Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c27.1

c27.1

EMBROIDERY is one of the least known of Sinhalese crafts, or at least remained so until the publication of an account written by Mrs. Coomaraswamy in the "Ceylon National Review," No. 2, 1906. "This," says Mrs. Coomaraswamy, "is how I first came to hear of such embroidery. I was staying at Haldummulla; we had a visit from an ex-Āracci of a neighbouring village, who brought with him some of his household treasures to show us. Among them was a large bag, made of fine blue cloth with embroidered work on it in red and white cotton. He explained this was a precious possession which no money would make him part with, and that it had been in his family for generations. This was my first experience of this kind of work and I thereupon made up my mind to get to know more about it. Some months after this I saw another bag, and then found out that although this kind of work is now almost unknown, yet here and there in out of the way villages old men can be found who know the stitches, although they have almost given up making anything now. Many other things I also found out—how that it is owing to modern conditions of life that this fine art has fallen into decay; that now, even if people would work at it, they cannot; the cloth cannot be got, the colours cannot be got, the cottons cannot be bought, and the things that used to be made have gone out of fashion. The cotton was grown by the people themselves, they used to dye it with home-made dyes, and weave it into the cloth they wanted. Now all this is past; the fine blue hand-made cotton cloth that used to be universal, is now to be obtained only with the greatest difficulty, if at all. It is no longer made and dyed by the Sinhalese themselves."