Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c11.9

c11.9

KINDURĀ, KINNARA. The kindurō of Sinhalese painters, are beings, human above and bird-like below; like a siren or a harpy, but with human arms and shoulders, and the wings not large enough for flight (Fig. 10). Like other mythical creatures, they are thought to dwell in the Himālayas, that Indian forest of Broceliande, where the boundary between the common world and the ideal world of the imagination may at any moment vanish. There has been some confusion as to the meaning of the word kindura. The meaning given by Monier Williams (Skt. Dict.) is a being of the centaur type, half horse, half man; and he is, presumably, followed by Dawson (Hindu Mythology, p. 158), and Pincott (Prema Sāgara, 1897, pp. 16, 232). I do not know how the confusion arose. In the man-bird form they are represented at Barāhat (third century B.C.), at Ajanta (fifth century A.D.), and mentioned by Aelian (second century A.D.) as follows: “These are matchless for the melodious notes of their throat and tongue, so that . . . they are sirens, or nearly so, for the mythical maidens so named are represented alike in the song of the poet and the picture of the artist, as winged and having the legs of birds.” In the Prema Sāgara (loc. cit., p. 310) they are described as ‘playing away on pipes and kettle-drums.’ Grünwedel (‘Buddhist Art in India’) reproduces a rather graceful modern Siamese drawing of the bird-woman form.*