Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c9.33

c9.33

In a general way it may be stated that the indigenous craftsmen of all sorts, integrally a part of the Sinhalese population, were makers of the plainer and most necessary articles normally required by a simple agricultural people, and the imported craftsmen were more especially sumptuary artists from the big cities and craftguilds of Southern India, making the more elaborate and costly goods required by the Court and the capital. The distinction is clearly marked in the case of weavers, the indigenous beravāyō making country cloth, good but not fine, and the imported salāgamayō making the gold-woven muslins worn by royalty and nobility. So, too, the dye-painting of cloth, the more elaborate sorts of embroidery (with gold), and tailoring and sandal making and so forth were crafts practised almost exclusively by foreign craftsmen, at the Court only. The king, sometimes himself a Tamil, and always with Tamil queens, naturally favoured Tamil fashions, and the results are seen in the Tamil influence upon jewellery and dress in the eighteenth century. India was the source of sumptuous cloths and skilled craftsmen for the Sinhalese, much as Paris sets the fashion in London. Even at the present day, those who require silk brocades or gold-woven turbans in Ceylon, are obliged to import them from Southern India, and dye-painted kerchiefs are made in Jaffna for sale in Kandy. It will thus be seen how intimately connected was the art of Southern India and Ceylon; but while thus recognizing the influence of the Tamil craftsmen, it is necessary to remember also the continuity and vitality of the indigenous tradition, and to give to the Sinhalese people the full credit for the fact that their art, taken as a whole, is perfectly distinct in style and feeling from that of Southern India, and preserves clearer and more numerous traces of the Early Indian, and especially of the Early Buddhist style, than can easily be found in India itself.