features are drawn with grief, and the eyes half closed. The crossed arms denote the deferential attitude of a disciple, and the figure, a little "hunched" or swung to one side, with the left shoulder higher than the other, speaks dejection in every line. Human emotion of a poignant kind has been wrought into stone. Lieut. Fagan, the first European who rediscovered these ruins, burst through the jungle in 1820, and with a shock found this upstanding colossal figure regarding him from the surrounding foliage. "I cannot describe what I felt at the moment,' "he wrote afterwards. Not less impressive was the sight to me when, breaking out into the open in the dewy morning, nearly one hundred years later, I first saw the fashioned stone full of tense suggestiveness. A low wave of sound greeted my ears, rising and falling like a litany, and drawing near I saw a row of white-clad figures ranged in line before the prostrate image, chanting their invocations. At the head of the line was a handsome grey-bearded man swinging a brass pot, next to him his son, a fine stripling, and then came the women-folk, a singularly good-looking, middle-aged woman, a wizen shaven-headed nun, and two little girls of about eight and nine with long black tresses flowing loose down their backs. The patriarch from time to time advanced a few steps, and with a dexterous swing of his lota, or brass pot, poured water in a stream over the head and face of Buddha. That Ananda's feet had been similarly anointed the wet stains showed. For untold generations the carved stone has resisted the sluicing of the monsoon rains, and the oblation can in no way injure it. In low tones, so as not to disturb the religious ceremony, my guide, himself a Buddhist, explained that these people were pilgrims; they lived in Colombo, and had gone by rail to Anuradhapura, and thence walked the sixty-five miles in order to visit the sacred shrines of Polonnaruwa. They will not travel in a bullock-cart, for it would be loss of merit so to use animal labour; they had even refused his own offer to send their bundles back by cart; they would spare themselves no whit of the toil. The Gal Vihara is frequently visited by such pilgrims, but the majority come in April or May, and many wealthy people use their own cars, thus solving the problem of transit to the satisfaction of their consciences. This family used no such subterfuges. As they turned away, having completed their service, I met them, and was struck by the dignified bearing and fine face of the leader, who might have stood for the reincarnation of some Druid priest. Having made their simple breakfast in the cave shrine, they passed on to other sacred places in the city, and slept that night in the open, by which they must have acquired abundant "merit," for the weather was uncertain, and it rained all night. Yet when I saw them again next morning, as they were just starting on their sixty-five-mile walk, they were as clean and neat as on the preceding day. Between the figure of Ananda and the caveshrine is a large sloping piece of rock, smoothed and inscribed in order that the duties of monks and the rules prescribed for their conduct might be fully set forth. The present little cave-shrine is only a remnant of what once was a large monastery, the ruins of which may be traced far to the front. In the corners of the shrine a little of the old fresco painting can still be seen preserved by wire-netting. The central figure is itself enclosed in a sort of" meat-safe" of similar netting to save it from the well-meant but destructive attentions of pilgrims, who like to attach their little wax candles to it by their own grease. Something of the "meat-safe" resemblance must have been on the mind of the American visitor, who observed on seeing it, "I've read a good deal about the fierceness of your mosquitoes in this country, but that beats all I imagined. If you have to protect your stone images against them with wire curtains, they must be the very dickens! " The Buddha is backed and surrounded by carvings of figures of singular richness, and it is not difficult to believe this was intended to represent "the cave of the spirits of knowledge." The further sedent Buddha on the rock westward does not usually impress visitors as being very interesting, but it is well worth while to examine the carving around it. It rests in a recess of the rock from which it has been cut, so that the rock-face projects like a screen on each side, somewhat after the manner of the rock-cut figures at Abu-Simbel, Egypt, though of course on a tiny scale in comparison. The Egyptians allowed their grand figures to face full daylight, open to the infinite canopy of heaven, while these figures of Ceylon, now uncovered, were once shut in by shrines, |