Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c32.11

c32.11

The Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa contain frequent references to “storeyed towers, galleries of pictures, and castes of painters, not to speak of the golden statue of a heroine, and the magnificence of personal adornment.” “Indeed,” continues Okakura, “it is difficult to imagine that those centuries in which the wandering minstrels sang the ballads that were later to become the epics, were devoid of image worship, for descriptive literature, concerning the forms of the gods, means correlative attempts at plastic actualisation. This idea finds corroboration in the sculptures of Aśoka’s rails, where we find images of Indras and Dēvas worshipping the bō-tree. These things point to the early use of clay, paste, and other impermanent materials, as in ancient China.”‡