Adzatathat reigned thirty-two years, that is to say, twenty-five years after Gaudama’s death. Under his reign, the first council was held with his consent, and a promise to make the decisions of the assembly be received with respect and strictly attended to. This is the first direct interference of the secular power in matters of a purely ecclesiastical nature. Adzatathat was, however, too prudent in his policy to persecute directly the holders of anti-Buddhistic opinions, who as yet formed the great mass of the people. He zealously supported the new creed he had adopted, but he left full liberty to the followers of the pounhas. By the advice of Kathaba, Adzatathat fixed the beginning of the religious era in the year of Buddha’s demise. It is the one which is followed by all the southern Buddhists. It was not the necessity of correcting certain errors in the calendar which induced the king to adopt that measure, since a correction had been made a hundred and forty-eight years ago by King Eetzana with the assistance of a celebrated hermit. A religious motive alone induced the king to obtemper the solicitations of Kathaba on this subject, and lay, as the point of departure for the reckoning of years, the great event of the death of the founder of religion. The two names of Pimpathara and of his son Adzatathat are indissolubly connected with the origin of Buddhism and its spread through the Magatha country. To the first, Gaudama owed much for the extraordinary success that attended his preachings and the conversion of remarkable personages. In a country like India, the example of the king must have exerted an extraordinary influence over the courtiers and the wealthy and powerful persons. The second rendered no less important services to the cause of religion, by supporting openly the great Kathaba, the patriarch of Buddhism, and countenancing the decisions of the first council, which secured unity among the members of the assembly at the very time that evil-minded individuals endeavoured to sow the seeds of dissension among the religious, and upset the fabric which Buddha’s genius and zeal had just set up. Under the reign of those two sovereigns religion gained a firm footing in Magatha, and secured for itself an ascendancy which it retained with various successes for many centuries.