Overview
Gnanatilleka Baddewithana was born on 14 February 1956 near Hedunawewa, a valley village in central Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). At about one she began to speak of another mother and father, and by two of two brothers and many sisters as well. She first named the place as Talawakele, a highland tea town sixteen miles away, after villagers who had stayed there called at the house; from then on she spoke of it often and asked to visit her ‘Talawakele mother’.1
She told her parents simply that she had been a boy and was now a girl. Many of her remarks reflected life in a colder hill town: there were no coconut trees at Talawakele, her mother there had to buy firewood, and she had gone to school on a train through a tunnel. Seeing the Queen on a calendar, she said she had watched her pass through Talawakele by train. She never gave the boy’s name.13
Records made before verification
The journalist H. S. S. Nissanka, then writing on rebirth for the Sinhalese weekly Silumina, heard of her from a reader in October 1960. With the monk Piyadassi Thera and a teacher, he interviewed her on 1 November 1960, at four years and eight months, and wrote down what she said. He also had the reader’s letters and one from a headmaster listing remarks she had made in 1958 and 1959, and he tape-recorded later interviews.23
The only name she gave was a ‘sister’, Lora or Dora. On 19 November 1960 Nissanka found the father of Tillekeratne, a postman’s son born in Talawakele on 20 January 1941 who had died on 9 November 1954, aged thirteen years and nine months. The family had since moved and their house had been pulled down. Matlock and colleagues later counted 74 statements made before the families met: 58 correct, three partly correct, two wrong and eleven unverifiable.13
Recognitions
In 1960, before Tillekeratne was traced, her brother took her to Talawakele. She led him to where she said the house had stood, remarking that it was no longer there, and pointed out a laundryman’s house. With Nissanka she later picked out the steps down to the river where the children had bathed. She showed no clear memory, though, of his drawing books, his clothes or a photograph of him.13
On 17 December 1960 three teachers from Tillekeratne’s school in Hatton visited her. She said she did not know two of them, neither of whom had known him, but told D. V. Sumithapala, his former teacher, that he had taught her and had never punished her. She then told a Jataka story he had taught the class shortly before Tillekeratne died, and drew in chalk the station, bridge and steps near the school.13
The next day the families met for the first time, upstairs in the Talawakele rest house, with Nissanka recording. People came in singly or in threes and she was asked only whether she knew them. Once her own mother had stepped away, she whispered that Alice Nona was her ‘Talawakele mother’. She identified Tillekeratne’s father, four sisters (one as ‘my fair sister’) and two men of the town, and denied knowing a newcomer who had never met him. She named his brother Buddhadasa only reluctantly and received him coldly; the boys had not got on.12
Stevenson's investigation
Ian Stevenson spent two days on the case in August 1961. He had seen only a short English article by Nissanka and did not meet him, so his inquiry was independent. He interviewed both families, Sumithapala and her headmaster. His table lists fifteen statements made before any contact between the families. He counted twelve recognitions, ten made when she was asked only whether she knew someone and two of women she picked out of crowds unprompted, besides three correct refusals of strangers.13
Stevenson found no prior acquaintance between the families. Visiting went almost only from Hedunawewa to Talawakele, and her home lay at the end of a jungle footpath, so remote that he was confident no stranger could have talked with her unnoticed. He saw no motive for fraud, which would have needed Tillekeratne’s family and teacher to act out their tears, and he judged that the recognitions ruled out both fraud and cryptomnesia.1
Behaviour and sex change
Tillekeratne had been unusually religious and built small Buddha shrines. His mother and teacher said he preferred girls’ company, liked sewing and silk shirts, sometimes painted his nails, and once asked whether one could change sex between lives. Gnanatilleka said she had wished to be a girl and was happier as one. Her parents thought her more boyish than her sister, though her headmaster noticed nothing of the kind. Like Tillekeratne she favoured blue and was devout.1
How he died is unclear. Stevenson understood that he had some internal illness and went into hospital after a fall from a chair, dying a week or two later; Nissanka was told he was there only hours, and his family later said a cricket ball had hit him at school. Gnanatilleka feared doctors and hospitals and avoided climbing where she might fall. She formed a strong bond with Sumithapala, letting him drink from her cup though not even her parents could.13
Later life and reassessment
By 1962 she had stopped speaking of the previous life spontaneously. Stevenson visited again in 1966, when she still remembered some of it, and in 1970, when she said it was fading. That year he brought Lora Almeda, a classmate of Tillekeratne’s whom she had never met, with a friend: she called Lora ‘Dora’ and placed her in Talawakele, but did not claim to know the friend. Her letters told Stevenson that her mother died in 1974 and that in 1978 she was studying Ayurvedic medicine; nothing is known of her since.13
Sri Lankan critics suggested parental influence or fraud, and Matlock and colleagues note that Abraham Kovoor later reprinted one such critique without proper attribution.34 Comparing the two investigations in 2024, Matlock, Akila Weerasekera and Michael Nahm found that Stevenson had missed much detail, recording 27 statements to Nissanka’s 61, but saw no sign that his report was unreliable; both reached the same conclusions. In their view Nissanka assembled the fullest set of statements recorded before verification in any reported case.3