NOTES. 139 



NOTES. 



1 . Hanguranketa Moonstone. — Readers of Fergusson's History of 

 Eastern Architecture will not need to be told that the ornate semi- 

 circular threshold stones, commonly known as moonstones, which 

 occur at the bases of flights of steps leading into the pansalas and 

 viharas of Ceylon, are an exclusive character of the ancient archi- 

 tecture of this Island, and are not found in India nor elsewhere on 

 the Asiatic continent. Crossing the threshold must have formed 

 a solemn part of the daily routine in the old days of militant 

 Buddhism. 



The stone here portrayed has been lying at the Museum for many 

 years (see SpoUa Zeylanica, III., p. 26, " Floral Moonstone"), but it 

 has never been illustrated before. It is unique of its kind, and the 

 •extremely conventionalized nature of the decorative scrolls may 

 point to the fact that it belongs to a somewhat later period than 

 the zoophorous or processional moonstones (with representations of 

 animals in procession). 



The disc, which might serve equally well as a lotus emblem or 

 as a sun emblem, is framed within a succession of what may either 

 be flower vases or water pots, terminating on each side in the sign 

 of the blessed footprints of Buddha. Outside these there is a com- 

 plicated terminal scroll, which appears to be a makara derivative ; 

 and behind these scrolls there is an actual makara with open mouth, 

 from which a minor scroll issues surmounted by a small uplifted 

 trunk ; behind the head the legs are seen, and the body ends in a 

 coiled tail. 



It has been said that when an object expressive of an artistic 

 conception and having the character of a sacred emblem is removed 

 from its original environment and brought to a Museum it loses all 

 its significance. Such a reproach, however, only proceeds from one 

 point of view, since, in addition to the original motive of the design, 

 which nothing can alter, it acquires a new meaning. The conversion 

 of a res sacra, even though it may have become obsolete, into a 

 Museum specimen may seem a cruel turn of fortune's wheel, but 

 it may be urged that its ethnographic value becomes accentuated. 



This moonstone is said to have belonged to the palace of a 

 Kandyan king at Hanguranketa. It is a great slab of gneiss with 

 roughly dressed edges and finely sculptured upper surface, measur- 

 ing 7 feet across the straight border, about 4 feet 8 inches from 

 the middle of the latter to the middle of the convex border ; the 



