models had been established by law, and the faulty conceptions of early times were copied and perpetuated by every succeeding artist." 1

The same observations apply, almost in the same terms, to the paintings of the Singhalese. The historical delineations of the exploits of Gotama Buddha and of his disciples and attendants, which at the present day cover the walls of the temples and wiharas, follow, with rigid minuteness, pre-existing illustrations of the sacred narratives. They appear to have been copied, with a devout adherence to colour, costume, and detail, from designs which from time immemorial have represented the same subjects; and emaciated ascetics, distorted devotees, beatified simpletons, and malefactors in torment, are depicted with a painful fidelity, akin to modern pre-Raphaelitism.

Owing to this discouragement of invention, one series of pictures is so servile an imitation of another, that design has never improved in Ceylon; one scene is but the facsimile of a previous one, and each may almost be regarded as an exponent of the state of the art at any preceding period.2

264.

1 Sir GARDNER WILKINSON'S An- | the churches and monasteries of cient Egyptians, vol. iii. ch. x. p. 87, Greece in 1839, makes the remark that "ni le temps ni le lieu ne font rien à l'art Grec au XVIIIe siècle, le peintre Moréote continue et calque le peintre Vénétien du Xe, le peintre Athonite du Ve ou VI. Le costume des personnages est partout et en tout temps le même, non-seulement pour la forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le nombre et l'épaisseur des plis. On ne saurait pousser plus foin l'exactitude traditionelle, l'esclavage du passé." (Manuel d' Iconographie Chrétienne Grecque et Latin, p. ix.) The explanation of this fact is striking. Mount Athos is the grand manufactory of pictures for the Greek churches throughout the world; and M. DIDRON found the artists producing, with the servility

2 The Egyptians and Singhalese were not, however, the only authorities who overwhelmed invention by ecclesiastical conventionalism. The early artists of Greece were not at liberty to follow the bent of their own genius, or to depart from established regulations in representing the figures of the gods. In the middle ages, the influence of the churches, both of Rome and Byzantium, was productive of a similar result; and although the Latins early emancipated themselves, the painters of the Greek church, to the present hour, labour under the identical trammels which crippled art at Constantinople a thousand years ago. M. DIDRON, who visited

Hence even the most modern embellishments in the temples have an air of remote antiquity. The colours are tempered with gum; and but for their inferiority in drawing the human figure, as compared with the Egyptians, and their defiance of the laws of perspective, their inharmonious tints, coupled with the whiteness of the ground-work, would remind one of similar peculiarities in the paintings in the Thebaid, and the caves of Beni Hassan.

FA HIAN describes in the fourth century precisely the same series of subjects and designs which are delineated in the temples of the present day, and taken from the transformation of Buddha. With hundreds of these, he says, painted in appropriate colours and executed in imitation of life, the king caused both sides of the road to be decorated on the occasion of religious processions.1

and almost the rapidity of machinery, endless facsimiles of pictures in rigid conformity with a recognised code of instructions drawn up under ecclesiastical authority and entitled Ερμηνεία τῆς Ζωγραφικῆς, "The Guide for Painting," a literal translation of which he has published. This very curious manuscript contains minute directions for the figures, costume, and attitude of the sacred characters, and for the preparation of many hundreds of historical subjects required for the decoration of churches. The artist, when solicited by M. Didron to sellcette bible de son art," naively refused, on the simple ground that "s'il se dépouillait de ce livre, il ne pourrait plus rien faire; en perdant son Guide, il perdait son art, il perdait ses yeux et ses mains” (ib. p. xxiii). It was not till the fifteenth century that the painters of Italy shook themselves free of the authority of the Latin church in matters of art. The second council of Nice arrogates to the. Roman church the authority in such matters still retained by the Greek;

66 non est imaginum structura pictorum inventio sed ecclesiæ catholicæ probata legislatio et traditio." In Spain, the sacro-pictorial law, under the title of Pictor Christianus,_was promulgated, in 1730, by Fray Juan de Ayala, a monk of the order of Mercy; and such subjects are discussed as the shape of the true cross; whether one or two angels should sit on the stone by the sepulchre? and whether the Devil should be drawn with horns and a tail? In the National Gallery of London there is a painting of the Holy Family by Benozzo Gozzoli, and Sir Charles L. Eastlake has permitted me to see a contract between the painter and his employer A.D. 1461, in which every figure is literally "made to order," its attitude bespoke, and its place in the composition distinctly agreed for. One clause, however, contemplates progress, and binds the painter to make the piece his chef d'œuvre"che detta dipentura exceda ogni buona dipintura infino aqui facto per detto Benozzo."

1 Foě Kouě Ki, ch. xxxviii. p. 335.

Amongst the most renowned of the Singhalese masters, was the King Detu Tissa, A. D. 330, "a skilful carver, who executed many arduous undertakings in painting, and taught it to his subjects. He modelled a statue of Buddha so exquisitely that he seemed to have been inspired; and for it he made an altar, and gilt an edifice inlaid with ivory." 1 Among the presents sent by the King of Ceylon (A. D. 459) to the Emperor of China, the Tsih foo yuen kwei, a chronicle compiled by imperial command, particularises a picture of Buddha.2 The colours employed in decorating their temples are mixed in tempera, as were those used in the ancient paintings in Egypt; the claim of the Singhalese to the priority of invention in the mixture of colours with oil, is adverted to elsewhere.3

Sculpture. -In style Singhalese sculpture was even more conventional and less imaginative that their painting; since the subjects to which it was confined were almost exclusively statues of Buddha, and its efforts were mere repetitions of the three orthodox attitudes of the great archetype-sitting, as when in deep meditation, under the sacred Bo-tree; standing, as when exhorting his multitudinous disciples; and reclining, in the enjoyment of the everlasting repose of "nirwana." In each and all of these the details are identical; the length of the ears, the proportions of the arms, fingers, and toes; the colour of the eyes, and the curls of the hair being repeated with wearisome iteration. To such

1 Mahawanso, ch. xxxvii. p. 242. * B. li. p. 7.

3 See the chapter on the Fine Arts, Vol. I. p. 490.

4 Mention is made of a figure of an elephant (Rajavali, p. 242), and of a horse (Mahawanso, ch. xxxix. TURNOUR'S manuscript translation), and a carved bull as amongst the ruins of Anarajapoora.

5 M. ABEL REMUSAT has devoted a section of his Mélanges Asiatiques,

1825, vol. i. p. 100, to combating the conjecture of Sir W. JONES in his third Dissertation on the Hindus, drawn from the curled or rather the woolly hair represented in his statues, that Buddha drew his descent from an African origin. (Works, vol. i. p. 12.) Another ground for Sir W. JONES's conjecture was the large ears which are usually characteristic of the statues of Buddha. But it is curious that one of the peculiar fea

an extent were these multiplied, and with an adherence so rigid to the same recognised models, that the Rajavali ventures to ascribe to one king the erection of "seventytwo thousand statues of Buddha," an obvious error 1, but indicative, nevertheless, that the real amount must have been prodigious, in order to obtain credence for the exaggeration. Many other sovereigns are extolled in the national annals, who rendered their reigns illustrious by the multiplicity of statues which they placed in the temples. It was doubtless from this incessant study of one and the same figure, that the artists of Ceylon attained to a facility and superiority in producing statues of Buddha, that rendered them famous throughout the countries of Asia, in which his religion prevailed. The carly historians of China speak in raptures of works of this kind, obtained from Singhalese sculptors in the fourth and fifth centuries; they were eagerly sought after by all the surrounding nations; and one peculiarity in their execution consisted in so treating the features, that "on standing at about ten paces distant they appeared truly brilliant, but the lineaments gradually disappeared on a nearer approach." 2

The labours of the sculptor and painter were combined in producing these images of Buddha, which are always coloured in imitation of life, each tint of his complexion and hair being in religious conformity with divine authority, and the ceremony of "painting of the eyes," is always observed by the devout Buddhists as a solemn festival.

Many of the works which were thus executed were either golden or gilt, with brilliants inserted in the

4

tures ascribed to the Singhalese by the early Greek writers was the possession of pendulous ears, possibly occasioned by their heavy ear-rings.

1 Rajavali, p. 255. Most of these were built of terra-cotta and cement covered with chunam, preparatory to being painted. See p. 478.

2 Wei shoo, a "History of the Wei Tartar Dynasty," written A. D. 590. B. cxiv. p. 9.

3 Mahawanso, ch. lxxii.; UPHAM'S version, vol. i. p. 275.

4 Mahawanso, ch. xxx. pp. 180, 182; Rajaratnacari, pp. 47, 48; Rajavali, p. 237.

eyes, and the draperies enriched with jewels.1 FA HIAN in the 4th century, speaks of a figure of Buddha upwards of twenty-three feet in height, formed out of blue jasper, and set with precious stones, that sparkled with singular splendour, and which bore in its right hand a pearl of priceless value.2 This may possibly have been the statue of which the Mahawanso speaks in like terms of admiration: "the eye formed by a jewel from the royal head-dress, each curl of the hair by a sapphire, and the lock in the centre of the forehead by threads of gold.3

Ivory also and sandal-wood, 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.

Figures of elephants were similarly formed at an early period. An image of Buddha so composed in the 12th century, is still standing at Pollanarrua 6, and every