Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c19.13

c19.13

One of the most important things needful to secure good colours, is long and careful grinding. This work, often done by the pupils, may occupy as much as a month before a large undertaking, such as the decoration of a vihāra, is begun. The pounded colour is ground with water in a stone mortar again and again until it is fine and smooth enough. According to the best method, the pigments are mixed with *divul laṭu* (gum of the elephant apple tree, *Feronia elephantum*) and water, and thus used. The work is thus in no sense fresco, but should be called tempera painting. Gum arabic is now successfully used when the *laṭu* cannot be had. The use of *doraṇa* oil (oil of the *doraṇa* tree, *Dipterocarpus glandulosus*) as a medium is said to be entirely a modern innovation; the effect is coarser and altogether inferior. But some say that *doraṇa* oil was used for outside work, and even in interiors when the *laṭu* could not be had. Certainly if oil was not used as the medium for outdoor work, such as that above the vihāra at Riḍi Vihāra, it is difficult to understand how it can have lasted. The paintings at Riḍi Vihāra were executed in the reign of Kirti Śrī Rāja Simha. Siddhattha, the incumbent who had charge of the works, after completing the vihāras and their decoration, “caused a delightful picture to be made of the Sage, seated amidst his five hundred disciples with Sāriputra at their head, above the image house, in the convenient hollow of the rock” (Mahāvaṃsa, Ch. C.). There are external paintings also at Māniyaṅgama and Lenagala. Mr. Bell (Kēgalla Report, p. 30) says of the latter, that above the lean-to tiled verandah there “is still visible a coloured representation of a *perahera*, much faded, in which riders on elephants and horses, with flag-bearers, escort a five-tiered *karaṇḍuva* on a car.” These paintings, at any rate those at Māniyaṅgama, date from the time of Kirti Śrī Rāja Simha. Ordinary interior painting is sooner or later destroyed by even partial exposure to damp.