Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c31.32

c31.32

Of English influence on purely Sinhalese art, the less said the better. It is been characterised, from the English side, by almost complete indifference to indigenous culture, the result of an ideal of purely material prosperity; the destruction of indigenous crafts by the competition of cheap machine-made materials and luxuries; the neglect of surviving architectural tradition and capacity for building; and by an entirely false and unnatural system of education, the result of which is to make the ‘educated,’ strangers in their own land. The immediate effect of British rule, was to destroy the system of State support of the arts and crafts; the links that bound the Koṭṭalbadde and the Paṭṭal-hatara craftsmen to the national life were snapped at a blow; by the withdrawal of support from the national religion, it came about that funds formerly available for building and decoration of temples were misappropriated. From the Sinhalese side, the history of the nineteenth century has been one of continual and snobbish imitation of the external features of Western culture, misunderstood and misapplied. . The results have been even more disastrous than is yet the case in India; it is, indeed, almost a matter for surprise that so much of the indigenous traditions of art and craft still survive. If it is so, if there are still devoted and skilled craftsmen of the old school, this is thanks neither to the patronage of the Sinhalese themselves nor to that of their British rulers; it is due to the vitality still latent in the old tradition, the effectiveness of the caste system in conserving, if somewhat forlornly, some of the best part of the old life, and lastly, and not least, to the affectionate devotion of the hereditary craftsmen to their art and its traditions.