Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c19.74

c19.74

A few words may be said as to the history of painting in Ceylon. Naturally there are no *History of* surviving examples of primitive work of this character where earth and leaves supply the *painting* pigments and materials. We are forced to rely upon inference and literary evidence for anything even as old as the oldest stone sculptures, at which time an equally developed school of painting must also have existed. Painting was one of the 64 arts and sciences practised in ancient India. It is frequently referred to in the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa. It may have been known in a primitive form to the original inhabitants of Ceylon before the arrival of Vijaya. The first mention of it in the Mahāvaṃsa, is the reference to the use of ‘painted vases’ in the reign of Dēvānam Piyatissa (307 B.C.). It is very likely indeed that the foundation of the craft as now surviving in Ceylon, dates, like so much else of Hindu-Buddhist culture, from the time of the settlement of Aśoka’s missionaries, and the great intellectual stimulus resulting from the contact of the art of Barāhat with the more primitive art, of which we have no remains, but which may have existed in Ceylon. In connection with the building of the Ruvanveli Dāgaba, we are told of the mixing of orpiment (mistranslated vermilion in the English edition) with oil for use in cementing the foundations; this has been taken as evidence of a practise of oil-painting, but without the least justification. But we hear also (p. 5, above) of the decoration of the relic chamber with representations of *jatakas*, and it is probable that tempera painting (in water colour) is here meant, though not expressly indicated.