[Footnote 1:  A.D. 432. Rajaratnacari, p. 74.]

[Footnote 2:  Possibly the “standing figure of Buddha” mentioned in the Rajavali, p. 253.]

Architecture.—­In Ceylon, as in Egypt, Assyria, and India, the ruins which survive to attest the character of ancient architecture are exclusively sacred, with the exception of occasional traces of the residences of theocratic royalty; but everything has perished which could have afforded an idea of the dwellings and domestic architecture of the people.  The cause of this is to be traced in the perishable nature of the sun-dried clay, of which the walls of the latter were composed.  Added to this, in Ceylon there were the pride of rank and the pretensions of the priesthood, which, whilst they led to lavish expenditure of the wealth of the kingdom upon palaces and monuments, and the employment of stone in the erection of temples[1] and monasteries, forbade the people to construct their dwellings of any other material than sun-baked earth.[2] This practice continued to the latest period; and nothing struck the British army of occupation with more surprise on entering the city of Kandy, after its capture in 1815, than to find the palaces and temples alone constructed of stone, whilst the streets and private houses were formed of mud and thatch.

[Footnote 1:  Rajaratnacari, pp. 78, 79.]

[Footnote 2:  Rajavali, p. 222.]

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 quantity 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 substitution 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 Anarajapoora, 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 Anarajapoora 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.]