File:In old Ceylon (1908) (14596538579).jpg

Identifier: inoldceylon00farr (find matches)
Title: In old Ceylon
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Farrer, Reginald John, 1880-1920
Subjects: Sri Lanka -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : E. Arnold
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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stumpy roundcolumns. And all—dagaba and pillars—are whitened toa purity that almost blinds the eyes in that mercilesswhite glare of sunlight on the naked rock plateau. Abovethe dagaba waves a tall exquisite group of palms, andthen, beyond, the Chinese bulk of the monastery buildings,the church, and the vihara, a concise, beautiful presencebuilt up with columned portico, and upper galleries ofcarved wood. Another small building stands to one side,and, in the interspace, very far away, pale and clear in theuttermost distance, one soft blue jag of mountain standsup over many miles of hill and jungle. Planted stark on the bare rock stands Gadaladeniya,approached over the undulating expanse of sun-floggedstone. Black in the glare falls the shadow of its project-ing eaves, and the only spot of refuge is in the shelter ofits porch, whence one looks back, through the pillars ofcarved stone, very fine and ancient, to the rise and fall ofthe plateau, the gleaming snow of the dagaba, and its
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Gadaladeniya: Dagaba and church. GADALAD^NIYA AND PERADENIYA 91 cluster of palms to the left. In the foreground stands amonument, thick-graven with writing, to record somedonation, some reformation, by some Cinhalese monarch.And that small dagaba, sheltered by its canopy of four short pillars, may give us some faint idea of what must,in their time, have been the splendour of the ancient royaldagabas of Thiiparama and Ambastala, once encircled,each, by row upon row, and rank upon rank, of fine delicatepillars, capitalled with lacy carvings, that carried a com-plete arcaded gallery round the sacred dome itself. But the measure of all this bygone opulence is themeasure of the decay of Buddhism in Lanka. For Buddhism, as an official organism, shows less of its character-istic loveliness in Ceylon than in Japan, Burma, or Siam.It is never fair, indeed, to judge a religion by its aspectin a country where it has been, from its very beginning,the state-established cult. For thus, to some de

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