Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c12.2

c12.2

A part of the artistic canon of Sinhalese painters is found in a Sanskrit work called the Rūpāvaliya, which is much relied on in Kandyan painters of the best sort. The versions procurable are usually very corrupt and imperfect. Nothing is known of the date of the work, which is clearly of Hindu origin. The learned Mudaliyar, E. R. Gooneratne, to whom I am indebted for a revised text and a translation based on my own and other copies of the work collated by Sīlakkhandha Thēra of Simbali Āvāsa, thinks that from the language the work may have been written in the eleventh century. I proceed to give an analysis of the contents, with translations of verses of interest in connection witn Sinhalese art; which reservation it is necessary to make, because the figures of many of the gods The Rapavaliya are never or hardly met with, though the best painters still possess the traditional knowledge necessary to represent them, and can do so when required. The verses are in the form of an invocation to, or meditation (dhyāna) on, the beings described.