Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c16.16

c16.16

Practically all stonework was intended to be covered with plaster of milky whiteness, just as the brickwork at Laṅkātilaka is only the foundation for work in modelled plaster [see Pl. VII., 1, and description]. The Kandy bō maḷuva wall, so beautifully described by the chronicler as resembling the necklet of a fair woman that was the city of Kandy, must have been lovely indeed when the delicate mouldings were perfected in form, and snowy white. The common whitewashing of the carved stone doors of temples, to which objection is often taken, is not a modern fashion, but a somewhat careless continuation of an old one. There can be no doubt that all architectural stonework was intended to be plastered or painted, or both. This old Buddhist method does not survive so markedly in Southern India, where the use of stone for building and for images is far more general *Stonework* than in Ceylon. In Ceylon the earlier methods of building in wood and of making images of impermanent materials have lived on side by side with the work in stone. But even in Southern India, stonework is very generally painted.