Moulding a sweet past
A stroll around the Colombo Museum this holiday season may just provide an intriguing lesson for Sri Lankans celebrating the dawn of the Sinhala and Hindu New Year. Beautifully carved Olinda boards, milk rice moulds, aluwa moulds and jaggery moulds displayed in the Colombo National Museum’s Anthropology Division give an illuminating glimpse of how our ancestors used to celebrate Avurudu.
Information on how they were used was gleaned from the Anthropology Division’s library and the Colombo Public Library. Some of the kitchenware and Olinda boards in the museum collection are not on public display, we learnt.
Most of the wooden artifacts are said to belong to the Kandyan period, yet records indicate they may have been in use even before that. “The kitchen utensils with elaborate carvings were believed to have been used by the ancient aristocrats as a way of displaying their social status and luxurious lifestyle,” says folklore researcher Mahinda Kumara Dalupotha.
Brass Kokis moulds used to make Kokis, a sweetmeat introduced to this country by the Portuguese belong to a collection donated to the Anthropology Division in 1906. Kokis is made during Avurudu season and at other occasions of festivity and of the two brass moulds, one is in a square pattern, rarely seen nowadays.
For Aluwa, a sweetmeat made with rice flour and sugar, the mould is pressed on the Aluwa paste, so the design is imprinted on it. The mould has four different patterns, square and floral, reflecting the intricate craftsmanship of the ancient artists from the Kandyan period. The moulds belong to an artifact collection received by the Division in 1938.
Jaggery (Hakuru) is an all time favourite among Lankans known for their sweet-tooth. The sweet, golden brown, coconut or kithul treacle paste would be poured onto the decorated mould to make jaggery shapes with floral patterns. Though we are familiar with hakuru made in a coconut shell in circular shape, this mould gives us a glimpse of what interesting shapes and designs jaggery came in, in the old days. Mr Dalupotha explains the origins behind the jaggery mould saying, “The villagers who used to make jaggery were poor and they sold the jaggery to aristocratic families in the village. They wanted to make their jaggery more appealing to the aristocracy. Thus, they used these jaggery moulds with elegant carvings.”
The milk rice (Kiribath) mould is another not in use in modern times. The mould has two parts, the frame and the inner carved piece. The outer frame is filled with milk rice and the carved mould is pressed onto the milk rice to imprint the pattern. This was used by the aristocrats who owned these decorative moulds. A piece of milk rice with a pattern on top is again a way of displaying their social status. The commoners neither had access to moulds nor had the time to make decorative milk rice pieces.