Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c7.46

c7.46

even now it is not very much sought after in the remoter districts, the villager, much to the disgust of planters, preferring to cultivate his own land, or to be lazy when occasion offers, above work on an estate for wages. Craftsmen were usually fed and housed while away from home working for the King, temple or chieftain; meanwhile the family lived upon the lands. It can only be when the craftsman is in some such way relieved of anxiety about the future, that his work can bear the impress of that leisure and contentment of which are born the inventiveness and feeling for quiet beauty that mark alike the Eastern craftsman and the mediæval European.