Salalihini Kowul Lyrics by CT FernandoLatha Walpola

The call of the salalihini and the koel rings out
in a great garden brimming with splendour.
Among the herds of deer, where tigers and bears roam,
this garden is a stage for their dancing.

(A flock of blue rock pigeons, a parrot,
a peacock dancing with its feathers spread)..//
(The lapwing with its crooked beak and the junglefowl,
the long-beaked stork)..//
They saw us, took fright, and raised their voices as if in contest.

The call of the salalihini and the koel….

(The spotted leopard, the rough tiger,
the jackal that earned the name of the cunning king)..//
(The venomous viper, the man-eating crocodile,
the monitor lizard shedding its skin)..//
The country python lay close by, and the cobra sat coiled.

The call of the salalihini and the koel….

This is a song about a garden alive with wild creatures, the kind of grand pleasure garden you find in old Sinhala verse, where every bird and beast seems to have gathered in one place. It opens with sound, the call of the salalihini (a small swift garden bird) and the kovula (the Asian koel) ringing through the trees, and from there it simply walks you through the garden and names what lives there. There is no lover and no heartbreak in it. The pleasure is in the cataloguing itself, the way the words pile up bird after bird, animal after animal, until you can almost hear and see the whole place.

The first half belongs to the birds. Blue rock pigeons move in flocks, a parrot calls, and a peacock dances with its feathers spread wide, which in Sri Lanka is the image of beauty and display at its fullest. Then come the homelier birds of the countryside, the red-wattled lapwing (kirala) with its crooked beak, the junglefowl (the wild ancestor of the village chicken, and Sri Lanka’s national bird), and the long-beaked stork wading at the water’s edge. The lovely turn is when these birds catch sight of the people in the garden, take fright, and all start calling at once, so it sounds like they are competing with each other. The song frames the whole noisy garden as a rangamandala, a dancing arena, with the deer and the bigger animals as the performers on its stage.

The second half shifts to the animals you would be wise to fear, and here the writing leans on the names Sinhala folklore gives them. The spotted leopard and the rough tiger come first, then the jackal, called here “the cunning king,” which is exactly the reputation the jackal carries in Sri Lankan and South Asian story, the trickster who outwits stronger beasts. After them the dangerous reptiles, the venomous viper (polanga), the man-eating crocodile, the monitor lizard sloughing off its old skin, the country python, and the cobra (naya) sitting coiled and ready. Naming the cobra last, poised and still, leaves the garden humming with a quiet sense of danger.

What you are left with is a kind of word-painting, a single garden holding the gentle and the deadly side by side, the dancing peacock and the coiled cobra under the same sky. It is the pleasure of a list done beautifully, a celebration of the richness of the island’s wildlife, all of it summoned up by that first sound, the koel and the salalihini calling across a garden full of life.