A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c13.s6.45

c13.s6.45

like them was known before, except the Anurādhapura Bodhisattva, if that be the correct designation for it. A few of the best have been selected from a set of good photographs taken by Dr. Andreas Nell and kindly supplied by the Government of Ceylon. The identification of the images has been effected by the Honourable Mr. P. Arunachalam. The bronzes, all massive and very heavy, are ascribed to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their large size proves that the artists of those days knew how to overcome the difficulties of casting bronze on a considerable scale, and gives the images an importance and dignity which cannot be claimed by miniature works a few inches high. In the opinion of Dr. A. Willey, F.R.S., late Director of the Colombo Museum, they ‘are Polonnāruwa bronzes for better or for worse’, and certainly were not imported from the mainland.² But I am disposed to agree with Mr. Bell that they were executed in India. The specimens from Southern India exhibited by Lord Ampthill at the Indian Section of the Festival of Empire (1911) are exactly in the same style (*ante*, p. 236, note 2).