Relic-Chamber Paintings & Polonnaruva Murals

Relic-Chamber Paintings

The use of painted decoration and ritual or didactic representations in association with free-standing architectural monuments is as old as the art of the rock monasteries, and probably predates the use of sculptural detail in architecture. In fact, the separation of rock-shelter or rock-face paintings, on the one hand, from architectural decoration and murals, on the otherie. between rock painting and wall painting is merely a convenient division imposed by us on a unified tradition which made no essential distinction between a cave-temple and one built of brick and plaster. The early rock-shelter residence of the monk, the guha or lena, was the equivalent of the free-standing monastic leaf hut' or pannasala, both of which became in time 'residences' of the Buddha. i.e. the cave-temple and the image house, respectively. The one was in no way different ritually from the other. In the same manner, the garbha grha or womb-chamber of the stupa or dagaba, in which relies of the Buddha were deposited. was the 'cave' par excellence, located at the centre of the *stupa-mountain".

These ritual correspondences are clear to us in architectural interpretation but not so obvious in the study of paintings, with the result that the rock paintings often seem very different from the wall paintings. There are at least two reasons for this. The first relates to actual differences in the layout of the paintings in monuments of different types. Thus, in rock shelters or rock-associated structures, the choice and arrangement of the paintings were profoundly affected by the configuration of the rock surface and the available space, while structural monuments had a relatively regularized distribution of wall surface and painted area. The second concerns factors of destruction, where- as historical experience shows-the chances of survival in rock shelters were very much higher than in structural monuments. It is significant that there is virtually no coherent fragment of early wall painting that has survived to any appreciable degree other than the paintings recovered from the excavated relic-chambers of ancient dagabas and the unique example of the Tivanka murals at Polonnaruva. The fact that wall paintings and painted decoration were fairly widely applied in architecture is clear from literary and archaeological evidence. A number of ruined buildings, both at Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva but mostly dating from the Polonnaruva period, show vestiges of painted decoration both internally and externally. This takes the form of flat areas of monochrome colouring and simple linear decoration, often emphasizing or sometimes

Pl. 34 Floral detail. From north entrance archway, Lankatilaka temple, Polonnaruva. 12th century (7), (From a copy by D.A.L.. Perera, c.1922, in the National Museum, Colombo) The original painting was on a plaster ground with a brick support. It resembles the vahalkada paintings from Anuradhapura described by Smither

replacing moulded architectural detail-as in the case of the ruined palaces at Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva, or royal buildings such as the 'Audience Hall' and the "Mausoleum' at Polonnaruva- as well as much more intricate floral and geometrical motifs of the type seen in the ceiling paintings at Sigiriya, and in the Lankatilaka. "Potgul Vehera and Tivanka shrines at Polonnaruva. We can be fairly certain that many buildings were colourfully painted and much more profusely decorated than is indicated by the bare masonry and stonework which survive today."

Bell's description of the Mausoleum' by the side of the lake at Polonnaruva, when it was first discovered, gives us an impression of the use of colour in architecture in a way that we can hardly visualize today:

The surface ornamentation is tastefully conceived and has been completed with great care, the lines are true and sharp, the plaster hard and smooth vivid and varied (the) colouring of the entire facades. the main colouring of the walls is in monochrome: A bright blue covers all the broadest spaces, only the pilasters and narrow string courses are picked out in red

The dagaha as the principal ritual monument of the Sri Lankan Buddhist tradition must certainly have been a subject of considerable painterly interest. This is clearly borne out by the floral and animal motifs and figures painted on the vahalkadas or highly ornamented frontispieces of almost all the principal dagabas at Anuradhapura. Protected over the centuries by being buried in earth, debris and vegetation, their exposure by early excavators has often led to the destruction of the paintings. Scanty remains of painted decoration, however, can still be seen at the Ruvanvalisaya and the Mirisavati dagabas at Anuradhapura and the Kantaka Cetiya at Mihintale (Fig.19). The frontispieces themselves are of great antiquity and date from the early centuries of the present era. Their sculptural decoration represents the earliest surviving examples of Sri Lankan sculpture in stone, preserving, as we observed earlier, a treatment of the female form that anticipates the art of Sigiriya. The paintings, however, as an carly documentalist, J.G. Smither, rightly observed, belong to the last phase of monumental restoration in the 12th or possibly 13th century. Smither's watercolour copies of the Ruvanvalisaya paintings are still preserved in the archives of the Archaeological Department in Colombo, while his description of the paintings is a detailed account of a method of architectural ornamentation that can rarely

be seen today. Other examples of painted ornament from similar contexts are found in the copies in the National Museum (P134) and in recently discovered fragments from the Cultural Triangle excavations at the Jetavana Vihara at Anuradhapura (Fig 36). The Jetavana fragment shows and unusual combination of blue and green tones, as well as several layers of pigment."

Fig. 36 Fragment with frieze of

hamsas (sacred geese) and lotuses.

Vahalkada, Jetavana dagaba,

Anuradhapura. 12th century (?).

(Drawing by Dayananda

Binaragama,1985.)

Fig. 37 Male figure and

attendants. Relic-chamber drawing,

Mihintale. c. 8th century. The

principal figure is placed within a

circle and centred upon a vertical

line bisecting the circle. It has been

identified as one of the Lokapalas,

the four rulers protecting the world.

Many of the motifs seen in these vahalkada paintings, such as dwarf, lion and hamsa figures, show close similarities to forms used in sculptural ornamentation and clearly demonstrate the unity of sculpture and painting. Moreover, the comparison of these vahalkada paintings with the ceiling paintings at Sigiriya shows the continuity as well as the development of decorative concepts and motifs over a period of nearly seven or eight hundred years. This is particularly noticeable in the very similar and, at the same time, very different use of the intricate whorl or volute and the combination of alternating circle or diamond forms. Of course, the best-preserved examples of paintings from dagabas are relic-chamber paintings from Mihintale and Mahiyangana, now removed from their original contexts and housed in the museums at Mihintale and Anuradhapura. The representation in relic-chambers of Jatakas and of the events associated with the life of the historical Buddha is, as we have seen, one of the most ancient practices in Sri Lankan art. It goes back, if the Mahavamsa account can be relied on at this early date, to the 2nd century BC, in the paintings executed in the relic-chamber of the Ruvanvalisaya.S9 In this connection, an interesting expression of the Sri Lankan concern with historical tradition is to be found in the 18th-century € Mahavamsa' panels at Dambulla, where we have an actual painting of the Ruvanvalisaya with its relic-chambers showing the Vessantara Jataka and other murals. The Mihintale and Mahiyangana paintings are archaeological discoveries which confirm the existence of these traditions in the Late Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva periods. The Mihintale relic-chamber was discovered by Paranavitana in his excavations of a dagaba to the east of the Kantaka Cetiya at Mihintale.60 As with all relic chambers, this was one of several — usually three — compartments, located one above the other in the centre of a solid mass of brick masonry which forms the dome and basal terraces of the dagaba. The chambers were embedded in the masonry and totally inaccessible. They served as repositories for the relics, which signified the presence of the Buddha within the monument. They also formed part of the cosmological symbolism associated with the dagaba. The chambers seem to have represented the three worlds the heavens, the earth and the underworld — of Buddhist cosmology, centred around the cosmic mountain, Mount Meru. The paintings, therefore, though never actually viewed once the monument was completed, were part of the ritual apparatus that activated the symbolic meaning of the chambers and their contents — as Paranavitana expresses it, they served 'purposes that may be called magical' .61 The paintings at Mihintale, dated by associated palaeographic evidence to the 8th century, are only red-and-black line-drawings or painters' sketches, even retaining the geometrical outlines that guided the composition. They are intentionally unfinished, perhaps for reasons of economy or time, but were obviously considered adequate for the ritual functions which they performed. The paintings depict Lokapalas, the four rulers protecting the world. Each occupies the

Fig. 38 Crowned male figures, probably with male and female

attendants, seated amidst clouds. Relic-chamber drawing, Mihintale.

c. 8th century. If the identification of the principal figures as

Lokapalas is correct, the figure to the left would represent the central

figure in this composition.