[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Architecture and art](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art) › [Mediaeval Sinhalese Art](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.coomaraswamy-1908) › c3.3 # Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c3.3 Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c3.3 - **Language:** English ### [c3.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.coomaraswamy-1908.c3.3) Mediæval Sinhalese Art was the art of a people for whom husbandry was the most honourable of all occupations, amongst whom the landless man was a nobody, and whose ploughmen spoke as elegantly as courtiers. It was a religious art, and so a popular art. It was also essentially a national art; the craftsmen, forming an integral part of the Civil Service, were rewarded with grants of State land, no less than soldiers or husbandmen. It was the art of a people whose kings were ‘one with the religion and the people,’—perhaps the most significant phrase in the whole of that magnificent chronicle, the Mahāvaṃsa, from which I have so often quoted,—a phrase embodying an ideal hopeless of attainment by a foreign ruler. - [Previous: c3.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.coomaraswamy-1908.c3.2) - [Next: c3.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.coomaraswamy-1908.c3.4) - [Up: c3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.coomaraswamy-1908.c3) ## Cites (1) - [Mahāvaṃsa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.theravada_postcanon.vamsa.mahavamsa) — Pāli --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.coomaraswamy-1908.c3.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.art.coomaraswamy-1908.c3.3) · Pramāṇa