SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 
SINHALESE” EARTHENWARE. 
By Ananpa K. Coomaraswamy, D.Sc.- 
INTRODUCTION. 
PE RENE the last three years I have made some study, chiefly 
in the Central and Sabaragamuwa Provinces, of the rather 
simple types of earthenware made and used by Sinhalese for cere- 
monial, architectural, and domestic purposes. These types are more 
varied than might at first sight be supposed, and, apart from any 
question of painted pottery, will be found to possess much excellence 
in respect of beauty of form and adaptation to the end in view. This 
last consideration it is which determines the primary form of the 
vessels. Hardly any work of a merely ornamental character falls to 
be considered in the present paper. It is however this primarily utili- 
tarian character and aim which give so much charm to the elegance of 
form and very simple decoration which accompany it; it has been 
said, indeed, that ugly pottery can only be made by an exertion of the 
cultivated intellect, and has only been so made in comparatively 
modern times. Much the same is true of India, where unglazed 
pottery is everywhere made for domestic and other purposes. Says 
Sir George Birdwood [‘‘Industrial Arts of India’’ ]: “ Truest to nature 
in the directness and simplicity of its forms, and their adaptation 
to use, and purest in art, of all its homely and sumptuary handi- 
crafts, is the pottery of India, and the forms of it shown on ancient 
Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, and the ancient Buddhist paint- 

* Although my observations have been chiefly made in the Central 
and Sabaragamuwa Provinces, I have not used the word ‘‘Kandyan” in 
my title, because I should rather wish to emphasize the unity than the 
diversity of the Sinhalese, and the low-country Sinhalese have histori- — 
cally no less right to the tradition of ancient art than have the Kandyans, 
although various circumstances have contributed to its more complete 
and earlier decadence in the low-country 
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