TWO AGELESS AND SPIRITUAL TREES IN THE VILLAGE TANK

Agbo the Tusker, named after nine kings with the same name and presently celebrated as royalty among wild elephants in Sri Lanka, limps as he inches towards the rank grove of Nabada (Vitex leucoxylon) and Kumbuk (Terminalia arjuna) trees seeking shade at the upper section of the Ulagalla tank near Tirappane, in the North Central Province.

- BY LOKUBANDA TILLAKARATNE

The much adored and, sadly, injured elephant has chosen this tank and the surrounding area to live alone to escape pestering from macho elephants who stray out from Kalaweva and Mahakanadarawa Forest Reserves.

Hoping to rest, he stops under a large and ailing Nabada tree.

Shapeless openings in its midsection show it is hollow. As I shall recount later, according to Sri Lankan history books, a similar tree growing in water at the Doramadalawa tank (Dwaramandalaka in Mahawansa), approximately 20 kilometers north of here, once had royal contact, literally, saving future King Pandukabhaya from certain death when he was still a boyish prince.

I suggest this tree is the Nabada, for no other tree with holes and a tunneled trunk big enough for a boy to hide grows in water in a dry zone tank. The other tree in the grove, the Kumbuk, carries the credentials of being a spiritual tree, as depicted in Buddhist literature.

Unlike the mother of all Sri Lankan trees the Sri Maha Bodhi Tree (Ficus religiosa) about which written volumes, nothing significant has been recorded about the Nabada and its companion Kumbuk, two large and unassuming trees standing at odd intervals like deformed Doric columns in and around the village tanks, temples of prosperity in the Dry Zone. They also do not possess the pedigree and vanity of showier trees, such as ebony and mahogany in Sri Lanka, or the stately 4,856-yearold Bristlecone pine tree named Methuselah, still surviving in the Eastern California desert. But Nabada and Kumbuk trees are the inseparable violin and the viola in the symphony which I call the part and parcel of the village tank.