The Maha Mudaliyar, colourful personality

By D.C. Ranatunga

Arguably the first Sri Lankan in the Governor’s staff in the colonial days to make an impression was Sir Solomon Dias Abeyewickreme Jayatileke Seneviratne Raja Kumarun Kadu Keralu Bandaranaike, KCMG, JP. The title ‘Raja Kumarun Kadu Keralu’ was given by Prince Albert Victor of Wales when he visited Ceylon in 1882. Then he was a young man of 20. He was appointed the Maha Mudaliyar of Ceylon in 1895 whom Arnold Wright refers to as ‘native Air-de-Camp to the Governor’ in the ‘Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon’.

Sir Solomon was the son of Don Christoffel Henricus Dias Abeyewickreme Jayatileke Seneviratne Bandaranaike, Mudaliyar of the Governor’s Gate (Gate Mudaliyar – a titular award as an honour) and of Siyane Korale East (a revenue district in the Western Province) and Justice of the Peace and Unofficial Police Magistrate. 

He was the grandson of Don Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, also a Gate Mudaliyar. Describing him as “a noble specimen of the native race”, Sir Emerson Tennent in ‘History of Ceylon’- Vol II (1859) states that “his tall and venerable figure, in his official costume, decorated with the gold chains and medals by which his services have been recognised by the British Government, makes a striking picture”. 

Visit to Horagolla

After a visit to the residence at Horagolla, Veyangoda, Tennent has portrayed it as a “most agreeable example of the dwelling of a low-country headman, with its broad verandahs, spacious rooms, and extensive offices, shaded by palm-groves and fruit trees.”

Tennent who was Colonial Secretary, vividly relates the visit to Horagolla which highlights the traditional customs of the day: “We were received by him with the honours of the white cloth, the approach to his house being covered with long pieces of cotton to the porch. Tom-tom beaters and musicians were stationed along the avenue, groups of boys exhibited national dances, and beat time by clashing together sticks of hard wood, and after them a band of devil dancers from an adjacent temple, with masks and grotesque dresses, went through a performance which, in contortion and enthusiasm, resembles the fury of the Corybantes.”

 

Fascinating life story

Grandson Solomon had his education at S. Thomas’ College and followed the father’s footsteps and succeeded him as Mudaliyar of Siyane Korale prior to becoming Maha Mudaliyar. His personality was that of an English country squire. His lifestyle was that of the English gentry. His life story is fascinating. He himself has recorded his life story in ‘Remembered Yesterdays’, which I haven’t read. Many writers have written about him.

Janus (D.B. Dhanapala), in the series ‘Men of Ceylon’ he wrote in the Daily News in 1937, gives a vivid description of his visit to Horagolla to interview Sir Solomon.

“It was a very rainy Sunday. I reached Horagolla to find Sir Solomon in a semi-surpine posture and a happy mood, on a very easy chair on the verandah… He sat in a grey-green tussore suit and talked to me as the rain pattered outside – a perfect picture of contentment. The shirt and socks matched the clothes perfectly. A check bow clung to the neck… The square, practical face looked at you with shrewd eyes – very, very shrewd eyes with a twinkle in the corners. The knobby-horn waxed moustache above and the not-too soft chin below squeezed out all emphasis from the downward curve of the egotist’s mouth. The backward sloping forehead, indicating a strong material-mindedness incapable of thinking in the abstract, was balanced by a certain aristocratic angle of importance the face assumed with the almost stiff neck.” 

“Ancestral portrait come to life”

To Janus, Sir Solomon in the 1930s was the laird of Horagolla, the one host in a thousand, the grand old man of the country, the soul of dignity, the glass of correctness. Comparing him to someone “who lives like an ancestral portrait come to life”, Janus felt it was an arduous life for a man of 75 to be on show in his own house at any time of day of night fully dressed – the socks well matched, the handkerchief sprinkles with two drops of the best eau-de-Cologne peeping out of the breast-pocket and a starched collar strangling the neck. 

“You might have heard of Englishmen like Sir Hugh Clifford (Governor) clad in a sarong eating rice and curry. But you would not have heard of Sir Solomon in anything less neglige than a well-cut lounge suit out of his bedroom in town or country, palace or tent.”  

As Maha Mudaliyar, he went to England in 1897 to officially represent Ceylon at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. In 1902 he gain went for the Coronation of King Edward VII. Then he received his CMG and the Coronation medal.

While performing his official duties he showed great interest in agriculture and stock-raising. He was a prominent breeder of livestock. He owned extensive coconut plantations in the Western Province as well as rubber estates. A Fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute and the imperial Institute, he was a life-member of the Royal Asiatic Society and a member of the Board and Committee of the Agricultural and Horticultural Societies and the Turf Club (later President).  His recreations were riding and shooting while his hobbies were horticulture and agriculture.

In ‘Naked Fakir’, Robert Berney wrote: “When we arrived at the house of my host’s father, I began to realise the enormous influence of Englishmen on manners and modes. For Sir Solomon Bandaranaike has the courtliness and the charm and the way of living of the best type of English country gentleman. He is as much at home in England as in Ceylon, and signed photographs in the drawing-room show him to be a welcome guest in half the great houses in England.”

Happiest father in the island 

Janus says Sir Solomon in his loneliness of soul may have been the happiest father in the island. “He has first had the luxury of having been the famous father of a son and has now become the father of a famous son. The future he planned for the son might have been totally different from what the young man chose for himself. Nevertheless, that was the happiest thing that ever happened to him in life.”

The national-dress clad Oxford educated son was then Minister of Local Administration as a member of the State Council. Sir Solomon could not see the son becoming the country’s Prime Minister – he had passed away 10 years before that.