ests (adhikarinah), 2740 priests and 2232
assistants, including 615 dancing girls. But even these figures seem
very large.[310]

The inscription comes to a gratifying conclusion by announcing that
there are 102 hospitals in the kingdom.[311] These institutions, which
are alluded to in other inscriptions, were probably not all founded by
Jayavarman VII and he seems to treat them as being, like temples, a
natural part of a well-ordered state. But he evidently expended much
care and money on them and in the present inscription he makes over
the fruit of these good deeds to his mother. The most detailed
description of these hospitals occurs in another of his inscriptions
found at Say-fong in Laos. It is, like the one just cited, definitely
Buddhist and it is permissible to suppose that Buddhism took a more
active part than Brahmanism in such works of charity. It opens with an
invocation first to the Buddha who in his three bodies transcends the
distinction between existence and non-existence, and then to the
healing Buddha and the two Bodhisattvas who drive away darkness and
disease. These divinities, who are the lords of a heaven in the east,
analogous to the paradise of Amitabha, are still worshipped in China
and Japan and were evidently gods of light.[312] The hospital erected
under their auspices by the Cambojan king was open to all the four
castes and had a staff of 98 persons, besides an astrologer and two
sacrificers (yajaka).

5

These inscriptions of Jayavarman are the last which tell us anything
about the religion of mediaeval Camboja but we have a somewhat later
account from the pen of Chou Ta-kuan, a Chinese who visited Angkor in
1296.[313] He describes the temple in the centre of the city, which
must be the Bayon, and says that it had a tower of gold and that the
eastern (or principal) entrance was approached by a golden bridge
flanked by two lions and eight statues, all of the same metal. The
chapter of his work entitled "The Three Religions," runs as follows,
slightly abridged from M. Pelliot's version.

"The literati are called Pan-ch'i, the bonzes Ch'u-ku and the Taoists
Pa-ssu-wei. I do not know whom the Pan-ch'i worship. They have no
schools and it is difficult to say what books they read. They dress
like other people except that they wear a white thread round their
necks, which is their distinctive mark. They attain to very high
positions. The Ch'u-ku shave their heads and wear yellow clothes. The