kings of innumerable gardens for the floral requirements of
the temples. The capital was surrounded on all sides[3] by flower
gardens, and these were multiplied so extensively that, according to the
_Rajaratnacari_, one was to be found within a distance of four leagues
in any part of Ceylon.[4] Amongst the regulations of the temple built at
Dambedinia, in the thirteenth century, was "every day an offering of
100,000 flowers, and each day a different flower."[5]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxiv.; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 52, 53.]

[Footnote 2: FA HIAN. _Foe Koue Ki_, ch. xxxviii. p. 335.]

[Footnote 3: _Rajavali_, p. 227; _Mahawanso_, ch. xi. p. 67.]

[Footnote 4: _Rajaratnacari_, p. 29, 49. Amongst the officers attached
to the great establishments of the priests in Mihintala, A.D. 246, there
are enumerated in an inscription engraven on a rock there, a secretary,
a treasurer, a physician, a surgeon, a painter, twelve cooks, twelve
thatchers, ten carpenters, six carters, and _two florists_.]

[Footnote 5: _Rajaratnacari_, p. 103. The same book states that another
king, in the fifteenth century, "offered no less than 6,480,320 sweet
smelling flowers" at the shrine of the Tooth.--_Ib._, p. 136.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

Another advantage conferred by Buddhism on the country was the planting
of fruit trees and esculent vegetables for the gratuitous use of
travellers in all the frequented parts of the island. The historical
evidences of this are singularly corroborative of the genuineness of the
Buddhist edicts engraved on various rocks and monuments in India, the
deciphering of which was the grand achievement of Prinsep and his
learned coadjutors. On the pillars of Delhi, Allahabad, and other
places, and on the rocks of Girnar and Dhauli, there exist a number of
Pali inscriptions purporting to be edicts of Asoca (the Dharmasoca of
the _Mahawanso_), King of Magadha, in the third century before the
Christian era, who, on his conversion to the religion of Buddha,
commissioned Mahindo, his son, to undertake its establishment in Ceylon.
In these edicts, which were promulgated in the vernacular dialect, the
king endeavoured to impress both upon his subjects and allies, as well
as those who, although aliens, were yet "united in the law" of Buddha,
the divine precepts of their great teacher; prominent amongst which are
the prohibition against taking animal life[1], and the injunction that,
"everywhere wholesome vegetables, root