Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c10.s4.2.3

c10.s4.2.3

and having furnished the temple with curtains, cloths for ceiling, umbrellas, flags, tom-toms, trumpets, and silver priests’-dishes, kettas, spitting pots, betel stands, and lamps, His Majesty, on the seventeenth day of Bak of the increasing moon, in the year of Śaka 1693 (A.D. 1771), ordered the festival Nētra Pinkama to be performed, and His Majesty also furnished all the necessaries thereto, and having granted much riches as clothes, money, &c.. to the artificers, the painters, and stone cutters, His Majesty received merit and was filled with ecstasy, and for the purpose of carrying on the offerings of rice, flowers, &c., and for the necessaries for five ordained and unordained priests in the said temple to reside therein and perform the rites, and also for the necessaries of the chief priest who presides over and causes the ceremonies to be performed therein, His Majesty having received much instruction and exhortation in the Buddhist faith and full explanation of the books Dighanikāya, Upāsaka-Jana-Alaṅkāraya, Milindapraśnaya, and Mahāvaṃsa from the High Priest Moratoṭa Dhammakanda, who had a thorough knowledge of Buddhism, granted to him, his pupils, sub-pupils, in succession, to be held by them for ever, the following property: . . . and His Majesty enjoined that none shall take forcibly any of the above lands.