JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, 

 CEYLON BRANCH. 



NOTES ON PAINTING, DYEING, LACWORK, DUMBARA 

 MATS, AND PAPER IN CEYLON.* 



By A. K. Co OMAR AS W AM Y , D.Sc. 



1. — Technique of Sinhalese Painting. 



It is impossible in a short space to treat adequately of Sin- 

 halese painting, the most important and most interesting 

 branch of Sinhalese art, architecture excepted. The best 

 place to study painting is in old viharas such as Degaldoruwa, 

 BAdi Vihare, Danagirigala. where there still remains good 18th 

 century work done for King Kirti Sri, that liberal patron of 

 religion and the arts ; something is also to be learnt from old 

 painted furniture and from the few existing but very beautiful 

 illuminated paper manuscripts of the 18th and early 19th 

 centuries. 



Vihara paintings are executed in tempera on the walls and 

 eilings ; the usual subjects are of course religious — Jatakas, 

 scenes from the life of Gotama Buddha, Mara's battle, the 

 twenty-four assurances, and the like ; pictures of the gods are 



* Reprinted, with additions and corrections, from the " Handbook 

 to the Exhibition of Arts and Crafts in connection with the Ceylon 

 Rubber Exhibition." Colombo, 1906. See C. A. S. Journal, Vol XIX. , 

 No. 57, 1906, p. 98, Council Meeting, November 20, " Resolution 4." 



b 36-07 



