WD540(44)

‘The Throne and audience Chamber, Palace.’

CALLED ‘Thee-ha-thuna-yàzà-pulleng’, and used only on occasions of importance.

If this drawing realizes in any degree to the eye the blaze and brilliancy of the colonnaded hall, with its choir and transepts, its elaborately ornate and singular throne, glittering in mosaic and gold, described in the Report (pages 98 and 99), it will also serve to convey a conception of the gorgeous interiors of those wondrous monasteries of Umeerapoora, known as the ‘Queen’s Kioams’, by the assurance being received that here is little more than the skeleton of what there rejoices in the fulness and substance of decorative magnificence.

In order, though imperfectly, to form an idea of the marvellous and ingenious workmanship of these monastic buildings, it is necessary to transfer, in imagination, the mosaic glitter, the laborious arabesque like carvings, and ingenious and jewelled tracery of the Throne, onto every wall and pillar, pannel, post, screen and roof of the place; not with mere barbaric and gaudy profusion, without judgment or taste, but with a vast amount of elegance in design, and of artistic feeling, — wanting, it may be, in delicacy of execution in the minute details, but not in effect of composition. It is hardly saying too much to declare that the first impression created upon the mind is that such a fabric must have been reared like coral reefs, or by some order of beings with hands infinitely less than human, and patience as infinitely more than Burman.

Of the exterior of these strikingly gorgeous and picturesque buildings and their endless carvings, Captain Tripe’s beautiful Photographs render description needless.

It is singular that the Burmans, with all their ignorance of a true God, if not indeed of any God at all, seem far to excel most other nations in conception of what is due to things sacred, which actually appear to monopolize all that art and skill can compass, or wealth command amongst the people.