MANUAL AND MECHANICAL ARTS. Weaving.—­The aborigines practised the art of weaving before the arrival of Wijayo.  Kuweni, when the adventurer approached her, was “seated at the foot of a tree, spinning thread;"[1] cotton was the ordinary material, but “linen cloth” is mentioned in the second century before Christ.[2] White cloths are spoken of as having been employed, in the earliest times, in every ceremony for covering chairs on which persons of rank were expected to be seated; whole “webs of cloth” were used to wrap the carandua in which the sacred relics were enclosed[3], and one of the kings, on the occasion of consecrating a dagoba at Mihintala, covered with “white cloth” the road taken by the procession between the mountain and capital, a distance of more than seven miles.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. vii. p.48; Rajavali, p.173.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch, xxv. p.152.]

[Footnote 3:  Rajaratnacari, p.72.]

[Footnote 4:  A.D. 8. Rajavali, p. 227; Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. p. 213.]

In later times a curious practice prevailed, which exists to the present day;—­on occasions when it is intended to make offerings of yellow robes to the priesthood, the cotton was plucked from the tree at daybreak, and “cleaned, spun, woven, dyed, and made into garments” before the setting of the sun.  This custom, called Catina Dhawna, is first referred to in the Rajaratnacari in the reign of Prakrarna I.[1], A.D. 1153.

[Footnote 1:  See ante, Vol.  II p. 35. Rajaratnacari, pp. 104, 109, 112, 135; Rajavali, p. 261; HARDY’S Eastern Monachism, ch. xii. pp. 114, 121.]

The expression “made into garments” alludes to the custom enjoined on the priests of having the value of the material destroyed, before consenting to accept it as a gift, thus carrying out their vow of poverty.  The robe of Gotama Buddha was cut into thirty pieces, these were again united, so that they “resembled the patches of ground in a rice field;” and hence he enjoined on his followers the observance of the same practice.[1]

[Footnote 1:  HARDY’S Eastern Monachism, ch. xii. p. 117.  See ante, Vol.  I. Pt.  III. ch. iv. p. 351.]

The arts of bleaching and dyeing were understood as well as that of weaving, and the Mahawanso, in describing the building of the Ruanwelle dagoba, at Anarajapoora, B.C. 161, tells of a canopy formed of “eight thousand pieces of cloth of every hue."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. xxx. p. 179, See also ch. xxxviii. p. 258.]

Earliest Artisans.—­VALENTYN, writing on the traditional information acquired from the Singhalese themselves, records the belief of the latter, that in the suite of the Pandyan princess, who arrived to marry Wijayo, were artificers from Madura, who were the first to introduce the knowledge and practice of handicrafts amongst the native population.  According to the story, these were goldsmiths, blacksmiths, brass-founders, carpenters, and stone-cutters.[1]