Arent Jansen

Arent Jansen, a draughtsman and painter in the Company’s service with the rank of ensign, was in Ceylon in the early 1730s, when Governor van Domburg commissioned him to record the island’s noteworthy sites. Among them stood the rock temple of Mulgirigala, which the Dutch called Adam’s Hill. Jansen built a hut at the foot of the rock, climbed it, was shown its painted chambers by the priests, and took soot-and-paper rubbings of the inscriptions, which he afterwards redrew in miniature, a patient method that speaks to the care of the man.

Many of his sketches passed to his friend J. W. Heydt, who had them engraved for his own book of 1744 with due acknowledgement, so that Jansen’s careful record of Mulgirigala survives at one remove. Heydt praised his accuracy, calling him an honest and experienced man of thirty years in the East. His work, preserved chiefly through another’s pages, remains a valuable early witness to the rock temple and its chambers.