Agbo the Tusker, named after nine kings with the same name and presently celebrated as royalty among wild elephants in Sri Lanka, limps as he inches towards the rank grove of Nabada (Vitex leucoxylon) and Kumbuk (Terminalia arjuna) trees seeking shade at the upper section of the Ulagalla tank near Tirappane, in the North Central Province. The much adored and, sadly, injured elephant has chosen this tank and the surrounding area to live alone to escape pestering from macho elephants who stray out from Kalaweva and Mahakanadarawa Forest Reserves.
Hoping to rest, he stops under a large and ailing Nabada tree. Shapeless openings in its midsection show it is hollow. As I shall recount later, according to Sri Lankan history books, a similar tree growing in water at the Doramadalawa tank (Dwaramandalaka in Mahawansa), approximately 20 kilometers north of here, once had royal contact, literally, saving future King Pandukabhaya from certain death when he was still a boyish prince.
I suggest this tree is the Nabada, for no other tree with holes and a tunneled trunk big enough for a boy to hide grows in water in a dry zone tank. The other tree in the grove, the Kumbuk, carries the credentials of being a spiritual tree, as depicted in Buddhist literature.
Unlike the mother of all Sri Lankan trees – the Sri Maha Bodhi Tree (Ficus religiosa) about which written volumes, nothing significant has been recorded about the Nabada and its companion Kumbuk, two large and unassuming trees standing at odd intervals like deformed Doric columns in and around the village tanks, temples of prosperity in the Dry Zone. They also do not possess the pedigree and vanity of showier trees, such as ebony and mahogany in Sri Lanka, or the stately 4,856-year-old Bristlecone pine tree named Methuselah, still surviving in the Eastern California desert. But Nabada and Kumbuk trees are the inseparable violin and the viola in the symphony which I call the part and parcel of the village tank.
The Village Tank is a book of poetry that nurtures fascination and imagination. The two trees in this narrative double this magic by refreshing the equity and appeal surrounding this core asset of the village. As much as it is a repository for lifesaving water for the villagers, the tank hosts an ambiance of beauty rarely surpassed by any other aspect of the village. A part of this setting is the vegetation that abounds in it, both in dry and wet seasons. Nabada and Kumbuk trees lead this parade.
Blood relatives of Nabada and Kumbuk trees grew on the ephemeral stream long before villagers dammed it up, some probably centuries ago, in a process called gambendeema. When the dammed area was inundated, most trees and shrubs trapped in the deluge drowned, leaving their dead branches like skeletons of dinosaurs sticking out in a pond. Nabada and Kumbuk trees, loaded with DNA ready for amphibious life, refused to die and continued to thrive in this new setting.
Agbo under the Nabada Tree
A Nabada tree will live for hundreds of years. As it grows old, its pith dissolves away, but it still retains enough muscle to hold it standing. A grove of such old and faded trees may give the tank a primitive expression. Some trees refused to move to the water’s edge and remained in the middle like the one Pandukabhaya dived to hide.
They nevertheless hold the Primus position growing on the bund and the tank’s upper reach, called gasgommana or wev-thavulla which are essential ecotones in the larger tank environment. They also grow in the marshy area called kattakaduwa, between paddy fields and homesites called gammedda, and in elangawa, a free-standing forest between two tanks in a cascade of tanks.
Nabada Tree in History
Nabada tree is the ‘elephant in the tank.’ No one notices it out there, right in the open. These trees stand like illustrations of unknown monster animals drawn in ancient maps by medieval cartographers to fill uncharted regions in world. Monsters or not, a verdant mass of green, this tree is there, providing breeding grounds for fish when the tank is full to the brim, and a shady haven for cattle to rest when metallic heat of the unforgiving sun punishes the dusty tank bed during hot months.
The Nabada tree grows in the village tank like an outcast. In a way, it is a good thing. Unlike the Kumbuk tree, which has become a victim of homebuilders who dismantle it to build flavoured steps to reach upstairs rooms, the Nabada tree has never found favor in this convenient therapy in homes or horticulture business in modern times along the borders of expressways.
Genealogic itinerary of these two trees run back in history. Thus, the influence and association of them on villagers’ lives are more pronounced than one thinks. For example, these trees became part of the village nomenclature, showing an instance of interesting footnote in our colonial history.
Until the 19th century, many present-day village tanks had been abandoned, nameless, or derelict. Then, a group of pioneer families looking for a new settlement would descend to such a place and restore the ruined dam through a communal custom called gambendeema.
At the time of entering the details of this project into government records in the early colonial irrigation department, clerks or technical officers, who were mainly Tamils and well-versed in English but less proficient in Sinhala, assigned names to identify these settlements using Tamil words for convenience. These words represented the physical or forestry features found in and around the immediate surroundings of the village. Thus, Nochchikulama, just a kilometer from my village, or Nabadawewa, is an eponym of the Nabada tree. In Tamil, Nochi is Nabada, and Kulam is wewa. Unsurprisingly, even today, Nochchikulama has over a dozen Nabada trees in its tank.
As a side note, as early as 1816, on the Jaffna Peninsula, there were over 600 students enrolled in Wesleyan missionary schools, learning English. Understandably, they got jobs to advance emerging irrigation projects of colonial administration in the Northern Province, which included all the NCP until 1873.
Kumbuk tree by the mankada at Manakkualama wewa.
The Sri Lankan chronicle Mahawansa records that Prince Pandukabhaya, who later became the king and ruled Sri Lanka from 307 to 377 BC, was seven years old and in exile in the village of Doramadalawa (Dwaramandalaka in Mahawansa) near Mihintale for fear of being killed by his uncles, who were eyeing the throne in nearby Anuradhapura. One day, while swimming with friends in the village tank, he saw a band of assassins approaching them with swords drawn.
He grabbed his clothes, dived underwater, and headed straight to the hollow section in a tree growing in the water not far from the mankada. He hid there for a while and came out only after the killers had left, thinking that all the boys, including the prince, had been killed, because there were no additional sets of clothes found on the tank bund.
Kumbuk Tree
This tree is a giant, growing over 50 meters tall, supported by a whitish trunk, some of which are about five metres in circumference at their base. A man can easily take cover between its root buttresses.
Around the latter half of the 20th century, when restrictions on harvesting timber in the country began to take effect, carpenters sought alternative sources to supplement their trade. They caught the scent of the Kumbuk tree, and soon the bells of doom for it began to toll, as the phenomenon of timber products harvested from it has become the darlings of carpenters and home builders. The timber of this tree is popular for use in floorboards and treadboards on stairs in multi-story homes. Before the advent of sawmill noise, villagers allowed these trees to mind their own business in the neighborhoods but guarded them with love. Now, they protect them with vigour.
Meanwhile, this tree is a valuable resource for villagers, but not for its timber. They believe the roots of the tree have water-purifying qualities. Before the village had running water, residents did their bathing chores at the naana mankada (bathing ford), where the Kumbuk tree usually provided shade. Women collected drinking water under this tree, which also grew near diya mankada (drinking water ford), located away from the bathing ford. During the dry season, as the water turned to a mustard color, they brought home this water in an earthen pot, rubbed the seeds of the Ingini tree (Strychnos potatorum) on its inner surface, and left it overnight for the muddy residue to settle to the bottom.
The Kumbuk tree is also a popular spot for village children to enjoy fun outings. They climb its lower branches running horizontally over water, and use them as diving platforms. On some days, we sit on a branch of this tree on the edge of the embankment and watch shoals of fish roam around under its shade. A villager hoping to upgrade his dinner menu often comes and sits by this tree, throws a line, and waits for any movement of the floater.
He picked the right place. The tall and partly submerged buttress root system and crevices provide secure nooks for fish to lay eggs and raise their young. Fishermen know that this lure attracts predator fish to hang around under this tree.
The Kumbuk tree invites tranquility and character to the tank and gammedda below the bund. Thus, this tree too became an eponym for some villagers, e.g., Kumbukwewa or Kumbukgate. It also found a niche in Sri Lankan folklore. Henry Parker, an early 20th-century colonial historian and irrigation engineer, heard from villagers the folktale “The Jackal’s Judgment.” A crocodile grabs a man at the foot of the village tank bund. The man then pleads for help from a nearby Kumbuk tree. Without hesitation, the tree tells the crocodile, “Eat him. He cuts the Kumbuk tree branches and takes them home.” The stairs builder, Mr. Carpenter, must read this folktale. If he gets caught in a crocodile’s jaws, the tree might throw out the preamble and say: “Take him home, buddy. It’s your dinner!”
The substantial presence of Nabada and Kumbuk trees on the bund proves that these trees are an integral part of the tank and the village, and are connected to tradition. Contrary to the vile treatment of the Kumbuk tree, it is considered holy in Buddhist culture.
Literature records that two Atawisi Buddhas (28 former Buddhas), Anomadassi and Piyadassi, received enlightenment under a Kumbuk tree. This belief spared it from the axe and adze of man for ages, just like hunters spared the peacock from slaughter because it is venerated as the vehicle of Kataragama Deyyo – Skandha, the guardian deity of Sri Lanka. Thus, at home, each time we walk on the impeccable steps to the upstairs made of Kumbuk planks, we must remind ourselves we are trampling on a sacred tree, and making the village poor with one less tree – both sacrilegious deeds.
Worthy Meeting Place
On the other hand, seeing the Kumbuk trees planted along the roadways is an incredible gift for travelers, and a well-thought-out investment, not for their carpentry potential but for the power of their environmental benefits for years to come.
From its sapling days, I watched the growth of one such linear grove of Kumbuk trees by the side of A9 south of Kekirawa bazaar. Street vendors, who have no seat in the town proper, gather in this grove daily to make a living by hosting a roadside marketplace. A few decades after the trees were introduced, they began to provide a calmer alternative to the hustle and bustle of the nearby town.
Moreover, the Nabada and Kumbuk groves in and around the tank serve as a meeting place for hundreds of aquatic and migratory birds, some of which have adopted it as their permanent or wayside home. During the day, it is their panchayat, the village assembly. They sort out their neighborly affairs and territorial conflicts here. Some work on their tan as you see flocks of black Cormorants do with wings outstretched in the sun while perched atop the canopy after a fishing outing. After nightfall, swarms of fireflies lit up the row of these trees, imitating the blinking bulbs screaming on the pandol carnival on the Wesak city streets.
In the evening, when the darkness creeps in, the Indian Flying Fox bats (Pteropus giganteus) leave the trees for night rounds. On the Nabada and Kumbuk groves by the Nuwara Wewa bund in Anuradhapura, one can hear the pandemonium of screaming birds flying in and joining the fight for room reservations for a good night’s sleep. Those of us who take evening fitness and doctor-advised strolls on the bund, or amorous couples spending the evening away on its embankment have seen the hullabaloo I am writing about.
Whether the tank is full or has gone bone dry, a line of these two trees growing alternately on the botanical horizon along the forest line or along the bund spruces up, adding to the silent grace of the village tank, accentuating a string of diamonds in an empress’s necklace.
Often, when the morning breaks open and the wind dies down, waves in the tank take a recess. Water becomes a sky-blue mirror producing the eternalized reflection of the Kumbuk tree on the edge of the nana mankada. Then, these twins stand ready yearning for a prize-winning photo. I caught that brilliant cadenza of the reflective melody one morning at my village tank. The prosody of that moment was crying to be written. Just staring at that diorama took me to a serene and unclouded moment of reverie.
By Lokubanda Tillakaratne 
from The Island https://ift.tt/MLYdVI9
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