[Footnote 4:  Wei shoo, a “History of the Wei Tartar Dynasty,” written A.D. 590.  B. cxiv. p. 9.]

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,"[1] is always observed by the devout Buddhists as a solemn festival.

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. lxxii.; UPHAM’S version, vol. i. p. 275.]

Many of the works which were thus executed were either golden[1] or gilt, with brilliants inserted in the eyes, and the draperies enriched with jewels.[2] Fa Hian in the fourth 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.[3] 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."[4]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. xxx. pp. 180, 182; Rajaratnacari, pp. 47, 48; Rajavali, p. 237.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 258.]

[Footnote 3:  “Parmi toutes les choses precieuses qu’on y voit, il y a une image de jaspe bleu haute de deux tchang:  tout son corps est forme des sept choses precieuses; elle est etincellante de splendeur et plus majestueuse qu’on ne saurait l’exprimer.  Dans la main droite elle tient une perle d’un prix inestimable.”—­Foe Koue Ki, ch. xxxviii. p. 333.]

[Footnote 4:  A.D. 459. Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 258.  Another statue of gold, with the features and members appropriately coloured in gems, is spoken of in the second century B.C. (Mahawanso, ch. xxx. p. 180.)]

Ivory also and sandal-wood[1], 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.

[Footnote 1:  Rajaratnacari, p. 72.]

Figures of elephants were similarly formed at an early period.[1] An image of Buddha so composed in the 12th century, is still standing at Pollanarrua[2], and every temple has one or more effigies, either sedent, erect, or recumbent, carefully modelled in cemented clay, and coloured after life.