Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c22.145

c22.145

It is, however, with Kandyan jewellery that we are specially concerned. As might be *Jewellery* expected, much of it shows strong Tamil influence; but many forms are distinctive, and experience enables the collector to judge with some certainty of their origin. The jewellery worn by men consisted of gold chains, pendants, girdles, and especially rings; by women, ear-rings, chains, pendants, and girdles, bracelets, and finger rings. It will be found that *Design* much of the gold jewellery is of South Indian design; there is also much having a distinct local character. The principal forms have distinctive names. In the case of the chains, these are the names of flowers or seeds, as *pol-mal-malaya* (‘coconut-flower-garland’, Pl. XLVIII., 1), *araḷu-malaya* (‘araḷu-seed-garland,’ Pl. XLVIII., 4), *peṭi-malaya* (‘flower’ or ‘petal’ garland, Pl. XLIX., 4 and 12), *geḍi-malaya* (garland of fruits). These names are reminiscent of the garlands of real flowers which play so important a part in Indian festal dress, and which are the origin of the more permanent garlands wrought by the jeweller, in gold and silver. It is highly characteristic of Indian art that these ‘garlands’ should be in design entirely suggestive, and in no way imitative of the forms suggested. The naïve realism which is so characteristic of all modern Western art, in jewellery producing the wholly unimaginative elaborate imitations of flowers, leaves, and animals by the school of Lalique, is never apparent in Indian design. The passion for imitation may be taken as *prima facie* evidence of the lack of a true artistic impulse, which is always a desire, conscious or sub-conscious, to express or manifest Idea. Why, indeed, imitate, where you can never rival? Nor is it by a conscious intellectual effort that a flower is to be ‘conventionalised’ and made into applied ornament. No Indian craftsman sets a flower in a vase before him and worries out of it some sort of ornament by taking thought. If the flower has not meant so much to him that he has already a clear memory picture of its essential characters, he may as well ignore it in his decoration; for a decorative art not intimately related to his own experience can have no intrinsic vitality, nor would the appeal of some rare plant conventionalised as ornament be strong for others. It is true, of course, that the original memory pictures are now handed on as crystallised traditions; but the force of their appeal is thereby strengthened by association of ideas—artistic, emotional or religious. The traditional forms have thus a significance not merely foreign to any imitative art, but dependent on the fact that they represent rather race conceptions than the ideas of one person or one period. They are a vital expression of the race mind; to reject them, and expect great art to live on as before, would be to sever the roots of a forest tree and look then for flowers and fruits to appear upon its branches. And so the goldsmith’s chains are not like real flowers; but they mean flowers to himself and to the wearers of them.