Talk:Millangoda Raja

Untitled

The world famous Millangoda Raja has passed away, leaving us the sweet memories that we had of the great tusker. Millangoda Raja was known as a tusker, had the longest tusks in the whole of Asia. The beauty of the tusker was such that it was featured in the covers of several books about elephants. The death of Millangoda Raja was a natural death. The teeth of the elephant had worn out and it could only swallow little amounts of food at a time. This sort of old aged death comes to wild elephants, where they may live for few days and eventually die. Before Millangoda Raja's death, prith was chanted, but on Wednesday August 3, 2011 Millangoda raja died at 12.25 pm. The elephant was 70 when he died. The history of Millangoda Raja begins in 1945, when his owner Appuhamy and few others went to Nawagaththegama jungle, in Anamaduwa, Puttalam. At the age of 22, Appuhamy's (now 88 years old) first elephant was captured in 1943, at Hambantota. Then he practiced the capturing of elephants in Angunukolapelesa, Hungama, Palle Malla, Bolana, Bundala and Koggala. Millangoda Raja was a baby elephant in the herd in Anamaduwa at the time. In Raja's herd nineteen elephants were captured, 15 of them were sold in Anamaduwa Wev Pitiya. The best elephant was Rs 3,000 at that time; the others were sold for Rs 2,000 and Rs 2,500. Appuhamy brought five six-foot tall, eight year old small elephants, out of which, one was left. The small elephant was Millangoda Raja, which grew up to a great tusker, 9 feet tall with 7 feet long tusk, which were amongst Asia's longest tusks, but not the longest (straight tusks are shorter than curved tusks). The name Millangoda was given after the Mansion, in which the tusker was kept, which was known as Millangoda Walauwa, situated at Molagoda in Kegalle. Throughout Millangoda Raja's life he participated in most Peraharas and in Deavale Peraharas. Millangoda Raja also had carried the Tooth Relic in Sri Daladha Maligawa, an opportunity enjoyed by only a few elephants in Sri Lanka. Year 2008 was the last time Millangoda Raja was able to carry the Relic. Then almost half a year before his death Millangoda Raja came under special veterinary treatment due to his old age. When the elephant was in the last stage of his life, many bottles of saline with vitamins had to be given. At the end no veterinary treatment worked. The elephant passed away in Millangoda Mansion. For his funeral, several people in the village rushed into the Millangoda Mansion to get a last glimpse of the great tusker, which had a reputation throughout the entire world. Even parliamentary ministers visited Millangoda Raja in his last moments. News about Millangoda Raja's death was telecast in several countries, through news channels such as the BCC. Although it was an animal, it received great respect from people in high places around the world. It was an animal so much related to Buddism. Even the Buddha had said that of all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme.

External links modified (January 2018)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Millangoda Raja. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121021105631/http://www.dailynews.lk/2011/08/09/fea28.asp to http://www.dailynews.lk/2011/08/09/fea28.asp

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:17, 31 January 2018 (UTC)