We will now explain rather minutely, and describe as accurately as possible, the various ceremonies performed on the occasion of the promotion of a shyin to the rank of patzin, or professed member. It must be borne in mind that this ordeal through which he has to pass, or ordination, as we may aptly perhaps term it, which he has to receive, does not confer any peculiar character, or give any special spiritual power to the admitted candidate; but it merely initiates him to a more perfect course of life, and makes him the member of a society composed of men aiming at a higher degree of sanctity or perfection. The incumbent must be provided for the ceremony with a dress such as is used in the community; he must be found exempt from certain moral and physical defects that would render him unworthy of being admitted a member of the order; he must pledge himself to a rigorous observance of certain regulations which form the constitutions of the society. The place where the ceremony is to be performed is a hall measuring at least twelve cubits in length, not including the space occupied by the Rahans whose presence is required on the occasion. The assembly of Phongyies, or Rahans, must include ten or twelve members at least if the ceremony be performed in towns, and four or six if it be in the country. He who presides over the ceremony is called Upitze, meaning master or guide; he has an assistant, named Cambawa Tsaia, whose office it is to read the sacred Cambawa, or book of ordination, to present the candidate to the Upitze and his assembled brethren, to put to him the requisite questions as prescribed by the ritual, and to give him instructions on certain points, the ignorance of which would prove highly prejudicial to and greatly offensive in a professed member of the order. All the regulations prescribed and the ceremonies observed on the occasion are contained in a book written in Pali, the sacred language. This book may be aptly termed the ritual of the Buddhists. It is held in great respect, and some copies written on sheets of ivory with gilt edges are truly beautiful, and bespeak the high value Buddhists set on the work. The copyists have retained the use of the old square Pali letters, instead of employing the circular Burmese characters. All the ordinances and prescriptions in this book are supposed to have been promulgated and sanctioned by no less an authority than Gaudama himself, the last Buddha and the acknowledged originator and founder of the Talapoinic order. Hence the high respect and profound veneration all Buddhists bear to its contents. The candidate, previously to the beginning of the ceremony, must be provided, as aforesaid, with his _patta_, or mendicant’s pot, and a _tsiwaran_, the clerical dress or monkish habit. The _patta_ is an open-mouthed pot of a truncated spheroidal form, wherein each member of the brotherhood must receive the alms which every morning he goes to collect in the streets.