LAND OF THE TEA GARDENS

Evening Star, Issue 21824, 13 September 1934, Page 13

LAND OF THE TEA GARDENS

ANCIENT AND MDDERN CEYLON n’oj A PART OF INDIA INTERVIEW WITH MAJOR. OLDI'TELD. AVhiio everyone knows that Ceylon is -part of the British Empire and one of New Zealand’s sister dominions, firsthand information about this interesting country is not very often obtained, so that the visit to Dunedin of Major John AY. Oldfield, 0.8. E., M.G., a member of the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, provides a welcome opportunity to learn something about Ceylon. “ 1 should like to impress upon everyone that Ceylon is not a part of India, has nothing whatsoever to do with India,” said Major Oldfield to a ‘ Star ’ reporter. “It is politically as separate from India as Newfoundland is from the dominion of Canada. The principal connection between India and Ceylon is in regard to labour.” Ho explained that the tea estates of the island obtained most of their labour from the Madras Presidency, which was inhabited by the Tamil race. Many of these Tamils settled permanently on the tea estates, and did not revisit India at all. The name “ Ceylon” would probably conjure up in the minds of most people the word “ tea.” The coffee industry in Ceylon disappeared rapidly as' a result of disease nearly eighty years ago, and the island was practically ruined; but with true British fortitude and pluck the pioneer tea planters faced that adversity, and commenced to build up the great tea industry in existence to-day. Tea ,was one of the oldest drinks in the world, and was mentioned in Oriental documents many centuries ago, according to Chinese legend, and was used in that country as a beverage over 4,000 years ago. Speaking of Ceylon and its most interesting early history. Major Oldfield said- that perhaps the two shores of India and Ceylon were once joined, or at least linked by a chain of small islands; but if this were so they must have been separated for a great length of time —long enough for separate species of birds, butterflies, flowering plants, and other forms of life to have arisen that were now peculiar to Ceylon. which lacked some of India’s animals. The proximity of India was by far the most important factor in Ceylon’s long history, for the chief race on the island, the Sinhalese, of whom there were more than three millions, descended from invaders who' swept down from North India in the fifth century before Christ and absorbed all but a remnant of the primitive forest people they found in the mountains and woods. The second race in point of numbers, the Tamils, also came from India, from just across the straits, and the history of 2,000 years was made up of the rivalries, the alliances, the intermarriages, the commerce, and the conflicts of these tn o

races. About 98 per cent, of the total population of nearly five and a-half millions descended from Indian races. The European population of Ceylon numbered onlv 8,000. Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Ceylon was that its history should be known at all. Of very few, countries could one say what form of government and what manner of civilisation existed 2,000 years ago. Egypt would probably be the one exception. But to answer such questions of Ceylon was quite simple, for the Sinhalese wrote histories in very early times, and these had been preserved; therefore Ceylon had this singular knowledge of her vast, perhaps unique amongst all colonies and dominions ot the British Empire. One thousand years ago King Sena ruled at Polonnaruwa, a year or two before (A.n. 934) his fleet having invaded the kingdom of 1 andu, in India, the capital city of which, Madhura, he had plundered and burned. Some 500 years before this Upa-iissa reigned at Anuradhapura. Six years before that he had sent an embassy to China, and documentary evidence ot this still existed. King Sena was responsible for the building of many Buddhist temples, while l)pa-iissa constructed many reservoirs, as well as monasteries and temples. Two thousand years ago the reigning monarch was Bratika, who died in Anuradhapura, and even at that early time he represented the thirty-first king m a line of Ceylon monarchs. Centuries before the Romans, discovered Britain there were kings in Ceylon. Rums ot cities stretching for miles and miles still remained where the Sinhalese kings held sway, and carved stone pillars, granite images of; Buddha, figures ol gods, <mntic brick domes, and deeply-cut ,n----scriptions in rocks still boro witness to the truth of the history and the legends that had been handed down through the years to the present day. * By sailing its fleet down the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean when the south-west monsoon blew, the Roman Empire traded with Ceylon returning when the season changed and the wind blew from the north-east. For about 400 years Ceylon was known to the sailors of Europe by this means. Every harbour on the west coast of the island had yielded evidence of their commerce in the shape of Roman coins dating from Nero’s reign to that of Hononus five centuries later. Ceylon s commerce with the western world then came to an end, and was not restarted for more than a thousand years, duiing which time the Roman Empire fell to pieces, Europe was plunged into its Dark Ages, and the island kingdom rose in power, reached its zenith, ami bc< r an to decline. Anuradhapura was abandoned, and a new capital was built to take its place, this in turn being deserted and falling-into decay. Its ruins, called Polonnaruwa, lay beside a great artificial lake, where crocodiles floated among pink lotus blossoms. Other capital cities were built, but these, too, were abandoned and overgrown by the forest. The enormous reservoirs built by the Sinhalese kings, some 10, 20, and even 30 miles in circumference, were damaged by invaders from India. They burst their banks, and hundreds of miles of irrigation channels were blocked by jungle growth. At last in A.n. 1505 Ceylon was rediscovered by the West, when a Portuguese ship sailed into a Sinhalese harbour. Tamil invasions, civil wars, the collapse of the irrigation system, and malarial fever had destroyed the civilisation of the Sinhalese, and the Portuguese found a distracted island divided among several sorni-barbaric princes, who wore too jealous to unite and too weak to stand alone. T.iic hard, shrewd invaders soon seized all the maritime provides of Ceylon and built stone fortresses, the ruins of which still remained. The Portuguese went as far as the foot of the mountains, where they stopped, and for 140 years governed the lowlands of Ceylon, while .Sinhalese kings still ruled an independent kingdom in flic mountain ranges. Then the Portuguese were driven out by the. Dutch, who ruled the lowlands for a further I-1Q years, until they in

turn were driven away hy the English in a. i). 1790.

Major Oldfield then drew a picture of modern Ceylon. Entering Colombo Harbour on the deck of a liner one could see mountain ranges cutting the sky if the day was clear, while above these Adam’s Peak towered to a height of 7,350 ft. It was clothed in virgin forest, and down in the valleys, deep among its foothills, men had delved for precious stones. In the capital city of Ceylon, Colombo, were to be seen many gardens, withYvenues of flowering trees shading the roads, where the electric trams ran. The town had many fine buildings, and measured by tjie tonnage of ships that called there its harbour was among the first dozen of the world. For thirty or forty miles inland the ground was flat and densely populated, and every available acre was cultivated. Villages were hidden among fruit trees and palms, but all the low-lying areas where water would lie had been turned into paddy fields, for to prosper paddy must grow in standing water. Paddy, lie explained, was rice. From the higher hills tumbled streams.

Climbing by different routes, road and rail met and ran parallel along a pass into a valley that led to Kandy, the last capital of a Sinhalese king. Few lovelier regions existed than the mountain valleys in the Kandyan hills. Perched on steep hillsides, villages existed above their terraced fields, surrounded by their gardens, where tea, coffee, cocoa, breadfruit, and bananas grew almost wild. It was oiily infrequently that one saw horses in these villages; two-wheeled carts were drawn by bulls. Tamo buffaloes could be seen wallowing in the mud in the fields, and when these animals were roused they were harnessed to the plough. Occasionally one might also see tamo elephants, which were kept partly for work and partly for display. Nearly all the mountainous portion of Ceylon was used in the cultivation of tea, and mile after mile of slopes and valleys were covered by small green bushes with glossy leaves. Those were the famous tea. gardens of Ceylon. It was hem that the clear, cool mountain air gave to the loaves a sweet flavour that could never lie developed in t.ho land below. It was in the high hills that the finest flavour of tea was found, and why that was so was a mystery not wholly solved,’