[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv.; Rajaratnacari, p. 52, 53.]

[Footnote 2:  FA HIAN. Foe Koue Ki, ch. xxxviii. p. 335.]

[Footnote 3:  Rajavali, p. 227; Mahawanso, ch. xi. p. 67.]

[Footnote 4:  Rajaratnacari, p. 29, 49.  Amongst the officers attached to the great establishments of the priests in Mihintala, A.D. 246, there are enumerated in an inscription engraven on a rock there, a secretary, a treasurer, a physician, a surgeon, a painter, twelve cooks, twelve thatchers, ten carpenters, six carters, and two florists.]

[Footnote 5:  Rajaratnacari, p. 103.  The same book states that another king, in the fifteenth century, “offered no less than 6,480,320 sweet smelling flowers” at the shrine of the Tooth.—­Ib., p. 136.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 104.]

Another advantage conferred by Buddhism on the country was the planting of fruit trees and esculent vegetables for the gratuitous use of travellers in all the frequented parts of the island.  The historical evidences of this are singularly corroborative of the genuineness of the Buddhist edicts engraved on various rocks and monuments in India, the deciphering of which was the grand achievement of Prinsep and his learned coadjutors.  On the pillars of Delhi, Allahabad, and other places, and on the rocks of Girnar and Dhauli, there exist a number of Pali inscriptions purporting to be edicts of Asoca (the Dharmasoca of the Mahawanso), King of Magadha, in the third century before the Christian era, who, on his conversion to the religion of Buddha, commissioned Mahindo, his son, to undertake its establishment in Ceylon.  In these edicts, which were promulgated in the vernacular dialect, the king endeavoured to impress both upon his subjects and allies, as well as those who, although aliens, were yet “united in the law” of Buddha, the divine precepts of their great teacher; prominent amongst which are the prohibition against taking animal life[1], and the injunction that, “everywhere wholesome vegetables, roots, and fruit trees shall be cultivated, and that on the roads wells shall be dug and trees planted for the enjoyment of men and animals.”  In apparent conformity with these edicts, one of the kings of Ceylon, Addagaimunu, A.D. 20, is stated in the Mahawanso to have “caused to be planted throughout the island every description of fruit-bearing creepers, and interdicted the destruction of animal life,"[2] and similar acts of pious benevolence, performed by command of various other sovereigns, are adverted to on numerous occasions.

[Footnote 1:  It is curious that one of these edicts of Asoca, who was contemporary with Devenipiatissa, is addressed to “all the conquered territories of the raja, even unto the ends of the earth; as in Chola, in Pida, in Keralaputra, and in Tambapanni (or Ceylon).”  This license of speech, reminding one of the grandiloquent epistles “from the Flaminian Gate,” was no doubt assumed in virtue of the recent establishment of Buddhism, or, as it is called in the Mahawanso “the religion of the Vanquisher,” and Asoca, as its propagator, thus claims to address the converts as his “subjects.”]