sacrificed, and once a year they assisted the king to immolate a victim to the Nats on a mountain top.  They claimed power to expiate all sins, even parricide.  They lived in convents (which is their only real resemblance to Buddhist monks) but were not celibate.[143] Anawrata is said to have suppressed the Aris but he certainly did not extirpate them for an inscription dated 1468 records their existence in the Myingyan district.  Also in a village near Pagan are preserved Tantric frescoes representing Bodhisattvas with their Saktis.  In one temple is an inscription dated 1248 and requiring the people to supply the priests morning and evening with rice, beef, betel, and a jar of spirits.[144] It is not clear whether these priests were Aris or not, but they evidently professed an extreme form of Buddhist Saktism.

Chinese influences in Upper Burma must also be taken into account.  Burmese kings were perhaps among the many potentates who sent religious embassies to the Emperor Wu-ti about 525 A.D. and the T’ang[145] annals show an acquaintance with Burma.  They describe the inhabitants as devout Buddhists, reluctant to take life or even to wear silk, since its manufacture involves the death of the silk worms.  There were a hundred monasteries into which the youth entered at the age of seven, leaving at the age of twenty, if they did not intend to become monks.  The Chinese writer does not seem to have regarded the religion of Burma as differing materially from Buddhism as he knew it and some similarities in ecclesiastical terminology shown by Chinese and Burmese may indicate the presence of Chinese influence.[146] But this influence, though possibly strong between the sixth and tenth centuries A.D., and again about the time of the Chinese invasion of 1284,[147] cannot be held to exclude Indian influence.

Thus when Anawrata came to the throne[148] several forms of religion probably co-existed at Pagan, and probably most of them were corrupt, though it is a mistake to think of his dominions as barbarous.  The reformation which followed is described by Burmese authors in considerable detail and as usual in such accounts is ascribed to the activity of one personality, the Thera Arahanta who came from Thaton and enjoyed Anawrata’s confidence.  The story implies that there was a party in Pagan which knew that the prevalent creed was corrupt and also looked upon Thaton and Ceylon as religious centres.  As Anawrata was a man of arms rather than a theologian, we may conjecture that his motive was to concentrate in his capital the flower of learning as known in his time—­a motive which has often animated successful princes in Asia and led to the unceremonious seizure of living saints.  According to the story he broke up the communities of Aris at the instigation of Arahanta and then sent a mission to Manohari, king of Pegu, asking for a copy of the Tipitaka and for relics.  He received a contemptuous reply intimating that he was not to be trusted with such sacred objects.  Anawrata in indignation collected an army, marched against the Talaings and ended by carrying off to Pagan not only elephant loads of scriptures and relics, but also all the Talaing monks and nobles with the king himself.[149] The Pitakas were stored in a splendid pagoda and Anawrata sent to Ceylon[150] for others which were compared with the copies obtained from Thaton in order to settle the text.[151]