families. He therefore
decided to apply to Dhammika, king of Ayuthia in Siam, and like his
predecessor despatched an embassy on a Dutch ship. Dhammika sent back
a company of "more than ten monks" (that is more than sufficient for
the performance of all ecclesiastical acts) under the Abbot Upali in
1752 and another to relieve it in 1755.[99] They were received by the
king of Ceylon with great honour and subsequently by the ordination
which they conferred placed the succession beyond dispute. But the
order thus reconstituted was aristocratic and exclusive: only members
of the highest caste were admitted to it and the wealthy middle
classes found themselves excluded from a community which they were
expected to honour and maintain. This led to the despatch of an
embassy to Burma in 1802 and to the foundation of another branch of
the Sangha, known as the Amarapura school, distinct in so far as its
validity depended on Burmese not Siamese ordination.

Since ordination is for Buddhists merely self-dedication to a higher
life and does not confer any sacramental or sacerdotal powers, the
importance assigned to it may seem strange. But the idea goes back to
the oldest records in the Vinaya and has its root in the privileges
accorded to the order. A Bhikkhu had a right to expect much from the
laity, but he also had to prove his worth and Gotama's early
legislation was largely concerned with excluding unsuitable
candidates. The solicitude for valid ordination was only the
ecclesiastical form of the popular feeling that the honours and
immunities of the order were conditional on its maintaining a certain
standard of conduct. Other methods of reform might have been devised,
but the old injunction that a monk could be admitted only by other
duly ordained monks was fairly efficacious and could not be disputed.
But the curious result is that though Ceylon was in early times the
second home of Buddhism, almost all (if indeed not all) the monks
found there now derive their right to the title of Bhikkhu from
foreign countries.

The Sinhalese Sangha is generally described as divided into four schools,
those of Siam, Kelani, Amarapura and Ramanya, of which the first two are
practically identical, Kelani being simply a separate province of the
Siamese school, which otherwise has its headquarters in the inland
districts. This school, founded as mentioned above by priests who arrived
in 1750, comprises about half of the whole Sangha and has s