No. 57. — 1906.] SINHALESE ART. 



89 



(3) The present Paper is not primarily concerned with the 

 still earlier history of the patterns in question ; but it is sug- 

 gested that they are partly at any rate, as suggested by Sir 

 George Birdwood many years ago, derived from Assyria, 

 whence they may have travelled with that alphabet of the 

 oldest northern Semitic or Phoenician type which became the 

 ancestor of all later Indian alphabets and which appears on 

 the Moabite stone and on Assyrian weights of 800 B.C.* ; 

 Assyria, however, is but a step on the way, for the patterns 

 are ultimately traceable to Egypt. The existence of Greek 

 influence, ma Persia and as a result of Alexanders conquests, 

 is indicated ; but it must be remembered that even the Greek 

 forms themselves are also in the last analysis traceable to 

 Egypt ; it is therefore quite unnecessary to postulate any 

 direct borrowing of the simple motifs of Sinhalese art from 

 Greece by early Indian (Indo-Persian) or by Sinhalese artists , 

 although we may trace Greek influence in the mode of 

 association of some of these elements (wellenranke, gegen- 

 standige lotusbluth und palmette, dkc.) . The period of later Greek 

 influence on Indian art must also be allowed for, inasmuch 

 as with the spread of the foreign types of figure sculpture 

 there must have gone also a strengthening of any Greek element 

 already existing in the purely decorative art of the peoples 

 i nfluenced. 



Mr. R. G-. Anthonisz — speaking as a " layman " — said he did not 

 know whether Dr. Coomaraswamy had intentionally omitted from that 

 discussion the fact that the Portuguese and Dutch had been in Ceylon 

 for about 200 years before the production of the specimens which 

 formed the subject of Dr. Coomaraswamy's remarks. They knew, 

 for instance, that the Portuguese first, and the Dutch after them, im- 

 ported a large amount of manufactures — works of art — which they 

 presented to the Kandyan Kings, and these had been going about 

 the country to a great extent. They saw some of these works of art 

 even now in some of the out-of-the-way villages— boxes with carvings 

 and various other specimens of European art of the 15th and 16th 

 centuries — so that he did not know whether they might not to a certain 

 extent have influenced the character of the specimens which had 

 been presented to them that evening. He merely threw out these 



* Macdonell, " History of Sanskrit Literature," p. 16. 



