Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c9.36

c9.36

Some part of the foregoing history of the Kammālar is mythical. A critical examination of the history and traditions of the Kammālar, and of their technical literature is greatly to be desired, and may be expected to throw light on the general history of art, of guilds, and perhaps of freemasonry. Will not the Viśvakarma Kulabhimana Sabhā in Madras begin this much-needed investigation before the opportunities are lost for good and all? It is probably true that there existed a caste or guild of artificers at a time long antecedent to the Christian era, and that they had spread all over India, perhaps as far as the extreme south at the time of the founding of the Sinhalese nation by Vijaya. Later, they passed to Ceylon, Java and other places. There is a remarkable unity underlying the diverse developments of Indian art (including the art of Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and Java), not merely as regards the persistence in time of elements of decoration, but also geographically; here I refer to the present peculiar isolation of particular trades and techniques which survive, so to say, in scattered ‘islands’ all over India (cf. ‘Indian Art at Delhi,’ 1904, pp. 112, 154, 158, 179, 206, 221, 233, and also this work, in various places). The argument from distribution is, that a knowledge of these crafts was once more widely spread and continuous; it is also fairly clear that it was once very much more extensive and thorough.