A MEETING OF CULTURES: THE UNIQUE VERNACULAR CHAPEL AT TRINITY COLLEGE KANDY, SRI LANKA – By Ranil Bibile K A N D Y ! The very name is redolent of history, culture, festivals, dances, caparisoned elephants, and historic rituals. Ancient temples nestle in remote corners of this Cande Udarata – the old Kandyan Kingdom. The architecture, hipped roofs, frescoes, wood carvings and antiquities of these places of worship provide a veritable feast for the eyes, vying for attention with the surrounding vistas of cloud-capped mountains, rivers, waterfalls and verdant plateaus. Kandyan architecture has a sublime beauty all its own, adroitly captured into words by the savant Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy when in 1905 he wrote his famous ‘Open Letter to the Kandyan Chiefs’, telling them that; “Architecture needs for its complete expression, the reasonable intelligent co–operation of all the arts; and in the days I speak of it did not lack ...