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Study with reference to Sigiriya, Sri Lanka.
Besides the efforts that are of a descriptive and celebrative nature, studies related to Sri Lanka's historical built heritage largely view material remains in historical, sociological, socio-historical and semiological perspectives. There is hardly any serious attempt to view such material remains from a technical-analytical approach to understand the compositional aspects of their design. The 5th century AC royal complex at Sigiriya is no exception in this regard. The enormous wealth of information and the material remains unearthed during more than 100 years of field-based research by several generations of archaeologists provide an ideal opportunity for such analysis. The Sigiriya Royal Gardens fills the gap in research related to Sri Lanka's historical built heritage in general, and to Sigiriya in particular. Therefore, the present research attempts to read Sigiriya as a landscape architectonic design to expose its architectonic composition and design instruments.
The monumental complex of Sigiriya, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is located in the central province of Sri Lanka and traditionally has been deemed to be the capital and site of the palace of Kassapa I, 5th-6th century AD. Drawing on archaeological, literary, religious and cultural evidence from Sigiriya, and from Sri Lanka and India in general, Raja de Silva presents a brand new theory on the identity and function of the site. Casting doubt on earlier interpretations of the site as a palace or fortress, he suggests that Sigiriya was never the abode of a God King', but was a long-standing monastery built several centuries before the time of Kassapa. The paintings for which Sigiriya has long been famous are reinterpreted, not as ladies from Kassapa's court, but as representations of Tara, the most important goddess in Mahayana Buddhism to whom the building was dedicated.
Contributed articles brought out on the occasion of the centenary of the Archaeological Department of Sri Lanka.
Volume Three contains 1643 records on South Asia selected from the ABIA South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology Index database at www.abia.net. Volume Three has been compiled by specialists of the ABIA Project stationed at Leiden, Colombo, New Delhi, Dhaka, Kathmandu and Peshawar. It features a selection of publications in print published between 2002 and 2007 on prehistory and protohistory, historical archaeology, art history (from ancient to contemporary), material culture, epigraphy and palaeography, numismatics and sigillography. Covered are South Asia and culturally related regions of Afghanistan, South Uzbekistan, South Tajikistan and Tibet. The bibliographic descriptions (with the original diacritics), controlled keywords and elucidating annotations make this reference work into a reliable guide to recent scholarly work in the fields of the ABIA Index.
In the fifth century Kasyapa I acquires his throne by murdering his father, who he plasters up alive into a wall. Unable to redeem himself with his people for this crime he abandons his capital and flees deep into the inhospitable forests of central Sri Lanka. There, in an area dominated by a massive black column of rock, he builds himself a new capital. At the center of his new city is the royal citadel, a terrestrial paradise of colorful gardens, pavilions and ponds. The once dark and foreboding rock he transforms to appear like a huge dazzling white cloud. Around its girth, like a giant colorful cummerbund, he paints an exquisite tapestry depicting celestial nymphs. Then on an escarpment half way up this sheer rock he then builds a colossal gatehouse in the form of a fearsome sphinx-like lion giving his lair it name, Sigiriya-Lion Mountain. There on its summit, hidden from view, he lives in splendid isolation tormented by fear and guilt. His city thrives for less than fourteen year. Then as quickly as it appears it disappears, abandoned, and quickly forgotten; relegated to an obscure footnote in history. This is the story of Kashyapa and his masterpiece-Sigiriya as it has never been told before.