Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c6.65

c6.65

The Sinhalese soon regretted this surrender, though glad to be rid of the tyrant. The chiefs especially disliked the curtailment of their powers. In 1817 a rebellion broke out in Uva, developing into a war of independence with some chance of success; but the harassed people were unable to hold out, and the rebels were put down with great severity in the following year. The results of foreign rule and of the insurrection and its suppression were disastrous. It was many years before the country began to recover its prosperity, while the breach in the continuity of national tradition and culture has never been spanned. But with the exception of a small rising in 1848, this was the last struggle, and the year 1815 may be taken as that of the final extinction of an independence which had lasted with few interruptions for more than twenty-three centuries. Had the British, instead of attempting to rule directly a people with whose religion and traditions they were entirely out of sympathy, established a Sinhalese upon the throne as their vassal, and left the administration of the country in his hands, and those of the chiefs, the people would have suffered less, and the great break in the continuity of national life need not have taken place. Such at least is the view of Sir A. C. Lawrie, whose remarks I quote: “It has been assumed by many writers that Eheḷapola’s ambition was to be raised to the Kandyan throne by the help of the English troops. It is said that was his main object in persuading General Brownrigg to invade the country. I do not know that there is foundation for this, but if such was his policy, it may be that he was a more able statesman than the Englishmen with whom he had to deal. If Eheḷapola had been raised to the throne as a king dependent on England, with a resident English garrison at once to support and to control him, the Kandyans might possibly have been spared the horrors of the insurrection of 1817 and the cruelty of its suppression by the English. The country might have flourished under a native ruler of no mean capacity, whose worst tendencies might have been corrected and his best fostered by English aid. The story of English rule in the Kandyan country during 1817 and 1818 cannot be related without shame. In 1819 hardly a member of the leading families, the heads of the people, remained alive; those whom the sword and the gun had spared, cholera and smallpox and privations had slain by hundreds. The subsequent efforts of Government to rule and assist its Kandyan subjects were, for very many years, only attempts begun and abandoned. Irrigation and education did not receive due attention. The descendants of the higher classes of the Kandyan times rapidly died out, the lower classes became ignorant and apathetic. If Eheḷapola had reigned, much that must now be regretted might have been avoided, but fate decided otherwise, and Eheḷapola died an exile in Mauritius” (Lawrie’s ‘Gazetteer,’ p. 203).