We were being driven along Davie Road in the car of a friend. On either side lay stretches of green paddy fields bathed in golden light. Beyond the fields, the roofs and the walls of the houses of traditional dancers of the village could be glimpsed. I had seen great dancers like Ukkuwa and Guneya in days gone by, dancers who deserved to be immortalized for their knowledge and skills. They had lived in this village of Nittawela through which we were now passing in our fearful journey. I had seen these men performing the vannams, the classical dance compositions of the Kandyan period. Each man knew all eighteen of the vannams. Their supple bodies were able, even in old age, to translate every movement, every subtle nuance of the gods, of man, bird and beast into dance. They knew the vannams of the deer, the peacock, the eagle, the elephant, the tortoise and the monkey. They simulated the exploits of warriors and kings in their dance. They enacted the wars of the Dewas, chanted eulogies to the God Sakra, sang of the adventures of Prince Siddhartha’s horse, Kantaka. They sang praises to Lord Buddha. Their dances paid homage to all nature, all living things which surrounded them in the countryside.

I too was familiar with this world which we had shared. But where were those virtuoso dancers now whom I had seen dancing in the light cast by flaming torches, who had transported me into another world where I had felt more at home? Many of them were no longer alive. Their shrill nasal voices chanting incantatory verses which accompanied each gesture, are only echoes in my mind. I did not understand the words but it was enough to feel that ancient past still retained in the blood as those sinewy arms encircled with heavy silver bracelets flashed in the torch flares. Old men who had many years ago been taken to Europe, to Germany, to perform in Hagenbeck’s circus.

In those cold, snow and ice-bound winter months they had shivered in their hotel rooms, huddled together, home sick and lonely. They were billed as the Wild Men of Ceylon. No one in Germany had seen such dances before. The parabolic trance-like curves of the hands lifted about their bodies, the ankles heavy with silver anklets, their ves head dresses shimmering with the wildly shaken silver bo leaves; the tossed tassels swing like plume-tails about their faces. What unaccustomed food had they eaten, what strange western attire had they worn on the streets or Berlin? These men were taken along on a sailing ship in the early years of the century by that European impresario, together with wild animals, trapped in tropical and equatorial forests, in their wooden crates buried in the hold of the ship.