Such had been the ostensible decay of Buddhism during the Malabar domination that, when the kingdom was recovered from them by Wijayo Bahu, A.D. 1071, “there was not to be found in the whole island five tirunansis,” and an embassy was bent to Arramana[1] to request that members of this superior rank of the priesthood might be sent to restore the order in Ceylon.[2]

[Footnote 1:  A part of the Chin-Indian peninsula, probably between Arracan and Siam.]

[Footnote 2:  Rajaratnacari, p. 85; Rajavali, p. 252; Mahawanso, ch, lx.

From the identity of the national faith in the two countries; intercourse existed between Siam and Ceylon from time immemorial.  At a very early period missions were interchanged for the inter-communication of Pali literature, and in later times, when, owing to the oppression of the Malabars certain orders of the priesthood had become extinct in Ceylon, it became essential to seek a renewal of ordination at the hands of the Siamese heirarchy (Rajaratnacari, p. 86).  In the numerous incursions of the Malabars from Chola and Pandya, the literary treasures of Ceylon were deliberately destroyed, and the Mahawanso and Rajavali, make frequent lamentations over the loss of the sacred books. (See also Rajaratnacari, pp 77, 95, 97.) At a still later period the savage Raja Singha who reigned between A.D. 1581 and 1592, and became a convert to Brahmanism, sought eagerly for Buddhistical books, and “delighted in burning them in heaps as high as a coco-nut tree.”  These losses it was sought to repair by an embassy to Siam, sent by Kirti-Sri in A.D. 1753, when a copious supply was obtained of Burmese versions of Pali sacred literature.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1155.]

During the same troublous times, schisms and heresy had combined to undermine the national belief, and hence one of the first cares of Prakrama Bahu was to weed out the perverted sects, and establish a council for the settlement of the faith on debatable points.[1] Dagobas and statues of Buddha were multiplied without end during his reign, and temples of every form were erected both at Pollanarrua and throughout the breadth of the island.  Halls for the reading of bana, image rooms, residences for the priesthood, ambulance halls and rest houses for their accommodation when on journeys, were built in every district, and rocks were hollowed into temples; one of which, at Pollanarrua, remains to the present day with its images of Buddha; “one in a sitting and another in a lying posture,” almost as described in the Mahawanso.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. lxxvii.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. lxxii.  For a description of this temple see the account of Pollanarrua in the present work, Vol.  II.  Pt. x. ch. i.]

In conformity with the spirit of toleration, which is one of the characteristics of Buddhism, the king “erected a house for the Brahmans of the capital to afford the comforts of religion even to his Malabar enemies.”  And mindful of the divine injunctions engraven on the rock by King Asoca, “he forbade the animals in the whole of Lanka, both of the earth and the water, to be killed,"[1] and planted gardens, “resembling the paradise of the God-King Sakkraia, with trees of all sorts bearing fruits and odorous flowers.”