3: "Parmi toutes les choses précieuses qu'on y voit, il y a une image de jaspe bleu haute de deux tchang: tout son corps est formé des sept choses précieuses; elle est étincellante de splendeur et plus majestueuse qu'on ne saurait l'exprimer. Dans la main droite elle tient une perle d'un prix inestimable."—Foe Koue Ki, ch. xxxviii. p. 333.
4: A.D. 459. Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 258. Another statue of gold, with the features and members appropriately coloured in gems, is spoken of in the second century B.C. (Mahawanso, ch. xxx. p. 180.)
Ivory also and sandal-wood[1], as well as copper and bronze, served as materials for statues; but granite was the substance most generally selected, except in the rare instances where the temple and the statue together were hewn out of the living rock, on which occasions gneiss was most generally selected. Such are the statues at Pollanarrua, at Mihintala, and at the Aukana Wihara, near Wijittapoora. A still more common expedient, which is employed to the present time, was to form the figures of Buddha with pieces of burnt clay joined together by cement; and coated with highly polished chunam, in order to prepare the surface for the painter. In this manner were most probably produced the "seventy-two thousand statues" ascribed to Mihindo V.
1: Rajaratnacari, p. 72.
Figures of elephants were similarly formed at an early period.[1] An image of Buddha so composed in the 12th century, is still standing at Pollanarrua[2], and every temple has one or more effigies, either sedent, erect, or recumbent, carefully modelled in cemented clay, and coloured after life.
1: A.D. 432. Rajaratnacari, p. 74.
2: Possibly the "standing figure of Buddha" mentioned in the Rajavali, p. 253.
Architecture.—In Ceylon, as in Egypt, Assyria, and India, the ruins which survive to attest the character of ancient architecture are exclusively sacred, with the exception of occasional traces of the residences of theocratic royalty; but everything has perished which could have afforded an idea of the dwellings and domestic architecture of the people. The cause of this is to be traced in the perishable nature of the sun-dried clay, of which the walls of the latter were composed. Added to this, in Ceylon there were the pride of rank and the pretensions of the priesthood, which, whilst they led to lavish expenditure of the wealth of the kingdom upon palaces and monuments, and the employment of stone in the erection of temples[1] and monasteries, forbade the people to construct their dwellings of any other material than sun-baked earth.[2] This practice continued to the latest period; and nothing struck the British army of occupation with more surprise on entering the city of Kandy, after its capture in 1815, than to find the palaces and temples alone constructed of stone, whilst the streets and private houses were formed of mud and thatch.
1: Rajaratnacari, pp. 78, 79.
2: Rajavali, p. 222.