The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c29.s4.33

v3.c29.s4.33

Dammazedi himself sent a mission to Buddhagaya³ in Bengal to take plans of the Holy Tree and of the temple as models for his buildings at Pegū. But his most important work was his mission of twenty-two monks to Ceylon⁴ in 1475. It was a long and dangerous journey, and several died in shipwreck or during their wanderings when cast away on the coast of Madras. To the Tooth, the Footprint, and the Holy Trees, at Kandy, they presented a stone alms bowl studded with sapphires, and reliquaries of gold and crystal; to the Cingalese monks, cloths and Chiengmai lacquer boxes; to the king of Ceylon, rubies, sapphires, Chinese silks, fine mats, and a letter on gold leaf. Their object was to secure valid ordination from the clergy of the Mahāvihāra, the great monastery in Ceylon which, founded in 251 B.C., still exists. On their return they proceeded to transmit this ordination to the clergy throughout Lower Burma: it was so generally accepted as valid that monks flocked to receive it from all over Burma and even from Siam; and thus religion in Burma, which for three centuries had been split into sects each with its own ordination, received a measure of unity from the standard Kalyānī ordination. It was and is granted at the Kalyānī *thein* (ordination hall) near Pegū, so called because the original monks were ordained on the banks of the Kalyānī stream in Ceylon. Dammazedi recorded these events on ten inscribed stones at the *thein*, called the Kalyānī Inscriptions.