[Footnote 1:  TURNOUR’S Epitome, p. 33.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv.  The Buddhist kings of Burmah are still accustomed to boast, almost in the terms of the Mahawanso, of the distinction which they have earned, by the multitudes of tanks they have constructed or restored.  See YULE’S Narrative of the Mission to Ava in 1855, p. 106.]

These broad possessions, the church, under all vicissitudes and revolutions, has succeeded in retaining to the present day.  Their territories, it is true, have been diminished in extent by national decay; the destruction of works for irrigation has converted into wilderness and jungle plains once teeming with fertility; and the mild policy of the British government, by abolishing raja-kariya[1], has emancipated the peasantry, who are no longer the serfs either of the temples or the chiefs.  But in every district of the island the priests are in the enjoyment of the most fertile lands, over which the crown exercises no right of taxation; and such is the extent of their possessions that, although their precise limits have not been ascertained by the local government, they have been conjectured with probability to be equal to one-third of the cultivated land of the island.

[Footnote 1:  Compulsory labour.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 104.]

One peculiarity in the Buddhist ceremonial served at all times to give a singular impulse to the progress of horticulture.  Flowers and garlands are introduced in its religious rites to the utmost excess.  The atmosphere of the wiharas and temples is rendered oppressive with the perfume of champac and jessamine, and the shrine of the deity, the pedestals of his image, and the steps leading to the temple are strewn thickly with blossoms of the nagaha and the lotus.  At an earlier period the profusion in which these beautiful emblems were employed in sacred decorations appears almost incredible; the Mahawanso relates that the Ruanwelle dagoba, which was 270 feet in height, was on one occasion “festooned with garlands from pedestal to pinnacle till it resembled one uniform bouquet;” and at another time, it and the lofty dagoba at Mihintala were buried under heaps of jessamine from the ground to the summit.[1] Fa Hian, in describing his visit to Anarajapoora in the fourth century, dwells with admiration and wonder on the perfumes and flowers lavished on their worship by the Singhalese[2]; and the native historians constantly allude as familiar incidents to the profusion in which they were employed on ordinary occasions, and to the formation by successive kings of innumerable gardens for the floral requirements of the temples.  The capital was surrounded on all sides[3] by flower gardens, and these were multiplied so extensively that, according to the Rajaratnacari, one was to be found within a distance of four leagues in any part of Ceylon.[4] Amongst the regulations of the temple built at Dambedinia, in the thirteenth century, was “every day an offering of 100,000 flowers, and each day a different flower."[5]