Let us return to the hillside preacher. A change has come over his audience. All are now alert and eager. Seated around his platform, they are holding a cord which seems to bind them in some mystic circle. It is "_Pirit_": a kind of magic incantation. The preacher is reciting the ancient runes by which evil is averted and demon armies kept at bay. He is telling how the bandit, Angulimāla, who had killed nine hundred and ninety-nine victims and wore their fingers as a chaplet, tried to kill the Buddha so as to make the full tale of a thousand, but was converted on the spot. "May the merit of this be yours," he says, and they all cry, "_Sadhu_, Amen." "All humbug," grunts the layman. "Come, let us go to the Young Men's Buddhist Association, where a Singhalese advocate, newly returned from England, is going to read a paper on 'Buddhism, a Gospel for Europe.'" Leaving the palms and fragrant trees of the jungle silhouetted against the brilliant sky, and passing the white buildings of the Buddhist High School and of the precious and venerated Temple of the Tooth, he talks of this possibility. It seems that a movement is on foot to send a mission to Europe. We agree that, if Christians were real followers of Jesus of Nazareth, such missions would be futile: and that the spirit of Gotama is akin to that of Jesus. "We see your Christ," he says; "in His beauty, because we have first seen the beauty of our Buddha." Here is a preparation for the gospel indeed. And may not all idealists--Christians, Buddhists, and others--cooperate much more freely than they do in great causes? In a League of Nations, for example, and in social programmes? In Ceylon, as in Burma, Buddhism is in some degree adapting itself to the new world-environment. Its old cry of pain, "All is fleeting, transient, sorrowful," is giving place to attempts at social service and positive living. Yet as compared with Burma or with Christian lands, the predominating note among Buddhists in Ceylon is one of world-weariness and despair. III. BUDDHISM IN SIAM 1. Siam a Buddhist Kingdom. Ceylon and Burma were for many centuries Buddhist kingdoms with a sovereign as patron and supporter of the monks and very often with members of the royal family amongst the great abbots. Buddhism has indeed depended much upon royal patronage, and in these days when kings are rare it is of special interest to get a glimpse of a modern Buddhist kingdom which is not unlike those of the past. Let us study a great festival in Siam where the king's own brother is Head of the Order and where he himself is a staunch patron of Buddhism. 2. The Thot Krathin Festival.