
Folk Tales- Mahasona the Great Graveyard Demon
Maha Sona is a fearsome demon in Sinhalese folklore. The most powerful demon second to none, who is believed to haunt the afterlife, especially on graveyards surrounded by human corpses, large rocks and hills, and Junctions where three roads meet, are the most common haunting grounds of this demon. Demon kills its human prey by crushing their shoulders and also by afflicting illnesses. It usually kills people at night and dusk when confronted alone and leaves his mark of a hand embossed on the flesh of the body, he is also able to possess humans. In such cases, exorcism rituals are performed by Kattadiya (exorcist specialist) to repel the demon.
Maha Sona is formally known as Ritigala Jayasena, a human warrior giant who served in King Dutugemunu’s army among the 10 great Giants. There was a celebration after the victory from the war between invading king Elara and King Dutugemunu. 10 Great Giants also participated in this ceremony with their families.
Jayasena offended another fierce warrior in a drunken stupor by insulting his beautiful wife. Gotaimbara challenges him for a battle and schedules a date and the time for the fight on a graveyard. On the scheduled day, the duel began with a grand ceremony. They fought with each other showing their strength.
The fight began with a grand ceremony. They fought with each other showing off their strength. Gotaimbara decapitates Jayasena by a single flying kick onto Jayasena’s head.
Seeing the embarrassing situation of Jayasena, a deity called “Wesamuni” took pity and tries to resurrect before the cadaver goes cold, but the deity couldn’t find his head on time. Time has passed. There is no more time left before the body goes cold forever. In the chaos of finding Jayasena’s head, the deity found a bear head in a hurry and fit it backwards to Jayasena’s body and revives him in the grotesque form, he is also given some supernatural powers as a newly born demon.
People who encountered him were terrified to the point of falling ill mostly because he was found on graveyards. This new persona is dubbed as ‘Maha Sona’ meaning in Sinhala “Great Demon of the Graveyard”.