An ethnological study on god vahala concept and vahala dance in devolmaduwa shanthikarmaya

Abstract

Devolmaduwa Shanthikarya is a ritual ceremony that is performed in the law country areas of Sri Lanka. Wahala Devi or Dadimunda Devi is a locally popular deity who is worshiped around the country. The main purpose of this study is to identify the interrelationship between the God Wahala and Devolmaduwa Ritual Ceromony from an ethnographical perspective. Other objectives are to identify the specialty of Wahala Dance and to identify the concept of Wahala Deity. The research problem is how the Concept of Wahala Deity is related to the Law Country Devolmaduwa Ritual Ceremony. Field observations, interviews were used as the primary source, books and internet sources were used as the secondary source. As revealed by this research, the concept of God Wahala has been known in the community as an extremely powerful deity. There is a recognition of this deity as a deity as well as lord of demons. The elements of Wahala dance have been created to highlight the concept of God Wahala. There is a strong belief that the artiste who performs the Wahala dance, dances in the attribution of Lord Dadimunda. The entire dance symbolically represents the power of Lord Wahala. Thus, it can be concluded that there is a special relationship between Wahala dance in Dewolmaduwa and the concept of God Wahala. Accordingly, Wahala dance and the concept of God Wahala can be seen as important cultural concepts in Sri Lankan culture.