Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c6.59

c6.59

The last king of Kandy was the notorious Śrī Vikrama Rāja Simha (A.D. 1796-1815). Following at first in his predecessor's footsteps, he “afterwards joined himself to evil companions and changed his ways; and he caused great ministers and many other officers to be seized and put to death; and like unto Death himself, he showed no mercy, and caused many hundreds of people to be seized and brought from divers places and impaled; and like a robber who plundereth the country around him, he seized their vast possessions which they had inherited from generation to generation.” The Kandy lake and parapet* was constructed for Vikrama Simha, also the Audience hall, the Pattirippuva, or octagonal tower of the Daḷadā Māligāva, and other buildings. In 1801 the Alut (new) Vihāra at Asgiriya was built by Pilima Talava Adigār,† close to the Paraṇa (old) Vihāra which his father had built in 1766. A pathetic interest attaches to the ceremonies performed on the completion of this work, perhaps the last of the many occasions‡ recorded in Sinhalese history, when ruler and people met together, united by a common religion * and a common culture, in sympathy and with mutual respect. “When the image and building were completed the ceremony of painting the eyes of Buddha was performed one morning towards dawn. The king, accompanied by his mother and sister, came to the vihāra just after sunrise from a temporary pavilion erected for the occasion. With him were both his Adigārs, Pilima Talāva and Ehelepola, and a great crowd of priests and chiefs, of whom Nugavela Basnāyaka Nilame of the Mahā Dēvāle and Bovala Unnānse almost alone survived to tell the story in 1859. The king and Ehelepola died in exile, Pilima Talāva by an executioner, many others by the sword or the gallows, and not a few were put to death by the English Government in the cruel times of the rebellion of 1818. The king, then only twenty-one, in the days of his youth and popularity, worshipped Buddha with his mother and sister, and, after causing Ehelepola to read the contents of an ola dedicating Kahawatta and Uḍasgiriya to the new vihāra, he offered the writing by laying it on the table before the image. He said that Uḍasgiriya was his mother’s village, and she joined in the offering. Then the royal party walked round the vihāra, and the king seeing the bare surface of the rock which formed part of the back wall, ordered that the contents of the writing should be there inscribed. About two months afterwards the king, with his mother and sister, again visited the vihāra. Ehelepola Adigār read the ola writing, which was compared with the inscription by the king in presence of the chief priests, and praising the stone-cutters he ordered them to be paid from the treasury” (Lawrie’s Gazetteer, p. 74).