malculae, casuistry succeeded so far as to fix the crime
on the slayer, and to exonerate the individual who merely partook of the
flesh.[1] Even the inmates of the wiharas and monasteries discovered
devices for the saving of conscience, and curried rice was not rejected
in consequence of the animal ingredients incorporated with it. The mass
of the population were nevertheless vegetarians, and so little value did
they place on animal food, that according to the accounts furnished to
EDRISI by the Arabian seamen returning from Ceylon, "a sheep sufficient
to regale an assembly was to be bought there for half a drachm."[2]

[Footnote 1: HARDY'S _Eastern Monachism,_ ch. iv. p. 24; ch. ix. p. 92;
ch. xvi. p. 158. HARDY'S _Buddhism_, ch. vii. p. 327.]

[Footnote 2: EDRISI; _Geographie_, &c., tom. i. p. 73.]

_Betel_--In connection with a diet so largely composed of vegetable
food, arose the custom, which to the present day is universal in
Ceylon,--of chewing the leaves of the betel vine, accompanied with lime
and the sliced nut of the areca palm.[1] The betel (_piper betel_),
which is now universally cultivated for this purpose, is presumed to
have been introduced from some tropical island, as it has nowhere been
found indigenous in continental India.[2] In Ceylon, its use is
mentioned as early as the fifth century before Christ, when "betel
leaves" formed the present sent by a princess to her lover.[3] In a
conflict of Dutugaimunu with the Malabars, B.C. 161, the enemy seeing on
his lips the red stain of the betel, mistook it for blood, and spread
the false cry that the king had been slain.[4]

[Footnote 1: For an account of the medicinal influence of betel-chewing,
see Part I. c. iii.