000			02028nam a22002177a 4500
005			20250926164212.0
008			250926b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
028			_aDonated by Prof. Romila Thapar
082			_a709.54 COO
100			_aCoomaraswamy, Ananda K.
245			_aMediaeval Sinhalese Art _c/Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.
260			_aNew Delhi _b: Munshiram Manoharlal _c, 2003.
300			_axvi, 344p. _c: 28cm.
365			_b00
520			_aThis book is a record of the work and the life of the craftsman in a feudal society not unlike that of Early Mediaeval Europe. It deals, not with a period of great attainment in fine art, but with a beautiful and dignified scheme of peasant decoration, based upon the traditions of Indian art and craft. Sinhalese art is essentially Indian, but possesses this special interest, that it is in many ways of an earlier character, and more truly Hindu - though Buddhist in intention - than any Indian art surviving on the mainland so late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The minor arts, and the painting, are such as we might expect to have been associated with the culture of Asoka's time, and the builders of Barahat. The period dealt with has been called Mediaeval; but it must be understood that changes of style in decorative art take place comparatively slowly, and that it is generally impossible to say at a glance whether a given piece of work be of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth century, or even older or later. Most of the specimens here figured or described date from the latter part of the eighteenth century. Mediaeval conditions survived in full force until the British occupation of Kandy in 1815, and what is actually described in this book is the work of Sinhalese craftsmen under mediaeval conditions, mainly as these survived in the eighteenth century, and, in a less degree, even to the present day.
650			_aSinhalese Art
650			_aMediaeval art
650			_aArt
700			_aAnanada K Coumaraswamy
942			_cBOOK
999			_c66179 _d66179