AS EE GAUDS THE PRIESTHOOD. 
The Priesthood in Siam is overstocked, and in their poorest pro* ' 
vinces they are very burdensome on the population. In the province 
of P,hoonga for instance, excluding the island of J uakceylonmtely 
annexed to it, I calculated when there in 1824, tbspthere was, one 
Priest for the care of every hundred souls. It is to-'this incubus that 
the decline of Buddhism in some countries may be chiefly imputed, 
although, in as far as India is concerned, the people made! but a poor 
exchange of the voluntary system, for the tyrannical and exacting one 
of the Brahmans. 
But the Government has often interfered to check a system which 
must prove depressing to the energies of the people, and by directing 
that the preparatory and final examinations of candidates should be 
very strict, thereby excludes numbers whose only inducement to enter 
the order is the hope of living at ease at the expense of the community’. 
There is one strong inducement, however, to enter the Priesthood 
connected with their notions of purgatory. They believe that the 
soul of a parent which is there in sufferance may be relieved from 
torment by the son becoming a Priest or even by such son obtaining 
some one to enter the Priesthood as a substitute for him. Their 
expiatory ceremonies are but few, and have all reference to future 
states of existence, having no efficacy in the present state. The Sia¬ 
mese hells are in fact purgatories, for the punishments to be endured 
by guilty souls in them are not considered eternal, although the periods 
of endurance amount sometimes to millions of years! Perfect rege¬ 
neration in this life cannot be attained by any expiation , or virtu¬ 
ous course whatever. * 
Apostacy is rare in Siam, but neither the moral nor civil Codes, so 
far as the copies examined by me shew, contain laws preventive of it. 
The Priesthood retain a powerful influence, but not a slavish one 
over the minds of the people. The knowledge that any one may en¬ 
ter the order tends to render it far less venerated than that of the 
Brahmans, and causes the veneration to be paid to the Priest merely 
as an organ of Booddha’s laws, and not as a sort of demigod like a 
Brahman. In the Lower Provinces a few Siamese have been con¬ 
verted to Mahometanism, 
