Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c19.36

c19.36

We shall understand the idealism of Indian and Sinhalese art as well from a study of the Barāhat or Kandyan trees, as in any other way. There are two ways of seeing a tree; at first glance or in a photograph, it strikes us as an irregular growth of branches and leaves, producing a confused effect of light and shade. We soon learn to distinguish more than this, and to tell one kind of tree from another. But as we consider more deeply a number of trees of different kinds, we realise that each has, as it were, a law of its being: its leaves have a certain form, with a certain range of variation, its branches a certain manner of growth, its flowers a particular symmetry. Each actual tree seems to be an incarnation or embodiment of some more perfect and rhythmical idea of the tree. This idea it is the aim of art to reveal.