Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c15.8

c15.8

A considerable variety of turned wood pillars is also met with, but less often than the thirmed; or very rarely a pillar is part turned, part square (Bell, Kēgalla Report, p. 22, Kumbukgama). Wooden pillars often rest on a stone base as a protection against white ants; where the whole building rests on low stone pillars, the wood pillars are morticed into huge beams forming the framework of the floor. A separate carved capital or bracket (*pe-kaḍaya*; not *gones*, which is a carved *rafter*) almost invariably intervenes between the pillar and the beams (*daṇḍu*) which it is to carry (Pl. VII., 4, and Fig. 73). These may be comparatively plain (Pl. X., 3), but are more often carved in pendent lotus forms (Pl. X., 4, 5); occasionally this issues from the mouth of a *serapendiya*; sometimes the downward face of the flower is occupied by a dancer, a *haṃsa-pāṭṭuva* or other design in place of petals, as in a small