Sri Lanka Hotel Guide

Sri Lanka Anaconda (Anaconda of Ceylon) Vs. Amazon Anaconda

South American name Anaconda is said to have been derived from Sinhalese name, Henakadaya. Among many other dictionaries, The American Dictionary of the English Language indicates that the name could be an alteration of Sinhalese Henakandaya.
It is interesting to note Colonol Percy Fawcett (1867- 1925), who had close encounters, the run-ins with Anaconda while on an expedition to mark the borders of Bolivia, had served in Ceylon too where he met & married his wife.

Could it be possible, in Ceylon, that the tales of Anaconda had fallen into the ears of the Englishman? The Scots magazine, in the year 1768 (99 years prior to the year of birth of Col. Fawcett, 1867), published a narration of an encounter with a 33 feet long monster with a girth as thick as a man’s waist, devouring a leopard of monstrous size, in the island of Ceylon. The narrator, an Englishman by the name E. Edwin, said to had been a resident in Ceylon for many years.
The Ceylonese seemed to know the creature well; they call it Anaconda, talked of eating its flesh when they caught it. And according to E. Edwin they did. “He was cut up; and afforded a flesh whiter than veal, & as they said that ate of it, finer tasted than any flesh whatever”

However there is no record of  Sinhalese ever having taken to eat snake meat  in Sri Lanka.

Could it be possible, Colonel Fawcett carried the name, Anaconda to Bolivia from Ceylon? Fawcett had a run-in with one not long after he arrived in South America. In his diary he noted: “We were drifting easily along on the sluggish current not far below the confluence of Tiger and the Rio Negro when almost under the bow of the igarit’e (boat) there appeared a triangular head and several feet of undulating body. It was a giant anaconda. I sprang for my rifle as the creature began to make its way up the bank, and hardly waiting to aim smashed a .44 soft-nosed bullet into its spine, ten feet below the wicked head. At once there was a flurry of foam, and several heavy thumps against the boat’s keel, shaking us as though we had run on a snag… ”

The Colonel made seven expeditions between 1906 & 1924. On 29th Many 1925, a message was sent from Fawcett to his wife, indicating that they were ready to enter unexplored territory. The three were sending back the assistants that had helped them to this point & were ready to go on by themselves. Fawcett told his wife “You need have no fear of failure…” It was the last anyone ever heard of the expedition. They disappeared into the Jungle never to be seen again. Despite Fawcett’s wishes, several rescue expeditions tried to find him, but without success. Occasionally there were intriguing reports that he’d been seen, but none of these were ever confirmed. So what happened to Colonel Fawcett. What danger that had eluded in the past had gotten him this time? Hostile Indians? A giant Anaconda? Piranhas? Disease? Starvation? Or was it, as one told, he’d lost his memory & lived out the rest of his life as a chief among a tribe of cannibals? Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad? Red by Somerset Maugham?

The South American anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is a semi aquatic boa that inhabits swamps. The family Boidae (boas and pythons) includes the world’s largest snakes, the South American anaconda and the Asian reticulated python, as well as the smaller boa constrictor and the tree and sand boas. Python (Molurus molurus) (Southern India and Sri Lanka), is a large (maximum length 6-7 meters) & powerful carnivorous snake with a large girth.

During the British colonial period in (1805-1948), a considerable territory of the dense jungles in the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka was cleared for coffee plantations & then for tea plantations, following the Coffee Blight. Could it be Sri Lanka Anaconda, which ambushed upon prey ranging from leopards to deer, in trees rather than in marshy areas as its cousins in the Amazon, gradually became extinct?  During Sri Lanka Holidays, you will have an opportunity to have a pet Python wrapped over your shoulders and pose for a photo shoot, if you are a lover of snakes.

Tags: Sri Lanka Holidays

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Sri Lanka Holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.