No. 57.— 1906.] 



SINHALESE ART. 



19 



of that serious idealism which appears to me to be associated 

 with Indo- Aryan art in general. 



All this has a bearing on the history of Sinhalese art. We 

 have seen therein a survival of the conventions and ideals of 

 the early Indian or Indo- Persian school ; and now we may refer 

 briefly to the Sigiri paintings (neither these, nor Kandyan mural 

 paintings are really " frescoes ") considered from this point of 

 view. The Sigiri paintings are as different from the Kandyan 

 in style as are those of Ajanta from the sculptures of Bharhut. 

 The impressionist element in them is equally foreign to the 

 art of Bharhut and to the art of the Sinhalese. We do 

 not find in these paintings of Ajanta and Sigiri (in spite 

 of the grace and elegance of the latter) that love of fine detail 

 and appreciation of clear form and line that are seen in 

 Kandyan paintings and Bharhut sculptures. These considera- 

 tions alone appear to me sufficient to prove that the Sigiri 

 paintings were not executed by "Kandyan" artists; it is 

 impossible to believe that the Sigiri artists can have been either 

 the lineal descendants of painters of the early Indian school, 

 or the ancestors of those of the Kandyan school. I can 

 hardly doubt that a school of mural painting existed at Bharhut, 

 and that it was in style and feeling close akin to the work in 

 stone (itself a replacement of earlier work in wood) ; and it is 

 with some such early school of mural painting rather than with 

 the work at Ajanta or Sigiri, the Kandyan paintings must be 

 associated. 



We must now return to the more detailed study and com- 

 parison of particular patterns. Perhaps the most striking 

 survival that I know of is that of a particular type of armlet. 

 On Plates 21-23 of Cunningham's Bharhut Stupa will be 

 found figures of various male beings, wearing the heroic garb 

 of India, viz., turban, shawl, and dhoti; all wear, beside 

 other jewellery, a peculiar armlet (fig. 10), consisting of an 

 ornamented band supporting ornamented flat plates shaped 

 like a "Fleur de lys " or "Prince of Wales' feathers" 

 (" palmette" ornament). Now, if we examine a beautifully 



