Part 88 (1/2)

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 quant.i.ty 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 subst.i.tution of bricks for the upper portion of the superstructure.

[Footnote 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 Anaraj.a.poora, 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 Anaraj.a.poora 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.

[Footnote 1: The _Rajavali_ states that these rough pillars were originally covered with copper, p. 222.]

The majority of the columns at Anaraj.a.poora are of dressed stone, octangular and of extremely graceful proportions. They were used in profusion to form circular colonnades around the princ.i.p.al 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]

[Footnote 1: Knox, _Relation_, vol. v. pt. iv. ch. ii. p. 165.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLUMN AT ANARAj.a.pOORA.]

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, a.s.sures me that the bricks in every ruin he has seen, including the dagobas at Anaraj.a.poora, Bintenne, and Pollanarrua, have been fired with so much skill that exposure through successive centuries has but slightly affected their sharpness and consistency.

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxviii. p. 165; ch. xxix. p. 169, &c.]

The sand for mortar was ”pounded, sifted, and ground on a grinding-stone;”[1] the ”cloud-coloured stones,”[2] used to form the immediate receptacle in which a sacred relic was enclosed, were said to have been imported from India; and the ”nawanita” clay, in which these were imbedded, was believed to have been brought from the mythical Anotattho lake in the Himalayas.[3]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.x. p. 175.]

[Footnote 2: The ”cloud-coloured stone” may possibly have been marble, but no traces of marble have been found in the ruins. Diodorus, in describing some of the monuments of Egypt alludes to a ”party-coloured”

stone, [Greek: lithon poikilon], which likewise remains without identification.--_Diodorus_, l. i. c. lvii.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxix. p. 169; ch. x.x.x. p. 179.]

_Dagobas_.--The process of building the Ruanwelle dagoba is thus minutely described in the _Mahawanso_: ”That the structure might endure for ages, a foundation was excavated to the depth of one hundred cubits, and the round stones were trampled by enormous elephants, whose feet were protected by leather cases. Over this the monarch spread the sacred clay, and on it laid the bricks, and over them a coating of astringent cement, above this a layer of sand-stones, and on all a plate of iron.

Over this was a large pholika (crystallised stone), then a plate of bra.s.s, eight inches thick, embedded in a cement made of the gum of the wood-apple tree, diluted in the water of the small red coco-nut.”[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxix. p. 169; ch. x.x.x. p. 178. The internal structure of the Sanchi tope at Bilsah in Central India presents the arrangement here described, _the bricks being laid in mud_, but externally it is faced with dressed stone.]

The shape of these huge mounds of masonry was originally hemispherical, being that best calculated to prevent the growth of gra.s.s or other weeds on objects so sacred. Dutugaimumi, according to the _Mahawanso_, when about to build the Ruanwelle dagoba, consulted a mason as to the most suitable form, who, ”filling a golden dish with water, and taking some in the palm of his hand, caused a bubble in the form of a coral bead to rise on the surface; and he replied to the king, 'In this form will I construct it.'”[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.x. p. 175. This legend as to the origin of the semicircular form of the dagoba is at variance with the conjecture of Major FORBES, that these vast structures were merely an advance on the mounds of earth similar to the barrow of Halyattes, which in the progress of the constructive arts, came to be converted into brickwork.--_Eleven Years in Ceylon_, v. i. p. 222.]

Two dagobas at Anaraj.a.poora, the Abay-a-giri and Jeyta-wana-rama, still retain their original outline,--the Ruanwelle, from age and decay, has partly lost it,--and the Thupa-ramaya is flattened on the top as if suddenly brought to a close, and the Lanka-ramaya is shaped like a bell.

_Monasteries and Wiharas._--According to the annals of Ceylon the construction of dwellings for the devotees of Buddha preceded the erection of temples for his wors.h.i.+p. Originally the anchorite selected a cave or some shelter in the forest as his place of repose or meditation.[1] In the _Rajavali_ Devenipiatissa is said to have ”caused caverns to be cut in the solid rock at the sacred place of Mihintala;”[2] and these are the earliest residences for the higher orders of the priesthood in Ceylon, of which a record has been preserved. A less costly subst.i.tute was found in the erection of detached huts of the rudest construction, in winch may be traced the embryo of the Buddhist monastery; and the king Walagambahu was the first, B.C. 89, to gather these scattered residences into groups and ”build wiharas in unbroken ranges, conceiving that thus their repairs would be more easily effected.”[3]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_ c. x.x.x. p. 174.]

[Footnote 2: _Rajavali_, p. 184.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xiii. p. 207.]

Simplicity and retirement were at all times the characteristics of these retreats, which rarely aspired to architectural display; and the only recorded instance of extravagance in this particular was the ”Brazen Palace” at Anaraj.a.poora, with its sixteen hundred columns; an edifice which, though nominally a dwelling for the priesthood, appears to have been in reality a vast suite of halls for their a.s.semblies and festivals, and a sanctuary for the safe custody of their jewels and treasure.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch, xxvii. p. 103. Like the ”nine-storied”

paG.o.das of China, the palace of ”the Lowa Maya Paya” was originally _nine stories_ in height, and Fergusson, from the a.n.a.logy of Buddhist buildings in other countries, supposes that these diminished in succession as the building arose, till the outline of the whole a.s.sumed the form of a pyramid. _(Handbook of Architecture_, b. i. ch. iii. p.