the world his heart was with the Church.  He was renowned for his piety no less than for his magnificence and is known to modern scholars as the author of the Kalyani inscriptions,[156] which assume the proportions of a treatise on ecclesiastical laws and history.  Their chief purpose is to settle an intricate and highly technical question, namely the proper method of defining and consecrating a sima.  This word, which means literally boundary, signifies a plot of ground within which Uposatha meetings, ordinations and other ceremonies can take place.  The expression occurs in the Vinaya Pitaka,[157] but the area there contemplated seems to be an ecclesiastical district within which the Bhikkhus were obliged to meet for Uposatha.  The modern sima is much smaller,[158] but more important since it is maintained that valid ordination can be conferred only within its limits.  To Dhammaceti the question seemed momentous, for as he explains, there were in southern Burma six schools who would not meet for Uposatha.  These were, first the Camboja[159] school (identical with the Arahanta school) who claimed spiritual descent from the missionaries sent by Asoka to Suvarnabhumi, and then five divisions of the Sinhalese school, namely the three founded by Chapata’s disciples as already related and two more founded by the theras of Martaban.  Dhammaceti accordingly sent a mission to Ceylon charged to obtain an authoritative ruling as to the proper method of consecrating a sima and conferring ordination.  On their return a locality known as the Kalyanisima was consecrated in the manner prescribed by the Mahavihara and during three years all the Bhikkhus of Dhammaceti’s kingdom were reordained there.  The total number reached 15,666, and the king boasts that he had thus purified religion and made the school of the Mahavihara the only sect, all other distinctions being obliterated.

There can be little doubt that in the fifteenth century Burmese Buddhism had assumed the form which it still has, but was this form due to indigenous tradition or to imitation of Ceylon?  Five periods merit attention. (a) In the sixth century, and probably several centuries earlier, Hinayanism was known in Lower Burma.  The inscriptions attesting its existence are written in Pali and in a south Indian alphabet. (b) Anawrata (1010-1052) purified the Buddhism of Upper Burma with the help of scriptures obtained from the Talaing country, which were compared with other scriptures brought from Ceylon. (c) About 1200 Chapata and his pupils who had studied in Ceylon and received ordination there refused to recognize the Talaing monks and two hostile schools were founded, predominant at first in Upper and Lower Burma respectively. (d) About 1250 the Sinhalese school, led by Sariputta and others, began to make conquests in Lower Burma at the expense of the Talaing school. (e) Two centuries later, about 1460, Dhammaceti of Pegu boasts that he has purified religion and made the school of the Mahavihara, that is the most orthodox form of the Sinhalese school, the only sect.