A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s7: Section VII. Ceylon
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s7
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Section VII. Ceylon
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The Sinhalese people from the earliest times to the present day have loved to decorate their innumerable sacred buildings with brightly coloured edifying pictures. Unfortunately, the combined effects of human violence, continued through the wars of many centuries, and the ruthless energy of tropical nature have left few remains of really ancient paintings, as we have seen in Chapter VIII, and the works of later mediaeval date have not fared much better.
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Certain pictures of *jātaka* stories painted on the walls of the Mahā Damala Saya shrine at Polonnāruwa, the twelfth-century capital, are said to resemble the Sīgiriya frescoes rather than modern work, but I am not in a position to fix their age, or to present copies of them.³
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³ ^3 Coomaraswamy, *Med. Sinhalese Art*, p. 178.
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The paintings on the roof of the Dambulla rock-temple, about fifteen miles south-west of Sīgiri, considered by some people to be the best example of Buddhist art in the island, are described by Tennent as being 'highly coloured illustrations of scenes in the history of Buddhism, such as the landing of Wijayo, the preaching of Mahindo, and the combat of Dutugaimini and Elala'. So far as I can ascertain, no reproductions of them are available. They cannot well be older than the close of the twelfth century, when King Nissanka Malla restored the temple, which had been sacked by the Tamils of the mainland, and it is possible that they may be of much later date, or they may be old work touched up and renewed from time to time.
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Mr. Cave has published a photograph of a picture in the Alu-vihari rock-temple, representing the torments of hell and a procession of elephants, which does not look very old.⁴
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⁴ ^4 Cave, *Ruined Cities of Ceylon*, 4th ed., p. 125, and plate; Tennent, *Ceylon*, 5th ed., vol. ii, p. 578.
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The decadent art of the eighteenth century was liberally patronized by the pious king, Kīrti Srī Rāya Simha, who reigned from A.D. 1747 to 1778. The extant *jātaka* pictures then painted on the walls of the Ridī Vihāra and at Degal-doruva by Silva-tenna and other artists certainly are extremely effective as decoration, even if they cannot be ranked as high art. Dr. Coomaraswamy has given, in the frontispiece to his valuable work on the eighteenth-century art of the island, a brilliant reproduction of a processional scene by Silva-tenna. The composition strangely resembles the Egyptian wall-paintings, the figures being all drawn in profile, in the most formal conventional style. Most of them are depicted of golden colour, marching across a bright red ground.¹ Many similar paintings, possibly of less merit, exist elsewhere.²
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¹ A. K. Coomaraswamy, *Mediaeval Sinhalese Art; being a Monograph on Mediaeval Sinhalese Arts and Crafts, mainly as surviving in the eighteenth century, with some account of the structure of society and the status of the craftsman* (4to, 1908, Essex House Press). The ‘peasant art’ discussed in that original and suggestive book has little concern with the subject of this work.
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² *E.g.* at Lenagala rock-temple (Bell, *Report on Kegalla District* (1892)), p. 30.
Linked texts (1)
- Jātaka — Pāli