Though stone is abundant in Ceylon, it was but sparingly used in the ancient buildings. Squared stones[1] were occasionally employed, but large slabs seldom occur, except in the foundations of dagobas. The vast quantity of material required for such structures, the cost of quarrying and carriage, and the want of mechanical aids to raise ponderous blocks into position, naturally led to the substitution of bricks for the upper portion of the superstructure.
1: Rajavali, p. 210; VALENTYN, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, ch. iii. p. 45.
There is evidence to show that wedges were employed in detaching the blocks in the quarry, and the amount of labour devoted to the preparation of those in which strength, irrespective of ornament, was essential, is shown in the remains of the sixteen hundred undressed pillars[1] which supported the Brazen Palace at Anarajapoora, and in the eighteen hundred stone steps, many of them exceeding ten feet in length, which led from the base of the mountain to the very summit of Mihintala. A single piece of granite lies at Anarajapoora hollowed into an "elephant trough," with ornamental pilasters, which measures ten feet in length by six wide and two deep; and amongst the ruins of Pollanarrua a still more remarkable slab, twenty-five feet in length by six broad and two feet thick, bears an inscription of the twelfth century, which records that it was brought from a distance of more than thirty miles.
1: The Rajavali states that these rough pillars were originally covered with copper, p. 222.
COLUMN AT
ANARAJAPOORA.
The majority of the columns at Anarajapoora are of dressed stone, octangular and of extremely graceful proportions. They were used in profusion to form circular colonnades around the principal dagobas, and the vast numbers which still remain upright, are one of the peculiar characteristics of the place, and justify the expression of Knox, when, speaking of similar groups elsewhere, he calls them a "world of hewn stone pillars."[1]
1: Knox, Relation, vol. v. pt. iv. ch. ii. p. 165.
Allusions in the Mahawanso show that extreme care was taken in the preparation of bricks for the dagobas.[1] Major SKINNER, whose official duties as engineer to the government have rendered him familiar with all parts of Ceylon, assures me that the bricks in every ruin he has seen, including the dagobas at Anarajapoora, Bintenne, and Pollanarrua, have been fired with so much skill that exposure through successive centuries has but slightly affected their sharpness and consistency.
1: Mahawanso, ch. xxviii. p. 165; ch. xxix. p. 169, &c.