Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c41.68

c41.68

Although geographically Ceylon is so closely allied with its powerful neighbour India, and associated with it by the bonds of religion, the independence of the island has remained practically intact throughout its history. With the advent of Buddhism certain influences in the sphere of the building art may have been derived from the productions of the Andhras, a Buddhist people of pronounced architectural ideals whose chief structures occupied a region towards the south of India before and after the beginning of the Christian era. Later, the art of the Pallavas, as already indicated, may have affected the style of the Sinhalese monastery buildings when these began to be erected at Anuradhapura These however were peaceful penetrations brought about by the demand on the part of the people for a constructional procedure to aid them in their building projects. But when the Cholas came in the eleventh century as ruthless invaders to force their Hinduism and its form of building art on the inhabitants of the island different circumstances prevailed. Whereas previously the features from India were incorporated in the indigenous style to give strength and character to the Buddhist architectural productions of the Sinhalese, on the other hand the Cholas destroyed the historical monuments which had been so laboriously evolved, and raised Siva temples in their place. And so there was imposed on the people during their period of occupation, extending over the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a style of building alien both in its structure and in its expressiveness, in a word a provincial development of the Tamilian type of Hindu temple architecture as this existed in Southern India at such places as Tanjore and Pudukottai. Examples of this architectural importation from the mainland may be seen at Polonnaruwa in the two temples of Siva Devale of the eleventh century, related clearly to a somewhat earlier Chola temple at Srinivasanallur in the Trichinopoly District. (Plate LVI, Fig. 1). Constructed of stone masonry in the characteristic Tamilian manner, these Siva temples, among other buildings of the same period, mark plainly the effect of the south Indian invasion at this stage of Sinhalese history. With their prominent pilasters crowned by the Tamilian order, of capital distinguished by its wide scalloped abacus, its walls divided by the "split" openings and sunken alcoves, its foundational string-course displaying the typical motif of immured gryphons, the entire composition manifests all the architectural attributions of the Dravidian mode under the Chola regime.