Overview
Sujith Lakmal Jayaratne was born on 7 August 1969 and grew up in Mt. Lavinia, a suburb just south of Colombo, with his mother and grandmother after his parents divorced. At eight months he was so frightened of the word ‘lorry’ that saying it was the only way to get him to take his milk.1
From about eighteen months he said he had lived in Gorakana, a village 12 kilometres further south, and called himself ‘Gorakana Sammy’. Where words failed him he used sounds and gestures, imitating a railway engine or a man walking with a cane. He spoke of a father called Jamis, of selling arrack, a distilled liquor, of a wife called Maggie, and of being hit by a lorry, and he asked for arrack and cigarettes. His family knew nobody in Gorakana and did nothing to check.1
The previous life
B. Selvin Fernando, known as Sammy, was born in Gorakana in 1919. He worked for the railways until he was dismissed at about twenty-five, then married Maggilin (‘Maggie’) Alwis and made illicit arrack, which he sold from a boat on the river behind his house. Jailed eight times for it, he became an alcoholic who was abusive and sometimes violent towards Maggie when drunk, though he was also known as generous, a good singer and dancer, and a careful dresser.1
On 29 January 1969, after a drunken row, Maggie went off down the road and Sammy followed. While his brother-in-law Martin Alwis was buying cigarettes at a roadside shop, Sammy stepped onto the highway and was hit by a lorry. He died in hospital an hour or two later, aged fifty, a little over six months before Sujith was born.1
Identification
Sujith’s great-uncle was a monk at the nearby Sri Sumanaramaya temple, and through him a younger monk there, the Ven. Wattarappola Nandaratana, heard of the boy. On 10, 11 and 14 March 1972 he wrote down sixteen of Sujith’s statements before any of them had been verified. In Gorakana a girl he questioned, Kusuma Dabare, later realized they fitted her uncle Sammy, and on further visits the monk confirmed nearly all of them. When Kusuma first came to Mt. Lavinia with ten other people, Sujith was frightened into silence; the next day, with a smaller group, he called her by name.1
Investigation
Stevenson’s interpreter E. C. Raddalgoda began work in April 1972 and recorded the family’s statements that summer. Stevenson investigated in March and October 1973 with Raddalgoda and Godwin Samararatne, interviewing thirty-five people and visiting the houses and temple in Gorakana, and saw the family again in 1976.1
He listed 39 statements and was more confident than usual that they predated contact: sixteen were in the monk’s notes and most of the rest in the family’s 1972 statements. Only one was clearly wrong, that Sammy had died at once. Some went back decades, such as Sammy’s railway work and his teacher, whom Sujith called by the old-fashioned but correct title ‘Francis gurunnanse’. He also used names that only older villagers still knew, such as Kale Pansala (‘forest temple’) for a local temple.1
There were weaker points. Sujith mixed up Sammy’s house with his parents’ house, and it was not clear at first who the lame man was: it turned out to be Sammy’s brother Milton, who had fallen from a train. His grandmother also gave two accounts of how much he had said about the fatal quarrel before the families met.1
Recognitions
Stevenson judged the recognitions uneven, since many took place in crowds, though the witnesses’ accounts agreed well. Maggie had introduced herself within Sujith’s hearing, so his naming her counts for little, but his familiarity with this stranger stood out: he told her he loved her and said ‘Look what you did to me’. He greeted Sammy’s brother-in-law W. Edmund Soysa as ‘machang’ (brother-in-law) and later called Sammy’s son Sunil, a stranger to his family, by name.1
Taken to Gorakana in April 1972, he noticed that the road and fences had changed since Sammy’s time, searched the house for Jamis, who had died in 1970, and claimed Sammy’s drum, ring and belt as his own. He failed to find the road to Jamis’s house and did not recognize Sammy’s dagger.1
Behaviour
Given soda in place of arrack, Sujith sat with his legs drawn up, drank from the bottle, belched and wiped his mouth as arrack drinkers do, then staggered about saying he was drunk. No one in his family drank or smoked. He offered drinks to Sammy’s old drinking friends, suggested to Martin Alwis that they go to the tavern at Moratuwa where the two men used to drink, and tied his sarong below the navel as Sammy had.1
He remained afraid of lorries and wary of police, hit and kicked people, used obscene language unknown in his household, and asked not to be taught the five Buddhist precepts, the last of which forbids alcohol. Stevenson listed eleven such correspondences between the boy and Sammy.1
Assessment and later life
Stevenson found no sign that the families had known each other. Sammy’s youngest sister lived about 250 metres from Sujith’s home and his drinking friend Wimaladasa de Alwis less than 100 metres away, but she denied knowing the family and he denied ever talking to them about Sammy. For Stevenson the best evidence against normal transmission was that the family had, for months, no idea whom Sujith meant. He noted that Wimaladasa would have been a ready source if the knowledge had come by extrasensory means.1
In March 1973 Sujith still gave his name as Sammy; by October he accepted the name Sujith but talked about the previous life as much as ever.1 The philosopher Brian Moore later argued that the case could have been built up socially from a toddler’s ambiguous gestures, and Paul Edwards objected that Sujith was conceived before Sammy died.23 James G Matlock replied that many cases have intervals shorter than nine months, so the timing alone does not count against them.4