Dec. 1906] 



497 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Suggestions for the Encouragement of Indigenous 

 Arts and Crafts in Ceylon. 



By Ananda K, Coomaraswamy, D. Sc. 



One of the chief results of the exhibition of Ceylonese Arts and Crafts, 

 organized by the Ceylon Agricultural Society, and under the present writer's imme- 

 diate charge, was to show that these arts and crafts, though decayed and in danger 

 of still greater degeneration, do survive, and that there are still men who have 

 learnt the old methods and are capable of doing work as good, or almost as good, as the 

 best mediaeval work ; but they are not sufficiently encouraged, and there is a lack of 

 sympathy and understanding for their work amongst those who should be its first 

 and principal patrons. Under the old regime there was an elaborate system of royal 

 patronage, practically a public department of arts and crafts, whereby a considerable 

 portion of the public revenue was expended on the erection of buildings and the 

 encouragement of craftsmen. The superior craftsmen were men of position and 

 importance, having lands and slaves of their own, and treated with a good deal of 

 consideration and respect. 



More important still, the conditions of their woik were different, especially 

 in the respect that they were allowed to take their full time over any important 

 work ; the chief expressed regret of good workmen now is, that they are only able 

 to undertake comparatively petty work, and are asked to do it quickly, and are 

 often inadequately paid, especially if the work has been given on contract, in which 

 case the middlemen usually get most of the profit. In old days a man might devote 

 a very long time to his work, and, if it were excellent, would be rewarded, not with 

 a daily wage, but with gifts of clothes, oxen, money or lands ; and also with intelli- 

 gent and not uncritical appreciation. The indigenous arts have been more seriously 

 affected by the decay of national architecture than by any other single cause. 



I have above referred to the expenditure of money on public buildings, whi^h 

 went on under the old regime and of which we see the result in such remaining 

 architecture as that of the Dalada Maligawa, the Old Palace, and viharas such as 

 Lankatilaka and Gadaladeniya. But all modern Government buildings are in a style 

 foreign to the country, a style so foreign that the local style has no possible part or 

 lot in them. They are, moreover, for the most part distinctly ugly. The people of 

 the country have not been slow to imitate the European style thus placed before 

 their eyes, with the result that most modern native houses are badly built and ugly 

 to behold, besides being rather less comfortable than the old. Thus, not only is 

 native capacity neglected by Government but also by the people themselves. But 

 all arts are the handmaids of architecture ; and when architecture is degraded so 

 are the minor arts. "It is particularly," says Sir George Birdwood, " through the 

 neglect of native architecture and the propagation of a bastard English style 

 blindly followed by the veople themselves, that the Government threatens the slow 

 destruction of the historical handicrafts of India." The same is the case in Ceylon 

 where also " it is not yet too late for Government, by the encouragement of native 

 hereditary architects, not only to arrest the decadence of the arts— but to promote 

 their revival." It is true that some indirect efforts have been made in this direction 

 in the case of certain ambalams and of the Kaudy bandstaud. I have, however 

 elsewhere shown that the architecture of the said ambalams is no more than a 

 caricature of real Kandyan architecture, standing to it in the same relation that a 

 modern tabernacle does to a mediaeval church ; and the influence of this degraded 



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