PHYSICIANS OF THE SOUTH

Cauterization and puncture were techniques well known in the Tangalle area in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  They formed a combined technology which had been introduced probably from the central highlands around Kandy.  After the revival of Buddhism by Venerable Welivita Saranankara and the reintroduction of the upasampadā ceremony in the middle of the eighteenth century, monks were in the habit of moving long distances barefoot in the central and southern districts.  It may be that they took with them not only palm-leaf books on Buddhism, medicine, and astrology but also techniques of medical treatment.  There may have been physician monks as well as lay physicians who were compelled to leave the central districts and go into hiding in the south whenever they were out of the favour with the ruling cliques.  All this is merely conjecture.  Systematic research is needed to establish the modes of the transfer of knowledge and technology from the Kandyan areas to the southern districts in the post-eighteenth-century period.  A further useful line of research will be to see how medical knowledge developed thereafter and spread from the south back to the central districts.   Muhindiram Don Johānis Atapattu of Nākulugamuwa, Tangalle, was a well-known physician who lived in this area in the late nineteenth century.  His kinsman Ayurvedic Dr. D.C. Atapattu, who now resides in Dehiwala, Colombo district, informed our researchers that he had seen in his boyhood many patients being brought to their ancestral home for cauterization or puncture after other kinds of treatment had failed to cure them.  Patients who were literally carried by able-bodied men were able to walk back independently after receiving treatment from Don Johānis Atapattu.
		Figure 1 - Sri Lanka showing the administrative districts referred to in the study.

The Atapattus belong to the Goigama caste.  They have maintained a harmonious relationship with people of other castes.  Don Johānis Atapattu learnt medicine from Don Christian Weerasuriya, a physician from a Karave caste family of Gurupokuna, Tangalle.  Popularly known as Pallemalala Veda Muttā, Weerasuriya attracted patients and students from far and near.  He often travelled on horseback, as he had difficulty in walking because of defective toes.  He effectively administered cauterization and puncture and cured people.  Rapiel Muttā, a 90-year-old resident of Gurupokuna, confirmed information about Don Christian Weerasuriya and added that he was a tough person to deal with.  Weerasuriya's grandson Dayananda Weerasuriya (age 56 years), of Räkava near Tangalle, also confirmed the abilities of physician Don Christian Weerasuriya.  Sixty-five-year-old Venerable Tillāvatavana Mahinda of Mahindarama Temple, Ambalantota, also furnished details about him.

M.C. Sri Wickramaratna Waidyaraja (age 81 years), who lives in the Tangalle area, was interviewed by our officers for details about the physician who travelled on horseback.  Waidyaraja said that he had often seen him riding a horse and visiting the sick.  He had also heard that Weerasuriya had been to India and learnt medicine.  Waidyaraja is not only well informed on such facts but also broad-minded in his attitude to contemporary problems.  When our researchers met him he recounted the services of Ponnambalam Ramanathan during the martial-law days of 1915 and melodiously recited a long Sinhalese poem composed in praise of Ramanathan.

Waidyaraja's conversation was fully taped by our officers.  Naturally they were interested in this capable southerner with his excellent memory.  The name Waidyarāja means 'king among physicians'.  He had been a traditional physician in his youth.  Once he won a lottery sweepstakes ticket and collected over Rs 100,000, but he spent the whole amount to build a public hall for monks to come and chant pirit for the benefit of villagers.  His knowledge of people, astrology, and traditional medicine is unique.  The Sinhalese he used in conversing with our officers was elegant and unaffected.  Unfortunately he is blind now.

When a researcher referred to the abovementioned Mundiram Atapattu as Don Juwānis Atapattu, Waidyaraja immediately corrected him, saying that the Muhindiram's name was Don Johānis and not Juwanis.  This was confirmed by nonagerian Don Nicholas Atapattu (aged 92 years), a retired school teacher popularly known as Galagama Teacher and a first cousin of Muhindiram Don Johānis Atapattu.

Interest in medicine was never altogether abandoned in this Atapattu family.  Books and manuscripts were treasured in the private libraries of senior Atapattus.  Ayurvedic Dr. D.C. Atapattu of Dehiwala is a graduate in ayurvedic medicine and surgery from the Astanga Vaidya Vidyalaya of Calcutta.  Don Johānis Atapattu's son, Mr. D.P. Atapattu, was a junior minister from 1965 to 1970.  Mr. D.P. Atapattu's son Ranjith, who studied western medicine and graduated from the Medical Faculty of the University of Sri Lanka, has earned recognition as Dr. Ranjith Atapattu, the present minister in charge of the Colombo Group of Hospitals.

Mr. B. D. Siripala, Cultural Officer of the Kandy Kachcheri, furnished very useful information to our researchers about the current practice of cauterization and puncture in the Southern Province.  Being the son of a well-known Ayurvedic physician of the south, Mr. Siripala had been interested in traditional medicine from his school days.  Sometime back he found traditional acupuncture to be of absorbing interest.  So he re-read relevant Sinhala palm-leaf manuscripts and consulted contemporary traditional physicians, including Ayurvedic Dr. K.S.S. Samarawickrama of Pathegama, Kottegoda, Matara district.

Dr. Samarawickrama, who himself administers traditional acupuncture and cauterization, instructed Mr. Siripala and also encouraged him to pursue further the study of katu chikitsā, as treatment by puncture with needle is called in the traditional system, and later Mr. Siripala for needles and cauterizers made at a goldsmith's workshop in Dikwella and practiced katu chikitsā with confidence.  In February 1979, for instance, one of the patients who he treated was a person suffering from epilepsy.  Mr. Siripala punctured a point on the reverse of the patient's palm and cured him.  That patient was thus relieved of the epileptic fits that had tormented him off and on during the nine previous years.

Figure 2 - Vidum katuva A, puncture needle - used for slitting open veins.  Stainless steel.  Actual size approx. 10.2 centimetres long.  Made in 1979 by a goldsmith in the Dikwella area (name not verified).  Present owner: B.D. Siripala, Cultural Officer, Kachcheri, Kandy.

Figure 3 - Vidum karuva B, puncturing needle - used for puncturing only.  Stainless steel.  Actual size approx. 10.2 centimetres long.  Made in 1979 by a goldsmith in the Dikwella area (name not verified).  Present owner: B.D. Siripala, Cultural Officer, Kachcheri, Kandy.

The Dinamina (a Sinhala daily) carried in its news columns of 17 March 1977 a report that Mr. Siripala had found in the private library of Ayurvedic Dr. Samarawickrama two very old palm-leaf manuscripts on traditional Sinhalese acupuncture techniques.  Mr. Siripala deserves praise for being such a consistent devotee of medical knowledge.

Ayurvedic Dr. K.S.S. Samarawickrama, is an L.A.M.S. (Licentiate in Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) - a qualification he obtained in India.  He had three other academic qualifications: he is a Pandita, an Ayurvedic Visarada, and an Ayurvedic Chintamani.  Popularly known as Veda Ralahamy, this seventy-five-year-old physician (Salagama caste) keeps in touch with standard textbooks of Ayurveda such as Sārngadhara, Mādhava Nīdāna, and Vara Yoga Sāra.  But the practice adopted by him is based on the fundamentals which had been pragmatically accepted in his family.  As the son of Ayurvedic Dr. S.D.B. Samarawickrama (1872-1937), K.S.S. Samarawickrama commands respect in the village.

S.D.B. Samarawickrama's father was Ayurvedic Dr. Sunnadeniyage Don Sadiris Samarakoon Samarawickrama, whose father in turn was Sunnadeniyage Don Siman, better known as Siman Kankanama on account of the supervisory duties he performed.  He was also a practicing traditional physician of the area.  On one occasion he received a message from Mudliyar Illangakkoon of the Illangakkoon Walawwa, Matara, to come and attend an urgent maternity case.  The woman was suffering intense pain in her inability to give birth to her child.  Siman Kankanama administered puncture treatment and instantly the child emerged.  The infant's hand which had which had been interfering with his movement out of the womb was found bleeding at the time of birth.  Evidently the physician's needle had effectively pricked the tiny hand and shifted it into correct position.

The elders of the Walawwa were so fascinated by the physicians accurate diagnosis and mode of treatment that they exercised their authority and conferred on him the name Samarawickrama as a mark of honour.  Thereafter he was known as Sunnadeniyage Don Siman Samarawickrama.

His father had learnt traditional medicine from Venerable Kanduboda Ratanajothi Seelawansa Thero (a monk of the Siamese sect), under whom he was for some time an acolyte at Purana Vihara, Gandara, Matara district.  The monk looked after him well , placing palm-leaf manuscripts at his disposal and giving him the opportunity of observing procedures when the monk examined patients and prescribed medicine.

According to another tradition, Siman Kankanama acquired his interest in Ayurveda from Mudliyar Tilakaratna (an expert in Ayurveda), under whom he served as a tax collector in the fourth decade of the eighteenth century.  It may be noted that even the reputed writer Matara Saranapala Thero, author of the Ayurvedic work Salla Vidiya (enlarged edition) and of Yogābaranaya and Heladiv Abidenawatha, was a son of one Pallewala (Salagama caste), who was a kinsman of Siman Kankanama.

Venerable Seelawansa was born in 1768 in the village of Kanduboda near Campola in the up-country hinterland of Sinhale.  In the post-fourteenth-century era it was in that area that Sinhalese scholars mostly lived safe from the ravages of war while studying old books or writing new ones.  After the Buddhist revival ushered in by Venerable Welivita Saranankara, monks of the Central Province were in the habit of travelling to and from the Southern Province.  Rules of conduct precluded them from residing even temporarily in the homes of laymen.  So they broke their journey at places of Buddhist worship.  It may be presumed that they took with them whatever handbooks they could conveniently carry.  Books on literature, medicine, astrology, and grammar could in that manner have been introduced to the south.  It may be presumed further that they discussed the substance of what was said in such books with people whom they met in temples.

New centres of worship and study may have developed in the Southern province in places where monks took up residence and disseminated knowledge.  Thus in Hambantota district there were Debokkawa Vihāra, and Mulkirigala Raja Maha Vihāra.  Matara district had Gandara Purāna Vihāra, Galwaladeniya Vihāra, Vēpataira Temple, Gunaratana Mudalinda Pirivena, Weragampita Temple, and Māpalāna Temple.  Learning diffused so significantly in this period that a distinct period, known as the Matara era of Sinhalese literature, came into being.  The libraries of palm-leaf manuscripts in temples were the nuclei for cultural centres which made such growth possible.

Detailed research is necessary to establish a hypothesis of this type.  The story of how Kandyan monks were instrumental in the dissemination of medical tradition for instance - the story of traditional technology being taken to the south, of its being amplified with local technologies, and of its being brought back to the up-country in enriched form - must be investigated by modern scholars.  The monks who pioneered the spread of medical lore belonged to the Siamese sect.  The temples mentioned in the previous paragraph belonged to that sect.  They continued to be centres where healing was done.

Although the monks of the Amarapure and Ramanna sects which came into existence later took the position that enrobed members of the Buddhist clergy should not practise as physicians, there is evidence of monks learning medicine as part of their obligatory studies.  If there was knowledge it was natural for it to be put to practical use.  Bhesajja Manjusa, a medical treatist in Pali verse, was written in the thirteenth century in Sri Lanka by a monk.  Asanga in stanza 30 of his Mahayāna Sūtrālankara stated that the art of healing was one of the subjects which monks should learn in order to be of service to their fellow human beings.  The custom of chanting pirit is a vestige of those early times when monks healed the minds and bodies of their lay devotees enabling them to tread the Path of Spiritual Unfoldment.

Venerably Kanduboda Ratanajothi Seelavansa, referred to above, had spent some time at Pathegama when he came from the hilly region.  It was in that village that he met the boy who was fortunate enough to learn traditional medicine from him.  From Pathegama the monk went to Talalla on invitation and from there to Gandara, again on invitation.  All these villages are in the Matara district.  It was his residence at Gandara which later came to be known as the Purāna Vihāra.

Our researchers met the present head of this temple, Venerable Nakulugamuwe Sumangala, well known as an eye specialist among traditional physician monks.  Many palm-leaf manuscripts belonging to Venerable Seelawansa are still preserved in this temple.  His successor was Venerable Heelle Revata (1845-1915).  After him Venerably Kapugama Seelawansa (1874-1950) was the chief incumbent.  His lay students removed some books from the temple library.  Nakulugamuwe Sumangala remembers a palm-leaf manuscript entitled Salya Cikitsa Vidhi which is now missing but had been there in the early days.  It contained about 70 to 80 leaves and was about 23 centimetres long, 5 centimetres broad, and 4 centimetres thick.  Instructions on puncturing and pressurizing of nila points (function centres) were given there together with illustrations of instruments and human fingers depicting critical loci.

Venerable Sumangala was well informed about Venerable Seelawansa, who belonged to the Malwatte branch of the Siamese sect.  His tomb can be seen even today a short distance from the temple.  Venerable Sumangala obliged our researcher and went there with him.  The jungle was cleared for the purpose.  The tomb bore the names of Kanduboda Seelawansa with a brief description of the position he held.  The year of his birth and the were of his passing were given in dates both of the Buddhist era and of the Christian era; the monk was born in A.D. 1768 and passed away in 1848.

Ayurvedic Dr. K.S.S. Samarawickrama is a general practitioner who gets a few cases each month - about four cases for cauterization, about five cases for puncturing, and about two cases for pressurized nila points.  In accordance with the tradition followed by Venerable Kandubods Seelawansa, Dr. Samarawickrama makes additional use of astrology and mantra shāstra (incantations) in his healing work.

Figure 4 - Vidum katuva - used for perforating the ear and for the treatment of hernia.  Stainless steel with wooden handle.  Actual size approx. 10.2 centimetres long.  Made in 1943 by an instrument-maker of the Navandanna caste in Nagalamulla, near Dikwella, Matara district.  Present owner: Ayurvedic Dr. K.S.S. Samarawickrama.

Figure 5 - Pilissum katuva - for cauterizing.  Gold, silver, copper, steel, and iron.  Actual size approx. 10.2 centimetres long.  Made in 1943 in Belideniya, Kottegoda, by Palatuwegedara Weda Manattaya.  Present owner: Ayurvedic Dr. K.S.S. Samarawickrama.

His two sons, S.K.M. Samarawickrama and S. Kirthisena Samarawickrama, and his daughter, Nanda Hasawathie Samarawickrama, take keen interest in their father's professional work.  Kirthisena attends acupuncture classes at the Colombo South Hospital, Kalubowila, in addition to receiving instruction from his father.

Dr. Samarawickrama's student K. Jayatissa has opened his own Ayurvedic dispensary at Bandarawela (Uva Province).

The textbook usually consulted by Dr. Samarawickrama is a palm-leaf manuscript called Salysa Cikitsāva, also known as Vidum Pilissum Potha.  It contains 33 stanzas and additional prose sections.  There are 50 leaves in the book, each leaf being about 46 centimetres long and 5 centimetres broad.  He has found from experience the efficacy of treatment recommended in the textbook, for instance, cauterization at the base of the second toe on the foot in cases of hernia, and cauterization of certain nila points on the back of the left palm in cases of chest ailments.

Another family of physicians who have established a reputation for administering puncture and cauterization reside in Agalaboda, Hambantota district.  They are the Jālat Muhindirams (Goigama caste) and were originally known as specialists in the treatment of boils.  Ayurvedic Dr. J.L.C. Jālat Muhindiram is a general practitioner but sometimes attends cases in need of puncture or cauterization.  He has books of clients' names, receipts, and notes where patients express their written consent to cauterization or puncture.  According to these books only two patients came in 1976 for cauterization.  From 1977 to date there were no patients at all.  Between 12 October 1952 and 19 April 1956, there were 100 patients for puncture according to the counterfoils of the receipt books.  Similarly, between 30 May 1956 and 20 April 1970 also there were 100 patients.  In 1979 there were seven patients for puncture.  In 1980 so far (January and February) only one patient has come for puncture.

This physician is a younger brother of Agalaboda Sri Nānissara, who passed away in 1975.  As head of the Jayamaha Vihāra Pirivena, Kitulewala, Matara district, he was a source of strength to the physician.  His grandfather, Babun Appu Jālat Muhandiram, maintained a good relationship with the monks and practised as a specialist in the treatment of boils.  Babun Appu's son, D.A. Jālat Muhandiram (1860-1940) was Veda Aratchi of Giruwa Pattuwa.  He practised puncturing and cauterization techniques in addition to being a general practitioner.  A palm-leaf manuscript which was in his possession contained about 30 leaves each 23 centimetres long and 7.5 centimetres broad.  The thickness of the book with the covers was 7.5 centimetres.  It was a copy made from a very old palm-leaf manuscript in the temple library of Sri Sudarsanaramaya, Galawaladeniya, Parapamulla, Deyyandara.  The distance from Agalaboda to Deyyandara by short cut was 7.25 kilometres.  The temple belonged to the Malwatta branch of the Siamese sect.

It had a fairly large stock of palm-leaf manuscripts on traditional medicine. The present head of the temple, Venerable Ransegoda Sivankara (a catarrh specialist) confirms it but says that his predecessor Venerable Deyyandara Seelaratana (1860-1942) gave away most of the books.  Venerable Tārāpēliyē Sobhita had been an enthusiastic teacher resident in this temple.  In his time he enriched the temple library with additional books.

D.A. Jālat Muhandiram in his childhood learnt to read and write at the Galwaladeniya Temple where he and Venerable Deyyandara Seelaratana had as their common teacher Venerably Tārāpēliyē Sobhita.  Just as Venerable Seelaratana mastered treatment of catarrh through the study of books in Venerable Sobhita's collection, D.D. Jālat Muhandiram mastered the theory and practice of puncture and cauterization by reading appropriate books in the same collection.  Contrary to the popular belief that teachers held back certain details, Venerable Sobhita taught everything he knew and also placed books at the disposal of his pupils so that they might widen their horizons by self-instruction.  D.A. Jālat Muhandiram and Venerable Seelaratana made the best use of the opportunity they got.

Figure 6 - Double-blade puncturing instrument.  Small blade - steel; large blade - stainless steel; partition piece - brass; handle/case - tortoise-shell.  Actual size (case) approx. 9.5 centimetres long.  Made in 1950 in Agalaboda, near Kirama, Hambantota district, by Gamage Hinnaya of Medagangoda, a blacksmith of the Vahumpura caste.  Present owner: Ayurvedic Dr. D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram.

It is tempting to speculate on whether medical knowledge pertaining to puncture and cauterization was brought to the Galawaladeniya Temple (Siamese sect) from the Kandyan highlands.  Galawaladeniya Temple is near the boundary of the Matara and Hambantota districts.  Venerable Sobhita's predecessor at the temple was Venerable Ahangama Sangharakkhita, a general practitioner of traditional medicine.  A generation earlier the temple had been founded by two monks who had come from a distant village which nobody remembers now.  The medical traditions in this temple owe its origin to them.  There is no evidence available as yet to establish that the two monks came from the up-country.  But if conclusive evidence does come to light it will support our thesis that knowledge of puncture and cauterization was brought to the Southern province from the Kandyan highlands.  An elderly informant from Parapāmulla near Deyyandara mentioned that according to a traditional story current in the area one of the two monks who founded Galawaladeniya Temple did practise medicine including puncture, cauterization, and mantra shāstra (use of incantations.

Figure 7 - Small blade - used for puncturing smaller veins.  Stainless steel.  Actual size approx. 9.5 centimetres long.  Made in 1950 in Agalaboda by Ayurvedic Dr. D. L. C. Jālat Muhandiram.  Present owner: D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram.

Figure 8 - Gedipalana pihiya - for splitting boils.  Stainless steel with wooden handle.  Approximately 20 centimetres long.  Made in 1950 in Agalaboda, near Kirama, Hambantota district, by Ayurvedic Dr. D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram.  Present owner: D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram.

Figure 9 - Pulussana katuva - for cauterizating.  Steel rod with brass knob and wooden handle.  Approximately 25 centimetres long.  Made in 1950 in Agalaboda by Ayurvedic Dr. D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram.  Present owner: D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram.

Figure 10 - Kana vidina katuva - used for perforating the ear.  Steel with wooden handle.  Actual size approx. 10.2 centimetres long.  Made in 1955 in Agalaboda by Ayurvedic Dr. D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram.  Present owner: D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram.

D. A. Jālat Muhandiram's son is Ayurvedic Dr. D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram (born 1903).  He consults a palm-leaf manuscript named Salya Vaidya Cikitsāva which gives instructions in three techniques of blood-letting, namely, use of leeches, use of an instrument to split smaller veins, and use of an instrument to split larger veins.

The Jālat Muhandiram family permits three degrees of imparting warmth into the bodies of patients: (1) cauterizing forcefully so as to scorch the skin; (2) delicately applying heat; and (3) fomenting, especially with a lump of nika leaves and attana leaves immersed in boiling kohomba oil.

It is interesting to note that these three modes correspond to gasā pilisīma, gasa tävīma, and tävīma referred to in our Salla Vidiya text.

D.L.C. Jālat Muhandiram's son S.P. Jālat Muhandiram (born 1933) has studied medicine at the Siddhayurveda Vaidya Vidyalaya, Gampaha.  He consults his father often on technical points concerning treatment.

D.L.C. Muhandiram's elder brother, Venerable Agalaboda Sri Nanissara, was referred to earlier.  His younger son is also a monk.  He resides at Sittangala Raja Maha Vihāra, near Kirama, Hambantota district.

Mention should be made of another old family of physicians residing in Matara district.  They are the Jayawardenes of Hatan Gewatte, Denipitiya, off Weligama in Matara district.  The family history goes back to the times of Vidiye Bandara (sixteenth century) when an army led by that Sinhalese warrior encamped near Weligama with the intention of fighting the Portuguese.  Stories current in the area associate the place with a battle between Sinhalese and Dutch forces also.  Hatan Gewatte, the location of the ancestral home of the Jayawardenes in Denipitiya, is said to have derived its name from the fierce battle between Sinhalese and anti-Sinhalese forces that raged there once upon a time.

A physician who came with Vidiye Bandara decided to stay at Denipitiya without going back to the highlands.  Hatan Gewatte was given to him in return for his services as an army physician.  The Jayawardenes of Denipitiya hail from that ancestor.  It is of interest for us to note that Mrs. Samararatne, wife of Ayurvedic Dr. Sugathadasa Samararatne who gave us the manuscript of the Salla Vidiya, is from this Denipitiya family.

When our officers met Ayurvedic Dr. Edwin Samarakoon Jayawardene (age 64 years) he explained his family history.  Many palm-leaf manuscripts as well as very old lists of prescriptions for various illnesses are preserved in the family library.  Family physicians residing in and around Denipitiya are general practitioners but they are conversant with puncture and cauterization.  There are several palm-leaf manuscripts on those subjects in the family library.  One of the younger Jayawardenes is at present studying acupuncture at the Colombo South Hospital, Kalubowila.

Venerable Kirinde Sri Seelananda Sangharatana, who came from the up-country hinterland and took up residence at Wewurukannala near Dikwella in Matara district, had a remarkable personality.  It is said that he was a son of Rajadhirajasinghe (the Nayakkar king who ruled in Kandy from 1780 to 1798) by a Goigama woman named Wasala Devi of Madakumbura.  Madakumbura is a village in Nuwara Eliya district about 32 kilometres from Gampola by road.  About the end of the eighteenth century the boy probably left his village (either before or after becoming a monk) because of problems created by relatives or else because of political and social pressure.

In the south he was popularly known as Kirinde Hāmuduruwo.  His temporary quarters at Wewurukannala evolved into the Budu-raja-maha Vehera Temple of Wewurukannala.  Most probably he brought from his hometown near Gampola many palm-leaf books on religion and medicine.

Among his pupils the best known was Venerable Wewurukannala Sumangala (1795-1875) of the Durawe caste.  He came from a Mutucumārana Waga Aratchige family of the village of Wewurukannala.  In the course of time he succeeded Venerable Seelananda as head of the Budu-raja-maha Vehera Temple.  Traditional medicine was one of the subjects in which he took a keen interest.  His father was not a physician, and his aptitude for medicine was derived from his ancestors who were renowned physicians.  The family had originally come from Sri Jayawardhanapura (Kotte near Colombo) and settled in Wewurukannala in A.D. 1415.

Abiyes Cumaranatunga (father of Munidasa Cumaranatunga, the well-known Sinhalese scholar) was a student at the Budu-raja-maha Vehera Temple.  He studied medicine under Venerable Sumangala and became a general practitioner who was proficient in puncture and cauterization too.  Most probably he had read the relevant books which were in the temple library and instructed himself in addition to being guided by Venerable Sumangala.  T.S. Dharmabandu records in his volume of biographies Sinhala Weerayo (Colombo, 1973, p. 602) that whenever patients who were lame and unable to move their hands and feet were brought to physician Cumaranatunga (Durawe caste) he would puncture their veins at selected spots, enabling those patients to walk back home the same day.

Cumaranatunga's contemporary, Don Andiris Dias (1849-1934), of the Durawe caste, was also a capable physician who administered puncture and cauterization.  He too was a student of Venerable Sumangala's when Cumaranatunga was studying there.  Andiris Dias is identified as the father of Don Hendrick Dias who was better known as Māgama Rālahāmy.  The fact that Don Andiris Dias also had access to knowledge of cauterization and puncture suggests that that technology was a part of the medical knowledge which Venerable Sumangala had in his possession.  The monk may or may not have practised it.  It is interesting to speculate as to how he obtained his knowledge.  Perhaps there were books in his ancestral home.  Perhaps Venerable Seelananda also brought books from the are of his hometown near Gampola in the hilly region.

During the period when Venerable Sumangala was head of the Budu-raja--maha Vehera Temple and for some time after his passing away, the temple was reputed to have had a well-stocked library of books on traditional medicine.  But today there are hardly any old palm-leaf manuscripts on the subject there.  The library became scattered and disorganized in subsequent years.

During the colonial period of rule in our country knowledge of traditional medicine gradually ceased to be a passport to recognition and economic security.  Fewer and fewer people cared to preserve the books or to master their substance.

Another family of traditional medical practitioners in the Southern Province, associated only marginally with techniques of cauterization and puncture, hails from Talalle in Matara district.  They reside at Diyabarige Watte and their family belongs to the Salagama caste.  Their family name is de Silva Gunawardana.  The last de Silva Gunawardena who was active in the district as a medical practitioner was Richard de Silva Gunawardana (1892-1956).  His father, Dionysius de Silva Gunawardana (1867-1942), was a traditional physician and registrar of births and deaths for the area.

Dionysius's brother, Simon de Silva Gunawardana (1877-1934), was also a well-known medical practitioner of Talalle.  Their father, Pediris de Silva Gunawardana (1836-1895), was a registrar of births and deaths in addition to being a medical practitioner.  His father, Peter Carolis de Silva Dunawardana, was not a medical man but was Police Officer (Headman) of Talalle.  It was his father, Simon de Silva Gunawardana, in the eighteenth century who started the tradition of medical practice in the family.  He was known as Ralahamy on account of his holding the post of Village Headman and Vidane Aratchi in addition to being registrar of births and deaths.

He had acquired mastery in the theory of puncturing.  But he would not insert the needles in the bodies of patients.  After deciding which patients needed puncture treatment, he would mark the nila point to be punctured and get his assistant to insert the needle there.  It is possible that the practice of getting the actual puncturing done by an assistant in that manner was due to astrological reasons.

The assistant who performed that service was a man named Babayhāmi Rāla (Salagama caste) of the village of Pathegama near Talalle.  Babayhāmi Rāla was not a medical practitioner but purely a technical assistant to Simon de Silva Gunawardana.  In the de Silva Gunawardana line of physicians he was the only physician who gave puncture treatment.  Marga researchers were unable to obtain any evidence of who Simon's teachers were or from where he had acquired medical knowledge.

His father was Ruhunu Totamune Liyana Muhandiram - a titular rank which implies that he did clerical work for the government.  He was assigned to perform the duties of that rank in the Talalle area.  He had migrated in the seventeenth century from Welitara near Balapitiya in the Galle district to Talalle in the Matara district.

Effective use of the technique of puncture to aid in the delivery of children is also attributed to the de Silva Gunawardanas.  We mentioned earlier that the Samarawickramas of Pathegama had been honoured for the use of that technique.  It is quite possible that a medical technique used at a chronologically earlier period by one physician can be used at a later period by another physician if that technique becomes widely known.  The famed physician Venerable Pothuwila Indajothi used the puncture technique with the aid of a pin and facilitated childbirth (Dharmabandu, Sinhala Weerayo).

Veda Aratchi Richard de Silva Gunawardana, who was a general practitioner at Diyabarige Watte in Talalle South, is reputed to have had a very good library of books on traditional medicine including treatises on cauterization.  Upon his death in 1956 a part of the library was removed by his wife to her village Pohaddaramulla near Wadduwa in Colombo district.  The rest of the library is being carefully preserved by Richard's brother's son, Mr. Gamini Gunawardana, who lives and works in Colombo.

As we have seen it was because of the existence of libraries that many capable individuals were able to instruct themselves on cauterization and puncture and other aspects of traditional medicine.  Research into these library centres of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries will reveal interesting facts.  Temples of the Siamese sect had stocks of books which were used by monks who were also practising physicians.  In temples of the Amarapura sect monks did not practise medicine but taught it along with subjects such as astrology, grammar, and Buddhist philosophy.

For instance, Venerable Walgameliya Somarama (1900-1968) of the Jayasumanarama Temple, Palatuduwa, had a large stock of medical works with him.  It was from him that the manuscript of the Salla Vidiya was obtained by physician Sugathadasa Samararatne.  Venerable Somarama taught medicine to students who came to the temple.  The temple belonged to the Amarapura sect.  Prior to him, at the turn of the twentieth century, Venerable Welipatanwila Deepankara (1872-1944) taught medicine at the Gautama Vidyalaya (Amarapura sect temple school) in Tangalle.  Being a son of Ayurvedic Dr. P.K.P. Jayasuriya of Welipatanwila and being conversant with Sanskrit textbooks, he was in the privileged position of being a teacher of Ayurveda.  Dr. Sugathadasa Samararatne, too, improved his knowledge of medicine by attending Venerable Deepankara's classes.

In still earlier times, Venerable Alutgama Sri Seelakkhandha (1848-1924) taught Ayurvedic medicine at Saraswati Mandapa Pirivena, Sailabimbarama Temple (Amarapura sect), Dodanduwa, Galle district.  He, too, was a Sanskrit scholar who was very conversant with Susruta and other Sanskrit works on medicine.

No systematic study of the service rendered at these temples has been done.  Louis de Zoysa produced a very useful catalogue of palm-leaf manuscripts found in temple libraries of Sri Lanka.  Later K.D. Somadasa did similarly excellent work in recording the names of palm-leaf manuscripts found in the libraries of Sri Lanka and in the British museum library.  One comes across numerous medical works in those lists.  But research should be able to unearth the names of the scholars who made these collections and also the story of how libraries got scattered and how the development of traditional medicine was halted.  Useful lessons can be learnt from such research.