the Sinhala time-honoured Avurudu traditions will not be drowned in today's complexity, decadence, dislocation and disintegration. The significance of the Sinhala Avuruddha in our time is above all that it is also the Tamil New Year.

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