detained by the king of Kandy from 1660 to 1680.  He does not seem to have been aware that there was any distinction between Buddhism and Hinduism.  Though he describes the Sinhalese as idolaters, he also emphasizes the fact that Buddou (as he writes the name) is the God “unto whom the salvation of souls belongs,” and for whom “above all others they have a high respect and devotion.”  He also describes the ceremonies of pirit and bana, the perahera procession, and two classes of Buddhist monks, the elders and the ordinary members of the Sangha.  His narrative indicates that Buddhism was accepted as the higher religion, though men were prone to pray to deities who would save from temporal danger.

About this time Vimala Dharma II[98] made great efforts to improve the religious condition of the island and finding that the true succession had again failed, arranged with the Dutch to send an embassy to Arakan and bring back qualified Theras.  But apparently the steps taken were not sufficient, for when king Kittisiri Rajasiha (1747-81), whose piety forms the theme of the last two chapters of the Mahavamsa, set about reforming the Sangha, he found that duly ordained monks were extinct and that many so-called monks had families.  He therefore decided to apply to Dhammika, king of Ayuthia in Siam, and like his predecessor despatched an embassy on a Dutch ship.  Dhammika sent back a company of “more than ten monks” (that is more than sufficient for the performance of all ecclesiastical acts) under the Abbot Upali in 1752 and another to relieve it in 1755.[99] They were received by the king of Ceylon with great honour and subsequently by the ordination which they conferred placed the succession beyond dispute.  But the order thus reconstituted was aristocratic and exclusive:  only members of the highest caste were admitted to it and the wealthy middle classes found themselves excluded from a community which they were expected to honour and maintain.  This led to the despatch of an embassy to Burma in 1802 and to the foundation of another branch of the Sangha, known as the Amarapura school, distinct in so far as its validity depended on Burmese not Siamese ordination.

Since ordination is for Buddhists merely self-dedication to a higher life and does not confer any sacramental or sacerdotal powers, the importance assigned to it may seem strange.  But the idea goes back to the oldest records in the Vinaya and has its root in the privileges accorded to the order.  A Bhikkhu had a right to expect much from the laity, but he also had to prove his worth and Gotama’s early legislation was largely concerned with excluding unsuitable candidates.  The solicitude for valid ordination was only the ecclesiastical form of the popular feeling that the honours and immunities of the order were conditional on its maintaining a certain standard of conduct.  Other methods of reform might have been devised, but the old injunction that a monk could be admitted only by other duly ordained monks was fairly efficacious and could not be disputed.  But the curious result is that though Ceylon was in early times the second home of Buddhism, almost all (if indeed not all) the monks found there now derive their right to the title of Bhikkhu from foreign countries.