In one of the rock inscriptions deciphered by Prinsep, King Asoca, in addressing himself to his Buddhist subjects, distinguishes them as “ascetics and house-holders.”  In the sacred books a laic is called a “graha pali,” meaning “the ruler of a house;” and in contra-distinction Fa Hian, the Chinese Buddhist, speaks of the priests of Ceylon under the designation of “the house-less,” to mark their abandonment of social enjoyments.[1] Anticipating the probable necessity of their eventually resorting to houses for accommodation, Buddha directed that, if built for an individual, the internal measurement of a cell should be twelve spans in length by seven in breadth[2]; and, if restricted to such dimensions, the assertions of the Singhalese chronicles become intelligible as to the prodigious number of such dwellings said to have been raised by the early kings.[3]

[Footnote 1:  “Les hommes hors de leur maisons.”—­FA HIAN, Fo[)e] Kou[)e] Ki, ch. xxxix.  This is the equivalent of the Singhalese term for the same class, agariyan-pubbajito, used in the Pittakas.]

[Footnote 2:  HARDY’S Eastern Monachism, ch. xiii. p. 122.]

[Footnote 3:  The Rajaratnacari says that Devenipiatissa caused eighty-four thousand temples to be built during his reign, p. 35.]

But the multitudes who were thus attracted to a life of indolent devotion became in a short time so excessive that recourse was had to other devices for combining economy with accommodation, and groups of such cells were gradually formed into wiharas and monasteries, the inmates of which have uniformly preserved their organisation and order.  Still the edifices thus constructed have never exhibited any tendency to depart from the primitive simplicity so strongly enjoined by their founder; and, down to the present time, the homes of the Buddhist priesthood are modest and humble structures generally reared of mud and thatch, with no pretension to external beauty and no attempt at internal decoration.

[Sidenote:  B.C. 289.]

To supply to the ascetics the means of seclusion and exercise, the early kings commenced the erection of ambulance-halls; and gardens were set apart for the use of the great temple communities.  The Mahawanso describes, with all the pomp of Oriental diction, the ceremony observed by King Tissa on the occasion of setting apart a portion of ground as a site for the first wihara at his capital; the monarch in person, attended by standard bearers and guards with golden staves, having come to mark out the boundary with a plough drawn by elephants.[1] A second monastery was erected by him on the summit of Mihintala[2]; a third was attached to the dagoba of the Thuparamaya, and others were rapidly founded in every quarter of the island.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. xv. p. 99.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xx. p. 123.]

[Footnote 3:  Five hundred were built by one king alone, the third in succession from Devenipiatissa, B.C. 246 (Mahawanso, ch. xxi, p. 127).  About the same period the petty chiefs of Rohuna and Mahagam were equally zealous in their devout labours, the one having erected sixty-four wiharas in the east of the island, and the other sixty-eight in the south.—­Mahawanso, ch. xxiv. p. 145, 148.]