The geography of Nicholas Roerich’s travels in Ceylon (on the basis of the artist’s writings and paintings)

Abstract

This article discusses Nicholas Roerich´s travel to Ceylon as part of his Central Asian expedition of 1923 -1928, which is a less-known episode in the biography of the artist and thinker. Roerich’s stays in India, Bhutan, Manchuria, China and other countries are already well known, but his visit to Ceylon has not yet been subject to research. One important question pertains to chronology: while Roerich´s diaries establish that he was on the island in 1923, his letters from December 1923 indicate that at the time of writing he was in India. Solving this issue is one purpose of this article. On Roerich’s map of his Central Asian Expedition, Ceylon is marked as a point of stay, yet without specifying the particular places of his visit. This article reconstructs the route of Nicholas Roerich’s trip to Ceylon during which he established contacts and spiritual ties with representatives of religious and secular circles of this island. The present study is based on Roerich´s documents of personal origin, as well as on visual materials from the cycle ‘Ashram’ that the artist created during his visit to Ceylon.

Keywords

• Central Asian expedition
• Ceylon
• Nicholas Roerich
• Theosophical Society
• E.P. Blavatsky
• K. Jinarajadas
• Anagarika Dharmapala
• Henry Alcott