Bellanwila Esala Festival Reaches its Climax with Randoli Perahera

Months of July and August hold great socio-cultural and aesthetic value for Buddhists across this resplendent island, as they are the time for the ceremonial commemoration of the significance of both Esala and Nikini Full Moon Poya phenomena, as documented in ancient Buddhist scriptures.

- By Sisira Wijesinghe

The Seasonal Perahera festival (pageants) with the crowning one in the charming hill capital, Kandy, Sri Dalada Maligawa, is annually conducted at Kataragama, Ratnapura, Bellanwila, Kotte, et al on a mammoth scale as great crowd-pullers since those spectacles attract captivating performers, artistes, dancers and elephants from all corners of the country.

Bellanwila Esala pageant festival, now being held for the 75th consecutive year in keeping with age-old practices and traditions, gives pride of place to the veneration of the Buddha with a week-long Pirith chanting ceremony, now a rare conduct of such chanting throughout day and night for seven consecutive days. Bellanwila Perahera too portrays a semblance of all rites and rituals, traditions and practices, associated with the historic Dalada Perahera, while the sequence of pageants that follows, i.e Dorakada Asna Anushasanawa Devadutha Perahera, Mal Perahera, Pavada Perahera, Ransivili Perahera and Randoli Maha Perahera and finally the Water Cutting ritual and the Perahera, adds varying dimensions to its religious momentum. This year marks the 75th pageant, which evolved to be a two-week-long national ceremony having commenced as a tiny pageant in the area in 1950 in order to ward off the ill effects, believed to have been caused by a cattle epidemic that destroyed the livelihood of hundreds of peasants and residents in and around Bellanwila in the late 1940s.