No. 48.— 1897.] 



APPENDIX. 



129 



in my Archaeological Report on " Sigiriya." I desire now merely to 

 correct one or two inaccuracies into which Mr. Fernando has slipped. 



It may be assumed once for all that the frescoes at Ajanta in India, 

 and those on the Sigiriya Rock, were executed, if not by the same 

 hands, at least by artists trained in the same school. 



Mr. Fernando's arguments against the importation of " exotic 

 talent " for the painting of the Sigiriya frescoes may best be quoted, 

 and briefly touched on seriatim : — 



(1) " Cceteris paribus, the credit of painting frescoes found in 

 Ceylon must, prima facie, rest with the Sinhalese." 



Granted : but " other things are " not " equal " ; little Ceylon is not 

 giant India ; the field of selection for competent artists is about 

 one to sixty. 



(2) " Two of the frescoes at Ajanta, as pointed out by Fergusson 

 and Manning [sic], depict scenes from the Mahdwansa, the ancient 

 chronicle of Lanka." 



The scenes referred to are — (a) the supposed landing of Vijaya in 

 Ceylon ; and (b) the supposed introduction of Buddhism into the 

 Island — given by Mrs. Speir in her .Life in Ancient India. * 



As regards («), Mrs. Speir rightly remarks that the picture — from 

 the horse-worship introduced into it — illustrates " a northern adapta- 

 tion of the story in the Mahdwansa, related in a Nepalese work of 

 Avaiokiteswara," who saved u Sinhala " (Vijaya) in the form of a 

 horse. The Sinhalese have always belonged to the Hinayana 

 (" Lesser Vehicle ") school of Buddhism, which knows not Avaioki- 

 teswara, the Bodhisatva of the northern Mahay ana, or " Greater 

 Vehicle." Much the same comment applies to (b). It may equally as 

 well have been based on Northern Buddhist works as taken from the 

 Mahdwansa of the Southern school — if, that is, the painting has 

 anything whatever to do with the meeting between Mahinda and King 

 Devanampiya Tisa. 



(3) " Mr. Bell made a point of the fact that the Sigiriya frescoes 

 were the only ones of the kind in Ceylon. I replied by saying that 

 those of Ajanta were just as unique as regards India." 



The Ajanta paintings are not " unique" in the sense of the frescoes 

 at Sigiriya. It is true that the former (as Fergusson records) 

 " represent Buddhist legends on a scale and with a distinctness found 

 nowhere else in India." But there are other frescoes which in beauty 

 of execution run them very close - if, indeed, they do not surpass 

 them ; and which prove further that the art retained its full vigour 

 for many centuries longer on the Indian continent. I refer to the 

 wonderful paintings to be seen at Fathpur-Sikri, near Agra, the 

 "royal abode" of Akbar in the sixteenth century. Here, in Ceylon, 

 we have nowhere else mural painting attaining the standard of art 

 exhibited in the Sigiriya frescoes. 



Again, had Kasyapa employed Sinhalese sitiyaru to adorn the walls 

 of his marvellous citadel, it may reasonably be inferred that the 

 services of the ancestors of the Nilagama guild of painters would have 

 been enlisted : yet at this day no tradition even lingers among 

 these hereditary craftsmasters, whose work at the ancient Dambulla 

 cave temple goes back to an earlier date than the occupation of 

 Sigiriya as a capital. Shown the Sigiriya frescoes in the " pockets " 

 themselves last year, these Nilagama men declared their inability to 



16—97 l 



