{"id":118760,"date":"2021-09-30T17:19:55","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T00:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=118760"},"modified":"2021-10-13T13:54:41","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T20:54:41","slug":"the-elephant-in-sri-lanka-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/09\/30\/the-elephant-in-sri-lanka-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"THE ELEPHANT IN SRI LANKA Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

revised\n12.10.21 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the\nUdarata kingdom, the forests in the central highland were a protected reserve where\nelephants lived undisturbed. British and European writers have given us\ninformation on these habitats. The districts, in which the elephants most\nabound, are all hilly and mountainous, they said. There was not a mountain or a\nlofty piece of land which the elephant had not traversed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The elephants generally keep along the\nbackbone of a chain of hills, avoiding steep gradients, they added. But there\nis no range so elevated as to be inaccessible to them.  In 1840, Skinner had found the spore of an\nelephant on the summit of Sri Pada.  In\n1847   elephants were found on the\nRamboda pass on the road to Nuwara Eliya\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agility\nof the elephants to negotiate the steepest hill was highlighted in the Ceylon\nObserver (1865), regarding an attempt to capture elephants in Avissawella.   The kraal was constructed close to a wall of\nrock so precipitous and high that they did not think an additional barrier was\nnecessary. The elephants climbed up the rocks and escaped. \u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

European writers\nspoke of the Elephant paths\u201d created by the elephants in the hill country.\nWhen a herd of twenty or thirty of these colossal beasts have marched in single\nfile through the woods, an open road of some yards wide is left ready beaten,\nas good as heart can desire in a wilderness, said  Ernst Haeckel \n(1883)speaking of an elephant path in the Nilu  forest at Horton Plains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These paths were\nwell known to the Sinhalese. The Portuguese, when approaching Balana fort, had tried\nto enter from the rear, using the Ali mankada, two leagues from Balane. But   they found it   well\nfortified. This showed that the elephant corridors were known to the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elephants had\nsome sort of steering instinct. When crossing valleys from ridge to ridge,\nthrough forests so dense as to   prevent\na view   of   what is ahead, the elephants invariably\nselect the route which was the safest path between the two points. \u2018The\nelephant\u2019s path is an excellent specimen of engineering. It winds judiciously\u2019,\nsaid Hooker, writing in the Himalayan Journal .\nThe British used these elephant paths, alimankada, when they created the\nupcountry road network for the estates and estate towns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British\nwere not interested in the elephant trade. They\ncontinued the capture of elephants for some time but it was low-priority. The\nnumber of kraals were reduced. The British abolished the Elephant Hunt in\n1832  and the export of elephants came to an end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

British\nrule was not a happy time for the elephants. The elephant lost its royal status\nand its protected position. Instead, the\nBritish engaged in shooting elephants as a form of sport. Large numbers of\nelephants were killed in this way, as sport. <\/strong>The present Ruhuna National Park<\/a> was the Resident Sportsmen’s Shooting Reserve,\nan area reserved for the sporting pleasure of British residents in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the magnificent elephant was\ndeclared a pest and hunted for sport. It is recorded that at the\nbeginning of the nineteenth century there were at least 19 500 elephants and at\nthe turn of the twentieth century there were only an estimated 2 000. This\ndrastic reduction was brought about by indiscriminate capture and wanton\nkilling (Jayewardene, 1994). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 A reward of a few shillings was placed for the\nhead of an elephant, and from 1845 \u2013 1856, 3500 rewards were claimed in the\nNorthern Province alone. Tennent\nrecords the official killing from 1845 \u2013 1856 as being 5500 elephants in the Northern and Southern Province. During the\nperiod 1851 \u2013 1856, a similar reward of a paltry number of shillings was paid\nfor 2000 elephants killed in the Southern Province between Galle and\nHambantota. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Major Thomas\nRogers had killed 1500 elephants. Captain Galloway and Major Skinner are each\nreputed to have killed over 750 elephants. Many others had killed 250-300\nelephants each. Such\nwillful decimation of elephants was never seen before, observed Ashley de Vos. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elephants were\nalso shot by the planters. British planters, who were opening up coffee and tea\nplantations shot trespassing elephants without hesitation. Not only did the\nBritish government encourage and condone killings but it also paid a bounty for\neach elephant killed, saying the elephant was an agricultural pest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British administration   also provided\nguns freely to villagers to keep away elephants from their cultivations.\nFarmers, who had hitherto protected their crops from marauding elephants by\nother means, now had a much easier method. They shot at them and either maimed\nor killed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elephant populations that had been able to\nwithstand the detrimental effects of capture all these years now started diminishing.\nThere was wanton and indiscriminate destruction of the elephant herds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British\nadministration did not kill all the elephants. They kept some to be used for\ntheir purposes.  Trained elephants were\nused to start the tea plantations. The elephants were first used to destroy the\nforests which had been their home. They were used to clear the virginal montane\nforests to plant tea, cinchona and coffee. \nElephants uprooted the trees in these forests and cleared the area <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were next used for drawing logs for the\nconstruction of buildings, and stones and rocks for constructing bridges,\nculverts, and walls in the plantations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirdly, they were used to transport machinery\nand other heavy items needed for the tea factory on the plantation. Most plantations employed elephants on a rate determined\ndaily on the type of work they performed said Ranjith Bandara and Clem\nTisdell.  Picture\nof Elephants taking a boiler From Marshall, Sons & Co., Gainsboro England\nto a tea factory, Ceylon can be seen at https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/pin\/127156389450093372\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elephants were used for other types of haulage\ntoo. Elephants were used to bring in the fifty four granite pillars used in\nthe Trinity College Chapel, in the building period, 1923 to 1935. Elephants were used to transport the granite\nstone blocks quarried in Aruppola<\/a>. They were 18 feet long and 3 feet square\neach weighing about 3 metric tons. These  \nwere loaded on trolleys specially made for transporting one pillar at a\ntime. One elephant pulled the trolley and another pushed from behind. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blocks\nwere hauled by two elephants, one pulling and one pushing, for a distance of\nthree miles to the school premises; and then another three hundred feet up the\nslope of the hill to the Chapel site\u201d.<\/strong> <\/strong>They were brought to Kandy at the rate of 2\nper month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photographs of elephants\nhauling in pillars to the chapel site   can be seen at https:\/\/www.trinitycollege.lk\/2019\/11\/05\/pioneering-days-of-the-trinity-college-chapel-images-from-1922-to-1935\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elephants\nwere also used to bring stone pillars to the new building at Dalada Maligawa,\nKandy. Carved granite pillars seventy to hundred feet high had to be erected\nfor the new building at the back of the Dalada Maligawa. British engineers said\nsuch haulage was not possible. Tikiri Banda Panabokke, Minister of\nHealth in State Council (1931) had said it could be done using elephants. And so it\nproved , recalled Panabokke\u2019s grandson, Derrick Nugawela. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wealthy individuals\n  owned\nelephant drawn carts during the British occupation. Sir Solomon Dias\nBandaranaike had owned a huge cart, about ten feet high, for\ntransporting coconut and paddy from his estates. Sirimavo Bandaranaike had\ngifted this to the Martin Wickremasinghe Museum and it is on exhibit there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British\nrulers do not seem to have interfered with elephants in temples, elephants in\nperaheras, elephants bathing or private ownership of elephants. The Kandyan chiefs\nwere allowed to hold kraals, and from 1800 to 1900, fifty two kraals were held.\nThe last Kraal was held in 1952, said Jayantha Jayewardene. (Continued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS revised 12.10.21 In the Udarata kingdom, the forests in the central highland were a protected reserve where elephants lived undisturbed. British and European writers have given us information on these habitats. The districts, in which the elephants most abound, are all hilly and mountainous, they said. There was not a mountain or a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}