Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c9.19

c9.19

It will be observed that in this way the chief families of smiths possessed what was really Devendra a state endowment. The artificers were much considered and favoured by the Kings, Mulacariya occasionally so much so as to lead to quarrels between them and the nobles, ending in disaster to the former, befell at the time of the building of the Audience Hall in Kandy, in the last King’s reign. Dēvēndra Mulācariya, whose descendants still flourish, was foreman, and is said to have deliberately shortened, and then rejected as too short, the timber supplied by the chiefs! On their complaint the King ordered one of the smith’s fingers to be cut off; but he drowned himself in the Kandy lake to avoid this disgrace.* The iron cubit rule (riyan lella) used by him is still preserved by his descendants (‘Ceylon National Review,’ No. II., 1906, p. 235).