is the diet described in the Mahawanso as being provided for the priesthood by the munificence of the kings; “rice prepared with sugar and honey, rice with clarified butter, and rice in its ordinary form."[3] In addition to the enjoyment of a life of idleness, another powerful incentive conspired to swell the numbers of these devotees.  The followers and successors of Wijayo preserved intact the institution of caste, which they had brought with them from the valley of the Ganges; and, although caste was not abolished by the teachers of Buddhism, who retained and respected it as a social institution, it was practically annulled and absorbed in the religious character;—­all who embraced the ascetic life being simultaneously absolved from all conventional disabilities, and received as members of the sacred community with all its exalted prerogatives.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Rajavali, p. 198.  Hiouen Thsang, the Chinese pilgrim, describing Anarajapoora in the seventh century, says:  “A cote du palais du roi; on a construit une vaste cuisine ou l’on prepare chaque jour des aliments pour dix-huit mille religieux.  A l’heure de repas, les religieux viennent, un pot a la main, pour recevoir leur nourriture.  Apres l’avoir obtenue ils s’en retournent chacun dans leur chambre.”—­HIOUEN THSANG, Transl. M. JULIEN, lib. xi. tom. ii. p. 143.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xiv. p. 82.]

[Footnote 3:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxii.; Rajaratnacari, ch. i. p. 37, ch. ii. p. 56, 60, 62.]

[Footnote 4:  Professor Wilson, Journ.  Roy.  Asiat.  Soc. vol. xvi. p. 249.]

Along with food, clothing consisting of three garments to complete the sacerdotal robes, as enjoined by the Buddhist ritual[1], was distributed at certain seasons; and in later times a practice obtained of providing robes for the priests by “causing the cotton to be picked from the tree at sunrise, cleaned, spun, woven, dyed yellow, and made into garments and presented before sunset."[2] The condition of the priesthood was thus reduced to a state of absolute dependency on alms, and at the earliest period of their history the vow of poverty, by which their order is bound, would seem to have been righteously observed.

[Footnote 1:  To avoid the vanity of dress or the temptation to acquire property, no Buddhist priest is allowed to have more than one set of robes, consisting of three pieces, and if an extra one be bestowed on him it must be surrendered to the chapter of his wihara within ten days.  The dimensions must not exceed a specified length, and when obtained new the cloth must be disfigured with mud or otherwise before he puts it on.  A magnificent robe having been given to Gotama, his attendant Ananda, in order to destroy its intrinsic value, cut it into thirty pieces and sewed them together in four divisions, so that the robe resembled the patches of a rice-field divided by embankments.  And in conformity with this precedent the robes of every priest are similarly dissected and reunited.—­Hardy’s Eastern Monachism, c. xii. p. 117; Rajaratnacari, ch. ii. pp. 60, 66.]