47-2 Sl'iEXCES AND SOCIAL ARTS, [Part IV. 



books ill regular notation ; tlie gamut, which was 

 termed septa souere^ consisting of seven notes, and ex- 

 pressed not by signs, but in letters equivalent to their 

 pronunciation, sa^ ri, ga, me, qa, de, ni} At the 

 present day, harmony is still superseded by sound, 

 the singing of the Singhalese being a nasal whine, not 

 unhke that of the Arabs. Flutes, almost insusceptible 

 of modulation, chanks, which give forth a piercing 

 scream, and the overpowering roll of tom-toms, con- 

 stitute the music of the temples ; and all day long the 

 women of a family will sit round a species of timbrel, 

 called rabani, and produce from it the most monotonous, 

 but to then* ear, most agreeable noises, by drumming 

 with the fingers. 



Painting. — -Painting, wdiether historical or imaginative, 

 is only mentioned in connection with the decoration of 

 temples, and no examples survive of sufficient antiquity 

 to exhibit the actual state of the art at any remote 

 period. But enough is known of the trammels imposed 

 upon all art, to show that from the earliest times, imagi- 

 nation and invention were prohibited by the priesthood ; 

 and although execution and facility may have varied at 

 dilTerent eras, design and composition were stationary 

 and unalterable. 



Like the priesthood of Egypt, those of Ceylon regu- 

 lated the mode of delineating the effigies of their divine 

 teacher, by a rigid formulary, with which they com- 

 bined corresponding directions for the drawing of the 

 human figure in connection with sacred subjects. In 

 the relics of Egy[:>tian painting and sculpture, we find 

 "that the same formal outhne, the same attitudes and 

 postures of the body, the same conventional modes of 

 representing the different parts, were adhered to at the 

 latest, as at the earhest periods. No improvements 

 were admitted ; no attempts to copy nature or to give 

 an air of action to tlie limbs. Certain rules and certain 



' JoiNVlLLE, Asiat. Rcseavcltes, vol. vii. p. 488, 



