The Arts

Architecture and Sculpture
Like Hindu art, Sinhalese art is essentially a religious art. It is, however, less exuberant and more restrained: its buildings are more stereotyped and its decorative themes less varied.

Early Buddhist architecture is represented mainly by the viharas and dagabas which were essential features of any Sinhalese place of worship. The vihara was a group of religious buildings a shrine, a place of pilgrimage, a monastery and a teaching centre all centred on a dagaba, which was the Sri Lankan equivalent of the stupa of northern India, a relic-house and a memorial.

While the stupa is hemispherical in form, the dagaba has a pointed superstructure above the dome, producing a shape which has sometimes been likened to a drop of water. It stands on a square, polygonal or circular base of dressed stone, with four platforms projecting at the cardinal points. These features, the vahalkadas or altar frontispieces, which are approached by flights of steps, are the most highly ornamented parts of the dagaba, with friezes, decorated slabs of stone, pillars and carvings. Each entrance is guarded by two spirits carved on vertical slabs of stone with a semicircular top. These guardian spirits correspond to the dvarapalas of Hindu temples, the conventionally represented door guardians which are found from the earliest times. Their heads crowned by the hood of a seven headed cobra, they are a reference to the cobra god and his followers, who according to the Jatakas were blessed by the Buddha. These figures are interpreted as a relic of the old snake cult of the Naga tribes, the older divinities being shrewdly relegated by the Buddhist monks to the subordinate position of doorkeepers and servants of the new faith.

The moonstone an architectural feature to be distinguished from the similarly named semi-precious stone is a semicircular threshold-stone decorated with concentric zones of traditional ornament which is commonly found at the entrance to a shrine. It appears to have a magical function, warding off the evil spirits which might disturb the inner peace of the worshippers. The decorative themes are almost always the same files of elephants and horses, lions and wild geese. The lion is the emblem of the Sinhalas, while the elephants and horses symbolise spiritual power and knowledge and the geese, depicted in flight, represent the total renunciation which leads towards Enlightenment. It may be noted too that these creatures feature in the legendary tales of the Buddha’s life. Another regular theme in the decoration of moonstones is a line of grotesque dwarfs an element common to all Indian sculpture which no doubt reflects magical traditions dating back to prehistoric times.

In technique and form Sinhalese art is related to Hindu art, but it has a distinctive character of its own, reflecting the particular genius of the Sri Lankan and the natural conditions of the island. In painting, for example, the frescoes at Sigiriya are in the same style as the paintings at Ajanta and though there is some controversy about this roughly contemporary with them; but in terms of draughtsmanship, use of colour and situation the advantage lies with the Sri Lankan artists.

Sculpture often took advantage of the opportunities offered by natural forms, as it did in India between the 5th and 9th centuries. Caves, tumbles of rock, cliff faces, vertical blocks of stone and granite or gneiss boulders were hewn into shapes which made full use of the natural conformation of the rock: thus a long horizontal block would become a sleeping Buddha a vertical slab would suggest the figure of a sage, a cave would be transformed into a temple.

Most of the sculpture is difficult to date, and the legends attached to the various works are not always of much help in this respect. The Gal Vihara at Polonnaruwa is a work of considerable originality and more distinctively Sinhalese character, with a leaning towards the colossal, a hieratic formality, an ascetic restraint and certain clumsiness.

One characteristic feature of Sinhalese architecture is its distinctive hallmark, a monolithic pillar made up of a number of elements with a square or rectangular base separated by prisms with eight or twelve sides. The pillar labelled by one archaeologist the 4 8 4 has no capital but is topped by corbels, often in cross formation. The form of these pillars is reproduced in the brass or bronze candlesticks which area popular handicraft product in modern Sri Lanka.

An art form peculiar to Sri Lanka is the creation and harmonious disposition of ornamental lakes: an interest natural enough in people who has so much concerned with irrigation and the formation of artificial lakes to serve as reservoirs. The siting and construction of bathing pools (pokunas) in luxuriant natural settings was the subject of considerable aesthetic concern. The art of landscape gardening has left its mark in many place-names containing the element aramu (park, pleasure garden).

The Tamil invasions also influenced the architecture of Sri Lanka. The Hindu temples are all of Dravidian type, but some of the Buddhist temples show a purely Indian style.

The coming of the Portuguese brought in the influence of Baroque architecture, which can be seen in a number of buildings of this period. Dutch and British architecture tended towards the neo-classical or colonial style, followed in the 19th century by the Victorian style.

Modern popular art is interesting, but may sometimes appear a little gaudy in Western eyes, with its delight in bright colours like red and orange. There is a whole symbolism of colour: thus green is normally used for baneful spirits. Naive works of this kind are to be seen in many temples, but the same style is found in the form of masks or in printed textiles.

Culture

Dance
In Sri Lanka as in India the art of dancing is religious in origin and gives expression to religious feeling, but in Sri Lanka there is a more marked trend towards dancing as a secular entertainment, put on for the purposes of the tourist trade. It is still possible, however, to see the old sacred dances in their original purity at religious festivals in the up-country areas. During the peraheras there are displays of the traditional fighting dances, in which the dancers make great play with sticks symbolising the swords or sabres of earlier days. At various local festivals in villages old dances are danced which have all the flavour of magical incantations, with the dancers wearing impressive masks a survival of ancient ceremonies intended to exorcise evil spirits.

The most famous dances in Sri Lanka are the dances of Kandy, of which eighteen different types have been identified. These Kandyan dances are usually called "Yes dances". The male dancers, who are bare-chested, wear splendid panoply of golden crowns or diadems, ear pendants, glittering necklaces, bracelets on their wrists and upper arms, ankle rings, etc. On their shoulders, they have a kind of cuirass or shoulder piece, as if wearing armour, and they may also wear a short skirt. Each dance has a particular theme, expressed in the movements of the dancers, the singing and the beating of drums and the tinkling of silver cymbals. All Kandyan dances are accompanied by drums, which are used to produce a variety of complex rhythms: there are four or five different types of drum with a range of timbres, from a high light note to a deep bass. The various drums appear to be out of time with one another (e.g. one drum may be played at seven beats to the bar and another at only five but they all come together at the end). These Kandyan dances are virile performances, demonstrations of martial vigour and warlike attitudes.

There is a school of dancing at Amunugama, near Kandy, where young men and girls (for in recent years there has been a great revival of interest in women’s dances) are trained in the ancient traditions. The women’s dances rather resemble the dances of Bali dramatic performances in the form of dances which are of high aesthetic quality.

Among the Tamils the commonest dance is the Bharata Natyam. The performances of this dance, which can be seen at Jaffna and Colombo, have a markedly religious atmosphere: each begins with an alarippu, an incantation addressed to the gods, to the guru who trained the dancer (a girl) and to the public. This is the traditional dance of southern India: the leading centres of the art are at Madurai and Tanjore (Tamil Nadu), but the most famous school is at Thiruvanmiyur, a few kilometres south of Madras.

The Bharata Natyam is a woman’s dance, once danced by the Dewadasis in Hindu temples, which is accompanied by an orchestra and choir of remarkable accomplishment and purity of style. The dancer is decked in brilliant jewellery and bracelets dangling with little bells, and wears a brightly coloured sari so arranged as to leave her freedom of movement while setting off the grace of her figure. Each dance represents an episode from one of the great Indian epics, particularly the legends about Krishna. With its traditional rhythmic figures, use of facial expression and attitude (abhinaya), gestures of the hands (mudra) and movements of the feet (gati), and its choral and orchestral accompaniment, the Bharata Natyam is a religious spectacle of memorable effect and moving beauty: one of the great dances of the world.

Theatre
The theatres of Colombo present plays in both Sinhalese and English. Some of the Sinhalese plays are original works; others are translations from Western languages. In recent years plays on themes from the country’s glorious national past have been popular.

In the villages on the south-west coast of the country there is a traditional popular theatre, the Kolam, specialising in satirical comedies of country life in which the actors wear highly coloured masks expressively depicting the characteristics of the various figures malevolence, stupidity, wrathfulness, naivety, etc. These burlesque and farcical pieces still betray something of their ritual origin. As in the Italian commedia dell arte, the characters are stereotyped and readily recognisable by their costumes and wooden masks the swaggering Portuguese braggart, the Dutch merchant or official, the British officer or resident, the functionaries of present-day Sri Lanka. In these farces the people of the villages found an expression of their hostility to the various authorities who oppressed them; a form of exorcism which points to the ritual origin of these plays. The repertoire of the Kolam theatre is very extensive, featuring not only human characters but a whole range of gods, demons and spirits the god of love, the cobra goddess, the goddess of smallpox, a forest goddess, the spirits of the eagle, the lion and the bear, and many more: again an indication of the Kolam’s origin as a dance of exorcism intended to propitiate the gods and preserve the village community from the evils to which it was exposed.

The plays include masked dances and have an accompaniment of beating and rolling drums with a characteristic syncopated rhythm. They have been called a kind of masked opera; but this is perhaps too grand a term for these colourful entertainments which have so far managed to preserve their rural character unspoiled. To see a performance of one of the Kolam plays one should really have to go to one of the villages of southern Sri Lanka.

Apart from the naive plays performed in the villages, the country has little in the way of a dramatic tradition. At the beginning of this century musical plays of the type popular in India began to be performed in following the example given by visiting companies from the neighbouring peninsula. These companies also performed translations or adaptations from Moliere, Gogol and Chekhov. A purely Sinhalese theatre emerged only in the 1950s. Ediriwira Sarachchandra’s "Maname", a lyrical drama which drew its inspiration from an obsolete theatrical form, "the Nadagama", was produced in 1956. Sarachchandra is a prolific author who has written over twenty plays and is regarded as the creator of the modern Sinhalese theatre. His masterpiece is Sinhabahu. He has had a number of imitators, and there are many contemporary playwrights who find inspiration in the village theatres of southern Sri Lanka and in the traditional plays with their element of the marvellous and their rites of exorcism inherited from a distant past. In the last few years a new trend has come to the fore, and a number of dramatists have sought to create a naturalistic theatre reflecting the social difficulties and political conflicts of the present day. Among them are: H. Jayasena, who is influenced by the works of Brecht; Sugathapala de Silva, who has taken Pirandello as his model; Namal Wiramini, an admirer of Jean Anouilh; and Premaranjith Tilakaratne, who shows the influence of Ibsen’s philosophical and social dramas. In addition there are numbers of others, not always of equal quality. Some of them are actors and producers as well as playwrights, following a tradition which goes back to Shakespeare and Moliere. The best known actor-cum-author is S. Nawagattegama whose play "Suba saya Yasa" has achieved considerable and continuing success.

Modern Sinhalese literature is less than a century old and is still feeling its way. Independence and the problems of the contemporary world have led to a proliferation of works of very varying kind and quality. Once the present ferment of literary activity has settled down and writers see their way more clearly we may expect to see a great flowering of one of the most distinctive and original cultures of South-East Asia.

Cinema
The Sri Lankan cinema came into being around 1949, soon after Independence. Since then it has enjoyed considerable local success, as well as a wider reputation throughout South-East Asia, to which it exports its productions. The people of Sri Lanka are great film-goers, and there are almost 400 cinemas on the island.

In addition to films produced for a simple-minded mass public which likes the marvellous and melodramatic, the film producers of Sri Lanka have also produced a number of films of considerable artistic quality, some of which have won prizes at international festivals, like "Gamperaliya", which won the Golden Peacock at New Delhi in 1964, and "Nidhanaya", which won the Silver Lion at Venice in 1972. The studios in the country have an output of 40 or 50 films a year, and perhaps half a dozen of these are of some quality. The best known name in the industry is that of the director Lester James Peiris.

Sri Lanka is also noted for some excellent short films, often centred on the ordinary life of the country and the humble problems of country people. Among outstanding films of this kind are Dassanaike’s Wild Life and George Wickremasinghe’s Fishermen of Negombo and Kandy Perahera.

In the towns foreign films can be seen, particularly Indian films in Tamil areas.