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The  Sigiri  graffiti

                 The Sigiriya paintings have preoccupied visitors to the site over many centuries. After the abandonment of the palace in the fifth or sixth century and the establishment of a monastery in the boulder and water garden area to the west of the rock, Sigiriya became a place of pilgrimage for visitors from all over the country, who came to see the paintings, the palace and the lion staircase. Greatly inspired by the paintings, they composed poems addressed mostly to the ladies depicted in them and inscribed their verses on the highly polished surface of the Mirror Wall just below the painting gallery, known as the ‘Sigiri graffiti’ and dating from about the sixth to the early fourteenth century, hundreds of these scribbled verses cover the surface of the gallery wall and also some of the plastered surfaces in the caves below.

                     Nearly seven hundred of these were deciphered by Paranvitana, and another 150 recently by Benille Priyanka. The poems, which express the thoughts and emotions of ancient visitors to Sigiriya, provide not only revealing comments on the paintings themselves but also an insight into the cultivated sensibilities of the time and its appreciation of art and beauty.

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