Kuweniye Ma Lyrics by Charitha AttalageDinupa KodagodaRidma Weerawardena

Kuweni, it is me…
Kuweni, I am the one
coming to Thammenna.
O beautiful one, it is me…
O beautiful one, I am the one
coming in search of love…

Take the cloth and go inside the house,
go on, princess.
Climbing down from a ship,
death is coming, princess…

Kuweni, it is me…

Do not take off your woven robe, Kuweni.
From the lovely land, blame is laid upon you, Kuweni.
Mud smears your soiled feet, Kuweni.
The rain falls and soaks you wet, Kuweni…

Because of the love you gave me,
much ruin has come to pass.
Do not come to me again, ever…
Until we meet in the next life…
I lay this love aside and remain here…

Take the cloth and go inside the house,
go on, princess.
Climbing down from a ship,
death is coming, princess…

Kuweni, it is me…

Because of the love you gave…

This song reaches back to one of the oldest stories in Sri Lanka, the legend of Kuweni. According to the chronicles, Kuweni was a Yakkha princess of the island’s first people, and when Prince Vijaya landed at a place called Thammenna with his followers, she fell in love with him and helped him take the land. They married and she bore his children. Then Vijaya, wanting a royal bride from across the sea, cast her aside. The song is sung in her voice, and it carries all the grief of that betrayal.

It opens almost like a memory of Vijaya’s arrival, the lines “coming to Thammenna” and “coming in search of love” tracing the moment the strangers came ashore. But the warning underneath is sharp. “Climbing down from a ship, death is coming, princess” is the song speaking to Kuweni across time, telling her that the love stepping off that boat will end in her destruction. The tenderness and the doom sit side by side, because she could not see then what we know now.

The middle verse is where the imagery cuts deepest. “Do not take off your woven robe” speaks to her dignity, the robe being who she was, a princess of her own people, before she gave everything up for him. Then comes the cruelty of what she became in the eyes of his world. “From the lovely land, blame is laid upon you” points to how she was made the villain, blamed and shamed by the very kingdom she helped build. The mud on her feet and the rain soaking her are images of a queen reduced to nothing, cast out into the cold, stripped of the place she once held. In Sinhala this paints a woman left exposed to the elements, no longer protected, no longer honoured.

The closing lines are her own quiet acceptance. She tells him that the love she gave brought ruin on herself, and asks him never to come to her again, not in this life. The hope she is left holding is small and sad, that they might meet again in a future birth, “matu bhawaye,” in the next turn of saṃsāra, the cycle of rebirth. So she sets her love aside and stays where she is. It is the voice of the island’s first wronged woman, and the song lets her speak her sorrow at last.