12-Century-Old Graffiti

PRICELESS SPIRITUAL HERITAGE

FROM YESTERDAY’S HUMANITY

TO THE HUMANITY OF TOMORROW

Diyakapilla, October 5, 2005

Olliergues, December 27–31, 2005

SIGIRI GRAFFITI

After Sri Lanka’s King Kasyapa’s fall in 495 CE, Sigiriya goes back to being religious probably with pilgrimages. Many visitors are proved and documented. Inside the Mirror Wall covered with a special lustrous plaster, all along the gallery under the frescoes, between the 9th and the 13th centuries, essentially between the 9th and 11th centuries, visitors inscribed small poems in traditional form composed of two or four lines in full agreement with contemporary poetics. Note this confirms a high educational level among the visitors. These small poems known as the Sigiri Graffiti are most of the time signed and we thus can know the names and social positions of their authors. There are about 1,200 poems of which about 900 have been published: 685 by Dr S. Paranavitana in 1956 and 150 in 1990 and 1994 by Benille Priyanka who is working on the remaining 300 or so. In the following selection I used the year of publication, 56, 90 and 94, and the number in these publications to identify them.

This is a translation in English and in French of a selection of Sigiri Graffiti.

Sigiri Graffiti (Excerpts English)

90–14

Ladies o’ beauty console our eyes

Shining golden on th’ Rock of fame

Forever lost hanging smiling

The snares of life stranded lifeless

90–15

Many people the lion greet

Beg him t’ see the attractive girls

Who stay so close water lilies

Their skin so blue next to Sihi (Sinha)

90–17

Heaven’s lady the blowing wind

Grieves with you your departed King

The jungle birds only presence